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Donated by the
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Collectzon
of Chddren s Lzterature
December 2001
The Umverslty of Mlchlgan Dearbom
Mardlglan Llbrary


THE umvensarv OF MICHIGAN-DEARBORN LIBRARY






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Pepys’






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BY RACHEL M. VARBLE
Ju]ia Ann
Romance for Rosa
Pepys’ Boy



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Copyright @, 195 5, by Rachel M. Varble
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 55-10520
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—hearing from my wife and the mayds complaints made
of the boy, I called him up, and with my whip did whip
him till I was not able to stir, and yet I could not make
him confess any of the lies that they tax him with . . .
that he did drink the whey, which he had denied, and
pulled a pinke, and above all did lay the candlesticke
upon the ground in his chamber, which he had denied
this quarter of a year. I confess it is one of the greatest
wonders that ever I met with that such a little boy as he
could possibly be made to suffer half so much as he did
to maintain a lie. I think I must be forced to put him
away. S0 to bed, with my arm very weary.
Diary of Samuel Pepys; June 21, 1662






Pepys’ Boy
.
i
,
1
If ever a boy was cut out to run away
from home and fall in with the most
colorful rogues and aristocrats of a
many-colored period, that boy was
redheaded Toby \Vayneman.
From the day he grasped his only
legacy, his father’s stafl, and swag-
gered off to earn his fortune, Toby
was plunged into the exciting life after
the Restoration of Charles II, from the
gay household of Samuel Pepys to the
salty vagrancy of the London water-
front. His companions were wood
carriers at the Maldon Salt VVorks and
the sons of lords, the lame workman's
daughter Dulcie, and that ardent fish-
erman, young \Villiam Penn. He was
involved in every kind of adventure
the day could offer—sabotage, dueling,
and highway robbery, in trouble more
than he was out of it.
Rachel Varble has drawn on her
special knowledge of the seventeenth
century to bring to life a boy men-
tioned with despair in Pepys’ Diary,
whom she herself calls the “Tom Saw-
yer of the Restoration.” .


L_



IOBY WAYNEMAN, nine years old, red-
haired, and slight, snatched an ash-wood walking stick
from a settle and shook it threateningly at his step-
brothers.
“Stand back!” he shouted at the two stocky boys, both
older than himself. “Stand back or I’ll make you mighty
sorry!”
The brothers dodged expertly, treading a measure with
their bare feet, retreating in order to advance. Their
names were Guy and Luke Snell. There was nothing
vicious in their characters or in their attitude toward
Toby. It was only that they were always two-to-one
against him, and they laughed at the wrong times.
[11]


They laughed now, Guy in a snicker, Luke bellowing
like a zany, and Toby lashed at them. The long stick
came down between them, and one of them seized it.
The other one stepped forward and pinioned the little
boy against the wall.
“Let me go, you pigs!” Toby Wayneman shouted.
There entered the kitchen a middle-aged woman with
bleak eyes and a wart on her chin. She was Mrs. Wayne-
man, who had been the Widow Huldah Snell first. Be-
tween her and her stepson a sullen war went on, and
Toby persistently declined to call her “Aunt Huldah” as
his brother and sister did. He called her “Mis’ Snell” in-
stead. The more he resented her, the more he “Mis’
Snelled” her.
Hemmed in now and more angry than he had ever
been in his life, he called to her shrilly, “Your boys are
pigs, Mis’ Snell!” He enlarged on it. “They’ve got snouts
for noses!”
She had come from out of doors and was carrying a
basket of potatoes on her hip. Setting her burden on
the floor, she confronted the boys in a welter of exasper-
ation. “Who’s to blame for this scuffle?” she wanted to
know.
“Toby was goin’ after us,” Luke said. “He was tryin’
with all his might to break our skulls.”
“Yes, he was,” Guy agreed. “Let ’im deny it!”
Toby laughed nervously. Now that they had named
his crime, he accepted it. He had lashed out blindly with
the staff to stop their tormenting, but the suggestion that
he was cracking skulls was delectable. His hazel-colored
eyes narrowed between his sandy lashes, and he crossed
[11]



his thin arms over his chest in a pose of defiance. Where
his shirt was torn, his collarbone showed through in a
ridge. He looked unkempt and unmanageable.
“Never lay your hands on that stick again, Toby
Wayneman,” his stepmother said. “I’ll let only Luke use
it.” She took it and laid it on the chimney piece.
“It was my father’s stafi that he walked with,” Toby
reminded her, and a silence fell.
Mr. Wayneman was a quarter year dead and lay in the
Loughton churchyard. He had been a joiner by trade,
and he had also been a reader of borrowed books and a
frequenter of the tavern.
Every evening after supper Mr. Wayneman used to
lose himself in some pages by John Milton or Francis
Bacon. Then he would get up and go to the Golden Pear
and drink a nightcap of ale and talk to fond cronies and
total strangers. In work, in solitude, and in fellowship
Mr. Wayneman had enjoyed himself, and so he was a
rounded man in his personality, but in his earning
capacity he was lacking. He left nothing for estate except
his house, pasture and cow, his carpentering tools, and
enough clothes to fill a little leather trunk.
Toby’s brother Will, who was a stagecoach groom in
London, had received most of the clothes (having come
for the funeral). Jane, the seventeen-year-old daughter
who worked for a family in Westminster, had taken her
father’s big shawl. The Snell boys, claiming to be their
stepfather’s apprentices, had got his tools. As for the
house and pasture, the widow pronounced those to be
hers. Toby had seen the “will paper,” and sure enough,
his father had made her heir. He had also requested that
[13]


she “cherish my son Toby and give him shelter till he
comes to the age to be bound to a good man to learn the
art and mystery of a trade.”
It was as if his father had willed him, like a prize calf,
to his stepmother, with never a token for his own use.
Just yesterday it had occurred to Toby to claim the
walking stick.
Mrs. Snell-Wayneman scanned the faces of the three
boys and she saw that her own lads were smug and inno-
cent, while her stepson looked as mean as a hedgehog.
“What’s got into you, Toby?” she demanded.
“I’ll have my father’s staff! ” Toby said, and he reached
up and snatched it off the shelf and ran out of doors.
“Bring that stick back!” Mrs. Wayneman shouted.
Her sons echoed her. The command enlarged and
throve in the quiet air until it took on importance. It
was like France shouting to England to give back Dun-
kerque.
Toby stood in the kitchen garden with his back to the
gate that led to the pasture, glaring toward the cottage
with distraught eyes. The stick, an ordinary knotty
walking staff, was pressed to his chest.
After a long silence, heavy with ill will on both sides
(a situation scrutinized sharply by a little girl next door),
the angry woman made her decision.
She latched the lower half of the kitchen door and then
leaned over it to call: “You must ask to get in, Toby
Wayneman, and you must bring the stick with you. I’ll
need it. I aim to treat your legs with it.”
She turned and began to prepare supper. She sighed
gustily, for she thought she was doing her duty.
[14]


When Toby woke at daybreak he got up and tested the
kitchen door and found both the upper and lower halves
to be tightly fixed. He stared at his bare toes and wiggled
them in the dust, trying to decide what to do.
“I hate old Mis’ Snell!” he said to a hen that was peck-
ing near an ash pile. “I hate ’er proper.”
He made his toilet, for all the house’s facilities were
out of doors, even a towel hanging above the wash bench.
He scrubbed his face more thoroughly than he was ac-
customed to do and combed his hair with a broken comb
that lay there.
He was hungry. He began to forage hopefully, think-
ing that a little piece of smoked meat would be appe-
tizing if he should find some in a crock on the window
ledge. Then, when nothing of the sort turned up, it
seemed that some plain bread would do.
“But no, she’s too stingy,” he said more loudly than
necessary. “She’d not leave a crust for me to get at.”
He took his walking stick and went next door to the
Lane cottage, where he saw a cheese bag suspended from
a bracket. It was just outside the back door. It had fin-
ished dripping, and the crock under it was half filled
with whey. In the shadow of the sleeping house the
cheese bag loomed like a full moon.
Toby had never stolen anybody’s property. True, he
had often snatched a pear or a tart from one of his step-
brothers, devouring the item as he ran and laughing at
the Snell consternation, for he was fieeter than they. But
this could hardly be called thievery, being witnessed by
the lamenting victims themselves. But now he decided to
lower his standards. He decided to cut down the cheese
[16]



and carry it to Epping Forest and there eat it entire. All
he needed was a jagged piece of slate, and that he pres-
ently found on the ground.
He climbed onto a stool and was preparing to saw the
string with the slate when his own conscience brought
him up short. He remembered how the Lane family was
having hard sledding now because Mr. Lane, one of the
foresters of Epping, had hurt his back felling a tree.
There were four Lane children, the oldest being Dulcie,
a clever girl about Toby’s size and age. Dulcie Lane wore
her hair in two smooth braids and had wide-open violet-
blue eyes and a pleasant little face. She limped because of
an illness that had smote her last year; a person pitied her
when she tried to run and keep up.
“Blast me!” Toby said suddenly, and climbed down.
It was too much for him, the thought of Dulcie asking
for a bowl of curds and getting none. But I’ll drink the
whey, he decided, and he knelt beside the crock and
tipped it to his mouth and emptied it.
He was rather disgusted to think he had consumed
something intended for the fowls, but his stomach felt
better and his spirits quickly lifted. He took his staff and
went to Epping woods, there to try his luck at fishing in
the Roding River. He had some fishing line in his pocket,
and his stick made an ideal pole.
Toby had the exquisite pleasure of catching a lively
trout, and some foresters lent him a knife to clean it with
and let him cook it over a little fire they had. They did
not give him any salt for his fish, though, because the tax
on salt made it too dear.
At dusk Toby returned home and took stock of the
[17]


situation. The cottage’s two doors were shut, and when
he felt the latches furtively, he could not lift them. They
were secured from inside. A flickering fire illumined the
kitchen. -
Toby looked through a casement window and saw
Mrs. Wayneman pressing some clothes with a smoothing
iron. Luke lay asleep, sprawled on the settle, but Guy
looked alert enough, mending a mousetrap, or perhaps
baiting it.
Toby noticed there was a crockery dish on the win-
dow ledge within his reach. It was the remains of a rabbit
pie, rather gone over, to be sure, but not without allure
to a tired boy with a gnawing stomach. A wooden spoon
lay beside it. This seemed odd, and Toby considered it
cannily. He realized the food had been placed there to
attract him, for Mis’ Snell did not intend actually to let
him starve; she intended merely to keep him hungry. He
wished he had the ability to start starving at once, to spite
her, but that sort of fortitude was lacking to him.
He lifted down the dish and spoon and retired to the
hedge with them. He heard Guy laugh, and there was a
mumble of conversation between Guy and his mother,
but nobody called out to him.
When Toby had finished the food he boldly placed
dish and spoon on the window ledge where he had found
them, intentionally making a clatter. He hoped his step-
mother would call out, even if in her worst voice,
“What, can’t you wash your dish at the well?” or some
such reprimand; for any sort of attention would have
been balm to his loneliness.
But Mrs. Wayneman seemed to hear nothing. She kept
._4u.Q —
[18]



her eyes fixed on the smoothing iron, taking elaborate
pains with an old yellow smock in which she fed the
chickens. Luke slept on. Guy set the mousetrap with a
little piece of bacon rind, giving it his whole attention.
During the following week Toby continued to live in
the hedge in a semi-detached manner, hiding his condi-
tion from the neighbors and playing mouse to Mrs.
Wayneman’s cat.
His daylight hours were spent in Epping Forest. There
he managed to pass the time very well, fishing in the river
and constructing miniature barges that he loaded with
miniature cargo.
At night he would return home and would invariably
find a cunningly placed chunk of bread or a skimpy bowl
of gruel on the window ledge, and these ungracious of-
ferings he would carry to the hedge and consume.
As the Wayneman cow was dry because of having a
calf, Toby got no milk, and expected none. But the dep-
rivation worked against him. It caused him to lose
weight and to gain in nervous resentment. He often
panted for breath, sometimes from running, sometimes
from dwelling angrily on his troubles. The troubles were
stored up inside him. For the first time in his life he was
denied the pleasure and comfort of hearing himself talk.
One evening, after a day of drizzling rain, he found
that a sort of bed had been constructed for him against
the hedge. There was a little mound of hay, and on it an
old woolen coverlet, as pat as you please.
[19]


Toby thought Mis’ Snell might be relenting in his
favor. Perhaps she was going to invite him to move in-
doors, without the beating and without the confiscation
of his property. Yet as he lay that night, comfortable
enough, between the moldy hay and the ragged blanket,
he saw the situation more clearly. Mis’ Snell was not
softening a whit. She was merely buckling down to an
extended siege. That was the night he resolved to leave
Loughton for good.
When daylight came he made his toilet as usual, but
instead of going to Epping he loitered. He wanted to see
Dulcie Lane and tell her his plans and bid her good-by.
It was traditional to bid somebody good-by before you
took off, he felt. Besides, he loved Dulcie deeply and felt
a responsibility toward her. She depended on him for a
good many chores, such as helping her spread the manure
and take down the wash.
As soon as he saw a wisp of smoke come out of the
Lane chimney he went and rapped on the door.
“Why, it’s Toby,” Mrs. Lane said, her eyes watery
from trying to make the fire burn. “What do you want,
boy?”
“Can I talk to Dulcie?” he requested.
“No, you can’t, so early. She's tending the least one.
He has colic. He fretted last night till his father couldn’t
sleep, nor me neither.”
“I’ll wait, then,” Toby said. “Can I bring a little wood
for your fire?”
“I’ve got wood aplenty,” Mrs. Lane replied, “but it’s
sap-green. We had to buy it from a carter.”
[=01



“I’m sorry Mr. Lane’s laid up,” Toby said. “When can
he go to Epping again, to work?”
“God knows,” Mrs. Lane replied. “His back’s killing
’irn.7’
She began to slice some smoked side meat thinly,
counting the slices aloud, and when the griddle was hot
on the fire she laid the meat on it. “Must you stand there
watching me?” she cried out, for she had barely enough
for her own brood and it distressed her that Toby
Wayneman had an expectant look in his eyes.
“No, I don’t have to watch you, Mis’ Lane,” Toby
stated literally, and he went outdoors and sat on a bench.
Mrs. Lane, seeing this outcome, called to her eldest
child. “Wrap up the baby, Dulcie, and go outside a min-
ute. See what on earth Toby wants.”
Toby was gratified to see Dulcie come through the
kitchen door with a hospitable smile on her face. The
youngest Lane was hung over her shoulder and she patted
his back rhythmically to bring up the air that disturbed
him. She was dragging one of her feet, as usual, and she
listed a little in order to balance the weight of the baby.
Toby drew her aside and said. in a low but bold voice,
“I’m leavin’ Loughton. I’ll not come back till I’m ready.”
Dulcie said, “Oh, Toby!” and laid her hand entreat-
ingly on his arm. “You’d never join the wild boys, would
you?”
“Who said I wanted to?”
“What, then? ”
“I aim to go to the saltworks and be a wood boy.”
“Oh,” Dulcie said, somewhat relieved. “Why must
you, Toby? Is it just because your father’s dead?”
[-11]


“It’s the Snells,” Toby told her. “There’s trouble.
They won’t let me come in the house now, nor eat with
’em.”
“Your stepmother lays the blame on you,” Dulcie
said.
“She’s been tellin’ her side, has she?” Toby exclaimed.
He was unduly precocious, intelligent, suspicious, and
dramatic, and there was the makings in him of a barrister,
an archbishop, or a bandit, but now his talents were all
unformed and undirected. “She ain’t satisfied to claim
my father’s staff for Luke, is she? No, she ain’t. She must
give me a bad name besides.”
“She did say you go to Epping woods and idle your
time away,” Dulcie explained with patience. “She did
say you fish in the Roding every day but ne’er bring
home a fish. I reckon it’s true, or where’ve you been
all week?”
“Ha,” Toby said bitterly. So the Snell boys were spy-
ing on him. He picked up a pebble and hurled it at a
molting pullet, striking the unfortunate fowl on the head
and making it squawk.
“Now you must kill our chicken, must you?” Dulcie
exclaimed angrily.
“If I wanted to kill your old chicken I’d use this stick,”
Toby answered, brandishing his treasure.
“Is that the stafi’ that belongs to Luke Snell?” Dulcie
asked.
“Go duck your silly head in the pond!” Toby said.
“And duck your baby’s silly head, too!”
Maturity laid hold of Dulcie. Woman replaced child,
and when she began to weep it was not for her own hurt
[=1]



WWI
1, 7;‘

feelings but for this frantic little boy, her friend.
“Poor Toby!” she said. “Poor Toby! Must you leave
right after breakfast?” She stood a little taller than he,
holding her little brother with one arm and wiping tears
from her face with the sleeve of the other. “-right after
breakfast?”
“Breakfast!” Toby replied loftily. “Who wants break-
fast? What are you snivelin’ for, Dulcie?”
“Because you’re goin’ away, and all.” She shifted the
baby. “Wait, Toby. Let me get you some milk first.”
[=3]


When she returned, having disposed of the infant, she
was carrying a mug of milk and a little pone of bread.
Her cheeks were flushed and her piquant face had a
brooding look. “You can have two mugfuls if you want
it,” she said.
Toby did. He gulped the milk shamelessly, the second
serving as well as the first, but he hid the bread in his
smock.
Mrs. Lane noticed what was going on. “Can’t Toby
get food at his own house, Dulcie?” she asked sharply.
The children started apart. “Well, good-by, Dulcie,”
Toby said. “Take care of yourself.”
“Promise to come back, Toby! Come back for the fair,
or maybe for Allhallows Eve, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will,” he promised grandly, for he saw that
Dulcie was taking it hard. “I’ll try to come both times.”
Then he added a jaunty phrase of the late Mr. Wayne-
man’s: “Why not?”
He went through the gate and into the big road while
she watched, bearing himself like a man and whistling
through the wide space in his front teeth.
Shortly after noon Toby came to a place where the high-
way crossed a little stream. He thought this ford would
be a suitable spot at which to eat his loaf of bread, for
water and shade were a desirable combination.
He went upstream a piece to a location that was free
of reeds, where the water had a clear green look, and
threw himself down and drank his fill.
[.14]


_. 1-

He turned onto his back and settled his heels in the
stream.
He lay thus for a while, looking up at the floating
clouds and letting the water lave his feet. The quenching
of his thirst had stilled his hunger, and he felt no urgency
to bolt his lunch. If his stomach had shrunken during
the past week, the condition was convenient, for hunger
can be a torment.
Toby was contentedly aware of his loaf of bread,
however. He had put it in the crotch of a nearby tree for
safety, and his love flowed out to Dulcie, who had given
it to him. Not for a long time had he been so happy. He
was going on a journey to a place of his own choosing
(the Maldon saltworks), and there was none to say him
nay, and the sky was a heavenly blue, and a golden
butterfly was resting on the big toe of his right foot, and
his next meal was at hand.
Into this paradise of circumstance burst a clatter that
caused him to sit up and look around him. A half dozen
boys of bad appearance were approaching him from the
ford. When they were at close range, Toby saw that
they were almost equal in tatters and filth but that they
varied in size. They stood still and stared at him in a
rude and hostile manner.
“Look at ’im!” the largest boy exclaimed. He had
broken teeth and a great stubby nose stained with dried
blood, and a shock of yellow hair, like straw. “Look at
’im, restin’ and takin’ ’is ease like a bailiff!”
“VVhy not? ” Toby remarked.
“ ‘W’y not?’ ’e says. ’E’s rich, then. The little cove’s
got filthy lucre on ’im, sure’s you live.”
[=5]


“No, I’ve not, neither!” Toby replied anxiously. “I’ve
not got tuppence.”
There was something formidable here, he sensed.
These were what the villagers called “wild boys” with
abhorrence. In small groups they fanned out from Lon-
don when the weather was open, and you daren’t leave a
shirt to dry on a hedge when they were in the neighbor-
hood, or a bridle on a stable door. What they could not
use they would sell to a fence (as it was called) in Lon-
don, and they divided the proceeds with a terrible sort of
justice. Often they caught their food and cooked it in
the fields, but they were equally at home when hanging
around a tavern stable yard and would as soon slit a purse
as a lamb’s throat. A Loughton lad, an orphan, had
joined a band of wild boys several years ago and had
never been heard of since. Perhaps he shunned his own
village out of a decent embarrassment, but his disappear-
ance was regarded as sinister by honest folk in that
region.
Toby got to his feet in a series of quick jerks. His staff,
still unnoticed by the gang, was propped against an elm
tree, but on the farther side of the trunk, and he edged
along in that direction. He kept his face toward the boys
and the road.
“Fer a shillin’ ye can join us,” said a runt of a boy with
a face like a fox’s. He had a butcher’s knife hanging at
his waist, and how he escaped cutting his own arteries
was a wonder.
When this boy spoke the others fell back a step or
two, and Toby saw that the runt rather than the big boy
was the leader.
[16]


Toby was embarrassed by so much sheer charm and
magnificence, but he approached and stated his needs.
“Can you tell me where the big road is, sir? I’m lost.”
“It’s in that direction, boy,” the young man said, nod-
ding his head to indicate, for both hands were occupied.
With large dark eyes he casually examined Toby’s thin
wrists, legs, and collarbone, his anxious face. “The fact
is, I’m about to stop and eat my dinner. I’ll ask you to
help me. There’s too much here for my appetite.”
“Well, now, thank you,” Toby replied in a voice that
shook with pleasure. He leaned toward the reed lunch
basket that the young man had begun to open, and he saw
parts of a browned fowl under a clean linen napkin, and
what appeared to be fruit and cheese. He remembered
his manners. “My name’s Toby Wayneman, sir. I came
from Loughton.”
“My name’s William Penn. . . . Look, Wayneman,
try this slice of ham with buttered bread.”
Toby ate almost all of young Mr. Penn’s dinner with-
out realizing that he was doing so.
“I’m much obliged to you,” he said sincerely while
licking his fingers.
“Not at all. What are you doing so far from home?”
“7 7
Ive left Loughton for good, sir. Im never going
back.”
“Why, boy?”
“Because I can’t go inside the house. My father’s not
been alive for four months, and my stepmother’s mad at
me.”
“You mean the woman won’t let you in? That’s
savage.”
[=9]


