In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place--not even when the fox
was killed in the conservatory, among acres of broken glass, and tons of
smashed flower-pots--such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy,
hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity, repose,
and order, as that day, when Grimes, gardener, the groom, the dairymaid,
Sir John, the steward, the ploughman, the keeper, and the Irishwoman,
all ran up the park, shouting "Stop thief," in the belief that Tom had
at least a thousand pounds' worth of jewels in his empty pockets; and
the very magpies and jays followed Tom up, screaking and screaming, as
if he were a hunted fox, beginning to droop his brush.

And all the while poor Tom paddled up the park with his little bare
feet, like a small black gorilla fleeing to the forest. Alas for 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 birc