Page:Tom Brown's School Days.djvu/161

Rh and yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the country."

"Well" said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his disappointment, "it can't be helped. We did our best, anyhow. Hadn't we better find this lane and go down it, as young Brooke told us?"

"I suppose so—nothing else for it," grunted East. "If ever I go out last day again," growl— growl—growl.

So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel how the run had taken it out of them. The evening closed in fast, and clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.

"I say, it must be locking-up, I should think," remarked East, breaking the silence; "it's so dark." "What if we're late?" said Tom.

"No tea, and sent up to the Doctor," answered East.

The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo was heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse; he had lost a shoe in the brook, and been groping after it up to his elbows in the stiff wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of boy seldom has been seen.

The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was now no longer under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so, in better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending-lane. At last it widened, just