This was not the end of the history of my half-crown. I kept it above three months till I happened to be sent to the market town, with a load of hay. Here, in passing through the street, my eye as usual was attracted by the bookseller's window. I had not forgotten how rich I was, and could not resist. I went in, examined some of the stores the shop contained, and with great difficulty restrained myself to the purchase of the Seven Champions of Christendom, which cost me a shilling. The other eighteen pence I found an opportunity, it being market day, of sending by a neighbour to my mother; with an injunction that six-pence of it should be given to her poor hostess. With what eagerness I read the valiant deeds of these valiant knights, as I rode home in my empty cart, I will leave the reader to divine: but he will probably pity me when I inform him that I was so deeply engaged in my book as not to perceive the arrival of the cart at my master's yard gate, and that he himself stood at the barn door, contemplating me in the profound negligence of my studies. Riding in the cart, neglecting the team, having a new book, and reading in it, formed a catalogue of crimes too black to hope for pardon. Not the horse but the cart whip was the instrument of vengeance; and, after having tired himself and left weals of a finger's breadth on my body, arms, legs, and thighs, he completed his malice this time, not by locking up but by burning my book. I had already lived a year and a half under the tortures of this demon, till they became so intolerable that at last I determined to run away. I was confirmed in this resolution by another dangerous incident, which terrified me more even than any of the preceding, and convinced me that if I stayed any longer with this villainous savage I could not escape death. I was one day driving the plough for him when a young horse, not half broken in, was the second in the team. I used my utmost endeavours but could not manage him, and the lunatic my master, who was as strong as he was ferocious, caught up a stone and aimed it at the colt (at least so from his manner at the moment I supposed) but struck me with it, and knocked me down immediately in the furrow, where the plough was coming. I saw the plough-share that in an instant was to cut me in two; but the madman, with an incredible effort, started it out of the earth and flung it fairly over me! Unable however to recover his balance, he trod upon my forehead with his hob-nailed shoe, and cut a deep gash just over my eye, and another in my skull: whether with the same foot or in what manner I do not know. My eye was presently closed up, and my hair steeped in the blood that flowed plentifully from both wounds.