At length he could bear imprisonment no longer. He opened the room-door with the caution of one who thought a tiger might be lying against it. He saw no one, and crept out with half steps. By slow degrees, interrupted by many an inroad of terror and many a swift retreat, he got down the stair and out into the garden; whence, after closest search, he was at length satisfied his enemy had departed. For a time he was his own master! To one like Tommy--and such are not rare--it is a fine thing to be his own master. But the same person who is the master is the servant--and what a master to serve! Tommy, however, was quite satisfied with both master and servant, for both were himself. What was he to do? Go after something to eat, of course! He would be back long before Clare! He had gone to look for work--and who would give _him_ work? If Tommy were as big as Clare, lots of people would give him work! But catch him working! Not if he knew it!--not Tommy! Never till she was grown up, never, indeed, until she was a middle-aged woman and Mr. Skymer’s housekeeper, did the baby know in what danger she was that morning, alone with surnameless Tommy. His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature. But in this case the exercise of the power brought him into another relation, one with the water-butt! He went back to the room where the child lay in her blankets like a human chrysalis, and stood for a moment regarding her with a hatred far from mild: was he actually expected to give time and personal notice to that contemptible thing lying there unable to move? _He_ wasn’t a girl or an old woman! He must go and get something to eat! that was what a man was for! Better twist her neck at once and go! But he could not forget the water-butt--proximate mother of the child. Its idea came sliding into Tommy’s range, grew and grew upon Tommy, came nearer and nearer, until the baby was nowhere, and nothing in the world but the water-butt. His consciousness was possessed with it. It was preparing to swallow him in its loathsome deep! All at once it jumped back from him, and stood motionless by the side of the wall. Now was his chance! Now he must mizzle! Not a moment longer would he stop in the same place with the horrible thing! But the baby! Clare would bring him back and put him in the butt! No, he wouldn’t! What harm would come to the brat? She was not able to roll herself off the bed! She could do nothing but go to sleep again! Out he must and would go! He wanted something to eat! He would be in again long before Clare could get back! He left the room and the house, ran down the garden, scrambled up the door, got on the top of the wall, and dropped into the waste land behind it--nor once thought that the only way back was by the very jaws of the water-butt. Chapter XXIX. THE BAKER.