(C
It’s not exactly that way,” Toby answered, and then
he told his story, rejoicing in the details.
“And where’s your famous stick now?” Penn wanted
to know.
“Here it is,” Toby said, going to get it.
Penn looked and shrugged. “See here, Wayneman, you
can’t keep this up. You’ll turn beggar or footpad. The
country’s full of young tramps who’ll end up in Newgate
Prison. Sometimes I wonder what England’s coming
to.”
Toby said he knew about the wild boys on the rove
and related his experience. “I’ll never join ’em,” he de-
clared. “I couldn’t stand to smell and have vermin.”
“We’ll have to think what to do,” William Penn said.
“I suppose you miss your father very much?”
“Yes, I do,” Toby replied. “But I’ve not cried since
the funeral. It’s a waste of time.” He got up and threw
pebbles at the water, making them skip.
“Would you like to tell me about your father?”
Toby concentrated, searching the recent past to find
the kindly, unambitious person who had been his par-
ent. . . .
“He was a joiner. The fourth finger was off his left
hand. He was stooped in the shoulders. People said he
was the best joiner in Essex, and the squires asked him
to build their cupboards and staircases, but he only
worked when he felt like it. He sang when he was work-
ing. He laughed a lot. When he came home in the eve-
ning he’d tell what had happened to him all day.”
“You’d miss a parent like that,” Penn said.
“He went to the pub every evening,” Toby confessed,
~ [301


“and sometimes he took a drop too much. Mis’ Snell says
he drank himself to an early grave.”
“My father drinks too much, too,” said young Mr.
Penn. Then he added with conviction, “But he’s the most
upright man in the world, and the best naval ofiicer.”
“Does he have a ship of his own to command?” Toby
asked.
“He has a flock of ships. He’s Admiral Penn.”
“Oh. Do you live close to here?”
“You might say I live in Ireland. That’s where our
estates are. But I’m visiting Admiral Batten here at
Walthamstow. This fall I have to enter Oxford.”
Toby’s spirits fell. July was coming in; all too soon
Mr. Penn would be swallowed up in education, and he
would never be the same. “I wish you well,” he said
politely. Then, fearing he had overstayed his welcome:
“I’d better be going.”
“Wait now. I’ve decided to take you back to Chig-
well. There’s a school there I used to attend. Besides the
regular boys, they take twelve poor lads a year. It was
endowed by a village vicar that got to be Archbishop of
York.”
“Oh no, sir!” Toby declined hastily, for the prospect
sounded dreary. Grammar-school hours were long and
tedious, he had heard, even if you were a paying scholar.
There was no telling what they might pile on you if you
were on charity.
“I don’t want to go to Chigwell or any other school,”
he told Penn point-blank. “My father taught me to read
and write and cipher like a man. That’s enough. I don’t
want to be a ’prentice, either. It keeps you cooped up.
[31]


I’m going to the saltworks and carry wood. The wood
boys get good wages.”
“Have it your own way. Which saltworks are you
headed for?”
“Maldon. A man that was my father’s friend works
there. His name’s Adam Drumby. My father used to tell
about him. When you leave the woods, sir, can I run
along beside your horse till I find the road?”
“You can ride behind me. I’ll take you to Chipping
Ongar and set you down. You’re considerably off your
course.”
Toby had never been on a horse in his life and he had
misgivings. He admitted as much while the impulsive Mr.
Penn untied his big hunting horse and tightened the
saddle girth.
“There’s nothing to it,” Penn assured Toby. “Watch
me, then swing up behind me.” He mounted with ease,
making a fine show of the legs that had won every foot
race at Chigwell School. “Now hand me your stick. I’ll
hold it with my fishing rod.”
Toby managed to mount, for Penn had left a stirrup
swinging and also extended a helping hand. “Now grip
me around the middle,” Penn said, “and we’re off.”
The gait was a rapid canter. Toby imagined the horse
to be as high as a house, and he suspected the creature’s
one aim was to throw him. Conversation was one-sided,
Penn being loquacious, Toby replying in brief.
“I’m sorry you’re set against Chigwell, Wayneman. It
might be the making of you. You need to eat regularly
and you ought to practice running and jumping. You’re
spindling.”
[31]


/


“J ////r





“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t mean it unkindly. It’s only that I’m interested.
And if you’ve got any bad habits like lying and swearing
and filthy speaking, you’d be cured of them.”
[.32]


“I’ve not got any of those habits,” Toby assured him.
“But last week I almost stole a cheese.”
“Why?”
“To eat. I was hungry. It seemed like a little fox was
gnawing my stomach.” .
Penn was silent awhile and then gave his opinion. “I’ve
never been hungry that way, but I dare say I might lift a
cheese if I were. Afterward, though, I’d go to the owner
and speak up, and offer to work off the debt.”
After a half mile of silence Penn continued as if he had
never left off. “I happen to have a bothersome con-
science.”
“That’s too bad, sir,” Toby replied politely, rather as
if Penn had complained of a stone in the kidney.
“When I was turning twelve years old, God’s inner
light came to me, and now I can’t get away from God.
It’s something of a nuisance.”
“It must be,” Toby answered, startled.
“It was right after my father’s release from the Tower.
Cromwell had clapped him there for failing to take the
West Indies away from the Spaniards. Father had a fever
and the prison doctor thought he’d die. But he didn’t. In
a few weeks Cromwell needed him and let him go, and
he came home to us, wasted but whole. That night I
knelt down to say my prayers. I could hardly bear my
happiness. It was like a light from God.”
“Please, Mr. Penn, would you ride a little slower?”
Toby requested.
“Certainly. And you don’t have to clutch me so hard.
You’re driving a buckle into my stomach.”
[34]


The adjustments were made.
“About three years ago I experienced the light again,”
Penn went on. “We’d just gone to Ireland to live in
Macroom Castle. There was a Quaker preaching in
County Cork, Thomas Loe was his name, and Father
asked him to preach at Macroom. While Loe talked about
God’s love, tears ran down my father’s face. Jack, our
black boy from Jamaica, sobbed out loud. My mother
was touched too. I thought we’d all turn Quakers, but
we didn’t. Father said it wouldn’t do. They teach you to
turn the other cheek, and that’s not compatible with the
English Navy. Father realized it as soon as he’d thought
it over. He forbade us to listen to any more of their talks.
But he tries to help the Quakers when they’re thrown in
jail.”
“What is this town we’ve come to, Mr. Penn?”
“It’s Chipping Ongar. Can you manage from here,
Wayneman?”
Toby said he could, and PC1111 let him off at a horse
block and handed down his staff. They were in front of
a large timbered taver n whose door lamps had already
been lit against the gathering dusk.
“This is a decent place,” Penn said. “I want you to stay
the night here.”
He hastily handed Toby a handful of silver. “Use this
for a bed and food. Eat all the food you crave, boy. After
breakfast tomorrow you’ll set out for Chelmsford in
better shape. It’s about ten miles from here.”
“This is a lot of money, sir. It’s mostly shillings!”
“That’s fortunate. It’s all I happened to have with me.
[35]


You can go to an inn in Chelmsford too. After Chelms-
ford, head east and do another ten miles, and you’re in
Maldon.”
Toby stuttered his thanks and looked at the coins un-
certainly. He dropped one and stopped to pick it up.
“Haven’t you got a purse?” Penn asked. “No, I see you
haven’t. Wait, we’ll make you one.” He snatched a green
silk handkerchief from his sleeve and gave it to Toby.
“Put your money into this, then knot it shut and stuff it
inside your shirt.”
Toby followed directions.
“Don’t pick up easy acquaintances,” Penn advised,
“and don’t try to walk all the way. Ask a carter for a lift,
or buy yourself a ride on a stage. Do you know how to
flag a coach?”
“I’ve seen folks do it.”
“All right, Wayneman. I hope you’ll find brotherly
love where you’re going. Good-by, boy!”
He wheeled his mount and rode ofi in the direction
from which they had come. The horse’s hoofs made a
ringing sound on the cobbles; the fishing rod dipped in
salute.
Toby saluted in reply, feeling both dazed and lonely.
The boy went to the inn’s kitchen yard and showed
some of his coins and asked for supper and a bed, and
soon he was being served bountifully at a table in the
kitchen. He excited no curiosity because he was taken to
be the servant of a traveler.
“Hadn’t you rather sleep in the stable?” a serving-maid
asked him considerately. “There’s no charge in the
stable.”
[36]


A person who had bowled with Toby’s father on vil-
lage greens when both were young, and cavorted with
him at county fairs. A relationship not kept except in
memory, a friendship not tested in thirty years. Adam
had gone away long ago to seek a living, he had found it
at the saltworks in Maldon. Loughton village sometimes
heard of him. He had married a girl of that region, had
fathered a family, had become a foreman. Adam Drumby
and the saltworks were acceptable to Toby. He assumed
that he would be acceptable to them.
No adventures befell Toby in Chelmsford, none any-
where until he reached the outskirts of Maldon, the day
following. There Toby bought a meal, a little meat pie,
from a man who was hawking them at a crossroad.
“Ye’re a smart boy,” the peddler said fawningly.
“Carryin’ money like a pawn merchant, I’ll be bound!
Walkin’ with a staff, too. Where might ye be goin’?”
“To the saltworks,” Toby replied, “to work there.
Where are they?”
“Where all the smoke is, to be sure. Ye cross the bridge
and go to that valley yonder.” He pointed it out, and
indeed there was a haze over the place, like smoke and
mist together. “I wonder a boy with money would go
there, a dull place where ye git a bent back and red eyes
fer yer pains.”
He bent over and squinted his eyes hideously to show
Toby how he might soon expect to find himself. “Ye’d
best fergit this ’orrid plan to be a saltworker, boy. Join
up with me and ye’ll be in clover in no time.”
It occurred to Toby that this man would be classed by
Mr. William Penn as an easy acquaintance, and he sen-
[38]



sibly left him there, still bent over and squinting like a
first-rate actor who knows his own talents.
Toby hurried away, and when he was out of sight he
tossed the meat pasty into a ravine, believing it to be
trickily unclean. “Maybe made of rat meat!” he mut-
tered. He was out fourpence but charged it to experi-
ence. Finding a clean bakery, he went in and bought jam
tarts and a mug of milk and consumed them there.
He crossed water by way of the bridge the peddler had
shown him. Soon he could see the saltworks spreading
untidily before him—pools, boiling pans, warehouses-
but all mighty interesting, all quick with life. On the
fringe of the works, overlooking it, was a row of cot-
tages where the laborers lived. He stopped at one and
asked for Adam Drumby.
The woman he spoke with did have red eyes and was
somewhat stooped, but perhaps only from life’s usual
vicissitudes, for she seemed both poor and shiftless. She
had not picked up the trash, and fowls wandered in and
out her door. “Drumby lives in the best ’ouse,” she re-
plied to Toby’s question, “ ’cause ’e’s been longest at the
pans.”
“Which is the best house?” Toby asked, for they
looked equally smoke-stained from where he stood.
“The last one, the biggest one. It’s the ’ouse with the
brew shed, to be sure, and its own well.”
Toby went to the house described and was glad to see
that it had a neat little lawn, and curtains at the windows.
An oak tree shaded it. A large gray-haired woman with a
cheerful florid face admitted to being Mrs. Drumby. She
was taking cockleburs out of the hair of a child who
[39]


called her “Granny.” Three other little children looked
on and hindered rather than helped, but none was railed
at.
“What do you want of me, boy?” she asked Toby.
“I’m right busy. Were you sent to fetch something?”
Toby launched into his story and got only a little way
when she exclaimed, “So you be Jim Wayneman’s young-
est! I’ve ’eard Adam talk of Jim Wayneman, many’s the
time. I’m sorry to know ’e’s dead. Where are you bound
for?”
“The saltworks, ma’am.” He looked around. “You’ve
got a nice place. I’d be proud to live here.”
“Live ’ere? In this ’ouse, do you mean?” Mrs. Drumby
was plainly startled. “There’s not room to sleep you,
lad.”
“I’ll have to sleep somewhere if I’m a wood boy.”
“Is the work promised you a’ready?”
“No,” Toby admitted, “but last year a man that
stopped in Loughton said the works can use boys. He
named good wages.”
“Wages ’as got to be good,” Mrs. Drumby said, “be-
cause the season’s so short. Boilin’ days are held down by
the big ones to keep salt scarce.”
Toby asked who the big ones were. He visualized
giants with clubs, but Mrs. Drumby soon relieved him of
his error. She said she meant King Charles, before he was
sent packing, then Cromwell, now merry King Charles
again. “They get the salt tax,” she said. “ ’Aven’t you
ever ’eard of the salt tax?” .
(4 77
Toby said he had. It’s what makes salt dear, he re-
[ 40 ]


’ 7.._;__»_ .; aw; II;

cited nimbly from memory, “and if cows don't get salt
the calves are wobbly, a cryin’ shame, too!”
Mrs. Drumby could not conceal her admiration for
this parrot-like statement of England’s worst abuse.
“Go on to the works, boy, if you’ve a mind to, and
look for Adam. If he hires you, you can sleep in our
brewhouse. I could never turn away a skinny orphan.”
Then she asked, “Don’t you have one extry shirt to your
name?”
“Not with me,” Toby replied with dignity. “But I’ve
got seven shillings.”
“We can buy some cloth with that,” Mrs. Drumby
said thoughtfully, “and I can sew you up some clothes.”
“Oh, Mis’ Drumby!” Toby’s voice was hushed with
gratitude.
“But not unless Adam hires you, remember. ’E’s a
prime judge of character, Adam is. Me, I’m no judge at
all. I once took in a woman with a little baby, and I let
’er stay with us a few days, and when she left she took
our last ha’penny and a copper kettle.”
Toby spoke up for his own character. “If you left your
purse wide open, Mis’ Drumby, I’d never dip my hand
in it.”
He found Adam Drumby without difiiculty, a large
work-wor n man with furrowed skin and gnarled hands.
Patience was in his face, and good cheer and self-respect.
He was old England in the flesh.
After a conversation with the boy, in which he lis-
tened more than he spoke, Drumby said he would recom-
mend Toby’s being hired, and he took him to the
[41]


foreman of the wood boys and accomplished Toby’s
employment.
As he turned away, Toby tugged at his sleeve. “Mis’
Drumby said I could sleep in your brewhouse, if you
don’t mind.”
“And eat at our table?”
“She didn’t say if I could, and she didn’t say if I
couldn’t.”
The man’s seamed face broke into a grin, for Toby had
a winning sort of desperation about him and was amus-
ingly mature for his size. “You can sleep there, Toby, if
you’ll not light a fire. And you can eat at our table if
you’re not greedy. We’ve got the four orphan grand-
childer, remember.”
“I would pay my way,” Toby said.
“You can buy your own clothes and help with the
chores, lad, that will be enough.”
He took off a leather guard he was wearing and
handed it to Toby. “Come now, we’re wasting the King’s
time. Put on this apron and get to work. The firewood
tears your clothes.”
Several hours of daylight remained, and Toby fell to,
eager to prove himself. He operated between a mammoth
woodpile and the salt pans, carrying split wood to the
men who kept the fires going. He was one of a long line
of boys.
As Toby made the circuit he tried to talk to the boys
nearest him. He got nowhere, though. The big lad ahead
flung him dour monosyllables, while the boy who fol-
lowed him did not answer at all and looked at him with
hostile eyes.
[41] .



W
,
.
if
_





\
ix
“V;


This boy was panting. Toby could hear the rasping
breaths he drew and supposed he had a head cold. He was
tall and stooped and looked to be fourteen years old.
Though he failed to get a response from his neighbors,
Toby was not entirely discouraged. At the woodpile,
when he had picked up his quota of firewood, he paused
a moment and watched several other boys do the same.
He made comments of a friendly nature to them. His re-
marks covered a range of subjects sacred to boyhood:
How did you split your toe? . . . That’s a mighty big
hoptoad, ain’t it? . . . Whose spotted dog is that? and
so on. The answers he got were so ungracious that he was
chagrined.
The big boy ahead finally addressed Toby of his own
accord. They were nearing the fire pits, descending the
hill. “Quit steppin’ on my heels, or I’ll flat yer nose!”
“I didn’t aim to step on your heels, Jake,” Toby an-
swered, for he now knew his neighbor’s name.
“Quit it. We don’t like to be ’urried, see? We got our
own gait, see?” ’
“I didn’t notice I was hurryin’ you,” Toby said.
“Ye been ’urryin’ us aplenty. Ye’re ’urryin’ the whole
line. We got our own gait, see?”
Toby looked back and, sure enough, there was a
noticeable gap between him and the tall stooped boy who
followed. “It looks like I’m a right smart worker,” Toby
admitted.
“We don’t like no pushers. We got our own gait, see?”
Toby saw. He stopped in his tracks to let the tall boy
catch up with him, and when he could hear him panting
at his neck, he moved forward, but slowly.
[44]


By day’s end Toby knew why the wood carriers of
Maldon had their own lagging rate of speed. His aching
arms and legs told him. There was enough strength in a
boy’s body to meet the task, but little to spare. If one of
them should spend more energy than was demanded, he
might set a new standard and make life unbearable for the
others.
When a strident bell announced that the last load had
been carried. Toby threw himself on the ground as
the stooped boy did, spent, eyes closed, a little light-
headed.
Mr. Drumby, seeing him so, waited quietly for the
earth to ease and revive him before calling him home to
supper. Work, he believed, was better for a lad than idle
wandering, even the hard work of the wood circuit.
Now and then it broke a boy, but he guessed it would not
break wiry little Toby.
Toby’s bed in the brewhouse was comfortable, for he
had a feather tick and a blanket. Mrs. Drumby also sup-
plied him with a pair of flax sheets. She said she would
change the sheets every month if Toby would show his
appreciation by bathing often at the well.
Mr. Drumby made a little chest for the boy to keep
his belongings in, and a three-legged stool for his leisure.
That the brewhouse smelled of malt was unavoidable,
for Mr. Drumby made his own ale, having built the room
for that purpose. The thatch never leaked, so the floor
was hard and clean-packed, never muddy. It was prime
[4s}


three-legged foot race at Chigwell Fair, the right leg of
one bound to the left leg of the other, and the course
being slippery because of rain.
“Toby here is the very spit of his father! ” he declared.
“He can read books like Jim could, too. Would anybody
like to hear Toby read?”
There was a clamor for this privilege, and a book of
Puritan hymns was got down from a shelf. Toby read
them with such rousing delivery that he wakened ad-
miration in persons present who read haltingly or who
could not read at all. The evening closed, and sweetly,
with the singing of john Bunyan’s verses, led by a neigh-
bor with a good voice:
He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
A slack time was at hand at the saltworks, for the maxi-
mum of boiling days permitted by law had been con-
cluded for the season. Fires were extinguished under the
brine pans, lest overseers be caught in a felony punish-
able by hanging.
Wood boys were laid off. Firemen found work in haul-
[47]


ing salt to the port or in splitting firewood for the next
boiling season. Mr. Drumby was in charge of the salt on
hand.
Toby rejoiced in his new leisure. Even after doing all
the chores laid out for him by Mrs. Drumby, he had time
for wandering over the countryside. Sometimes he ac-
companied other boys, sometimes he went alone.
The part of Essex that lay between Maldon and the
North Sea was a wonder to him, being marshy and
clothed with a strange vegetation. The Chelmer River
met the Blackwater River thereabout to form estuaries.
When the tide was high it seemed as though the sea itself
had moved in. But when the tide went out there were
great arms of alluvial mud exposed, offending the nose
as well as the eyes, and diverting Toby by its strangeness.
Sea gulls dipped and glided. Shells abounded. Driftwood
appeared, wearing outlandish shapes. Toby was kept busy
collecting. He brought in so many items of interest that
the brewhouse became crowded. Mr. Drumby could
hardly move around his vats.
His hard-earned wages filled Toby with pleasure and
freedom. He stood treat to some friend or other every
day, and if a needy child lacked for a top or hoop he
would buy him one.
Mr. Drumby noticed this trend. “You must watch
out,” he warned. “Your money will get away from you.
Get yourself some clothes now. A warm coat, let’s say,
and shirts and breeches. There’s a tailor in Maldon could
fix up a boy mighty pretty.”
“He needs Sunday shoes too,” Mrs. Drumby said.
[-48]


