Clare and Tommy. Not one opportunity of appropriation presented
itself, else it would have gone ill with Tommy, now that the eyes and
ears of his guardian were on the alert. For Clare thought of him now
as a little thievish pup, for whose conduct, manners, and education he
was responsible.

The agony began at length to abate--ready to revive with augmented
strength when the next hour for supplying the human furnace should
begin to approach. Few even of those who know what hunger is,
understand to what it may grow--how desire becomes longing, longing
becomes craving, and craving a wild passion of demand. It must be
terrible to be hungry, and not know God!

As the evening came down upon them, worn out, faint with want,
shivering with cold, and as miserable in prospect as at the moment,
yet another need presented itself with equally imperative
requisition--that of shelter that they might rest. It was even more
imperative: they could not eat; they _must_ lie down!

Whether it be a rudiment retained from their remote ancestry, I cannot
tell, but any kind of suffering will wake in some a masterful impulse
to burrow; and as the boys walked about in their misery, white with
cold and hunger, Clare's eyes kept turning to every shallowest
archway, every breach in wall or hedge that seemed to offer the least
chance of covert, while, every now and then, Tommy would bolt from his
side to peer into some opening whose depth was not immediately patent
to his ferret-gaze. Once, in a lane on the outskirts of the town, he
darted into a narrow doorway in the face of a wall, but instantly
rushed back in horror: within was a well, where water lay still and
dark. Then first Clare had a hint of the peculiar dread Tommy had of