Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/49

 'All this comes of leaving the path,' he says; 'I shouldn't have cared for rolling down if it hadn't been for this bush. The fern was soft enough. I'll never stray in a wood at night again. There, free at last! And my jacket nearly torn off my back!'

With a good deal of patience, and a great many scratches, he gets free of the thorn which had arrested his progress, when his feet were within a yard of the water, manages to scramble up the bank, and makes the best of his way through the wood.

And now, as the clouds move slowly onward, the moon shows her face on the black surface of the water; and the little white owl comes and hoots, and flutters over it like a wandering snowdrift. But the boy is deep in the wood again, and knows nothing of the danger from which he has escaped.

All this time the dark passenger follows the main track, and believes that his prey is before him. At last he hears a crashing of dead boughs, and presently the little midshipman's voice not fifty yards before him. Yes, it is too true; the boy is in the cross track. He will pass the cottage in the wood directly, and after that his pursuer will come upon him.

The boy bounds into the path; but, as he passes the cottage, he is so thirsty, and so hot, that he thinks he must ask the inhabitants if they can sell him a glass of ale.

He enters without ceremony. 'Ale?' says the woodman, who is sitting at his supper. 'No, we have no ale; but perhaps my wife can give thee a drink of milk. Come in.' So he comes in, and shuts the door; and, while he sits waiting for the milk, Rh