“When we take him to chapel his old shoes creak dread-
ful.”
Mrs. Drumby accompanied Toby to the Maldon shops
next day and they spent freely. She was no more prov-
ident than he, and she pleasured in seeing a boy well
turned out. She went to the best mercer for cloth, and
the tailor she selected was not on a mean street. At the
shoemaker’s she specified first-class leather. After shop-
ping they went to the public room of a good tavern and
had chocolate to drink.
“Lor’!” Mrs. Drumby said. “I don’t know when I’ve
enjoyed myself more!”
“Will there be enough money to take me to Loughton
and back on the stagecoach?” Toby inquired.
“What for?” Mrs. Drumby demanded. The chocolate
covered her upper lip like a rich mustache while she
looked at Toby in surprise. “Do you want to see that
naggy Huldah Snell again?”
“No, ma’am, but I want to see the Lanes that live next
door. I want to see Dulcie, their oldest girl. It looks like
I’ve got to see Dulcie.”
“Mercy on us! In love at ten years old.”
“I don’t know if I am,” Toby said, not sure what being
in love meant, “but I told Dulcie I’d come back and see
’er. She’s lookin’ for me. I want to see all the Lanes. I
reckon I even want to see Guy and Luke Snell.” Sud-
denly tears came to his eyes and overflowed them, and he
lowered his head and began to gulp his chocolate.
“It’s called bein’ homesick,” Mrs. Drumby said kindly.
“I mighta known. I had it when I come here a bride from
Danbury, sixteen years old. Yes, there’ll be money
[49]


enough for you to go to Loughton and back, I expect.”
As soon as the completion of his new clothes permitted,
Toby engaged a stagecoach seat for Loughton. There
was enough silver in his purse to pay his fare there and
back, if he was frugal, and Mr. Drumby gave him some
sound advice about not standing treat and not ordering
fowl or roast beef in taverns.
“Porridge is strong enough for a boy that rides a
stage,” he said, “or else plain bread and cheese. And if
you spend a night at Chipping Ongar, or wherever, bar-
gain for cheap quarters. Don’t get above yourself, lad,
because you’re a wage earner in good clothes.”
Toby took to heart this fatherly advice and so arrived
at his destination with his finances in good order. He was
let down at Loughton, not a regular stagecoach stop on
the road to London, but sometimes served as a favor. The
boy stood in the road after the coach had rolled on,
enjoying the little stir he caused. It was obvious to
everybody that he was wearing new clothes and carry-
ing a change of linen in his bundle.
Forgiveness was in Toby’s heart, and he rapped on
the door of his old home right smartly, whistling a tune
to show himself at ease. Mrs. Wayneman opened the
door and stared at him as if he were a tramp in plague-
time instead of a little boy she knew well with new
clothes and a wistful face.
“Where did you come from?” was her greeting.
“From Maldon, Mis’ Snell. I live there now. I live
at Mr. Adam Drumby’s house.”
“You do, eh? Shame on you, to run away from home.
We’d have thought you dead, but Dulcie told us better.”
[50]


H7
Im a wood boy at the saltworks. I make good wages.
I paid for these clothes myself. Can I see Luke and
Guy?”
She barred the door with her arm. “Where’s the
staff?”
“It’s back at Maldon.”
“I said you’d not come in without it, didn’t I? Didn’t
I tell you that very thing?”
“I don’t want to go in your old house,” Toby said
loudly. “I just want to see Luke and Guy.”
“Well, you’ll not see ’em unless you stand there till
Saturday night. Luke works at Loughton Hall now,
tendin’ horses. Guy’s ’prenticed to a joiner in Chigwell.”
“Did he take my father’s tools with ’im?”
“He did, yes. But you’ll not be needing ’em. You’re
going to be ’prenticed to a tailor, Clyde Hook, over at
Lambourne.”
Toby was nothing short of horrified. “Do you think
I’d stay in a stuffy room all day and thread needles?”
“It’s a steady trade, and you can be grateful Hook’s
in a notion to bother with you. You’re under age for
bindin’ out. But allowances can be made because you’re
a total orphan.”
“I told you I make good wages, Mis’ Snell. Let me be.”
“The saltworks! Pooh! It’s not steady. You’ll be
comin’ back here to loaf. You’ve come back a’ready,
haven’t you?”
“I’ve come back for a couple of days, is all. I don’t
want to live in your old house.”
“You don’t fool me a mite. You’ve got a hankerin’
for this house. But I can’t take care of no idle boys. I
[51]


can’t hardly take care of myself. Your father didn’t leave
me fixed right. He was lazy and wasteful.”
“Go duck your head in the pond!” Toby shouted.
Anger and disappointment tore at his vitals. Home-
sickness (so Mrs. Drumby had named it) had brought
him here seeking something. A part of himself was in
this place, a part of his life and his father’s life, and he
had supposed he could find it again by coming and look-
ing at the vegetable garden and the fireplace and his
father’s chair and his own bed under the eaves. But now
he knew better, for the woman’s hardness had destroyed
whatever he sought. Her hardness had released him, too,
and he need never be homesick for this place again.
“You’ve sassed me,” Mrs. Snell-Wayneman said in an
aggrieved voice that carried as far as Toby’s. “You’ve
spoke ugly to the faithful wife of your dead father. And
just because she wants to ’prentice you in a good trade.
You’ll come to some bad end. You’re wicked from the
bone out!” and so on, her voice fading behind the slam-
ming door.
Toby went to the Lanes’.
“Why, Toby!” they exclaimed joyfully, especially
Dulcie, and invited him to come in and commented
favorably on his new clothes and asked gratifying ques-
tions.
Toby presented Dulcie with two seashells he had
brought her, fluted and perfectly matched.
“Oh, Toby,” she said. She put them to her ears to hear
the sea in them, but they were too flat to give out any
sound, try as she might to hear it.
“They’re to put on the dresser,” Toby told her. “Or
[51]


leather looked the worse for wear and brine. Toby flailed
at Bess to repel her, but she followed avidly.
“Oh, do let ’er lick your shoes!” Dulcie urged.
“No, I’ll not,” Toby shouted. “I’ll not have any old
cow slaverin’ on my shoes!”
Dulcie began to weep, sniflling in a way that Toby
found trying, and talking as she sniflled. Bess longed for
salt, she said, but they’d not been able to buy her any
for a long time. They couldn’t even buy enough salt
for themselves. Bess gave very little milk now, and what
she gave was bluish. Mr. Lane, from his bed, had decreed
that Bess must be sold to the butcher because of her
milk failure. “It seems like I can’t stand it,” Dulcie con-
cluded.
Toby was greatly moved. He contritely offered his
shoes to Bess and she licked them greedily, all but
dragging them off his feet to get at the brine that flavored
the leather.
He made a decision. “I’ll go back to Maldon and get
some salt,” he declared. “I’ll get it from the works and
bring it to you myself. The man I live with is in charge
of the stuff. Mr. Adam Drumby. I reckon he could
spare some.”
“Oh, Toby!” Dulcie put her arms around his neck
and laid her cheek against his. “That would save Bess’s
life. Dear Toby! You’re the best boy in the whole world,
the very best! And you’ll grow to be the kindest man
in the whole world!”
This was so at variance with his stepmother’s opinion
of him that Toby was transported. “It’s nothin’!” he
declared in a large way. He extricated himself from
[54]


way, Toby could throw it over his shoulder and not
strain his arms.
“No, no!” Mr. Lane said with weak peevishness from
the bed. His back pained him constantly, all the way to
his skull, and sometimes his skull ached too. “Either
way, folks would think he toted something special. He’d
be robbed of it.”
“How, then?” Toby asked, becoming anxious.
“Get out our cloak bag, Mother,” Mr. Lane instructed.
“Give him that. Most travelers carry cloak bags.”
Mrs. Lane brought out a small piece of luggage that
was shabby and old-fashioned and similar to some of the
bags Toby had seen lifted into and out of the stage boot.
“Use that to bring the stuff in,” Mr. Lane said. “And
God bless you for a useful boy. You can see how helpless
I am, Toby. I’m nought but a dead weight on my family.”
He shut his eyes, too concerned with his own pain to
bother further.
Mrs. Lane went to the kitchen and made a fire under
the soup kettle and presently called the children to come
to the table. The meal was very enjoyable, and Toby
told them about the peculiar habits of sea gulls.
Next morning at daybreak Mrs. Lane went to the
hearth pallet where Toby lay sleeping and shook him
awake. “Get up, Toby,” she urged. “You must flag the
first stage, remember?”
Toby did remember, and got up and dressed himself.
Toby arrived at the Drumby house about dusk three
days later. He left the cloak bag in a clump of peonies,
[56]


feeling uncertain about it, and went indoors and an-
nounced himself.
“What, back so soon!” Mrs. Drumby said. “Didn’t
you have a nice time?” However, she seemed distrait, not
really interested in his journey.
She had some new troubles to contend with, and she
told Toby about them as she plodded around the kitchen,
steeping herbs for a brew. Two of the grandchildren
were down with a fever and a rash, and a third child
was fretful. Mr. Drumby was absent from home, having
been summoned that morning to Ipswich, and she had
to manage alone.
“Draw me a bucket of water and bring in some wood,”
she said to Toby. “I’m in bad need of both.”
Toby did the chores and then gratefully ate the bread
and cheese she set out for him.
“Don’t go near the little ones,” Mrs. Drumby warned.
“A spotted sickness hops from child to child; I can’t
say why, but it does. I’ve not got time to nurse you
too.”
“When will Mr. Drumby get home?” Toby asked
her, for his own problem was urgent in his mind.
“That's the pesky part of it,” she answered. “Ipswich
is a day’s journey. And when ’e gets there, the ones that
sent for ’im is apt to waste ’is time. I mind the last time
’e was called to Ipswich, ’e was gone four days and
come home as mad as a wet cat. ’E’d set in the outer
room the best part of two days, ’e said, while the govern-
ment men loitered, playin’ cards and sendin’ out for ale
and pigeon pie. They was Cromwell’s men, but the
King’s will be as bad. Salt counters be a selfish lot.”
[57]


“Do all the salt counters live in Ipswich?” Toby asked,
peculiarly interested.
“All I’ve ever heard of does. But there may be some
that lives elsewhere. Carry out the ashes now and spread
’em to cool on the flagstones. Then go to bed. I reckon
you’re tired.”
“All right, Mis’ Drumby,” Toby replied, wishing he
might unburden himself.
“Did you see that girl?” she thought to ask him
politely. “That little Dulcie Lane?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did,” Toby said, seizing this opening.
“Her father’s in bed with a hurt back. He can’t work
a lick. And let me tell you about their cow, Mis’
Drumby!” But before he could select words for this
recital, one of the children called out, “Granny!” and
Mrs. Drumby had to go.
“You can tell me about the cow tomorrow,” she said
absently. “Go to bed now and get your sleep.”
Toby could not go to bed with his affairs in such
a state. The necessity of helping a friend beset him, and
he must cope with it. He felt that he had become an
adult. Instead of waiting to be fourteen years old to
become a responsible person, as England’s laws com-
manded, he had become one several years in advance.
He could never be an utter child again.
He sat on his stool in the brewhouse door and looked
out into the gathering darkness, and he thought how
Dulcie was counting on him to bring the salt for old
Bess, and to fill the family saltcellar. Mr. and Mrs. Lane
were counting on him too. He had raised their hopes
by acting as if the salt were easily obtainable, as if the
[58]


only worry he had was to carry it to Loughton. But if
he should fail to arrive with it in a reasonable time, they
would give him out, at least Mr. and Mrs. Lane would,
and off would go Bess to the slaughter pen.
No, he would not wait for Mr. Drumby to come back.
He began to entertain the unethical idea of taking the
salt tonight by stealth, Mr. Drumby being absent.
He cast about in his mind for justification, and it came
to him. He recalled telling Mr. William Penn how he
had almost stolen a cheese one day because his stomach
gnawed, and Penn had replied in a cheerful voice (Toby
remembered his exact words):
“I’ve never been hungry that way, but I dare say I
might lift a cheese if I were. Afterward, though, I’d go
to the owner and speak up, and offer to work off the
debt.”
Things appeared simpler to Toby after misapplying
Mr. Penn’s offhand remark, and he went and got the
cloak bag out of the peony bush and made some plans.
He would go at once to the saltworks, secretly fill the
bag with salt, and bring it to the brewhouse. At daybreak
he would set out for Loughton with it, catching the first
stage going west on the Maldon road. He would leave
before Mrs. Drumby was awake, for he wanted no com-
plications. Mrs. Drumby had her troubles; he had his.
He ought not, he decided, come up to the saltworks
by one of the regular paths. He must approach by the
most unlikely route. As he was familiar with all of them,
through his excursions, he decided on an old road that
connected the works with an inlet of Blackwater Bay,
though poorly. This road was barely wide enough to
[-59]


accommodate a cart, and it was almost obliterated by a
coarse salt grass. In the dismal cove it led to, boats were
rarely seen, but a rotting wharf showed that some people
must have used it regularly long ago.
With difliculty, tugging his bag, Toby crossed a piece
of sedgy wasteland and got onto this road and began
to follow it toward the saltworks.
He was just able to see his way. Before he had gone
far he was surprised by a rumble of wheels. A cart was
coming. He ran off a little distance, crouching, and hid
in the sedge to wait for it to pass. It appeared to be
drawn by a donkey, for the beast’s ears stood up higher
than a horse’s and it had a lumbering gait. Two men
were in the driver’s seat. They wore sea caps and jackets,
and one of them was smoking a pipe of tobacco. They
did not converse in sensible sentences but in phrases that
broke before completion, heavy with profanity and
guttural laughter. One of the men sounded like a Dutch-
man, the other like an Englishman. They appeared to be
cronies and not too dangerous, yet Toby wisely lay in
hiding till the cart was gone. They were going to pick
up contraband wine, Toby supposed, from a ship out of
France or Spain. A good deal of that business went on,
and a boy naturally heard about it.
Toby returned to the road and resumed his plans.
The dry salt of the Maldon works was kept in one-
room warehouses, where it was packed for shipping. It
was of three varieties: the best, for the tables of the
rich; a second grade for poorer folk and animals; the
coarsest and least pure sort for the curing of fish.
Arriving, Toby peered and listened. The way seemed
l 6 0 l


clear. He ran to the shed that was most accessible to the
path by which he had arrived. He tugged at the latch;
it lifted. He went inside and stood still in the darkness,
too interested in his mission to be afraid.
After a little unmeasured time in the dark, Toby
began to grope. He found a number of casks that were
nailed shut . . . and finally one keg with its cover lying
loose on it, as if a packer had been called away before
the job was finished.
This one’s meant for me, he told himself.
He reached into it and began to bring out salt in hand-
fuls and put it into his valise. He was unhappy to discover
that it was fine salt; he had never felt any so fine. It
was diflicult to handle. His impulse was to abandon it
and seek a commoner grade, but as that would necessitate
locating and entering another shed, he dared not. He
must continue to take what was at hand. When he
thought he had put six or seven pounds of the superfine
salt into his bag, he desisted and straightened his back
and dusted his hands on his breeches.
He heard then some shouts and the sound of running
feet, and as he listened he became aware that men were
converging on the saltworks. It was the night watchmen,
he realized, for he had heard Adam Drumby speak of
such. From their excitement, it was apparent these men
sought thieves who had eluded them. Toby knew they
were not looking for him, yet he was in a bad position,
for a fact.
Not being accomplished in crime, it did not occur to
Toby to abandon his loot and go out stealthily and join
the searchers, like a spectator drawn by the hue and
[61]


Wonder and speculation followed while Jock held his
beam above the plundered keg. “Salt spilled on the
boards!” Gritty marveled. “The finest salt in Englan’
spilled on the boards fer us to tread on!”
“Why didn’t they take the whole of it?” the man
at the door wondered. “I ask you, does it make sense?
Six kegs they takes as tidy as you please; number seven,
they dips from. ’Ow much would you say they dipped
out 0’ that one, fellows?”
“Six pound,” Jock calculated with awe in his voice.
“No, more than that; eight pound, maybe. ’Twould-a
been easier to roll away the whole cask.”
It was then that Toby was espied.
The lantern was held above him, and he put his arm
over his face and lay still while they looked down at him.
He felt as if his very bones were exposed.
“ ’E’s got a bagful there.”
“Yes, ’e’s got it, ’e’s a real picklock.”
This caused laughter, for the boy was young for the
shifty London moniker. After the laughter, which had
been but a sort of nervous explosion, there was silence.
Then Gritty said, “Get up, rascal! Stand on your
pegs!”
Toby stood up. He no longer felt frightened or cring-
ing. He had no feeling at all.
“Give us the bag.”
Toby handed them the valise and they painstakingly
emptied its contents into the keg he had robbed. Their
faces were grave and harsh in the lantern light, for they
were men in trouble and danger. They were responsible
for whatever lacked here. If they should seem thieves by
[63]


circumstance, they would hang on Tybur n Hill as surely
as if they had confessed the crime to a magistrate.
“Now where’s the six kegs?”
“I don’t know where they are,” Toby answered.
“Who be ye ’elpin’ on this job, rascal? Tell us!”
“I was doing it just for myself,” Toby explained.
“I wanted a little salt for a cow.”
‘G I
Fer a cow, he says. The finest table salt in Englan’
fer a cow! What’s yer name, boy?”
“Loughton.” This was an occasional English trick that


had all but achieved the face of honesty. A man might
forget his own name, if he chose, and use the name of
his home. Or a man as innocent as gooseberries might
have this done for him. He, coming from Marlow, say,
with an unpronounceable name, might be called Marlow
by his new neighbors to his dying day, and after.
“My name’s Loughton,” Toby said.
“What be yer baptized name?”
“James.” This was true. James Tobias, after his father.
“Are ye called Jim?”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“The boy’s called Jim Loughton, you can count on it.
’E wants us to think ’e’s called James, but it ain’t likely.
Where do you live, Jim Loughton?”
Toby knew he must not speak the word Drumby and
bring trouble to the house that had befriended him. “My
father’s dead, so’s my mother,” he stated earnestly. “You
might rightly say I don’t live anywhere.”
“But ye’ve got a cow! A likely story.”
Toby yawned, for he was weary beyond belief. The
man with the stick, Gritty, struck him hard across the
shoulders, making him reel against the doorjamb. “None
0’ that drowsy business now. We must know where the
six kegs o’ salt went.”
Toby rubbed his bruised shoulder. “I expect it went
to Blackwater Bay,” he said. “I saw two men in a cart
tonight. They mighta been haulin’ salt.”
“Ye saw ’em where, rogue?”
“I can take you there. The road hasn’t got a name.
It comes in right over there. It was dark, but I saw
the cart plain.”
[65]


The three watchmen stepped over the doorsill to con-
fer outside. Toby waited wearily. He heard phrases that
labeled him a liar, a fatherless brat, the son of a low
woman, a guttersnipe, and the implement of a band of
thieves. The decision was to avoid whatever road he
pointed out, for it was sure to be a snare and a delusion.
Suddenly Toby heard “Poultry Compter” mentioned,
and his hair prickled on his head. That was a notorious
London jail, vile with evil and vermin, where a friendless
boy could be sent if he proved troublesome, wearing the
dubious title of King’s Ward.
“That be a stinkin’ place for a little kid,” Jock said.
Above his lantern his face was kind and regretful. “I’d
sooner a boy 0’ mine died than went there.”
“It’s our necks we must think on now.”
“Will sending ’im to Compter prison bring back the
salt?” Jock asked. “Will it catch the thieves?”
“This way it might,” Gritty answered, “it’ll make ’im
talk. That’s why the magistrates sends young’uns there.
They’ll tell on their own father to get out.”
Toby no longer felt sleepy or tired. He darted over
the doorsill into the darkness more swiftly than he had
known he could move. Threading his way among the
sheds, aided by the cries of the watchmen, he left the
saltworks on its southern boundary and gained a waste-
land of scrub oaks. Through this he felt his way with
outstretched hands, and presently he reached an open
road. This he followed until he had put several miles
between himself and Gritty’s outraged bellowing. Finally
exhausted, he lay down beside a hedge and slept.
[66]


