The Adventures of Tom Leigh Read Free Page B

money has really been stolen from a dead man, it will be a bad lookout for Barseland. Happen the bag fell into the pool. Let us hope so. If, indeed, there was a bag at all.”
    â€œMy father had a leather bag with five golden guineas in it,” said I firmly.
    Mr. Gledhill’s face twitched with annoyance, and he rose and made to quit the room. At the door, however, he paused, and turned to me, saying:
    â€œTry not to grieve, Tom. When you are recovered—” he hesitated—“when you are recovered I will take you to see your father’s grave.”
    He went out. So there I was, of all boys, I thought, the most wretched. Fatherless, destitute, a pauper in a poorhouse in a strange land. I felt so lonely, so helpless, so desolate, that it was all I could do not to throw myself face down on my pillows and cry like a girl.
    Since that time I have heard bad accounts of many poorhouses; how the inmates were ill fed and ill clothed, slept in dirty beds and were employed continually on hard exacting tasks. But except for the tasks, I did not find life too hard at the Barseland poorhouse. Mrs. Hollas, though bustling and rough in her manner and somewhat coarse in her speech, was kind at heart. Her husband I did not like so well. A thin wiry little man with red eyebrows, a very pale hollow face and strong freckles, he was mean in disposition, and I thought would have cheated Barseland and us if he had been able. But Mr. Gledhill in his quiet dour way delved into all the expenditure very closely and often. Before one of his visits Mr. Hollas was always in a bad temper, and took it out on the inmates, cuffing the younger and shouting at the older amongst us. Indeed he was too much given at all times to cuffing heads, boxing ears and hitting our wrists with his bunch of keys; we were always happiest in the poorhouse when he was away on one of his expeditions into the north of the county to buy provisions. It seemed that further north in Yorkshire there was more fertile land than in our part of the West Riding, and Mr. Hollas had a cousin who lived up that way, in Skipton, and from him he bought cheese and sides of mutton for our benefit. At cheap rates, he said, and certainly I never heard Mr. Gledhill grumble overmuch about these prices when he and Mr. Hollas went into the barn together to check the purchases. Mr. Hollaswas always agitated and fidgety as he unlocked the door, Mr. Gledhill very slow and quiet, with long bills in his hand.
    Partly, therefore, owing to this useful cousin of Mr. Hollas, but more, I thought, to the watchfulness of Mr. Gledhill, our food, though neither ample nor varied, was sufficient; the cheese and oatmeal porridge and milk were plentiful, the meat, though not plentiful, was enough to give us all a small slice a day, and as the days went on I grew used to eating oatcake. At first these thin spongy ovals which were hung up on strings above the fire to dry filled me with dislike, but I soon found that when they were crisp their sharp taste and crackle were not disagreeable.
    The poorhouse was kept clean, and we were given the chance to wash our linen. Though as regards clothes I was in evil case; our bundles had vanished with my father’s money, so I had but one shirt, my shoes had dried out of shape and split, and my breeches were so torn and stained by my adventure in Barseland stream that I was ashamed to be seen in them.
    There were only nine of us at that time in the poorhouse, five very old people, three young children and myself. Thus I had no one of my own age to talk to, and this increased my feeling of being alone. However, I had not much time to think of this, for from morning till night I was busy with the tasks set me by Mr. and Mrs. Hollas. I ran errands in the sparse, bleak, hillside village of Barseland, I washed floors and dishes, I peeled potatoes, turned the meat on the spit, chopped wood, cracked coal, harnessed the horse, Dobbin, in the cart for Mr. Hollas