to touch him, he should not come out--not if he died of hunger!

At length he could bear imprisonment no longer. He opened the
room-door with the caution of one who thought a tiger might be lying
against it. He saw no one, and crept out with half steps. By slow
degrees, interrupted by many an inroad of terror and many a swift
retreat, he got down the stair and out into the garden; whence, after
closest search, he was at length satisfied his enemy had departed. For
a time he was his own master! To one like Tommy--and such are not
rare--it is a fine thing to be his own master. But the same person who
is the master is the servant--and what a master to serve! Tommy,
however, was quite satisfied with both master and servant, for both
were himself. What was he to do? Go after something to eat, of course!
He would be back long before Clare! He had gone to look for work--and
who would give _him_ work? If Tommy were as big as Clare, lots of
people would give him work! But catch him working! Not if he knew
it!--not Tommy!

Never till she was grown up, never, indeed, until she was a
middle-aged woman and Mr. Skymer's housekeeper, did the baby know in
what danger she was that morning, alone with surnameless Tommy.

His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect
itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature. But
in this case the exercise of the power brought him into another
relation, one with the water-but! He went back to the room where the
child lay in her blankets like a human chrysalis, and stood for a
moment regarding her with a hatred far from mild: was he actually
expected to give time and personal notice to that contemptible thing
lying there unable to move? _He_ wasn't a girl or an old woman! He