Mr. Drumby arrived home the following night, to Mrs.
Drumby’s surprise and pleasure. As soon as he had washed
off the dirt of his journey he went in to see the sick
children. All four were now peppered with the rash, but
the first two to be stricken were improved, so the disease
was less frightening.
Over his supper Mr. Drumby mentioned Toby
Wayneman. “When do you expect the boy to come
back?” he asked his wife.
“Lor’, Adam, he come back yester eve, but now ’e’s
gone again. ’Is bed wasn’t slept in last night. I can’t make
any sense out of it. ’E was as ’elpful as could be after ’e
got back from Loughton, fetched wood and water and
carried out the ashes like I asked ’im to. Then ’e went to
’is room. That’s the last of ’im.”
“I’ll not have him acting so,” Adam Drumby stated.
“When he gets home I’ll give him a talking-to, maybe
flog him a little. I’m genuine fond of the lad.” Then
he began to tell his wife about his journey, which had
been successful. The salt counters, a new set of men, all
mighty brisk, had received him well. His report on the
Maldon stock had tallied with the tax records.
“But as I neared home I heard a bad thing,” he said.
“Folks up and down the road are talkin’ of it. A ware-
house was entered last night while the watchmen were
at supper. Six kegs of the finest was lifted. A seventh
was looted, and a boy was found hiding in the shed. He
had a cloak bag full of salt, which they took away from
him, but he got off before they could learn aught but
his name.”
“What was his name?” Mrs. Drumby asked. She
l- 6 7 l


leaned against the deal table, her face suffused with
anxiety.
“His name was Jim Loughton.”
“Did they ne’er see him before?”
“No, they ne’er did. Those watchmen live the far side
of Maldon. They sleep in the daytime. They’re none too
bright, anyhow. They don’t agree about the boy’s age,
named it anywhere from nine to twelve. Said he wore
a green kerchief around his head, they couldn’t see what
color hair he had. They say he belongs to the gang that
took the six casks. He denied it, though: said he was
just stealin’ salt for a cow.”
Mrs. Drumby sat down. She was shaking. “That sounds
like Toby, Adam. If ’e don’t come back, we’ll know
for sure.”
Adam Drumby was aghast. “I’ll not believe it,” he
said. “Jim Wayneman’s boy couldn’t be a felon.”
“Toby had a green silk kerchief, Adam. He was
mighty proud of it and kept it in his chest. He told me
it was give him by a young man that goes to Oxford.”
“Go and see if it’s gone,” Mr. Drumby said. He looked
bleak. He looked even bleaker when his wife returned
to the kitchen from the brewhouse, shaking her head.
“It’s not anywhere, Adam.”
Mr. Drumby clenched his hands. “If we took a viper
to our bosom——! We trusted that boy. To think he’d
lead a gang of robbers right into my warehouse!”
“Oh, ’e never, never did!” Mrs. Drumby declared.
She wept and rocked back and forth in distress. “It was
two different matters, Toby and those thieves. There
wasn’t any connection, I’m sure. Whilst ’e was ’ome, ’e
[63]


saw a little girl named Dulcie Lane, his friend. She’s got
a sick father that can’t work, and they’ve got a cow.
Toby tried to tell me about the cow last night. Oh, ’e
did, ’e tried ’ard, but I was too pushed to listen.”
Mr. Drumby went to the door. Mrs. Drumby followed
and laid an urgent hand on his arm. “If you go outside,
Adam, don’t speak Toby Wayneman’s name, unless
you’re asked for ’im. That case, say ’e’s gone back to ’is
old ’ome.”
“All right, Mother, but this be a hard matter. If the
boy comes back, I’ll be forced to turn ’im in. I’m the salt
keeper.”
“Toby’ll ne’er come back, that I know. Oh, the poor
boy! ’Is new little coat’s there in the brewhouse, and
’is staff, and all ’is shells and tops. ’Is new shoes, too. Oh,
if ’e’d only wore ’is warm coat and ’is new shoes when
he took off!” Her tears flowed, and even Mr. Drumby
had to wipe his cheek with his hand.
When Toby wakened at daylight he was chilled and
stiff from sleeping on the hard earth. His shoulder pained
him, and he remembered what had caused it. Last night’s
nightmare came back to him in somewhat diminished
intensity. All troubles must yield a little to the rising sun.
He thought with regret of his blue wool coat hanging
on a peg in the Drumby brewhouse, and his staff, but
spilt milk is spilt milk. He looked about him to get his
bearings. ~
The highway he had slept beside was a much-used one,
[69]


bordered by pastures where sheep grazed. Already a
wagon was in sight, going north toward Maldon. He
stepped behind a hedge. But when he heard a vehicle
moving in the other direction he stepped out and waved
his arms to indicate his wish to be picked up. Somewhere
to the southwest of him lay London, where Will, his
brother, lived. He would find Will, and Will would
take him in.
The driver, a husky farm boy, stopped his cart and
told Toby to climb up, promising him a ride as far as
the village of Woodham Ferrers. He lent Toby some
sacking to put around his shoulders and invited him to
share the breakfast he was eating out of a rush basket.
“Why are you on the road so early?” the boy asked.
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“I like to get an early start,” Toby answered. “No
matter where I’m going, I like to be forward.”
“Well, I don’t. I’d never get up before sunrise if I
wasn’t shook up. I live with my uncle. He shakes me up
at five of the clock except market days. Market days, like
today, he shakes me up at four. What’s yer name?”
“Toby Wayneman.”
“Haven’t you got a coat?”
“Yes, I have, at home.”
“Where do you live at?”
Toby ignored the question and was annoyed to hear
it repeated. “I live all around,” he said, “first here, then
there.” He thought of calling the boy Nosey Bozey, an
epithet much employed around Loughton, but he re-
frained because the carter looked to be thirteen or four-
teen years old and was, besides, extending him hospitality.
“I’d like to live that way, myself. It’s tiresome to live
with yer uncle and get shook up so early. Sometimes I’m
a mind to run off. Where was the last place you lived at?”
“Maldon, where do you suppose? Didn’t you pick me
up close to there? Thank you for the duck eggs.” He had
consumed three of them, hard-boiled.
“I don’t fancy eggs without salt,” the cart boy said.
“You’re welcome to ’em. I like sausage because it’s got
salt cooked in it. That’s why I ate the sausage and gave
you the eggs.”
Toby wished the boy would not talk about salt, but
he was obsessed with the topic, as it turned out.
“My uncle’s well off,” he said. “He buys salt to cure
his beef and pork with. That way, our meat don’t spoil.”
“There ain’t anything like a rich uncle except two rich
[71]


uncles,” Toby offered. It was an expression of his father’s
that seemed suitable at the moment.
“I ne’er saw anybody with two rich uncles,” the driver
said thoughtfully. “Do you know what I’m haulin’ to
Woodham Ferrers?” And immediately he answered him-
self: “Two quarters of beef already salted, that’s what.
I’ll take home a purse full of shillings, you can bet.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll get to keep some of ’em for myself. My uncle
lets me put away ten shillings a week against the time
I marry. When I’m eighteen I’m pledged to marry a girl
on the next farm. Her name’s Edith. Is your wife picked
out yet?”
“Yes, she is,” Toby answered, picking her out at that
moment. “Name’s Dulcie.”
“Can her father give ’er anything for dowry?”
“No,” Toby replied. He felt acutely depressed. Not
because Dulcie had no prospects but because he had
failed her so miserably. In a week’s time, perhaps, Bess
would be cut into quarters like the animal in the cart.
It was unthinkable. Bess had trusting eyes and was gentle
in the extreme. Dulcie milked her and brought her water
in a pail. In summer, Dulcie made ropes of clover to hang
around Bess’s neck.
When Toby was let down near noon in the cobbled
street of Woodham Ferrers, he thanked his benefactor
sincerely, but he felt no regrets at leaving him. The
boy’s boastings had emphasized his own forlorn state.
Their leave-taking was interrupted by a bugle call, and
a lumbering coach came into view and slowed to a stop
before the tavern.
[71]


. _ _, . _»_ _ .. ..- - M.._.....~.$.~ T ' '

“It’s the London Mail,” Toby said reverently. Around
his neck and under his shirt still hung the little bag of
coins he had reserved for his trip to Loughton. His hand
went up and touched it.
“Well, good-by,” he said to his host. He wanted in-
tensely to ride that great secure stage to London, but he
feared to let the carter see him enter it. Before the day
ended, perhaps, the news about a boy serving a gang of
salt thieves would have reached this far. It would be
dangerous for him if this reliable carter, nephew to an
Essex farmer, should say that a coatless boy he carried
to Woodham Ferrers took coach to London.
“Where do you aim to go from here?” the carter
asked, beguiled by Toby’s foot-loose condition.
“I always wanted to see Burnham-on-Crouch,” Toby
said evasively. He looked toward the coast, where the
town ought to be. “The most oysters in the world are
there. I might find me some pearls in the shells.”
The farm boy was smitten with an envy beyond bear-
ing, and, like any prince frustrated by a pauper, he let
fly, “You know what? I’ll bet you’re a wild boy wanted
by the law. You look like a regular pickpocket, head
to toe.”
“Go duck your head,” Toby advised. He was giddy
with injured pride. He could not help his appearance.
His journeyings and the events of the past few days
had made him look like a scarecrow, but it seemed un-
fair to him that he should be taunted with it. He turned
and ran away, blinded by tears. Darting down the first
street he came to, he hid in a recessed doorway till the
carter drove off and was out of sight. Then he hurried
[73]


to the tavern where the stage stood and boldly asked for
a ticket to London.
The driver peered at his anxious face. “Be ye runnin’
away, boy?” he asked, speaking as sternly as it was pos-
sible for such a jolly man to speak. “We don’t carry
runaways.”
“I’ve got a brother in London, sir, a grown man. I’m
going to find him. I’ve got a sister somewhere in London
too.”
“Did they send ye enough money for a stage seat?”
“I hope I’ve got enough,” Toby said. He poured the
contents of his coin bag into the driver’s hand and waited
with an anxiety he could not conceal.
“There be enough here, yes. Sixpence over.”
He handed back the excess coin and told Toby to
climb to the top. “Ye can bed down amongst the trunks
on a lap robe,” he said. “ ’Ave ye e’er been down to
Lon’on?”
“No, sir, I ne’er have.”
“Ah, I envy ye then! A boy’s first ride to Lon’on!”
Toby climbed up and found a niche that gave a view
over the tossing ears of the six horses. Soon the whip
climbed up, too, and while the courier sounded the horn
the stage began to roll toward London, scattering fowl
and folk before it and filling Toby’s bleak heart with
hope and excitement.
Jane Wayneman supposed her employer spelled his name
P-e-e-p-s, because that was the way he said it.
[74]


“Mr. Peeps!” she called urgently one September day.
“Do please come downstairs! The upholsterer’s here!”
She was a slender, brown-eyed, animated girl with a
fresh country complexion, but plain otherwise. She stood
with her arms akimbo, peering up a stairway that needed
sweeping. She had too much work to do in that house.
For two years she had been cook-maid to Mr. and Mrs.
Samuel Pepys, and there was no end to what was ex-
pected of her. Recently she must even clean the brass and
copper because “the boy” had been discharged for steal-
ing. Her hands were red and raw from it.
No reply was made to Jane’s summons, but something
crashed with a splintering sound, and a pretty voice with
a French accent exclaimed, “Look what you’ve done,
Sam! I hate you!”
Jane shrugged her shoulders and returned to the entry.
“I must ask you to wait,” she told the upholsterer. “Mr.
Peeps is quarrelin’ with his wife.”
“Will it take him long?” asked the literal craftsman.
“I think he’ll soon come down,” said Jane, resuming
her polishing. “When he kicks the furniture and makes
Mrs. Peeps cry, he’s almost through. But they kiss and
make up, and that takes a little while longer.”
Sure enough, Mr. Pepys presently appeared, his full
lips puckered in a sentimental whistle and his eyes moist
from a few penitent tears. “There you are!” he said to
the upholsterer. “Come and see my dining room. I want
the chairs done in brown leather, but my wife wants red
serge, poor wretch.”
“Didn’t I cover some furniture for you when you lived
[vs]


in Axe Yard?” asked the upholsterer, looking hard at his
customer. “And wasn’t the pay a little slow?”
When Pepys nodded, unabashed, the tradesman went
on: “You said you were Lord Montagu’s cousin, and
clerk to him. I remember you very well now. The new
location threw me off.”
“Since then I’ve been made clerk of the entire Navy
Board. You won’t have to worry about your pay any
more, my good man.”
Upstairs, Mrs. Pepys was sobbing more loudly, and
now and then she would emit an angry wail, like an in-
jured puppy. Jane Wayneman wiped her hands and went
up to her.
“What’s wrong, poor Mrs. Peeps?” she asked.
Poor Mrs. Peeps was a matron of twenty, blessed with
a pretty figure and creamy skin and dark brown curls.
When her mouth was closed it seemed a sort of rosebud,
but now it was stretched into a comical square and
showed a missing tooth. Her hair was tousled from her
throwing herself about, and she had kicked off her slip-
pers.
“Set up and let me wash your face, Mrs. Peeps,” Jane
urged.
Mrs. Pepys submitted. She was used to family quarrels
from the cradle, for her father, Mr. Alexander St.
Michel, an excitable French Protestant, and her mother,
an Irish Catholic lady, used to go at it hammer and tongs.
Elizabeth was glad to escape from them and marry
Samuel Pepys when she was fifteen years old and he was
twenty-tvvo. Mr. St. Michel gave his blessing, but he had
nothing else to bestow upon the rash young couple, and
[76]


so for several years they lived in an attic and were very
poor. But it seemed to Elizabeth Pepys that they were
happier then. They were more considerate of one an-
other, and less suspicious. Nowadays they were always
bickering and spending too much money and making the
wrong friends.
While Jane Wayneman bathed her face, Mrs. Pepys
told her troubles. “Sam broke the dear little sewing
basket he brought me from Holland. He threw it across
the room. There it lies on the hearth. Oh, I detest him! I
could pinch his nose with the fire tongs!”
“No!” said Jane. “Surely you wouldn’t do that. He’s
been your dear husband for five years, and you love him
madly. You’ve often told me so.”
“Yes, I know. But now he’s a horrid man that drinks
too much and has an ugly temper.”
“You’ve got a little temper yourself, Mrs. Peeps,”
Jane reminded her. “Come now and pick up your sewing
box whilst I finish doing the brass.”
Rolling into London by way of Aldgate, the coach of-
fered its rural travelers a respectable picture of the great
city. To Toby, riding on top, the view was magical. As
he looked down at the shopkeepers lighting their door
lamps and caught glimpses of a famed river and a great
hulking bridge, the boy trembled with a wonderful
pleasure. When he climbed down at the Essex terminal
there was no room in his thoughts for misgivings. Every-
thing would be all right, he believed.
[. 7 7 1


In this happy spirit he approached a groom who was
unharnessing the big horses and asked him, “Do you
know my brother, Will Wayneman?”
“I do. That is, if ye mean the Wayneman that works
at the Southwark post’ouse.”
“That’s the place,” declared Toby, for the word
Southwark' was a cue in his memory. “Is it far from
here?”
“It’s a piece. It’s across river.”
“You mean across London Bridge?” Toby asked with
awe.
“Aye. That be the best way.”
“I’m obliged,” Toby said.
Lacking his staff, he looked about for a large stick. No
scarcer commodity could have been sought in London
at the advent of chilly weather, and Toby was forced
to content himself with a broken bridle bit that he found
on the ground. It was unthinkable that a boy should walk
through the streets without something to tap with: as
soon a lady go to Hampton Court without plumes.
Walking briskly and tapping every tempting shutter
and lamppost with his metal bit, Toby made his way to
the great bridge and crossed it without incident.
In Southwark the location of the posthouse was un-
known to several persons whom he questioned (city folk
being habitually ignorant of their surroundings), but
finally Toby met a boy who knew the place well and
called it “the Carrier’s.” He sent Toby there with the
normal directions of boyhood: a pigeon roost would mark
one turning; a door knocker shaped like a swan would
[78]


mark the next; a fine cat sat in a window just here; a dog
was chained in a narrow court there . . .
Toby arrived unerringly.
Mr. Will Wayneman was immediately identified when
Toby asked for him. “—the chap that coughs,” said the
manager of the posthouse. “Yes, Wayneman works here.
Go through that arch and find ’im. He’s first ostler.”
Confronting his brother, Toby had his first misgivings.
Will looked shocked and startled at sight of him. No
light of welcome shone in his eyes. “What are you doing
here, Toby?” he cried out nervously. “Why are you so
dirty and underdressed?”
“I started in too much of a hurry,” Toby answered.
“I didn’t think about my coat till it was too late. I’ve
come to live with you, Will.”
“VVhy, little fellow, you can’t live with us,” Will said.
“It ain’t possible. Our quarters are above stable. Dusty,
too. Bad for the chest.” He was seized with a spell of dry
coughing and held his ribs as if to keep from flying
apart.
“You can stay a little visit with us,” Will resumed
when he had got his breath. “Then I’ll pay your fare
home.”
“Home?”
“To Loughton, lad. Where else?”
“I’ll not go back to Loughton,” Toby said.
“Our father wanted it, Toby. He said in his last will
and testament for Aunt Huldah to keep you till you’re
apprenticed.”
“Those Snells!” Toby exclaimed. He spat on the
ground and told his story, but only up to a certain point.
[79]


His brush with the law was omitted. He said the salt-
boiling season was too short, so he’d decided to leave
Maldon and come to London.
“Mr. Drumby can’t use me any more,” he concluded.
This was one of the most accurate statements of the
Restoration, had Will but known it.
“Where’s Jane?” Toby asked in a businesslike way.
Will’s face brightened. “That’s it!” he said. “Jane’s the
one to take you. The family she lives with needs a boy.
The master works for the Navy. Wait till I’m through
here. Sit down and wait, lad, till I can take you there.”
While he waited for Will, Toby investigated the post-
house and Will’s flat over the stables. He became ac-
quainted with his sister-in-law, a pale young woman with
a sad face who was tending a baby with tender blue
veins. Mrs. Wayneman provided Toby with a bowl of
water, some soap, and a towel, and let him take a bath.
Then she offered him food. Toby was glad to get it,
though he thought he had never seen such thin soup and
soggy pastry.
Mrs. Wayneman was relieved to hear that Toby would
not take up residence with them; she could hardly have
managed it.
“I’m going to work where Jane works,” Toby assured
her. “It seems like they’re lookin’ for a boy. A grown man
won’t do. In some cases it’s like that. They’re ship
people.” You would have thought they had sent for
him. .
Mrs. Wayneman was doubtful, being accustomed to
disappointments. On the marshy fringes of Southwark,
she remembered, things seldom went right for a child.
1 [801


“Don’t get your ’opes too ’igh,” she warned him. “But
go on, there’s Will ready for you.”
London Bridge again loomed ahead, but Will said they
would not walk across it. It was too dark and late. They
went down some steps to the water’s edge to take boat
to the City side. When the waterman said he must charge
them sixpence each in advance, Toby was quick to bring
out the money for his own fare. It was his last coin, but
Will needn’t know.
“Toby,” Will Wayneman said during the crossing,
“I’d thank you to show your best side when we get to
Navy Yard. This job would have a future, if it’s God’s
wish you get it.”
“Of course, Will,” Toby replied sincerely. “What
name does the man have?”
“Peeps. No matter how it’s spelled, which I’ve forgot,
call him ‘Mr. Peeps.’ ”
Toby laughed, and the carefree sound rang over the
water and cheered Will Wayneman immeasurably.
Jane opened the door to their knock and exclaimed in
surprise at sight of them, especially at seeing her little
brother from the country standing there. “What does it
mean?” she asked.
“It means we’ve got Toby on our hands,” Will said
with a shocking want of tact; but then, he was a sick
man, and an extra word might set him coughing.
While Toby studied floor boards, Will told Jane how
the boy had come to London uninvited and refused to
go home. He told of Toby’s break with the Snells. He
told of the Maldon interlude as far as Toby had told it
to him.
[31]


H
I’m stumped to know what to do with him,” Will
concluded. “I wonder if Mr. Peeps could use him. Does
he still lack a page?”
“He does need a page, Will, but he wants an older boy
than Toby. The last boy was all of thirteen and had been
to school. Mr. Peeps likes to be read to.”
“I can read to ’im,” said Toby grimly, for Will had
offended him. Those words, “We’ve got Toby on our
hands,” sounded as cold and ugly as Mis’ Snell’s pro-
nouncements.
“I can read better than both of you,” he reminded
Will.
Jane laughed. He had told the truth. She was almost
illiterate, though she could write her name with a flourish
and tot up the grocer’s bill. As for Will, he had gone to
the village school only two or three years. When his
father tried to educate him further, he had balked. Toby
had been the responsive one. Mr. Wayneman had taught
him at home and marveled at how naturally he took to
reading. “He’s no scholar,” Mr. Wayneman said, “but
let a book tell a good yarn, Toby will devour it.” Toby
also took to maps. When Mr. Wayneman was doing
cabinetwork in the fine library of Loughton Hall, Squire
Wroth had lent him a set of maps to take home. Toby
very soon learned where the ships went on the high seas.
He memorized the names of faraway places and would
spout them for pure pleasure.
“Yes, Toby’s a good reader,” Will conceded. “I never
saw much use in it till now. Do your best to get him
hired, Jane. Tell Mr. Peeps what a bright little chap he
is. Otherwise, I don’t know what’s to become of him.”
[31]


“Dear heaven,” exclaimed Jane, “let me think! Mr.
Peeps is out and he mayn’t come home for hours. Be-
sides, he has two or three other boys in view.”
“If he’s got two or three in view,” Toby ventured,
“then he hasn’t settled on any one of ’em.”
“That’s so.” Jane looked at her little brother in a specu-
lative way.
She had not seen him for more than two years. No
doubt his nature had changed as much as his looks. His
traits of character, his little habits, would all be stronger
now, just as surely as his body had grown taller and his
mind keener. When he was six and seven and eight, she
remembered, he was stubborn. Mr. Peeps, though, could
cope with that.
“Well, Jane?” Will said urgently.
“I’ll do my best,” she said. “Let me talk to Mrs. Peeps.
Set down on a bench whilst I go talk to her.”
A few minutes later Jane returned and she was gig-
gling a little. “Mrs. Peeps says yes, Will! I’m to put Toby
to bed and tell the master later.”
Will expressed relief. “If there’s any trouble about it,
let me know,” he said. “I don’t mean to ditch the little
chap.” He then told his sister and brother good-by and
urged Toby to conduct himself as their late father would
have wanted him to do.
When Will had gone Jane shut the door and turned to
the boy. “Are you hungry, Toby?” she asked. “You
looked peaked and thin. You look like you’d had a hard
time lately.”
“I could drink some milk,” he said.
She gave him bread and milk in the kitchen, several
[83]


bowls of it. She noticed that his table manners were ac-
ceptable; if anything, he was less wolfish than Sir Ed-
ward Montagu’s second son. She ran her hands through
his sunny red hair. “It’s goin’ to be nice havin’ you
around,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
“I like to be here, Jane,” he replied. “I’ll work hard
and not make any trouble for you. Can I go to bed
now?”
“Yes, little chap.” She took him to a plain bedroom on
the ground floor. “This is where you’ll stay. It’s the
chamber of Mr. Will Hewer, Mr. Peeps’ clerk, though
he’s not here tonight. The big bed is Mr. Hewer’s. The
truckle bed is always the boy’s. . . . Dear Heaven!
Didn’t you bring any clothes? Not even a shift to sleep
in?”
Toby said he had nothing but what he was standing in.
“That Mrs. Drumby you stayed with must have been
a neglectful sort of woman to let you come away so
shabby. I’d like to give ’er a piece of my mind.”
“She wasn’t neglectful,” Toby protested.
“I’m judgin’ by the looks of you,” Jane said. “This
torn shirt speaks for itself.”
“Mrs. Drumby was good to me and ne’er said a mean
word,” Toby declared stoutly. “Mr. Drumby was good
to me too.”
“They had a funny way of showin’ it,” Jane com-
mented.
She went and got one of Mr. Hewer’s nightshirts and
told Toby to put it on. She showed him where things
were kept and saw to it that he had all the necessities.
But she would not let herself kiss him good night. Some-
[84]


thing warned her not to pamper him. He would need to
be a little man.
“Blow out your own candle,” she told him before she
closed the door. “Hold your hand back of it when you
blow.”
Toby did so and got into bed, tired and satisfied.
Gropingly he had made his own destiny. He had become
Pepys’ boy.
Tomorrow he would enter an imperishable diary,
though unaware of it. Indeed, it would hardly have in-
terested him, with Seething Lane to be investigated.
When Pepys came home it was almost midnight, but
Mrs. Pepys was waiting up for him. When she stomped
her foot and cried out, “Where have you been, Sam?”
he truthfully replied that he had been consuming walnuts
and wine at Hoop Tavern with the Navy Victualler.
“Oh?” she said. “Well, while you were wasting your
time I hired a boy! He’s gone to bed in Hewer’s room.”
“That was cheeky of you, Elizabeth. Who is he?”
“Toby Wayneman, from Loughton village in Essex.
Our Jane’s little brother.”
“How old is he?” Pepys asked suspiciously.
“He’s ten, Jane says.”
“That’s too young, Elizabeth, and you know it.” He
did not argue further because his head was aching. Be-
sides, he knew his wife had done this just to assert her-
self; she was tired of staying alone so much and of having
no say-so in anything, not even in buying her own
[85]


clothes. He would try to accept this boy, he decided re-
morsefully. Putting a wet towel on his forehead, he
groaned and lay down to sleep.
Breakfast was often taken in bed by Mr. and Mrs.
Pepys; at such times Jane went up and down the stairs,
carrying trays. This morning she had no sooner said
“Good morning” than Mr. Pepys asked to see Toby.
“He’s hardly fit, sir,” Jane answered nervously. “He’s
really tattered. I’ll get him a change of clothes today, if
Mrs. Peeps can spare me.”
“Bring him up in whatever he’s wearing,” Pepys
ordered. “He was hired without my knowledge. Let me
have a look at what I’m expected to put up with.”
When Toby appeared he was neatly brushed and grave
of face. The rips in his clothes had been hastily sewn up
by Jane. Not being used to seeing folk in elaborate night
clothes, he hid his surprise by picking at his broken
thumbnail.
Mr. Pepys asked him that most abominable of ques-
tions: “What have you got to say for yourself, boy?”
The reply that Toby made was forthright, and Mr.
Pepys was pleased in spite of himself. “I want to work in
this house, Mr. Peeps, because it’s close to the river and
the ships.”
“Are you afraid to go about in the dark alone?” Pepys
wanted to know.
“Go where, sir?”
“Anywhere! You’d have to run errands for me, carry-
ing your own link. Some boys are afraid of London after
night. I can’t put up with that sort of timidity.”
Toby hesitated, decided. “I’d not be afraid of the dark
[86]


