run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The
gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the
mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, 'A boy with Somebody-
else's pork pie! Stop him!' The cattle came upon me with like
suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their
nostrils, 'Holloa, young thief!' One black ox, with a white cravat
on--who even had to my awakened conscience something of a
clerical air--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved
his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
round, that I blubbered out to him, 'I couldn't help it, sir! It
wasn't for myself I took it!' Upon which he put down his head,
blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-
up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.

All this time I was getting on towards the river; but however
fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold
seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was
running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight,
for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe sitting
on an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him,
regularly bound, we would have such Larks there! However,
in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the
right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on
the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked
the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had
just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery,
and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I
saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and
he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his
breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly
and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and
it was not the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a
great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was
everything that the other man was; except that he had not the
same face, and had a flat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned felt hat
on. All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see
it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me--it was a round,

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