miles from the Orphanage, due south-west.


Of his adventures on the road the story is equally silent, as I
warned you. But the small figure comes into view again, a week
later, on the hillside of the coombe above his home. And when he saw
the sea and the white beach glittering beneath him, he did not stop,
even for a moment, but reeled down the hill. The child was just a
living skeleton; he had neither hat, coat, nor waistcoat; one foot
only was shod, the other had worn through the stocking, and ugly red
blisters showed on the sole as he ran. His face was far whiter than
his shirt, save for a blue welt or two and some ugly red scratches;
and his gaunt eyes were full of hunger and yearning, and his lips
happily babbling the curses that the ships' captains had taught him.

He reeled down the hill to the cottage. The tenant was a newcomer to
the town, and had lately been appointed musketry-instructor to the
battery above. He was in the garden pruning the rose-tree, but did
not particularly notice the boy. And the boy passed without turning
his head.

The tide on the beach was far out and just beginning to flow.
There was the same dull plash on the pebbles, the same twinkle as the
sun struck across the ripples. The sun was sinking; in ten minutes
it would be behind the hill.

No one knows what the waves said to Kit. But he flung himself among
them with a choking cry, and drank the brine and tossed it over his
head, and shoulders and chest, and lay down and let the small waves
play over him, and cried and laughed aloud till the sun went down.