“Take the Peeps family,” Jane said, taking it. “You
brag about your Cottenham ancestors, and how you went
to Cambridge, and how your brother john goes there
now. But your father’s a merchant tailor, and your
brother Tom’s an apprentice tailor. Tom’s not even a
good one. His seams run zigzag!”
Mrs. Pepys giggled. Mr. Pepys’ face flushed to crim-
son. Then he decided to laugh. Jane Wayneman was a
better servant than most, and she was companionable to
Elizabeth; it would be foolish to discharge her for im-
pudence.
He instructed Jane: “Take your brother to Cheapside
today and get him some clothes. He looks like a ship’s
rat. Go any time your mistress can spare you.”
“Give her the money then, Sam,” Elizabeth said.
“That I shan’t,” he replied. “The boy ought’ve come
in decent clothes. When it’s settled he stays, I’ll put
him in livery. I can’t be expected to outfit him twice,
can I?”
Toby was listening attentively; his hopes fluctuated.
He was thankful Jane made no more saucy replies, for it
was evident she was itching to do so. He helped her stack
the dishes and carry them downstairs.
In the kitchen he asked, “What can we do, Jane? I
don’t have money to buy clothes with.”
“I’ve got three crowns,” Jane said sullenly. “We’ll
have to spend ’em. Oh, the stinginess of that man, to
make me outfit his serving-boy!”
“I’ll pay you back out of my wages,” Toby said stifliy.
“Yes, Toby, of course. It’s not you I’m mad at, it’s
Mr. Peeps. He knows I’ve got the money saved for a
[83]


cape and a hood. He heard me tell Mrs. Peeps so, just
yesterday. Oh, the meanness of him!”
“You oughtn’t have talked back to him,” Toby re-
minded his sister. “I won’t ever.”
“See that you remember that,” Jane advised.
That night Toby grew sleepy soon after supper. He
was exhausted by the pinchpenny shopping to get him
outfitted, by the unfamiliar scullery work of a city house,
by his own darting excursions into Hart Street and Seeth-
ing Lane between chores. Back of him stretched a day
that was too long, too packed with novelty. He told Jane
he would like to go to bed.
“I’m sorry, Toby, but Mr. Peeps gave orders for you
to stay up. This is Saturday night. You’ll have to carry
up his bath water. You must scrub his back, too.”
Toby said he would start carrying up the water at
once.
“But you can’t do that,” Jane explained. “He likes to
step in it piping hot. You must wait till he comes home.
He’s two doors away, playing cards with Sir William
Penn.”
Toby looked at his sister in surprise. “Do you mean
Admiral Penn?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s called Admiral too. He’s a good man, but
Mr. Peeps has a grudge against ’im. They spend a lot of
time together.” She went to the buttery, where she was
putting some bread to rise. Toby sat at the kitchen table
and pondered on the smallness of the world, and pres-
ently he laid his head on his arms and slept.
When Mr. and Mrs. Pepys came home, they were
laughing and singing. Toby was disturbed by the noise,
[89]


and by Jane’s shaking his shoulders. “Let me alone,” he
begged crossly.
“It’s too bad, Toby,” Jane said, “but you’ll have to
come awake. Mr. Peeps is home!”
The water was hot in a tank on the new stove. Jane
filled a pewter pitcher, holding it under the tank’s spigot.
“Take this upstairs, little chap. Pour it in his copper
tub on the hearth, then come back for more.”
Toby obeyed and was soon wide awake. A score of
trips were made up the steep little stairway, and finally
Jane followed him and pronounced the water line to be
high enough. She hurried to and fro, collecting towels
and brushes and giving anxious instructions.
“If you comb his hair, look out for nits,” she advised.
“He picks ’em up at that dirty Cockpit, where the plays
are.” She went downstairs then, leaving the new page to
his chores.
Mr. Pepys came from his little back room, which he
called his closet. He disrobed and got into his tub, still
singing. Toby knelt and scrubbed a back as pink as
pork, and then, while Mr. Pepys soaked, he was in-
structed to read aloud.
Later, his voice hoarse, his arms and legs aching, Toby
got into his truckle bed without undressing. The room
was lit only by moon rays, for he had not bothered to
light a candle.
“Come, lad,” said a pleasant voice from the other bed,
“get up and say your prayers!” It was Mr. Hewer, the
clerk.
“Yes, sir,” replied Toby, and he did so.
The voice of authority, it seemed, might come at a boy
[90]


from any direction at any time, even from the far corner
of a dark room at midnight.
As for Mr. Pepys, he wrote in his diary anent this day:
This morning I called up my boy (my maid’s brother,
who was gone to bed, and I conld not see him last night)
and I found him a pretty, well-looked boy, and one I
think will please me. . . . I had the boy up tonight for
his sister to teach him to put me to bed, and I heard him
read, which he did pretty well.
The next day was Sunday. Mr. and Mrs. Pepys put on
their new mourning clothes (the Duke of Gloucester be-
ing dead) and walked up and down in public with the
Navy Yard set. Toby was ordered to follow them. He
looked remarkably spruce, for he had spared neither
pains nor cold water.
After the stroll they went to morning service at St.
Olave’s Church across the way. The text that Mr. Mills,
the minister, had chosen was: “So run that ye may ob-
tain.” Toby listened reverently and applied the text to
himself, with a slight alteration; he had obtained this
Peeps job through Jane, but he must run to hold it.
Dinner was dished up by Jane Wayneman at one
o’clock, Toby helping her. Will Hewer dined with the
family, and Toby listened to them talk as he served. The
meat was a joint of beef, and Jane was praised for having
cooked it so well.
“Thank you,” she replied to her mistress. She ignored
Mr. Pepys, being still angry about the money he had
[91]


H
Here’s where the prisoners get their recreation,” he
said. “Let’s have a look.”
In this harsh enclosure a sort of life was being lived
by the inmates; the men, the women, the children. And
permeating the air they breathed was the smell of wet
feathers from the poultry-plucking vats of Scalding
Lane.
Toby pressed his face to the iron bars and peered
through. Several other persons were doing the same, and
Toby noticed that each visitor was talking to a specific
prisoner and had brought his prisoner some food.
Fascinated and repelled, Toby continued to gaze.
Some boys were playing at a game of hopscotch. Every
so often one of them would fall out and a new boy would
take his place. They had rules and were endeavoring to
follow them, but listlessness hung like a pall over the
entire proceeding. Toby wondered why they didn’t play
at something else, until he realized the difliculty. They
had no hoop, top, or string. No horn or drum. Not one
book, button, bell, stick, or whittling knife among them.
Mr. Pepys tossed fourpence to a little boy whose feet
were tied up in pieces of undressed leather. He picked it
from the ground and walked away, shuffling like an old
man, not remembering to say “Thank you.”
“Very bad manners,” Mr. Pepys said, “but we won’t
condemn him.”
Toby thought Mr. Peeps had shown bad manners in
throwing the coin at the boy, instead of handing it to
him. Maybe the little chap had felt like an animal when
he stooped to pick it up.
“Come,” Pepys said. “I’ve had enough of this.”
[94]


They went on to Lothbury and bought the chafing
dish, and then they went to Tom Pepys’ shop in Paul’s
Churchyard to get some mousetraps. The turner was
one of the common Pepyses, and a pleasanter man could
hardly be found. Even Samuel Pepys, who looked down
on his cousin socially, liked to visit him.
Tom Pepys received Toby cordially. “So you’re the
new page at my cousin’s house,” he said. “Are you lear-
n-
ing your way around, young Wayneman? Do you know
which way is Temple Bar, and what it is?”
“It’s through Ludgate there, sir, in Fleet Street. It’s
the arch that divides London from Westminster.”
“Spoken like a veteran! I’ll have ’prentice Edwin
bring you a beaker of milk while my cousin picks out his
traps. You appear to be tuckered out. You look pale to
fainting.”
“It’s likely I’ve walked him too fast,” Pepys said. He
had no idea the boy had been bowled over by the prison.
Toby sipped the milk and sat thinking. He was glad
that he had gone to Poultry Compter and had stood close
enough to touch its stones. It was no better than he had
thought. But if you fear a thing it is better to know ex-
actly what you fear.
Toby was always expecting his sister to lose her job. She
complained of being overworked, and she spoke with
such abandon that she could be heard by Lady Batten
next door.
Jane’s complaints were reasonable. She had to cook
[95]


and clean. On washing days she must rise at two o’clock
in the morning and do the laundry. She contended with
all the pets that Elizabeth Pepys collected: a little black
spaniel that fouled the house; canary birds and doves
whose cages must be kept tidy; and for a few weeks a
bad-tempered parrot off a ship. Jane could not keep
ahead of the work, or even catch up with it, and one
wretched morning in December Mr. Pepys basted her
with the broom because the house was dirty.
Toby was away on an errand when it happened.
Reaching home, he found his sister weeping in the scul-
lery, dwelling on her wrongs in her excitable way and
talking to the doves while she cleaned their cages.
Toby was incensed. “I’ll beat him with that very
broom!” he promised. “Hand it here! If he’s in the Navy
Office, I’ll go and baste him there!”
Jane was alarmed. “You keep out of this, Toby,” she
said. “Do you want to get us both discharged? Winter’s
a hard time to find work. Mrs. Peeps shamed ’im for beat-
ing me, and he made his manners and gave me half a
crown. I’m only crying now because I’m all wound up.”
But Christmas came in cheerily, with old grudges for-
gotten. The pews at St. Olave’s Church were decorated
with rosemary and loops of green baize, and masters and
servants went together to hear the Christmas story and
to be reminded of the Babe’s humility.
Every house in the Navy Yard gave out savory odors
of cooking. The Pepys house had a great turkey which
was dispatched with difficulty, Jane refusing to kill fowl,
and standing in the cellar with her ears stopped while
Toby and Will Hewer used the ax. She struggled hero-
[-96]


ically with roasting it, though, and turned the spit till her
face was flaming.
On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s,
Sir William Penn came to dine, bringing his own barrel
of oysters and some Florentine wine. The season was
lonely for him, he said, because his wife and daughter
were in Ireland and his sons were at school.
While passing him some tobacco, Toby managed to
say, “I know your oldest son, Sir William.”
“You do, eh? Bless us, how could you?”
“When he was at Walthamstow I ran into him. He was
fishing. He gave me a lift on his horse.”
“William’s an amiable boy,” Admiral Penn said, “but
a mighty strange one. I’m not at ease about William.”
Then he changed the subject, as if it distressed him to
think about his elder son.
On the last day of the year Toby went with Mr.
Pepys to Lord Montagu’s and became involved with a
remarkable cat.
Lord Montagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, was the
cousin to whom Pepys owed his Navy position. He lived
in a fine house in Westminster, while Lady Montagu
and the seven young Montagus stayed at Hinching-
brooke, their estate in the country. My Lord’s town
house was presided over by an elderly housekeeper
named Mrs. Sarah Williams. This old lady was kind to
Toby, for she had a great sympathy for pages.
On the last night of the year the dining went on later
than usual, and old Mrs. Williams did what she could to
make Toby’s visit tolerable in the servants’ hall. Other
pages had fallen asleep, but Toby was watching a large
[97]


they parted in Fenchurch Street, near the Navy Yard,
Pepys was suddenly apprehensive, thinking he may have
been chummy with an agent of the French King. About
this time he noticed the cat’s eyes glowing in the dark
(for Toby had been forced to let its head out of the bag)
and he called out in fright, “What’s that thing, Wayne-
man?”
“A cat, Mr. Peeps.”
“What! Have you stole a Montagu cat?”
“No, sir. It’s a cat Mis’ Williams didn’t want. She told
me to carry it home to Mis’ Peeps.”
“Mrs. Pepys can’t stand cats. Besides, it would be an-
other mouth to feed. I’ll not have it.”
“He’ll eat mice, Mr. Peeps. The cellar’s full of ’em.
They’ve even gnawed your little wooden ship.”
Pepys hesitated, then said the cat might go on trial. He
admitted the mice were a problem and that Tom Pepys’
traps did little good. “But keep the thing out of Mrs.
Pepys’ rooms. A cat’s a very devil after caged birds. Did
Mrs. Williams tell you its name?”
“It’s Prince Rupert.”
Samuel Pepys laughed. Prince Rupert, cousin to the
King, was a royal rascal who had gone off with part of
the English fleet and used it for piracy. Poor Admiral
Penn had spent some of the best years of his life chasing
him. The cat’s name filled Pepys with glee. “We must
introduce Rupert to old Penn! ” he exclaimed.
The possession of this fine cat, the largest inside the
City walls, compensated to Toby for the loss of his treas-
ures in the Drumby brewhouse; his shells, his driftwood
oddities, his staff. Rupert was companionable. He would
[99]


turn up in unexpected places and would deign to notice
Toby in a most gracious manner. Toby often encoun-
tered him on Tower Hill, bent on some errand of his
own. And once he saw him on the roof of St. Bride’s,
miles away, stalking sparrows. On being summoned,
Rupert came down from there. He rubbed against
Toby’s legs and followed him home like a dog, only more
arrogantly. Before long, even Mr. Pepys referred to
Rupert as “Wayneman’s cat.”
That winter Mr. Pepys’ sister Paulina came to live with
them as a housemaid. She was made to dine with the
servants.
Mr. Pepys disliked his sister because she was homely
and would require a marriage dowry. He complained of
her sharp tongue too. But Pall Pepys blossomed happily
in the company of friendly people, and with the Wayne-
mans she was gay and helpful. After the work was done,
she and Jane often went out together.
Toby was becoming an accomplished footboy. He had
learned all the streets and short cuts and he was resource-
ful. If the Navy Ofiice wanted Mr. Pepys in a hurry,
Toby would run him down. He would go to the public
rooms of the various taverns frequented by Pepys, or he
would thread his way through Temple Gardens and the
parks till he located him.
Pepys appreciated this sleuth-like talent of Toby’s, and
he praised him for it. He also appreciated Toby’s clear-
cut features and vivid coloring, for he liked to have good-
[100]


looked like, and if she was sweet-tempered. “Did your
parents affiance you?” she asked, for she was both
romantic ar.1d.practic.al, being French. “Are you pledged
to ; . i g. . ~,". .
Toby; described .Dulcie~’s ,appearance...He said they
wererftl pledged. .As ~for I-)ulcie’s being sweet-tempered,
sometimes she was, sometimes she wasn’t.
“You’re going to be a handsome and spirited young
man,” said Mrs. Pepys, looking at him speculatively. “It
would be sad if you got a girl that lost her temper every
day.”
She sighed desolately, remembering how she treated
Sam, even scratching his face if the quarrel went far. But
then she revived and tied up the parcel and addressed it.
“Take this to the carrier that goes out to Epping,” she
said. “Tell him to drop it off wherever Loughton folk
get their letters.”
“At the Golden Pear,” Toby said. “Somebody will
tell Dulcie it’s there. They’ll see her name on it.”
They both looked at the cushiony little package that
proclaimed in Mrs. Pepys’ best handwriting: Mistress
Dulcie Lane, Loughton in Essex, ofi Epping Rode. Toby
was pained that she had misspelled road, but he did not
mention it.
“Now you must write Dulcie Lane a letter,” Elizabeth
said, “so she’ll know you sent her this present. Tie the
letter to the parcel after you’ve wrote it.”
Toby followed instructions. In a fortnight he began to
expect a reply and went and asked the Epping carrier if
he had a letter for Toby Wayneman, care of Samuel
Pepys, Navy Yard. No. Come again on Saturday. Toby
[102]


went again on Saturday, and twice a week thereafter, on
into the summer. But there was never a message for him,
written or oral.
“Your folks may be wiped out,” said the carrier one
day, looking regretful. “I’d be at fault if I didn’t tell ye
this: there’s been a deal of smallpox thereabouts.”
Toby returned to Navy Yard, heavy of heart and foot.
Smallpox had taken off the Duke of Gloucester last fall,
right out of Whitehall, and it had taken the Princess
Royal on Christmas Eve. Lord Montagu’s oldest son,
Edward, had it now, and the three younger boys, Sidney
and Oliver and John, were staying in the Pepys spare
chamber to keep away from it. If it had no respect for
castles, why would it stay its hand from smiting a little
house with a thatched roof?
Toby worried in silence, not wanting to burden Jane.
That night he rolled and tossed dismally in his bed.
“Can’t you sleep, Wayneman?” Will Hewer asked
across the dark room. “Does your stomach hurt you?”
“No, Mr. Hewer, my stomach don’t hurt me.” Why
must people always ask a boy if his stomach hurts him?
“If something’s bothering you, speak out.”
“It’s about the smallpox,” Toby admitted.
“Oh, nonsense! Don’t tell me you’re afraid of losing
your pretty complexion.” Though the taunt sounded
heartless, Mr. Hewer was actually fond of Toby, valuing
him as a roommate because Toby kept to his own side of
the room and always picked up his clothes. “Not one
person in a thousand gets smallpox, Wayneman, and
many that do get it recover. Edward Montagu’s already
on the mend.”
[163]


“That’s so, Mr. Hewer.” Greatly cheered, Toby went
to sleep.
The Pepys house was in derangement that summer and
everybody was affected. Mr. Pepys no sooner got one
part of his dwelling decorated than he started on another.
He was having an extra stairway built, going up out of
his parlor, and it filled the place with plaster, workmen,
and tumult. He himself was always on the go, ordering
new clothes, cultivating fashionable friends, attending
the theater. He was also the hardest-working man in the
Navy Yard. No wonder he suffered daily from an aching
head and jangling nerves. He drove Mrs. Pepys to tears
and the servants to rebellion. Toby took to loitering on
his errands. Jane defiantly let the dust collect. Will
Hewer kept his hat on in the house and dressed carelessly
to get even with Pepys. Pall found several new ways to
annoy her brother. It was she who brought things to a
head.
“You’ve grown proud and idle!” Pepys shouted at
her. “I’m tired of you! My father can have you back!”
“It suits me exactly,” Pall replied, and she began to
pack her clothes. Old Mr. Pepys had inherited a little
country estate at Brampton in Cambridgeshire. He was
about to give his tailoring business to his son Tom, move
to Brampton, and become a country gentleman. Pall’s
prospects would be brighter there than in her brother’s
kitchen.
“I’ve had no appreciation here and not twopence in
wages,” Paulina Pepys stated in a carrying voice that
reached the Navy Ofl’ice itself. “Nothing but criticism.”
This outburst set off Jane Wayneman. “I’m leaving
[104]


too!” she declared, taking off her apron like a bailiff re-
moving his badge. “I’m fond of you, Mrs. Peeps, but I
can’t abide a mean master, nor I won’t! I’m going to the
country like Pall. I’m going to my mother, out Epping
way. She’ll be mighty pleased to see me on the doorstep,
I can tell you!”
Toby was openmouthed with astonishment, for Jane
had always called Mrs. Snell-Wayneman “Aunt Huldah”
and had never been able to get along with her. Because
of this uncongeniality she had left home at fourteen to
become a domestic servant in London. She had worked
for Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pepys ever since.
Mr. Pepys and Elizabeth were shocked by Jane’s sud-
den decision to leave them and they tried to pacify her.
Pall was dispensable, but Jane was not. She cooked the
best roast meat in town. She used a smoothing iron skill-
fully. She took care of the pets. She could tie a ribbon
bow or mend a pair of heavy breeches.
“We must talk this over, Jane,” Mr. Pepys said hur-
riedly. “It may be I can raise your wages to three pounds
a year.”
Jane noticed Toby standing there, and his anxious look
cooled her off. She refrained from telling Samuel Pepys
her opinion of him. Instead, she began to speak demurely
and to weep a little.
“I thank you, Mr. Peeps, for your generous intention,
but I’ve made up my mind. I’ve been here three years,
come Monday. I need a rest and a change. I leave my
little brother in your charge, though. Please be kind to
him and overlook his faults.”
Presently the two girls were gone, Pall to Brampton,
[1<>s]


send it on. .I’m only sorry I didn’t get the name of the
parish where Dulcie lives. But Dulcie’ll tell you herself
when she writes to thank you.”
“Yeah,” Toby said. He was dazed to think the Lane
cottage no longer had Dulcie in it. It was better than
hearing she’d died of smallpox, though, a thousand times
better. “Whatever became of old Bess?” he asked.
Jane was puzzled until Toby said, “I mean their cow,
the yellow one they had so long.”
\
Ca
\
/J I


“Oh, the cow. Nothin’s happened to her, I reckon. I
saw her in the pasture. She looked healthy.”
Toby scratched his head in bewilderment. Old Bess
must have got salt at the time of her need in some regu-
lar, unspectacular sort of way. Was there always a way
without felony to solve every lack and problem? Could
he have found a right way and have missed the threat of
Poultry Compter?
Jane asked if the Pepys kitchen had a cook in it.
“Yes, they’ve got a girl named Doll. She burns the
meat, and her temper’s right high.”
“Well, don’t cross ’er,” Jane advised. “And maybe
you can help ’er polish the brass, the way you helped me.
I wish nothin’ but good to the Peeps house, Toby, and I
pray you continue there, safe from harm and danger.”
“Yes, Jane.”
“Go to see our brother sometime,” Jane requested.
“I don’t think he likes me to come,” Toby said im-
patiently. He had gone to Will’s a few times from duty,
but the welcome had been so lukewarm and the enter-
tainment so dreary that he soon left off going. “His wife
don’t like for me to come, either.”
“It’s because they’re so hard up,” Jane reminded him.
“They never have any food to spare.”
“I guess that’s the reason. Was there any more news
about Dulcie?”
“Aunt Huldah said Dulcie can’t abide Widower York
and she vowed she’d never, never call him ‘Father.’
That’s why Mrs. Lane sent her to Ipswich to live with
her aunt. But they do say she’s growing out of her limp,
and that’s a blessing.”
[ro8.]


