The old horse raised his head and looked after the dog wistfully.  “If only I were as young and fleet, and able to get away as quietly!” he thought longingly, and sighed a sigh which made his thin sides heave painfully.  Then his head drooped again, even more sadly than before, and he closed his eyes patiently once more.  He loved the lank yellow dog.  Next to little Huldah he loved him better than anything in the world.  It hurt him as much or more to hear the stick raining blows on them as it did to feel it on his own poor battered body, for his poor skin was hardened, but his feelings were not.

On each side of the wide road which ran past the coppice and away from it were sunk ditches and high hedges, separating it from a bit of wild moorland, which stretched away on either side as far as eye could see.  Here and there in the hedges were gaps, through which a person or an animal could pass from the road to the moor, and back again.  To Dick, who did not understand it, this was very bewildering.  Ahead of him a black shadow would flit for a moment, dark against the dazzling white road, then it would disappear.  It moved so swiftly and so close to the ground, that if it had not been for the scent he might have thought it was some animal dodging about among the ditches and dry grasses.  Dick could not know that when it had slipped through a gap in the hedge it became, instead of a shadow, a solid little dingy brown figure.

Dick was puzzled.  He was sure that Huldah was on ahead of him somewhere, and he was very sure that he wanted her, but he was not at all sure where she was, or that she wanted him; and there are times in the lives of caravan dogs when they are not wanted, and are made to know it.  Dick had learnt that fact, but he wanted Huldah, and he could not help feeling that she wanted him.  It was very seldom that she did not.

So he followed along slowly, keeping at a safe distance, his eyes and his senses all on the alert to find out if that shadow ahead of him was really his little mistress, or what it was—­and if she would be angry if he ran after her and joined her.

For a mile, for two miles, they went on like this, then the moor ended, and roads and fields and houses came in sight.  The black shadow, which was really a little brown girl, stood for a moment under the shelter of the hedge and looked hurriedly about her.  “Which’ll be the safest way to go?” she gasped to herself, and wished her heart would not thump so hard, for it made her tremble so that she could hardly stand or move.  She shaded her eyes with her little sun-burnt hand and looked about her anxiously.

“They’d be certain sure to take the van along the main road,” she said to herself; “and anyway somebody might see me, and tell ’im.  He’s sure to ask everybody if they’ve seen me.”  A sob caught in her throat, and tears came very near her eyes.  She had often and often thought of running away, but had never before had the courage and the opportunity at the same time, and now that she had got both, and had seized them, she was horribly frightened.