his apprenticeship would end, and Dick
thought of what he should do when master
of his time, and planned out many a scheme.
But, old Ranson grew every day more irritable.
Dick's silence, when he spoke to him,
looked like contempt. He saw the time
drawing near when he supposed that his
apprentice would throw off the mask and
set him at defiance. All things soured him;
and, one day when he had been rating his
apprentice for some trifle, Dick, who thought
no more of the matter, began to whistle at
his work. The old man's anger was roused
at this. He rushed at his apprentice and
struck him. If Dick had paused to think
a moment, he would not have returned
the blow; but he didn't pause to think,
a moment. He knocked him down. There
could be no reconciliation after that. The
old man declared solemnly that Dick should
be taken before a magistrate, the next
day, and sent to jail. Ranson, it is true,
had struck the apprentice first; but
magistrates had no sympathy with apprentices.
The old man had bruises; Dick had
none. There was nothing more certain than
that Dick, if he came before a magistrate,
would be sent to a prison, to associate with
thieves and rogues. Dick turned it over in
his mind that night; but, look at it how he
would, he saw no hope, except in running
away: so he made up his mind at once.
He tied in a bundle all he possessed, put
on all his clothes, dropped out of the low
window on to the porch, and so into the
road-way, and walked away.

A runaway apprentice in those days was
a far blacker villain than he is now. There
was not a man or woman in the country
round about where poor Dick had spent his
days, who would have helped him with a
crust if they had known it. The very dogs
were in the interest of masters, and barked
at all such unnatural rebels. Dick had a
little money, and he did not doubt of getting
work when he had got far enough to be
safe.  Dick's plan was to make a fortune at
once, and return and claim Margaret for
his wife, to compel old Ranson, to forgive
him and forget the past. But, although
this scheme seemed to him well defined and
practical enough, he found difficulties. In
many towns, there was not a single saddler to
be found. More than a week after he had
left his home, he came to a place where he
learned at last that there was a saddler's shop
Dick surveyed the house, and determined to
go in and ask for work; but, going across
the road to clean his shoes and shake the
dust from his clothes, he made a discovery
which turned him in a moment from his
purpose. Right facing him was the watch-house,
and there, for the first time, Dick
caught sight of his own name upon a large
handbill, evidently newly stuck upon the
board beside the door.  Dick read hurriedly
the description of himself, and made him
of a down and sullen look, and, on the whole,
was not flattering.  It gave Dick a pang to
think how his detractors must have it all
their own way now; how every little fault
he had committed would be raked up and
exaggerated, and how Margaret, hearing
such things all day, might come before long
to lose her liking for him, and to think that
they were right.

It would not help this story to tell all Dick's
sufferings: or how his stock of money gradually
went; or how his stick and bundle
dwindled down at last to a stick and no
bundle. In some places people told him at
once that he was a runaway apprentice. They
knew it, they said, by his looks, and would
not harbour him: in other places they
wanted a character with him—wanted to
know where he came from, and who employed,
him last; and said that he looked young, and
must be only just out of his time. To all
these things he could give no good answer;
and, therefore, in the end, went on his way.
In this manner, Dick soon began to look like
a miserable tramp. He slept in barns and
outhouses, where poor travellers took shelter
with him, and became in looks, at least, a bad
sample even of their class. The very beggars
on the road addressed him familiarly, without
a doubt that he was one of them. But Dick
would not be. He would go and be a soldier
first; and to this end, in fact, he had been
inevitably coming from the first.

It was on New Year's-day in the year seventeen
hundred and forty-five, that Richard
Hayes found himself, hungry and weary, and
cold, in the town of Newcastle on Tyne. He
wandered up and down the steep and angular
street, and looked in at shops, and saw two
saddlers; but he was too beggarly in his
appearance now, to go in and ask for employment,
like a decent workman. There was no
help for him. Rebellion was rife in the
north. Only that week, the regiment called
the Old Buffs, and that called the King's
Own, commanded by Colonel Wolfe, had
landed there from Flanders. Dick found out
a Serjeant at a public-house, in a bye-street,
and there took service at once in the Old
Buffs, and in the name of Philip Joyce.

When all the world conspires to treat an
honest fellow as an abandoned scoundrel, it
is ten to one that he begins to get nearer and
nearer that character every day. Dick's
trials had, in fact, not improved him; nor did
the company of ragged recruits, in which he
found himself, tend to make him better.  He
cursed his own fate, and cursed the people
who had behaved harshly to him in his
wanderings. He had a bitter feeling towards all
easy comfortable folks who sat at that merry
time by cheerful fires, and ate, and drank,
and sang. He heard of fighting and cruelties
in the north with savage pleasure, and
wished to be on the march to have a license
to lay waste and kill; and if he should get
killed himself? Well, Dick had no objection