Toby wondered if he would like Dulcie as well with-
out her limp. How would it be not to feel a little sorry
for Dulcie, not to feel a little impatient at her slowness?
How would it seem not to help her over a stony brook
and not to warn the other children against laughing at
her dragging foot?
“Look, there’s Rupert!” Jane exclaimed as some sage-
bushes parted and a pair of remarkable green eyes came
through. The big cat rubbed against her, purring loudly.
“He remembers me, he remembers how I fed him.”
“Yes, he does,” Toby assured her. “Rupert misses
you.”
“Don’t let ’im follow me,” Jane cautioned. “I live a
half mile past Dr. Williams’ place and I must go back
now.”
Toby quickly picked up his cat, bade Jane a hasty
adieu, and took Rupert home, where he deposited him in
the cellar. He preferred for Rupert never to discover the
estate Jane had mentioned. Dr. Williams of Holbor n was
the Pepys physician, and he had a remarkable dog that
was the talk of London. When a cat entered the garden
to stalk the pigeons (of which Dr. Williams had a great
number), the doctor’s dog would kill the intruder and
bury it. He was so careful in burying the cat that if a tip
of its tail stuck out he would take it up again and dig
the hole deeper. It was claimed by Dr. Williams that his
dog had killed and buried over a hundred cats in the gar-
den and vineyard.
So alarmed had Toby been at the possibility of Rupert’s
following Jane and ending up in the feline graveyard that
he forgot to ask Jane where she was working. And she
[169]


forgot to tell him. As a result, Toby did not see his sister
again for many months.
Toby’s behavior took a turn for the worse, and it was
coincident with the arrival of Mr. William Penn from
Oxford.
On the first day of November, Mr. Pepys and Admiral
Penn went to Westminster to see the Duke of York
about Navy matters, after which they dined at Three
Tun Tavern and went to the theater to see The Ioviall
Crew. From the theater they went to Pepys’ house, where
Mrs. Pepys and her maids, Doll and Nell, scurried about
to prepare supper. They set the table with two extra
places, Admiral Penn having summoned his son from
next door. William was morose, he said, and needed
cheering up. .
When William Penn arrived he was not morose, only
absent-minded and not very talkative.
Toby watched him from the corners of his eyes while
he carried coals and laid them on the grate, and finally
Penn became aware of him. “Well, Wayneman,” he ex-
claimed, “you’re as redheaded as ever! Come and shake
hands.”
Toby removed his cotton glove and went and
pumped Penn’s hand. “I’d have known you anywhere,
Mr. Penn,” he said, grinning.
“So would I have known you,” Penn replied, “though
my father told me you were here. It’s strange, your land-
ing in the Navy Yard.”
— — I I
[110]


Ll
Yes, sir, but not too strange, because my sister worked
for the Peepses. How’s your health, Mr. Penn?”
“Fair. But I don’t like this warm weather. I’d feel
spryer if it frosted.”
“Maybe it’ll frost for Guy Fawkes Day,” Toby said
brightly.
Both Pepys and Admiral Penn looked pained, and
Pepys commanded in a chilly voice, “Get on with your
work, Wayneman, if you please! You’re not paid to en-
tertain the guests.”
“I was detaining him,” William Penn said. “It’s hardly
his fault that we got to talking.”
“We don’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in this house,”
Pepys said to Toby’s retreating back. “It’s an insult to
His Majesty.”
As Toby helped the maids serve supper young Mr.
Penn several times spoke kindly to him and engaged him
in snatches of conversation, quite in defiance of Mr.
Pepys. Toby’s spirits lifted and he forgot the humili-
ation of his call-down.
The next day, a busy Saturday, found Toby with a
problem, and whether he was washing the wainscot or
running errands he wrestled with it. What was he to do
with the fireworks he had bought for Guy Fawkes Day
that was coming up Tuesday? All of the Navy Yard, he
had discovered, frowned on the celebration. But the City
(as the walled part of London was called) encouraged a
flashy show on November fifth. “It’s to remind royalty,”
said the old merchant who had sold him the fireworks,
“of the power of the plain citizens.”
Toby preferred to set off his gunpowder in Hart
[111]


Street or on Tower Hill. Other pages and all the women
and children and housemaids would come running. Visit-
ing naval oflicers would take notice too. “Who’s setting
olf the fireworks?” they would call to one another, and
the answer would go around: “Wayneman, Peeps’ boy!”
They would marvel that he could afford such a hand-
some display.
And indeed they might marvel. Toby had invested all
his savings in this outlay. -
By nightfall Toby had decided to relinquish his contra-
band to the big apprentice -boys in Cheapside, but the
decision pained him. He knew they would take it without
thanks and relegate it to the common stockpile. He,
standing on the fringe, would never know when his own
display was sounding off.
But he would set off one string of firecrackers now,
he decided. Mr. Pepys, he thought, had not come home
from Westminster.
He had bought a dozen big sulphur matches and he
struck one of those on a stone and applied it to the string
of crackers on the ground. The result was satisfactory,
a series of shots in orderly sequence that brought Mrs.
Pepys and the maids on the run and filled the cellar with
acrid smoke.
“Stop it!” Mrs. Pepys shouted, holding her hands to
her ears, while Doll and Nell screamed gratifyingly.
It was not in Toby’s power to resist lighting another
string, but he had no sooner done so than Mr. Pepys
called from the top floor, asking what went on. Toby
jumped at the popping crackers and stamped them out.
He hastily put them into his pocket, and the burnt match
[112]


too, and what happened next was not really clear to him.
Muflled explosions occurred inside his clothing, and he
put his hand into his pocket to quench them, and he did
quench them, but not before his hand and his side were
painfully burned.
“Come up here, Wayneman,” Mr. Pepys called from
the top of the second stairway. Toby went up.
“I thought you weren’t at home, Mr. Peeps,” he said
foolishly. He felt a little lightheaded from the explosions
in his clothes.
“So,” said Pepys, “you must celebrate this business
right in my house, must you? You must make me look
like a fanatic on my own property, me, faithful servant
to the King and the Duke! Do you know what Guy
Fawkes did about fifty years ago, Wayneman?”
“He set off some gunpowder, Mr. Peeps, but I don’t
know why.”
“He tried to blow up the first Stuart King and Parlia-
ment, that’s what! When did you get this stuff? Who
sold it to a minor like you? I’ll see that he’s caned.”
“I bought it in September from a peddler,” Toby in-
vented glibly. “At Bartholomew Fair. The man’s gone
away now.”
“You’re lying,” Pepys said astutely. “Nobody would
sell gunpowder at a fair.”
Doll entered the room, carrying towels for the Satur-
day-night baths. She was a mischief-making woman and
it pleased her to see Toby getting a grilling.
“Do you know where Wayneman got the explosives?”
Pepys asked her. “And when?”
' [113]


“Last Saturday,” Doll said, “in Leadenhall Street. He’s
been bragging about it ever since.”
“Call up Mr. Hewer,” Pepys instructed her, “whether
he’s gone to bed or not. Show him where the stuff’s
cached in the cellar. Tell him to throw it in the river.”
“Yes, sir, and I’m sure we’ll all sleep the sounder.” She
went out.
Pepys took a leather strap and whipped his page ani-
matedly. Toby, being agile, managed to keep his burnt
side to leeward, and so considered himself fortunate on
the whole. By the time Mr. Hewer returned from the
river he was in bed, with the candle blown out, pretend-
ing to be asleep. Remembering that he had lied, he con-
sidered this beating merited. Even his own father used
to lay it on when a boy lied.
Toby’s burns soon healed, thanks to some ointment
that Will Hewer gave him, and he got into no more
trouble of any sort till the day after Christmas, when he
yielded to a desire to leave an empty house and attend
a party. .
On the day mentioned, Admiral Penn and two of his
children, William and Peg, accompanied Mr. and Mrs.
Pepys in a hackney coach to Moorfields. They had
planned to stroll, but when a cold rain came on they took
immediate refuge in an alehouse.
As they alighted, everyone was surprised to see Toby
Wayneman sitting on the box with the driver, a shame-
less stowaway. He had been told to stay at home and
bring his copybook up to date. When Pepys exclaimed,
“Wayneman!” in an outraged voice, he jumped down
and disappeared in the regions back of the tavern. He
[H4]


Pepys craned his neck and saw his page. The carol
singers had stopped at his table and were singing for him,
very cheerily, while he finished his repast.
“Go and ask him to pay his check,” Pepys said grimly.
William Penn got up and started toward the rear. “Sit
down, Mr. Perm,” Pepys said. “I can manage my own
servants.”
William Penn sat down and studied his fingernails.
The others at the table also fell into an uncomfortable
silence.
“Go and make him pay up,” Pepys commanded the
woman of the house.
She had no taste for her mission. “It seems too bad to
shame him before the whole room,” she said, “in case
he’s out of money.”
“If he hasn’t got the money,” Pepys said, “he can come
here and ask me for it.”
The woman went to the little table at the rear of the
room and entered into conversation with the tavern’s
youngest patron. Those watching saw Toby Wayneman
take a little drawstring bag out of his shirt and extract
some coins. The woman fingered them uncertainly as
they lay on the table, the boy eying her with an anxious
face. After a little more conversation she accepted them.
No doubt her kind heart had induced her to take a loss.
Toby arose from the table and put on the cape, fling-
ing it rakishly over one shoulder as Will Hewer some-
times did. Then he followed the Pepyses and the PCIIIIS
out of doors.
William Penn hailed a hackney coach, and when
everyone was disposed inside it except Samuel Pepys
[116]


and his footboy, Pepys asked sarcastically: “Will you
ride outside, Wayneman, or shall I?”
“Oh, I will, Mr. Peeps,” Toby answered politely, and
he climbed to the box. He showed a good deal of poise,
considering the fact that he had not expected to be
caught.
Inside the coach everybody was laughing, even Wil-
liam Penn. Samuel Pepys could hardly have been angrier,
but because it was Christmas he schooled himself to a
seasonal forgiveness.
Toby never got enough rest, and it was noticeable be-
cause he was growing. He looked rangy and thin and
would often doze off in hackney coaches and anterooms
while on duty. During his evenings at home he was
supposed to do his lessons, for Pepys tutored him in a
haphazard way and might ask to hear him recite at any
time. But the bane of his existence was his having to call
up the cook and the rest of the household in the early
morning. The burden of coming awake was a heavy one
and sometimes he could not even hear the bells of St.
Mary’s strike seven.
On the last day of February this proved disastrous,
for Mr. Pepys had an appointment to go to the palace
and take a map of Tangier to show to the Duke of York.
He hoped to advance himself by this piece of business,
for the map he had got hold of (made by a seafaring
Swede) was excellent. The Duke had agreed to see
Pepys and his map at midmorning.
[117]


Toby overslept, and so did Mr. and Mrs. Pepys and
Will Hewer and both maids. Mr. Pepys awakened about
nine o’clock to a cold and lifeless house. The place was
soon resounding to his calls of outrage. As he departed
for Whitehall without breakfast he promised Toby a
beating. “I’ll teach you the importance of my engage-
ments,” he told the boy bitterly. To Will Hewer he said,
“Get some rods ready while I’m gone.”
Pepys was as good as his word, and when he returned
that evening he meted out the punishment. The rods kept
breaking, for Will Hewer had bought some rather weak
ones from a firewood peddler, but as often as one switch
would fail him, Pepys would seize another and fall to.
He never succeeded in making Toby cry out, and finally
he had to desist because his arm gave out. For days after-
ward his right arm pained him as if affected with rheu-
matism.
Though that beating caused Pepys more bodily hurt
than it caused Toby, Toby was outraged by it. He could
not have kept from oversleeping that morning if his very
life had been at stake. He knew, too, that it might happen
again. He would sit and brood over the matter, stroking
Rupert’s back and thinking of outlandish ways of getting
even with Pepys. Fortunately his mind was diverted by
some interesting gossip that came to him through the
servants: Mr. William Penn had been sent down from
Oxford for bad conduct, and Sir William was threaten-
ing to drive him from home. It seemed that young Mr.
Penn had been snatching vestments off High Churchmen,
a much too conspicuous way of being a religious dis-
senter.
[118]



Toby one day approached William and suggested that
they leave the Navy Yard together. “I’ll be your footboy
without wages,” he offered. “I’m mad at Mr. Peeps for
beating me so much and I want to quit him as soon as
I can.”
Penn was eating a snack of lunch, sitting on a stone
step that led from yard to kitchen. He took the top off a
sandwich to see what was under it, then munched it
thoughtfully. “Where do you plan for us to go, Wayne-
man?” he asked with curiosity.
“To sea, Mr. Penn.”
“No, thank you. Of all the profane, warlike occupa-
tions,” he stated, “it’s that of a seafaring man. And the
drinking and double-dealing and gun smoke. They can’t
celebrate a birthday without firing nineteen rounds.”
“Is that so, sir?”
“Yes, it is. Don’t try to shake me down for a Navy
career. I’ve compromised with my father and he’s not
turning me out. He’s agreed to let me go to Ireland to
see my mother, and I’ve agreed to go to school in France
afterward.”
“Oh, all right, Mr. Penn.”
Penn noticed his dejection. “I appreciate your offer,
Wayneman,” he said kindly. “It was sporting of you. But
I doubt if you and I like the same things fundamentally.
What, for instance, is your attitude about wearing a
sword?”
“I’d like to wear one,” Toby answered promptly, “the
way your father’s footboy does, and Mr. Creed’s.”
“That’s what I mean,” Penn said, nodding. “You’re
the backbone of society, like the manp you work for. Go
[119]


home and try to get along with him. You’re too young
to be running loose.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t sir me.”
“All right, Mr. Penn.”
“And don’t drink wassail on top of ale, Wayneman.
You made a jackass of yourself Christmas.”
“Did I?”
Penn smiled. “You made a fool of Mr. Pepys too. It’s
things like that you want to look out for, Wayneman.
Well, I’ll be seeing you around. It’ll be several weeks
before we get off to Ireland.”
Toby settled down to his job again, and his life was
presently brightened in several ways. He was put into
handsome livery by Mr. Pepys and equipped with a
sword. The gray uniform was trimmed with black braid
and a touch of gold and was extremely dashing. It fitted
well. It had been made at Tom Pepys’ tailoring shop,
and the colors carried out the ancient Pepys coat of
arms. Samuel Pepys valued it for that feature. Toby
valued it for its military air and because it accented his
height. His sword, short but the real thing, had a hand-
some scabbard and belt.
Toby was taken on a good many outings now in order
that Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys could show their smartly
dressed page; he was a sign of their prosperity. Some-
times they went puntingion the Thames. At other times
they crossed the river and walked to Halfway House in
Rotherhithe or to Vauxhall Gardens at Lambeth. Often
they took a hackney coach to Bethnal Green or some
other rustic resort frequented by stylish people. Mrs.
[120]


Pepys would wear a large hat trimmed in cherry-colored
ribbons, while Mr. Pepys would wear something copied
from the outdoor clothes of the court crowd. Toby, in
spite of his clanking sword, managed to carry the picnic
basket.
The more the Pepyses went abroad in the daytime,
the less Mr. Pepys prowled atnight, and so everybody’s
sleep was lengthened that summer, and everybody’s
health improved.
Jane was back too. She appeared in answer to a plea
from Mr. Pepys. Would she come and help prepare his
feast “for the cutting of the stone”? (He had made a
vow to celebrate his successful gallstone operation every
springtime.) And would she consider staying awhile?
She would never have to do the washing again. Mr.
Pepys was very humble.
When Toby found his sister in the kitchen, tying on
her apron, he embraced her joyfully. He asked if she
intended to stay, thinking how the meals would be more
tasty and regular if she would.
“As long as I can stand it,” Jane said in an independent
way. “They’ve promised me three pounds a year and
some pretty clothes for my hope chest.”
“Are you going to get married?” Toby asked in sur-
prise.
“Of course,” Jane said. “I’m going to marry a chap
in Holborn named Tim Browne as soon as he’s saved
enough money. He’s twenty-two and a bricklayer. Come
now and help me clean these carps. Then I must make a
tansy pudding.”
Toby saw that for all of Jane’s briskness she had a
[121]


Toby Wayneman had conducted himself well in Cam-
bridgeshire. Then Mr. Pepys need not have written in
his diary for all posterity to see: My wife writes me from
the country that my boy is turned a very rogue. And
on Mrs. Pepys’ return: She tells me what a rogue my boy
is, and strange things he has been found guilty of.
Toby did not intend to behave strangely at Brampton,
but perhaps old Mrs. Pepys drove him to it.
She had no end of mean little tricks. Indeed, she was
slightly crazed. Old Mr. Pepys was kindly, but he reacted
to his wife’s tirades with too much emotion. The quar-
reling that went on was amazing, with Pall taking sides
like a boxing enthusiast. No matter what the outcome
was, old Mrs. Pepys would end by asking, “Where’s
that lazy boy?” and when she had got hold of Toby she
would put him to some repugnant task. She could not
bear to see him resting himself or swinging in the rope
swing he had made or eating fruit in the orchard. She
would not hear of his going to Hinchingbrooke, as he
sometimes asked to do. If he went off the premises for
an hour (she seemed to figure) she lost some of the
service she was entitled to get in exchange for his keep.
Toby’s only daylight visit to Hinchingbrooke occurred
the day after he arrived at Brampton. He accompanied
Elizabeth Pepys and Pall there and was well received
by Sidney Montagu, aged fourteen, and the twins, Oliver
and John, who were ten. The twins took him over the
house and showed him their ship models and pets.
Toby was captivated by Hinchingbrooke. It was such
a comfortable little castle; anybody in his right mind
would want to live there. It was a shapely stone build-
[113]


ing, not high, with handsome chimneys. It had large
windows, low to the ground. A beautiful bay, two stories
tall, was crowned by a stone balustrade and a pair of
grifiins holding a crest. Elsewhere, the roof had battle-
ments around it.
Lady Montagu and her three daughters took Elizabeth
Pepys and Pall to see the gardens. As Lady Jemimah
carried a basket of cakes, the boys went too. Lady Mon-
tagu began to tell the history of the place, and when
she said it was haunted, Toby pricked up his ears.
“It was a nunnery,” Lady.Montagu explained. “King
Henry VIII drove out the nuns and seized the place
and gave it to the Cromwell family, from whom the
Montagus finally bought it. When I came here as a bride
I was told how one of the nuns had died in fleeing. She
tripped and fell at the little stone bridge you crossed,
the Nun’s Bridge. They say she walks in these gardens
once a year, wearing a gray habit. I don’t know why
gray. . . . Pass the cakes around, Jemimah. Anyway,
none of us has ever seen her except Paulina.”
The Lady Paulina looked self-conscious. She was the
plainest of the brood. She was peevish, too, perhaps from
having been always neglected in favor of her more en-
gaging brothers and sisters.
“Do tell us about her, Paulina,” urged Pall Pepys.
“One can’t be entirely sure,” Lady Paulina said, “but
she walks when the leaves begin to turn. She’s small and
young. She carries a little basket, or so I thought the
two times I saw her.” The Lady Paulina was extremely
conscientious and so she said again, “But of course one
can’t be sure.”
[114]


