Poor fellow, he was only too ready to run away for his own sake as well as theirs. The feelings which had been stirred and reawakened by the children's companionship had not slumbered again; on the contrary, they seemed to gain strength every day. Every day he felt more and more loathing for his present life; every night when he tumbled into the ragged heap which was called his bed he said to himself more strongly that he _must_ get away--he could not bear to think that his mother, looking down on him from the heaven in which she had taught him to believe, could see him the dirty careless gipsy boy he had become. It was wonderful how her words came back to him now--how every time he could manage to get a little talk with his new friends their gentle voices and pretty ways seemed to revive old memories that he had not known were there. And the thought of rescuing them,--of succeeding in taking them safe back to their own home,--opened a new door for him. "Maybe," said Tim to himself, "the old gentleman and lady'd take me on as a stable-boy or such like if the little master and missie'd speak a word for me, as I'm sure they would. And I'm right down sure I'd try to do my best--anything to get away from this life." Of course he could have got away by himself at any time much more easily than with the children. But till now, as he had told them, he had not cared to try it, for where had he to run to? And, besides, it was only since Duke and Pamela had been with the gipsies that the wish to return to a better kind of life had grown so very strong. He sighed heavily as he stood on the desolate moor with his two little companions, for he felt what he would not say to them, how terribly difficult their escape would be. Suddenly Pamela tugged at his arm. "What is that shining down there, Tim?" she said, pointing over the moor, which sloped downwards at one side. "Is it a river?" Tim looked where she directed, and his face brightened a little. "'Tis the canal, missie," he said. "It comes past Monkhaven, and goes--I don't rightly know where to. Maybe to that place we're going to, where the fair's to be. I once went a bit of a way on a canal--that was afore I was with Mick and his lot. There was a boy and his mother as was very good to me. I wish I could see them again, I do." "But what _is_ a canal, Tim," said Pamela. "Us has never seen one, and that down there looks like a silver thread--it shines like water." "So it is water, missie--a canal's a sort of a river, only it goes along always quite straight. It doesn't go bending in and out like a real river, sometimes bigger and sometimes littler like." "And how did you go on it," asked Duke. "And the boy and his mother? You couldn't walk on it if it was water--nobody can except Jesus in the big Bible at home. _He_ walked on the top of the water."