Tommy shivered when he heard him, and gave a shriek when he saw him coming. He shook till his teeth chattered. But terror not always paralyzes instinct in the wild animal. As Clare came running, he took one step toward him, and dropped on the ground at his feet. Clare shot away over his head, struck his own against a tree, and lay for a minute stunned. Tommy’s success was greater than he had hoped. He scudded into the house, and closed and bolted the door to the kitchen. When Clare came to himself, he found he had a cut on his head. It would never do to go asking for work with a bloody face! The little pool served at once for basin and mirror, and while he washed he thought. He had no inclination to punish Tommy for the trick he had played him; he had but done after his kind! It would serve a good end too: Tommy would imagine him lurking about to have his revenge, and would not venture his nose out. He discovered afterward that the little wretch had made fast the cellar-door, so that, if he had entered that way, he would have been caught in a trap, and unable to go or return. He got the iron roller to the foot of the wall, where he had come over the night before, and where now first he perceived there had once been a door; managed, with its broken handle for a lever, to set it up on end, filled it with earth, and heaped a mound of earth about it to steady it, placed a few broken tiles and sherds of chimney-pots upon it, and from this rickety perch found he could reach the top easily. The next thing was to arrange for getting up from the other side. For this he threw over earth and stones and whatever rubbish came to his hand, the sole quality required in his material being, that it should serve to lift him any fraction of an inch higher. The space was so narrow that his mound did not require to be sustained by the width of its base except in one direction; everywhere else the walls kept in the heap, and he made good speed. At length he descended by it, sure of being able to get up again. He had been gone an hour before Tommy dared again leave the room where the baby was. He had planned what to do if Clare got into it: he would threaten, if he came a step nearer, to kill the baby! But if he had him in the coal-cellar, he would make his own conditions! A tramp would not keep a promise, but Clare would! and until he promised not to touch him, he should not come out--not if he died of hunger!