him! there was no big father gorilla therein to take his part--to
scratch out the gardener's inside with one paw, toss the dairymaid
into a tree with another, and wrench off Sir John's head with a
third, while he cracked the keeper's skull with his teeth as easily
as if it had been a cocoa-nut or a paving-stone.

However, Tom did not remember ever having had a father; so he did
not look for one, and expected to have to take care of himself;
while as for running, he could keep up for a couple of miles with
any stage-coach, if there was the chance of a copper or a cigar-
end, and turn coach-wheels on his hands and feet ten times
following, which is more than you can do. Wherefore his pursuers
found it very difficult to catch him; and we will hope that they
did not catch him at all.

Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had never been in a wood in
his life; but he was sharp enough to know that he might hide in a
bush, or swarm up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance there
than in the open. If he had not known that, he would have been
foolisher than a mouse or a minnow.

But when he got into the wood, he found it a very different sort of
place from what he had fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of
rhododendrons, and found himself at once caught in a trap. The
boughs laid hold of his legs and arms, poked him in his face and
his stomach, made him shut his eyes tight (though that was no great
loss, for he could not see at best a yard before his nose); and
when he got through the rhododendrons, the hassock-grass and sedges
tumbled him over, and cut his poor little fingers afterwards most
spitefully; the birches birched him as soundly as if he had been a