Chaos was about to appear.  The wind rolling back the fog, and making a stage of the clouds behind, set the scene for that fearful drama of wave and winter which is called a Snowstorm.  Vessels putting back hove in sight.  For some minutes past the roads had no longer been deserted.  Every instant troubled barks hastening towards an anchorage appeared from behind the capes; some were doubling Portland Bill, the others St. Alban’s Head.  From afar ships were running in.  It was a race for refuge.  Southwards the darkness thickened, and clouds, full of night, bordered on the sea.  The weight of the tempest hanging overhead made a dreary lull on the waves.  It certainly was no time to sail.  Yet the hooker had sailed.

She had made the south of the cape.  She was already out of the gulf, and in the open sea.  Suddenly there came a gust of wind.  The Matutina, which was still clearly in sight, made all sail, as if resolved to profit by the hurricane.  It was the nor’-wester, a wind sullen and angry.  Its weight was felt instantly.  The hooker, caught broadside on, staggered, but recovering held her course to sea.  This indicated a flight rather than a voyage, less fear of sea than of land, and greater heed of pursuit from man than from wind.

The hooker, passing through every degree of diminution, sank into the horizon.  The little star which she carried into shadow paled.  More and more the hooker became amalgamated with the night, then disappeared.

This time for good and all.

At least the child seemed to understand it so:  he ceased to look at the sea.  His eyes turned back upon the plains, the wastes, the hills, towards the space where it might not be impossible to meet something living.

Into this unknown he set out.

CHAPTER IV.

QUESTIONS.

What kind of band was it which had left the child behind in its flight?

Were those fugitives Comprachicos?

We have already seen the account of the measures taken by William III. and passed by Parliament against the malefactors, male and female, called Comprachicos, otherwise Comprapequenos, otherwise Cheylas.

There are laws which disperse.  The law acting against the Comprachicos determined, not only the Comprachicos, but vagabonds of all sorts, on a general flight.

It was the devil take the hindmost.  The greater number of the Comprachicos returned to Spain—­many of them, as we have said, being Basques.

The law for the protection of children had at first this strange result:  it caused many children to be abandoned.

The immediate effect of the penal statute was to produce a crowd of children, found or rather lost.  Nothing is easier to understand.  Every wandering gang containing a child was liable to suspicion.  The mere fact of the child’s presence was in itself a denunciation.