Grasping his stick below the handle, he hardened his heart and hurried off towards Ramsgard. When he reached the workhouse, he looked at his watch. It was only half-past two. He had two hours and a half before teatime.

On the side of the road opposite the workhouse was a low stone wall. The garden of some tradesman’s house was separated from the pavement by this wall, on the top of which grew thick green moss. The Ramsgard people being all at their noon-meal, he had the pavement to himself; and he stopped and stared at this coping of moss. Hooking his stick on his elbow, he laid both hands upon the top of this wall; and the life of the moss seemed to pass into his nerves. It was at this moment that he heard a boy’s shrill scream from an unseen playground behind the house which appertained to this garden. The sound was not repeated; but Wolf clenched his teeth. “It’s one of the Houses of the School. It’s a bully,” he thought. And then he found himself muttering a deadly curse. “You brute! you brute!⁠—Never, till you die, shall you dare to do that again!”

Then it suddenly occurred to him that he had his back to the workhouse.