“Then there’s another strange thing about Hinching-
brooke,” Lady Montagu resumed. “When Oliver Crom-
well was a boy he used to visit his uncle here.”
Elizabeth Pepys uttered a little scream, for she had
gone two years ago to see Cromwell’s disinterred body
dragged through London and hanged at Tybum. She
told about it now. “It made me quite sick,” she said.
“Then why did you go and look, Cousin Elizabeth?”
asked Anne Montagu, a practical little girl.
“To get on with my story,” Lady Montagu said,
“Oliver Cromwell as a boy was staying here with his
uncle, and one day Charles Stuart came too—they were
the same age, you know—and they fought, and Oliver
gave Charles a bloody nose. Just like a prophecy, wasn’t
it?”
“Where were they standing?” Toby asked Sidney
Montagu in a low voice. “Where was the spot?”
“How should I know?” Sidney said.
“Would you ask your mother?” Toby requested.
Sidney did so, explaining, “Wayneman wants to
know.”
Everyone looked at Toby, who blushed in embarrass-
ment. Mrs. Pepys said, “How silly, Wayneman! VVhat
does it matter? It happened so long ago.” To Lady
Montagu she explained, “He does say the queerest things
sometimes.”
Lady Montagu replied, “It’s because he has imagina-
tion. I had a brother like that; once he asked our mother
what Moses combed his beard with. Now let me find out
where the blood was spilt——”
She called a very old gardener who was trimming a
[115]


hedge, and when he had come she shouted in his ear,
“Where was it Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart
fought when they were boys?”
When the question had sunk into his thoughts the old
man muttered, “ ’Twas on the leads! Aye, ’twas up there
on the leads! ” He went off, cackling with laughter.
“Now come see the kitchen garden,” Lady Montagu
urged. The boys did not take this tour, as the cakes had
given out. Toby improved his time by getting better
acquainted with Sidney, for when Sidney stayed at the
Navy Yard during his brother’s spell of smallpox, Toby’s
duties had prevented their being together.
Toby now found Sidney to be good-natured, credu-
lous, and open to suggestion.
A week after this, famished for company, Toby de-
cided to make a night visit to Hinchingbrooke. He could
not use the stairs and doors of old Mr. Pepys’ house in
doing so, being obliged to employ secrecy, so he arranged
to go and come by a knotted rope tied to a chimney near
his bedroom window. He would go as soon as a clear
moonlight night permitted. Meantime he practiced the
take-off and return. Skill and courage were required of
him in gaining the chimney, securing his rope, and going
over the edge of the slate roof. The return was less
perilous but more tedious, hand over hand. He concealed
his rope in the guttering.
“What’s become of your swing?” old Mrs. Pepys asked
rather pouncingly one evening when Toby was drying
the supper dishes.
“Is it gone?” he countered with a wide-eyed look.
[126]


Toby to make himself at home on the back terrace until
he could dress and join him.
Toby went there and waited, dabbing at his forehead,
which he had scratched on a thorn. He felt happy and
at ease.
Sidney soon came out, followed by the twins, who
were carrying bread and cheese and apricots. They all
repaired to a spreading beech tree that had a circular
bench around it, and there dined as if by prearrangement.
They talked of bats, since some were darting about,
and the twins were remarkably well informed; several
times they corrected their older brother on nature lore.
They were bookish, too, and Toby was discomfited to
learn that they knew more Latin than he did. Their tutor
was preparing them for Cambridge. They were identi-
cally alike in looks, with fair hair and even features.
“Were you afraid, bowling along in the dark?” John
asked Toby.
Toby flouted the idea, though he had thought the
Nun’s Bridge and the old pond dismal enough and had
come up the hill at a rather fast clip. “I’ve traveled a good
many miles in the dark by myself,” he remarked with
simple grandeur.
The boys were surprised to hear this and Toby was
soon persuaded to tell the story of his life. He told it
colorfully, hardly recognizing it himself.
He said he must get back to Brampton, and Sidney
asked him when he could come again.
“Tomorrow night if it suits you,” Toby said, “at about
the same time.”
[128]


“It suits me very well,” Sidney replied. “Would you
like to come up to my room tomorrow night?”
“No,” Toby said, “but I’d like to go up on your roof.”
This caused surprise, but Sidney rallied and said
nothing would suit him better.
When Toby arrived at Hinchingbrooke the following
night he was startled to see three forms lurking in some
shadows where lawn gave way to park. He was darting
off in retreat when Sidney’s taunting laugh brought him
back. The Montagus were pleased to discover that he
was not such a hero as he had made himself out to be.
“You’re late,” Sidney told him. “It’s almost midnight.”
Toby said he had had trouble getting away. “Our
little dog got loose,” he said, “and I had to catch him.
Then Mis’ Pall Peeps lost her keys and made me go all
over the lawn with a lantern, looking. Don’t ever count
on me at a regular time if you don’t want to be disap-
pointed.”
The arrogance of this remark put the older boy in his
place and established Toby as a dispenser of favors. A
supper was produced by the twins, more elaborate than
last night’s, and the four boys sat cross-legged on the
grass and ate.it. The twins had raided the buttery. There
was cold fowl which they said was guinea hen, and
which Toby thought tasty beyond anything he had
ever eaten.
“Father got some guineas on one of his voyages,”
Oliver said, “and they lay eggs like regular fowls, and
now we have them all over the place. They make a
fiendish noise when you run them off the roost. Would
you like to hear them?”
[119]


told him, “and you can see for yourself.” It was as if his
father had promised to take him to a far fair country
but had never got around to it.
The Montagu boys were following Toby around the
roof and presently Sidney asked impatiently, “Well, are
you satisfied? It’s not very high, you know.”
“No, it’s not very high,” Toby answered, ashamed of
having been so excited. “Would you like to fight, Mon-
tagu? Would you?” For suddenly he hated Sidney for
having a castle like this, and a father called “my lord,”
and a mother who was kind.
He began pommeling the older boy with his fists,
darting around him on tiptoe as he had seen the fighters
do at Southwark Street Fair. He got in some very good
punches before his surprised opponent could pull himself
together. But presently Montagu got his defenses or-
ganized, and his offensive blows too, and Toby was
knocked sprawling.
“Don’t try that any more, Wayneman,” Sidney said
as he watched Toby get to his feet. “Who do you think
you are?”
“I’m Cromwell,” Toby said, attacking again. This
time he was more wary and persistent and he succeeded
in landing a chopping blow on Sidney Montagu’s nose,
causing it to yield strangely with a small squashed sound.
He dropped his hands, startled by his own skill and
fury.
Sidney’s nose began to bleed and swell, and it seemed
to lie a little to one side. Sidney groaned with pain. One
of the twins—John, the more tranquil one—took off his
shirt and offered it to his brother for stanching the flow.
[I31]








I
¢

Soon the linen was so soaked that Oliver’s shirt was re-
quired too.
Toby was frightened. “We’d better call somebody,”
he said. “It looks like it’s broke.” They went down the
stairway in dismal single file. When they stood in the
hall on the second floor the three brothers conferred
and decided to awaken Edward because he had once
suffered a nose injury playing ball and would know
what to do. Toby took this occasion to leave as he had
come, and no one tried to detain him. He had a feeling
of utter loneliness, a sensation not uncommon to victors.
[131]
Q’
|\...__ _



For several days Toby lived in dread of a messenger
from Hinchingbrooke, sent to report on his conduct.
But when none came, when nothing at all came from
the castle except silence, his dread gave way to chagrin.
Was he too worthless to cause a rumpus? Was he too
measly to matter? He sank in his own estimation as time
passed and the Montagus continued to ignore him.
Some of the Brampton boys were inclined to be
friendly, but old Mrs. Pepys forbade Toby to invite
them onto the place. She knew them all, she said, and
they were a bad lot, given to climbing fruit trees and
breaking the branches. She also went out of her way to
warn the mothers of those boys against Toby, naming
him a mischief-maker of the first water. Consequently
when he loitered in Brampton there was no house to give
him welcome. As for visiting the village after nightfall,
he knew it would be useless. Brampton had a vesper bell,
rung by old Mr. Hanks from the church tower, and it
was respected like a law of Parliament.
By the time the moon was full again Toby Wayne-
man, a prey to four weeks of remorse and boredom, went
over the Pepys roof and returned to Hinchingbrooke.
“Oh, it’s you!” Sidney said from his window in an-
swer to some thrown pebbles. “What do you want?”
Toby said he didn’t want anything. “Is your nose
all right?”
“Of course,” Sidney replied. “Did you expect it to
fold up forever? It was only broken.”
“I’m sorry I punched you,” Toby said.
“It was the way you did it I objected to. Sneaky.”
“Yeah.”
[133]


“Your blade’s a lot longer than mine,” Toby finally
objected.
“See here, Wayneman. I didn’t ask you to come over
here and slash at me, did I?”
“No.”
“Quit complaining about your short blade, then.
Ready?”
Toby presently made the thrust of the evening, and
Sidney’s sword went over his head and struck the stone
wall of the castle with a shattering crack. When they
went to pick it up, the blade was broken.
“Look what you’ve done!” Sidney exclaimed.
“Could I help it if your old house was there?”
Their voices mounted as they continued to blame and
berate one another, and suddenly the butler came run-
ning out, grotesque in his nightcap. He probed for
details and clucked angrily when he learned about the
sword.
Indoors some lamps were lit, and a baby cried fret-
fully. It was the year-old Lady Catherine, awakened by
the commotion.
Lady Montagu leaned from her window and asked
what had happened. “Do I hear Sidney’s voice?” she
asked anxiously.
“Mr. Sidney’s been fencing with that boy, my lady,”
the butler called up.
“What boy?”
“Mr. Pepys’ page, my lady, that’s staying at Brampton.
He knocked Mr. Edward’s sword against the stones and
broke it.”
[135]


“Food, for one thing. I lose bread and cheese right
regular. Then one of my best bleached sheets is missing.
My egg basket’s disappeared, too, and a nutmeg grater.
I suspect Wayneman. Bring him here, Paulina, and ques-
tion him.”
Toby was called on the carpet. “Have you got a linen
sheet of my mother’s,” Pall asked, enumerating on her
fingers, “and her egg basket and a nutmeg grater?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Toby replied. “They’re all under my
bed.”
“There you are!” old Mrs. Pepys said triumphantly.
“He’s strange! He takes things he can’t even use.”
“It’s too amazing,” Elizabeth Pepys said. “Were you
planning to sell these things, Wayneman?”
Toby said that he was not planning to sell them, but
he would not give any more information. To admit that
he intended to impersonate the ghost of a little nun in a
linen sheet, carrying a basket and making an eerie sound
on a nutmeg grater, was more than he could bring himself
to confess. But such had been his plans.
Old Mr. Pepys, wishing to spare the boy any further
questions, told him to come along with him to the Bramp-
ton bakery.
As Toby trudged dejectedly at his side old Mr. Pepys
said to him: “It’s remarkable, the trouble you get into,
Wayneman. You’ve put two houses in an uproar.”
“Yes, sir, I surely have,” Toby agreed wholeheartedly.
“But when I came here I aimed to be good.”
“I believe you did,” the decent old man said thought-
fully. “Yes, I believe you did, young Wayneman.” But
[137]


he was too harried, unfortunately, too frail of health
and purpose to champion the boy.
Back in London, Toby noticed that his master was more
severe toward him than he used to be, and he knew it was
because of the bad reputation he had got in Cambridge-
shire. He responded by performing his duties sullenly and
not very well. Mr. Pepys beat him frequently, meting
out the punishment in the cellar so that Mrs. Pepys would
not find out about it and question his judgment. But
Jane Wayneman, being much in the kitchen, knew what
went on. One day she followed Mr. Pepys to the cellar
and begged him to let Toby off lightly. “Don’t whip
him again!” she implored. “Try some other way to
punish him. Oh, please do!”
“I’ve not got time to think up new forms of punish-
ment,” Samuel Pepys told her. “A whipping’s effective
and it’s soon administered.”
“But it’s not soon forgotten,” Jane said bitterly.
“I don’t want it to be forgotten. It’s for his own bene-
fit. I’ll make a good man of him if I can break down his
spirit.”
“You’re making him hard and stubborn,” Jane argued.
Her cheeks flamed with anger. “He’s not a boy you can
treat that way. Besides, he never has time to play. You’re
a hard master, Mr. Peeps!”
Pepys warned her to mind her own business and to
mend her manners. “Go back to the kitchen,” he ordered.
“When I want your advice I’ll ask for it.”
| | - ||~n.mm.
[138]


Jane returned to the kitchen, but she made no effort
to be docile. As the weeks passed she clashed with Mr.
Pepys repeatedly. Her hostility grew to include Mrs.
Pepys as well. She was recklessly impertinent. Finally
they told her that she must pack her belongings and go.
“And take the pesky boy with you!” Samuel Pepys
shouted. “Let me be rid of all my trials at once.”
As Jane had no other employment in view, she tear-
fully admitted it would be impossible for her to take
Toby.
“Then tell your brother Will to come and get him,”
Pepys said in cold anger.
Will Wayneman came over from Southwark during
the Christmas holidays. He looked apprehensive as Pepys
came into the kitchen to interview him. “My sister says
you want to see me, sir.”
“Yes, I want you to take your brother off my hands,
Mr. Wayneman. I’ve had enough of him.” He told of
Toby’s conduct over the past year. Toby, listening in
the buttery, recognized some of the accusations to be
true and reasonable, but several of them were madden-
ingly unjust. He sat there on a keg of salt pork, wonder-
ing what he had better do. He heard Will cough and
then say to Mr. Pepys in a voice that sounded ill and
hopeless:
“I don’t know what to say, sir. It’s not convenient for
us to have him live with us. My wife’s sickly and needs
a good deal of medicine. We’ve not got a bed to spare,
either.”
Toby got up and went into the kitchen. He went to
his brother and laid a hand on his arm. “It’s all right,
[139]


Will,” he said. “I’ll stay here if Mr. Peeps will give me
another chance. Maybe I can please him if I try harder.”
Samuel Pepys was surprised, even touched. Here was
the contrite spirit he had been laboring for. He said Toby
might remain on trial. “But Jane must go as soon as she
can find another job,” he declared. “She sets the boy off,
makes him harder to control. I can hardly reduce his
pride with Jane around.”
“I’ll try to find some housework for Jane in South-
wark,” Will promised. “Meantime I hope they’ll not
make any more trouble, sir.”
Will Wayneman drank the glass of ale that Mr. Pepys
poured out for him and went quietly away. The defeated
young man never expected an end to his troubles; all
he asked was a little respite from them, as in this adjust-
ment today. Toby, sensing something of this, ran after
him and thrust into his hand the three Dutch guldens he
had received at Christmas.
“You’re a good boy, Toby!” Will exclaimed with a
smile. “Our father always said so.”
The compliment warmed Toby’s heart and he ran
home in a fine glow, remembering his father’s high esti-
mate of him.
Toby’s resolve to subdue his spirit and keep out of
trouble lasted several weeks, but one January night Mr.
Pepys irritably picked up his quill and wrote in his diary:
With Mr. Creed to the King’s Head ordinary, but people
being set down, we went two or three places; at last
[140]


found some meat at a Welch cook’s at Charing Crosse,
and here dined, and our boys. After dinner to the ’Change
to buy some linen for my wife, and going back met our
two boys. Mine had struck down Creed’s boy in the dirt,
with his new suit on, and the boy taken hy a gentle-
woman into a house to make clean, but the poor boy was
in a pitifull pickle; I hasted my rogue soundly. Thence
to my Lord’s lodgings.
Mr. John Creed was one of Mr. Pepys’ best friends.
He was deputy treasurer of the Navy, an upright,
wealthy, shrewd Presbyterian widower who was court-
ing Miss Elizabeth Pickering, niece to Lady Montagu.
Anybody who knew Mr. Creed would expect him to
have the best-behaved, the neatest and most industrious
page in the whole world, and so he did have. But the
page was a smug boy, rather two-faced, and Toby knew
his seamier side. He would not have chosen him for a
companion, but when Mr. Pepys and Mr. Creed went
out together and made a day of it, the two pages must
make a day of it too. There came the day too many.
While Pepys and Creed were in the Exchange, Creed’s
boy, Alfred Rooker by name, taunted Toby with his bad
record in Cambridgeshire.
“You’re a common thief,” he concluded. “That comes
straight from your housemaid Sarah.”
“I’m no thief!” Toby answered hotly. “Take it back!”
“Maybe you’re base-born and can’t help stealing,”
Rooker suggested with a look of innocent regret. “Maybe
you come from thieving folks. Sarah says things were
missing at Brampton last summer, and things are missing
at the Navy Yard right now.”
[141]



public whipping. He was about to bolt when Pepys left
off.
Creed sent his subdued page home in a hackney coach
with instructions to take a hot bath and drink some China
tea. Then he set out with Pepys for Lord Montagu’s
lodgings. As always, he was polite and self-controlled.
“I believe you’ll have to get rid of Wayneman,” he said.
“He’s going to keep you in hot water.”
“We’re attached to him,” Samuel Pepys replied, nurs-
ing his sore knuckles. “Otherwise I’d have got rid of him
before this and hired a boy that’s musical. We still hope
to make something out of him, at least my wife does,
poor softhearted wretch.”
Toby, following, strained his ears to hear the con-
versation, needing to know what was in store for him.
He was wondrously surprised and gratified to hear that
Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were fond of him and did not con-
sider him hopeless. Again he humbly resolved to do
better.
Had Mr. Pepys trusted him, Toby could have measured
up, but Pepys was suspicious by nature and was always
expecting his own faults to crop up in others. He cheated
a bit in most of his relationships, he often lied to his best
friends, and in order to advance himself he sometimes
made promises he did not expect to keep. It was natural
for him to accuse Toby of many a sin he had not com-
mitted.
[143]


Usually Toby held out against false accusations, es-
pecially those of thievery. He knew that Mrs. Pepys and
her succession of servants (excepting honest Jane, now
gone away) sometimes pocketed Mr. Pepys’ loose change
while looking as innocent as lambs. They would also
snip off Lady Batten’s flowers to wear in their hair and
would take gloves from church pews without batting an
eyelash. London ways, court ways, but not the ways of
Loughton village, and Toby resented being blamed for
such episodes.
Mr. Pepys, for his part, was saddened by what he
called Wayneman’s ingratitude and stubbornness and was
all but maddened by his propensity for snatching at fun.
One balmy, starry night in April he wrote in his diary:
At cards till late, and being at supper, my boy being sent
for some mustard, staid half an hour in the streets, it seems
at a bonfire, at which I was very angry, and resolve to
beat him tomorrow. Next day’s entry commenced thus:
April 24th. Up betimes, and with my salt eele went down
in the parler and there got my boy and did beat him till
I was fain to take breath two or three times, yet for all
I am afeard it will make the boy never the better, he is
grown so hardened in his tricks, which I am sorry for,
he being capable of making a brave man, and is a boy
that I and my wife love very well.
Yet perhaps nothing about Toby concerned Mr. and
Mrs. Pepys as much as his looks. His curling red hair,
his pink-and-white skin so goldenly freckled, his hazel
eyes with their thick sandy lashes, his thin erect body
that was given to impish posturing—these physical char-
acteristics pleased them profoundly. They kept him in
[144]



excellent livery and were always gratified when he was
favorably noticed. They compared him critically with
other pages. On Whitsunday night Mr. Pepys added to
his diary entry: So home, and there my wife and I had
an angry word or two upon discourse of our boy, com-
pared with Sir W. Pen’s boy, whom I say is much prettier
than ours and she the contrary.
With the knife-sharp wisdom of boyhood, Toby un-
derstood how much and how little he meant to Mr. and
Mrs. Samuel Pepys. If they asked, “Did you get soaking
wet in the rain, Wayneman?” they were thinking first of
all of his rumpled uniform. If winter errands sent him
sloshing through mud and melting snow it was not a
sore throat they dreaded most for him, but damaged
shoes. And when Prince Rupert disappeared (reputedly
carried aboard one of His Majesty’s ships by a sailor)
the consternation was not because Toby had lost his pet
cat but because the Pepys cellar had lost a mighty mouser.
Toby was not fooled. Nowadays when he looked at Mr.
Pepys he narrowed his eyes and kept back a part of
himself.
When summer came around again Elizabeth Pepys got
ready to go to Brampton to visit the elder Pepyses, ac-
companied by Toby and a new lady’s maid named Ash-
well. But as they were about to set out, Samuel Pepys had
an urgent letter from his father, requesting that Toby
be kept at home.
Spare us a visit like last summer’s, he wrote. I doubt
your old Mother would survive having Wayneman again.
At Hinchingbrooke they are of the same mind. My Lady
says it would be a sore trial to her to have Wayneman
[145]


in the neighborhood, because of the influence he has on
her boys, and the mischief he makes.
When Mr. Pepys read the letter aloud, Mrs. Pepys sat
down and cried. County society would be gay that
season, Pall had written, and Elizabeth had counted on
having her page follow her at all the garden parties,
wearing his new summer livery and his sword.
“See the trouble you’ve made!” Pepys shouted at
Toby. “After all the effort I’ve spent on you, you’re not
fit to be received in decent houses!”
Toby surprised them by laughing loudly and swagger-
ing out of the room. Then he did a jig in the passageway.
As he went to his room he whistled discordantly, making
Samuel Pepys flinch.
“He’s a little beast,” the new maid pronounced.
“No, but he’s not!” Elizabeth sobbed. “Sometimes I
think he’s better than we are!” She continued to weep
till her petulant face was swollen, partly out of pity for
Toby, partly for herself and her husband because their
lives were so confused and frantic.
Toby went and unpacked his chest. He was glad Mr.
Hewer was not in the room but away at his father’s on
vacation, for tears were blinding him. He had been
counting on this journey to Brampton and had built some
sprightly dreams on it. He was going to be a model
of deportment and usefulness, and old Mrs. Peeps would
be as reformed as he was, and would urge him to mix
with the village boys and invite them to come in and
pick plums; she would let him go off to Hinchingbrooke
every evening after he had dried the supper dishes. At
Hinchingbrooke he would be well received by Sidney
[146]



and the twins, and even by Lady Montagu and the butler,
everybody knowing that he had meant no harm last
summer in any way, shape, or form. He would make a
public apology the minute he arrived, standing on the
terrace with his sword at his side, and Sidney would
throw his arm around his shoulder and say, “Don’t men-
tion it, old chap,” and take him to find Oliver and John
up on the leads. The Lady Anne would be agreeable, too,
the one that was about Dulcie’s size, but prettier, and
wearing a gold necklace.
Dulcie. Where was Dulcie now? Where were his step-
mother and the Snells? Where were the boys he used
to wrestle with on Loughton Green? Where were Mr.
and Mrs. Drumby, and the ragged boys of the saltworks?
Where was Mr. William Penn? Where was Jane? Where
was old Bess? Where was the sailor with a crinkled yel-
low beard who had thrown him coconuts from the deck
of the Dartmouth when she came in from Jamaica?
Where were they in time and feeling, he meant, as well
as in place. Had they changed? Would they look at him
with glad and friendly eyes if they saw him again?
Mr. Pepys, passing, glanced in at the door and ob-
served his footboy squatting beside his empty chest. “I
see you’ve hung up your clothes,” he said. “That’s very
commendable. Tomorrow after they’re gone we’ll get at
your Latin. You can’t seem to cope with the ablative
absolute.”
Toby walked away from the Pepys house forever a
fortnight later, walked away in the midst of a beating
while Mr. Pepys was gone to get a rope to replace his
dried eel, the eel being badly frayed. It was not yet five
~-
[147]


