hes
birched him as soundly as if he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over
the face too (which is not fair swishing, as all brave boys will agree);
and the lawyers tripped him up, and tore his shins as if they had
sharks' teeth--which lawyers are likely enough to have.

"I must get out of this," thought Tom, "or I shall stay here till
somebody comes to help me--which is just what I don't want."

But how to get out was the difficult matter. And indeed I don't think he
would ever have got out at all, but have stayed there till the
cock-robins covered him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head
against a wall.

Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant, especially if it
is a loose wall, with the stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered
one hits you between the eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful
stars. The stars are very beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they
go in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and the pain which
comes after them does not. And so Tom hurt his head; but he was a brave
boy, and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall the
cover would end; and up it he went, and over like a squirrel.

And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors, which the country folk
called Harthover Fell--heather and bog and rock, stretching away and
up, up to the very sky.

Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow--as cunning as an old Exmoor stag.
Why not? Though he was but ten years old, he had lived longer than most
stags, and had more wits to start with into the bargain.

He knew as well as a stag that if he backed he might throw the hounds
out. So the first thing he did when he was over the wall was to make the
neatest double sharp to his right, and run along under the wall for
nearly half a mile.

Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, and the gardener, and
the ploughman, and the dairymaid, and all the hue-and-cry together, went
on ahead half a mile in the very opposite direction, and inside the
wall, leaving him a mile off on the outside; while Tom heard their
shouts die away in the woods and chuckled to himself merrily.

At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to the bottom of it, and
then he turned bravely away from the wall and up the moor; for he knew
that he had put a hill between him and his enemies, and could go on
without their seeing him.

But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went. She
had kept ahea