Various - Fourth Reader

Ill fares it now with our youngsters that they follow young Brooke; for he takes the wide casts round to the left, conscious of his own powers, and loving the hard work. However, they struggle after him, sobbing and plunging along, Tom and East pretty close, and Tadpole some thirty yards behind.

Now comes a brook, with stiff clay banks, from which they can hardly drag their legs; and they hear faint cries for help from the wretched Tadpole, who has fairly stuck fast. But they have too little run left in themselves to pull up for their own brothers. Three fields more, and another check, and then “Forward” called away to the extreme right.

The two boys’ souls die within them. They can never do it. Young Brooke thinks so, too, and says kindly, “You’ll cross a lane after next field; keep down it, and you’ll hit the Dunchurch-road.” Then he steams away for the run in, in which he’s sure to be first, as if he were just starting. They struggle on across the next field, the “Forwards” getting fainter and fainter, and then ceasing. The whole hunt is out of ear-shot, and all hope of coming in is over.

“Hang it all!” broke out East, as soon as he had wind enough, pulling off his hat and mopping his face, all spattered with dirt and lined with sweat, from which went up a thick steam into the still, cold air. “I told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come! Here we are dead beat, and yet I know we’re close to the run in, if we knew the country.”

“Well,” said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his disappointment, “it can’t be helped. We did our best, anyhow. Hadn’t we better find this lane, and go down it as young Brooke told us?”

“I suppose so – nothing else for it,” grunted East. “If ever I go out last day again,” growl – growl – growl.

So they turned back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went limping down it, plashing in the cold, puddly ruts, and beginning to feel how the run had taken the heart out of them. The evening closed in fast, and clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.

“I say, it must be locking-up, I should think,” remarked East, breaking the silence; “it’s so dark.”

“What if we’re late?” said Tom.

“No tea, and sent up to the Doctor,” answered East.

The thought didn’t add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo was heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse. He had lost a shoe in the brook, and been groping after it up to his elbows in the stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of a boy seldom has been seen.

The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degree more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was now no longer under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so in better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane. At last it widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they came out on to a turnpike road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all bearings, and knew not whether to turn to the right or left.

Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road, with one lamp lighted, and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a heavy coach, which after a moment’s suspense they recognized as the Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.

It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught it as it passed, and began scrambling up behind, in which exploit East missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed to take them in for a shilling. So there they sat on the back seat, drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and jogged into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up. – Thomas Hughes.