Yet Harold was not a bad or unfeeling boy by nature; and if he would but have paused to think, he would have been shocked to see how cruelly he was paining his widowed mother and dying brother, just when he should have been their strength and stay.

One afternoon in October, when Alfred was in a good deal of pain, Mr. Blunt said he would send out some cooling ointment for the wound at the joint, when Harold took the evening letters into Elbury.  Alfred reckoned much on the relief this was to give, and watched the ticks of the clock for the time for Harold to set off.

‘Make haste,’ were the last words his mother spoke—­and Harold fully meant to make haste; nor was it weather to tempt him to stay long, for there was a chill raw fog hanging over the meadows, and fast turning into rain, which hung in drops upon his eyebrows, and the many-tiered cape of his father’s box-coat, which he always wore in bad weather.  It was fortunate he was likely to meet nothing, and that he and the pony both knew the road pretty well.

How fuzzy the grey fog made the lamps of the town look!  Did they disturb the pony?  What a stumble!  Ha! there’s a shoe off.  Be it known that it was Harold’s own fault; he had not looked at the shoes for many a morning, as he knew it was his duty to do.

He left Peggy with her ears back, much discomposed at being shod in a strange forge, and by any one but Bill Saunders.

Then Harold was going to leave his bag at the post-office, when, as he turned up the street, some one caught hold of him, and cried, ’Ho!  Harold King on foot!  What’s the row?  Old pony tumbled down dead?’

‘Cast a shoe,’ said Harold.

‘Oh, jolly, you’ll have to wait!’ went on Dick Royston.  ’Come in here!  Here’s such a lark!’

Harold looked into a court-yard belonging to a low public-house, and saw what was like a tent, with a bright red star on a blue ground at the end, lighted up.  A dark figure came between, and there was a sudden crack that made Harold start.

’It’s the unique (he called it eu-ni-quee) royal shooting-gallery, patronized by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ (what a story!) said Dick.  ’You’ve only to lay down your tin; one copper for three shots, and if you hit, you may take your choice—­gingerbread-nuts, or bits of cocoa-nut, or, what’s jolliest, lollies with gin inside ’em!  Come, blaze away! or ha’n’t you got the money?  Does Mother keep you too short?’

If there was a thing Harold had a longing for, it was to fire off a gun!  If there was a person he envied more than another, it was old Isaac Coffin, when he prowled up and down Farmer Ledbitter’s fields with an old blunderbuss and some powder, to keep off the birds!

To be sure it was a public-house, but it was not inside one!  And Mother would call it gambling.  Oh, but it wasn’t cards or skittles!  And if he shot away his half-pence, how should he pay for the shoeing of the pony?  The blacksmith might trust him, or the clerk at the post-office would lend him the money, or Betsey Hardman.  And the time?  One shot would not waste much!  Pony must be shod.  Besides, Dick and all the rest would say he was a baby.