What struck Tom's youthful imagination most was the desperate and
lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He
couldn't help hoping that they were true. It's very odd how almost all
English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a
tree, or swim a stream, when there's a chance of breaking their limbs or
getting drowned, for one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth,
or play quoits or bowls.
The guard had just finished an account of a desperate fight which had
happened at one of the fairs between the drovers and the farmers with
their whips, and the boys with cricket-bats and wickets, which arose out
of a playful but objectionable practice of the boys going round to the
public-houses and taking the linch-pins out of the wheels of the gigs,
and was moralizing upon the way in which the Doctor, "a terrible stern
man he'd heard tell," had come down upon several of the performers,
"sending three on 'em off next morning in a po-shay with a parish
constable," when they turned a corner and neared the milestone, the
third from Rugby. By the stone two boys stood, their jackets buttoned
tight, waiting for the coach.
"Look here, sir," says the guard, after giving a sharp toot-toot;
"there's two on 'em; out-and-out runners they be. They comes out about
twice or three times a week, and spirts a mile alongside of us.
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