He ate four of them as he stood there, and stowed away the others, talking to the couple with his mouth full all the while. And when the woman's back was turned he nearly emptied the coarse earthen tea-pot which she had prepared for the delectation of her man, feeling now that matters had been equalized. Then he scrambled up the embankment and hastened on.
The sun rose and he sweated just as the night before he had shivered. Presently he overtook a party of men with heavy saddlebags on their shoulders who said that they were bound for Yangtsun. His heart leaped within him as he heard that and without further ado he attached himself to them. They were all timid and frightened, but they said that there was nothing for it but to push on since their business demanded it. Also they were too much concerned about themselves and the dangers they might encounter to ask him a single question--excepting the inevitable one as to whether he had seen soldiers.
"It is said all of them have left Yangtsun," they repeated again and again to him, apparently to reassure themselves. "Otherwise we should have never started. For ten days we have been waiting in a village and now that the rains have closed the roads we decided to risk the journey along the railway. Several have done it safely already."
"You were wise, you were wise," agreed the boy, "I, too, have been forced to travel owing to death in our family. I go to find my uncle who is employed in a wine factory."
"So small and yet not alarmed," commented one wonderingly.
"What would you," rejoined the boy, "when a house is on fire even the timid must act."
This sententious remark, which he had often heard his seniors use, and which his ready memory had stored for use, so favourably impressed the three that presently when they rested they invited him to share their food. His prodigious appetite amused them--he ate everything that was offered down to the last crumb. But when one produced a leather bottle and a little pewter wine-cup and offered him a drink, his caution returned. He knew well from experience that drowsiness would rapidly come if he indulged himself.
"I am unable to use wine," he said in the set phrase of the native teetotaller.