Jack, however, had very little information to give that could be turned to any account. It was at the far side of the Mere that he had come upon a couple of men crouching under a sand-hill, as though they were on the look out for somebody. They had collared him, tied a stick in his mouth, and carried him away--where, he had no idea--a very long way, till they came up with a party on the road. There he was placed in one of the travelling caravans, fed from time to time, and not allowed out for many days. He had tried to escape more than once and been soundly thrashed for it. His back--well, there it was, and it made Eager almost ill to think of what those terrible weals must have meant to the boy. Then, after a long lime, another chance came, when all the men were lying drunk one night and some of the women too. He had crept out, and ran and ran straight on till his legs wouldn't carry him another step. A farmer's wife had taken pity on him at sight of his back and helped him on his road. And through her, others. He knew where he wanted to get to, and so, bit by bit, mostly on his own feet, but with an occasional lift in a friendly cart, he had reached home. "And what do you say to all that, Mr. Eager?" asked Sir Denzil. "I say, first, that I am most devoutly thankful that he has come back to us. What may be behind it all is altogether beyond me. If he is their boy would they treat him so cruelly?" "To gain their ends they would stick at nothing. I see no daylight in the matter." "You had no chance of seeing how the old woman received him, I suppose, sir?" "All we know is that when Kennet went downstairs he found the boy sitting in the kitchen, eating as though he had not seen food for a week. Not a word beyond that and what he tells us. The problem is precisely where it was when those damned women came in that first morning each with a child on her arm." BOOK III CHAPTER XXIII BREAKING IN Smaller matters must give way to greater. You have seen how that great problem of Carne came about, and how it perpetuated itself in the persons of Jack and Jim Carron, without any apparent likelihood of satisfactory solution, unless by the final intervention of the Great Solver of all doubts and difficulties. To arrive at the end of our story within anything like reasonable limits, we must again take flying leaps across the years, and touch with no more than the tip of a toe such outstanding points as call for special notice. Harrow was the most tremendous change their lives had so far experienced. Mr. Eager had indeed prepared them for it to the best of his power. But the change, when they plunged into it--first Jim and then Jack--went far beyond their widest imaginings.