"'Whoy, the nearest!' says he, and smacks at me. "Then Knapp tripped him from behind, and he was our prisoner.... "He's been with us ever since. Piper's been tryin to make a Christian of him." "What's his story?" "I don't know, and he can't tell us. He knows nothing--not even fear. I call him Blob, because blob's his nature. Piper found the name Hoad on his shirt. I daresay his people sold him to the Gap Gang; and they kept him." "To be cruel to?" shuddered Kit. "Not they," laughed the Parson. "He was plump as a little pig. They'd be kind to him because he wasn't right--superstition, you see. Kept him to bring em luck, probably. A kind of idol." The boy in the blue jersey was coming up the hill towards them, slobbering at the mouth. His hands were in his pockets, and he lolloped along on his toes. "Oi druv her back," he announced with complacent cunning. "She was creepin in on us, sloy-loike." His face was that of a babe. Clearer eyes Kit had never seen, nor a more perfect mouth. But for the ears, large and flap, it might have been the face of a cherub, poised on the gawky body of fifteen. The expression, by no means vacant, was of slow and staring interest. Certainly this was no congenital idiot. Probably some chance blow on the head in infancy had arrested mental growth. The flesh had gone on; the mind had stopped. A baby-soul was sheathed in the body of a boy. The two lads were much of a height, and much of an age. But what a difference between them! The one was limp as a lolling flower, the other alert as a sword, and as keen. Experience had written nothing on the face of the simpleton. All there was blank as the moon. The haggard cheeks and anxious eyes of the other told that he had already drunk deep of the bitter waters of life. Blob was staring at Kit with the solemn interest of a babe. Then he pointed a finger. "Boy!" he bleated. "Call me 'sir'!" ordered Kit imperiously. "And take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me." "Go home, Blob!" said the Parson, patting him. "Home!" pointing, "Home! and stop making a blob o yourself for the present, there's a good boy. Mr. Piper wants you to help him." Blob shook a slow head. "Nay," he said in musical Sussex. "Oi'll boide with Maaster Sir." Here was another boy in a land of men. In a dim way he felt their kinship. CHAPTER XXXIX THE FLAP OF A FLAG The Parson was staring through the spy-glass at Beachy Head. A mile and a half away, it lay in misty splendour, not unlike a lion sleeping. At the foot of it a few tiny black figures moved among the rocks. "I make out about a score of em," he said. "The boat's beached, and a man over it. I can catch the glint on his gun-barrel. We can't get at em except along the shore, hang it! They'd see us coming a mile off." "If we can't get at the boat," said Kit, "neither can the Gentleman." "That's truth," mused the Parson, dropping the glass.