Tom Edwards, old enough to be a clerk as well as foot-
boy, and the possessor of a good singing voice. For a
while there under the stars he worried about Toby and
what would become of him, but soon his worries shifted
to ways and means of acquiring Tom Edwards. Edwards
had been schooled in the King’s Chapel and had sung
in the choir. He would be in demand, now that he was
sixteen. Could the Pepyses afford him? He was sure to
ask high wages. His uniforms would be costly, and he
would eat more than Wayneman had eaten. . . . Poor
little Wayneman, thought Mr. Pepys with regret; he had
eaten irregularly, usually bolting his food between
errands, but thriving on it apparently, and acting as
blithe and cocky as you please.
Admiral Penn put his head out of his bedroom win-
dow and asked Pepys if he must play that dirge all night.
“If I please, I will,” Pepys told him. Then he men-
tioned his page’s departure. “We couldn’t get along,” he
admitted.
“But you’ll give him a recommendation, won’t you?”
Penn asked.
“No, never. He’s irresponsible and untruthful.” He
hurried home, not wanting to be softened up by old
Penn. He took Toby’s copybook and wrote one last
Latin word in it. The word was finis.
Toby set up housekeeping in an empty barrel that lay on
its side in the Navy Victualling Yard in East Smith-
field. He had a change of underclothing and a clean
[149]



heaved freight. Such rough kindness no doubt saved his
life All the men who were noticeably able-bodied feared
the press gangs and never approached the docks except
in sizable groups. At this location many young men
had been seized and thrown in holds by enlistment crews,
not to be seen again for a year or so, while their families
faced starvation. The victualling wharves were especially
subject to these kidnapings when an anchored ship was
short of hands and wanted to sail. Such conditions pre-
vailed now.
“They’d even snatch a handy little chap like you,”
Toby was warned by a baker, a jolly man who never
went near the docks.
Toby was flattered by the warning, yet his practical
nature caused him to reject it. During the past year he
had twice applied to be taken to sea as a cabin boy and
had been told to go home and grow some muscle. On
both occasions his attempts to enlist had drawn a good
deal of laughter. True, Mr. William Penn might have
got him on a ship by being responsible for him, but Mr.
Penn had declined once and for all, had declined rather
coldly while munching his lunch. Toby still remembered
the finality of it. But because he remembered Mr. Penn’s
remarkable kindness to him at other times, he forgave
him. He accepted the fact (as all must do sooner or later)
that one’s friend can differ from one, can seem to let one
down, yet still be one’s friend.
Toby’s leisure began to hang like a weight around his
neck, and the smell of pickled meat became revolting.
The fact that he was dirty bothered him. Though he
had swum in the Thames several times and had washed
[1sa]


his linen, neither he nor his clothing seemed attractive
to himself. He was surprised to discover one day that he
wanted to find employment.
He knew it would be useless to apply for a job any-
where in the Navy Yard. Mr. Pepys would have seen
to that. Only last Christmas, when housemaid Sarah left
the Pepyses and went to work at Sir William Penn’s,
Mr. Pepys never left off till he got her fired from there.
He wanted no servant of his, he said, going to another
house in the Yard to carry tales.
And Toby learned that his shortcomings were known
and magnified beyond St. Olave’s parish. When he went
to Mr. Tom Pepys’ shop near Paul’s, the turner declined
to hire him. “I’m genuinely sorry, Wayneman,” Tom
Pepys said. “I need another boy, but I’d not apprentice
you. Cousin Samuel told me about your waywardness.
My advice to you is to go back to Loughton where you
came from. Can I give you something to eat and drink,
lad?”
“No, sir,” replied Toby stiffly. “Where I’m stayin’
I get plenty of both.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Tom Pepys in his
kind way. “I’d hate to think you were in want.”
Toby knew now there would be no use for him to look
to any kinsman or friend of Mr. Pepys, and that gave
him pause. It narrowed his opportunities considerably.
It meant he would have to call on Jane and ask for help.
After he rested awhile at the foot of a lamppost he got
up and followed Warwick Lane to Newgate, and thence
traversed Snow Hill to High Holborn. It was a long
walk, but necessary. He had been to the place once be-
[154]


fore, but that was when he was in funds and had ridden
in a hackney coach, taking Jane a birthday gift of march-
panes in a pretty box. He had not seen Jane’s employers.
He found an elderly lady in a plum-colored silk dress
snipping flowers on the lawn. She wore a plum-colored
turban too, and it sat on top of a reddish wig; she ap-
peared quite withered and top-heavy. The flowers she
was cutting were wonderfully tall and stiff, and each
plant was tied to a stick and labeled. The boxwood hedges
had been trimmed to peculiar shapes, some bushes re-
sembling birds, some lanterns, others the four figures in
a deck of cards. It was evident that the old lady could
not let anything be itself.
“Good day, ma’am,” Toby said. “I’ve come to see my
sister Jane Wayneman that works here.”
“She’s not here any more, boy. She’s married and gone
away.”
“Did she marry Tim Browne? ” asked Toby, not want-
ing to appear entirely ignorant.
“Yes, that’s the young man’s name. He’s a brick
mason.”
“She couldn’t have done better,” declared Toby gen-
erously, though he had never laid eyes on his brother-in-
law.
“I don’t know if she could or couldn’t,” the plum-
colored old lady said. “I only know she left us on short
notice. Jane’s a good worker and she’s a virtuous girl,
but she’s saucy. When she decided to marry that chap
I tried to dissuade her, but she was impertinent to me.
‘Very well, miss,’ I said, ‘you’ll forfeit a month’s wages.’
She was flighty about it. Said it didn’t matter in the least,
[155]


as Browne was going to one of the shires to help build
a fine country house—he to do the chimneys—and they’d
not need my money. She took off then and we’ve not
seen or heard of her since.”
“That sounds like Jane,” Toby admitted. He stood
there, wondering what to do.
Old Mrs. Bates, for that was her name, now took notice
of Toby as a human being and she saw that he was thin,
dirty, and disappointed. She was touched. “Are you in
hard straits, boy?” she asked kindly. .
“I’ve not got any work to do, ma’am,” he told her,
“but I’m not worryin’. I’ve not looked out for work very
long.”
“Do you have a home and parents?”
“Not now,” was the confused answer.
“Where do you live, then?”
“In a man’s yard,” Toby replied with caution, “near
the river.”
“Oh, you poor little fellow,” Mrs. Bates cried pity-
ingly, “my husband and I will make a place for you!
You can sleep in the little room under the stairs and help
the other servants, and we’ll raise you up to be a good
man! You must never go near that dirty Thames again.”
Toby backed away, for the look in the old lady’s eyes
was determined and possessive, and nearby a sour-faced
old man sat wrapped in a blanket, staring like a spider
in a web.
“Is that your husband?” Toby asked.
“Yes, that’s Colonel Bates, retired.”
The old gentleman began to pound the flagstones with
his ebony cane, and he also took the tops off some fine
[156]


~. . _A_.___> .__ _/_.$ . WV .§ig~. ».-—--II1!?~:..—:..—ui’""

purple phlox that were the color of his wife’s turban.
“Who is that boy?” he called, pointing at Toby.
“It’s Jane Wayneman’s brother looking for work,”
Mrs. Bates told her husband.
“Have him commence at once. Send him for my read-
ing glass and the almanac. Have him warm a brick for
my feet. Have him——”
Toby backed toward Holbor n Road. “Thank you,
Mis’ Bates,” he said, “thank you very much——” then
turned and ran headlong toward insecurity and freedom.
He took the first turnito the right, which was toward
the river.
It was a Tuesday, June 23, when Toby left the Navy
Yard. Exactly two weeks later Pepys caught his first
glimpse of him as he played on Tower Hill with some
boys about his own age. Hurrying to the Navy Office,
he sent the doorkeeper, Mr. Griffin, to fetch him. “Hurry
over to Tower Hill,” Pepys instructed. “I just saw
Wayneman. Bring him to my house if you have to use
force. That suit he’s wearing is mine.”
Mr. Griflin was a large phlegmatic man, capable of
handling disgruntled sailors, and when he laid his heavy
hand on Toby’s shoulder, Toby knew that he must go
with him. “What does Mr. Peeps want me for?” he asked
en route.
“He only wants that suit you’re wearing,” Mr. Griffin
assured him. “I reckon he’ll make you climb out of it.”
Such was the case. With a show of indifference Pepys
[157]


ordered Wayneman to go to his old room and change
his clothes.
“I didn’t go away in my livery,” Toby protested.
“No, but you went away in your best plain suit. I
paid for it and I mean to keep it, though you’ve got it
dirty. You’ll find the suit Jane bought for you on a chair.
Put it on and leave that one in its place. You can keep
the linen you’re wearing.”
Toby went and took off his outer clothes. He had not
been so angry since Mrs. Snell-Wayneman took his
father’s stick away from him. Nor so outraged. The
bedroom could hardly contain him. “This is mighty little
of you, old Peeps!” he said as loudly as he dared. He
made a hideous face he knew how to make, turning his
hands into claws and making imaginary thrusts at Pepys
through the closed door. He danced around in his under-
wear like a demon.
When he had pretty well worn himself out he put on
the suit Jane had bought for him. At the time she had
purchased it, it was too large; now it was too small. The
coat declined to fasten and the sleeves exposed his skinny
wrists. The breeches looked unfashionably short. More-
over, they were bleached from his having washed the
wainscot in them so often. He felt shrunken in size and
importance.
He was going through the front door when Mr. Pepys
detained him. “I hope you’re not giving your poor weak-
lunged brother as much trouble as you gave me?” he said
experimentally.
“I surely ain’t,” Toby replied with a clear conscience.
He had to grin at his own joke; he was not giving Will
‘I|"ll .
[158]


to do better. The home was a shanty boat tied to a
Limehouse herring shed, and often it rocked with Mrs.
Skeet’s lamentations more than with the tide. This was
as annoying to Amos and Kip as going without meals,
and so they would put out to sea, in a manner of speak-
ing, and get as far away as the docks of Deptford or
Woolwich. Because their father was a sailor in good
standing, most of the bargemen knew them and gave
them free passage.
After a week or ten days of rich acquaintanceship
with the Skeets, Toby went to call on them one rainy
morning. He looked forward to a comfortable exchange
of civilities: he would entertain Kip and Amos with one
of his colored-up adventures, and they would give him
a big bowl of hot oatmeal, heavily sugared, such as they
usually had for breakfast. . 0 i
But this cozy dream was not to be fulfilled. It was one
of Mrs. Skeet’s regretful mornings, and she had cooked
nothing at all, being entirely taken up with lamenting
her weakness for drink. . -
“Oh, me poor lads, to ’ave such a thirsty old mother!”
she wailed as Toby hove in sight. “Not a bite fer ’em to
eat, nor fer their little wet frien’, neither! Oh, the pity
of it!”
Amos and Kip were sitting on an aged timber that had
been fished from the River Thames (indeed, all the
furnishings of the shanty boat were of that nature), and
they looked discouraged and sad. When Toby sat down
beside them on the timber they greeted him dispiritedly.
“Do you ’ave any ship bread on ye?” Amos asked.
Toby brought out some biscuits and passed them
[160]


’prentice to a candlemaker or poulter or such. Let ’im
stay away from the water.”
The boys feared he would order them to return at the
next tide, so they went ashore quickly. They were
ashamed of having abused a kind man’s hospitality, and
they sorrowed, but only for a moment. The sun came
out, making Chatham glisten. They conferred and agreed
it would take several days to do justice to Chatham.
To lose sight of their host was easy enough. The docks
seemed endless (some said they stretched a fair mile),
and there was special activity along the waterfront be-
cause a ship had been launched. These were “The
Docks,” dwarfing the lesser royal docks at Blackwall
and Woolwich and Deptford. That expanse of water on
which the ships rode was a tip of the North Sea itself.
Toby brought out the rest of his biscuits and they ate
them. Afterward they rigged poles for fishing, using
some line and hooks the Skeets carried, and some bait
given them by an old sailor. They caught six sizable fish.
With patience and ingenuity they cleaned and cooked
them on the beach of an inlet. The fish were haddocks
and flounders, and the Skeets were happy that none was
a herring or pilchard, because it was their duty to help
pickle those that their mother sold at Limehouse.
After dark came an adventure, the boarding of a ship
which rode at anchor out beyond the guard ships. She
was the Soveraigne, and they reached her by persuading
four sailors who were putting off for her in a dinghy to
let them go along. The sailors were in a careless mood
from drinking spirits and one of them said, “W’y not?”
[163]


I
\ :ll"“\‘ :.~..'r.I/"""

kl/I
and urged his companions to let the boys go. “They can’t
do no ’arm,” he said, “no more nor mice.”
They handled the crowded rowboat recklessly, and
Toby was alarmed. He feared he could not reach shore
by swimming if the boat should capsize in the deep water
of the harbor, and he saw that the sailors were too
drunken to save him. But he took courage from the
Skeets, who appeared calm and unconcerned. Amos was
even munching a biscuit, and Kip was rewinding a rag
on his sore toe.
Boarding the ship was perilous, too, in the dark, but
once it was accomplished, all was well. Toby felt as if his
feet had wings when they touched the deck, for the
i-—-—--—.-__.~ .._. 1&9 _

[164]







_, \
I

' in-P





Soveraigne herself was winged. She was an ornate flag-
ship and, though a quarter century old, was still the
fastest ship in the fleet. Give her deep water and she
would skim it like a gull. Toby had been green with envy
one day when Pepys inspected the Soveraigne at Ham
Creek, taking Lady Montagu and Jemimah and Laude
Crispe, the musical page, but leaving him, Wayneman,
at home.
Toby told the Skeets, “She’s got more than a hundred
guns!” But the Soveraigne was not spruce that night and
all her ordnance was neglected. Her decks were cluttered
with cable and sea chests and sleeping sailors. The lan-
terns gave out a smoky light, even up in the big lanthorn
[165]


it with passing interest. He had been accustomed to at-
tending services on the Lord’s Day, not only at Loughton
but in the Navy Yard, for Mr. Pepys was an inveterate
churchgoer. He said he would go by himself, then, while
they tried to catch some fish for dinner.
Toby found it as natural as breathing to enter under
the spire and find a vacant pew. It was homelike, almost
like finding one’s own bed and family. The sermon
seemed long, and he had nothing to put in the alms basin,
but otherwise he was content. He looked at the effigies
of some sleeping knights and examined their pointed
brass toes when the minister became too tedious. An
especially tall one bore the inscription;
FAITHFULL KN1GHT
HE D1ED HAPPY AT FLODDEN
P1ERCED 1N THE HEAD FOR H1S KING
LAMENTED BY H1S GOODE LADYE
SEVEN 1NFANT CH1LDREN
YE POORE OF THIS PAR1SH
Toby wondered if Faithfull Knight had actually felt
happy to be pierced in the head for his King when he
had such a nice family at home, and all those poor folk
depending on him. Did untruths sometimes get put in
stone and brass?
As he went out, an old lady leaning on a cane said,
“What sunny hair that boy’s got! It minds me of my
brother, fifty years gone.” And her maid replied, “He’s
dirty, though, smells of grease.” (It was the neat’s tongue,
and so on.)
“Who cares? Give him this money.” The old lady
[167]


reached into her purse and brought up three shillings,
and her companion passed them on to Toby with a
disapproving look.
“Well, thank you, ma’am,” Toby said to his admirer.
Even the Montagu boys took tips, as they called such
windfalls, from relatives and friends; if this old lady
liked his hair three shillings’ worth, so be it. “Can I help
you down the steps?” he asked considerately, wishing
to show his gratitude.
She permitted him to do so, and he and the female
companion gave each other baleful looks across the black
lace shawl as they assisted her. A great jeweled locket
dangled from a gold chain around the old lady’s withered
neck, and the companion suspected Toby planned to
snatch it and run.
“If you touch that I’ll rouse the vestry,” the woman
hissed past the old lady’s bosom.
“Go duck yer head!” Toby replied, reverting to the
standard insult of his childhood. He was disgusted at
being misjudged for his courtesy. He might have left
there in a bad state of mind, except that several sub-
stantial persons nodded to him as he walked away and
wished him good day as if he were their equal.
He found Amos and Kip fishing not far from where
he had left them. They had caught nothing worth keep-
ing and were rather let down. Toby gave them each a
shilling from his three.
“We can buy something from a tavern,” he said. “We
can eat hearty. Three shillings is what a carpenter makes
all day.”
The Skeets were dazzled by the good fortune and
[168]


London. To encourage and hearten himself and the
Skeets he spoke disrespectfully of the vessel. “Did you
ever see such a rummy old tub?” he asked loudly at one
point, though his own voice frightened him.
Last night on board the Soveraigne they had had the
noisy sailors of the dinghy for company, and many of
the men sleeping on the cluttered decks had a reassuring
look about them. But the London was not only quiet;
she was weirdly tidy.
The truth was, she was the flagship of Vice-Admiral
Lawson, who was just back from settling the Algerian
pirates. Sir John was now being acclaimed a hero. He
would not have tolerated a dirty ship, and so the London
was spruce. But while he was being wined and dined
upriver, his officers with him, most of his men had gone
ashore. A few slumbered within, but none was on watch.
And so the London rode at anchor that night like a
dream ship stripped for action. It was as if she had be-
come a ghost two years ahead of her time. Toby would
recall this hour when he would hear of the London’s
end in these waters: the explosion of mysterious origin,
the sudden sinking near the Nore buoy, the more than
three hundred persons lost as the London broke to pieces.
While the boys were examining some guns on the
lower tier, a dinghy came alongside their own boat and
was held there by oarsmen while a lone man boarded.
As the man came up the ladder his face was now and
then lit by moonlight, and Toby was struck by some-
thing familiar. When the climber emerged and stood up-
right, very near them, he knew that it was Mr. Samuel
Pepys.
[170]


Day, could do deadly damage to an unwatched ship.
. . . Wayneman! Did one of those boys suggest Wayne-
man? Or had the thought of him merely presented itself
in connection with gunpowder?
When Pepys had got into his dinghy he held his lan-
tern toward the little skiff that was tied to the London’s
ladder, tossing crazily, yet with its oars well protected.
“Do you know that boat, Mr. Whitfield?” he asked
a local clerk who had accompanied him and remained
with the oarsmen.
“No, Mr. Pepys, I don’t. But it’s got ‘Cricket’ painted
on 1t.”
One of the oarsmen spoke up: “Belongs to a chap
named Jason Davis, a ship carpenter.”
“Does he have any minor sons?” Pepys asked.
“No, sir. He ain’t even got a wife.”
Samuel Pepys looked up at the London intently as
they pulled away, loath to leave her.
“Are you ready to go to shore, sir?” the clerk asked.
“Eh? No! I’ll inspect ships all night. In the morning
I must go back to London.”
“Where next, then, sir? Do you have a preference?”
“To the Swiftsure,” Pepys directed.
The Swiftsure was commanded by Sir William
Berkeley. It would be as gratifying to report on Berkeley
as on John Lawson. . . . But those boys on the London.
One of them had reddish hair and he was waspishly thin,
like Wayneman. Could Wayneman have become so un-
kempt? Could he have got all the way to Chatham? Pepys
decided to go over to the Southwark posthouse as quickly
as possible and find out if Wayneman was missing. If the
__ 41--—.
[172]


Toby ate the herring, licked his fingers, sat thinking.
“It’s this way,” he said presently. “I’m not ever goin’
back to the Victuallin’ Yard, nor near the Tower nor
the Navy Yard. That man that caught us last night was
Mr. Samuel Peeps, the one I worked for. It looks like he
sees me in a rummy light, no matter what I’m doin’. It
was bad luck he caught us on a ship last night.”
“Is he a captain,” Kip asked, “or is he a harbor pilot?”
Toby explained that he was neither but just something
called Clerk of the Acts of the Admiralty. “He puts his
nose in everything, though, and when he finds something
wrong he goes and tells the Duke of York. He even
comes down here and musters the yard. I’ll bet he’s doing
that this very minute.” (Toby was so right.)
“Wherever will you go, Toby?” Kip asked in anxiety.
“I’ve got a friend at a chancery place,” Toby said,
“name of Mr. Slingsby. I’ll go stay with him. You and
Amos can have my blanket and pillow. Get ’em out of
my barrel, and welcome.” He made these announcements
to himself as well as to the Skeets, for he had consciously
decided his future only at that moment.
He declined passage upriver and took leave of Amos
and Kip with a reserve that hid his feelings. He was
seeing himself through Mr. Peeps’ eyes: a boy who would
take a skiff when the owner’s back was turned and use
it in a forbidden enterprise. In parting with Kip and
Amos he thought how he was ridding them of bad com-
pany, and not the other way around as some might
suppose. His past was filled with mistakes, and now this.
“Do you think we’re in bad trouble?” Amos wanted
to know.
. [174]


on Fleet Street, and walk till he found a quiet courtyard
on his left. Once he was inside, St. Dunstan’s Church
blocked his way, but going past it along a stone-paved
alley, he came to what he sought: a four-story brick
house with a low stone hall attached to it. This was
Clifford’s Inn. It was a school for chancery clerks and
solicitors, and if a young man wanted to go further and
become a barrister or a judge, Clifford’s Inn might be
his preparatory school.
Toby lifted the knocker on the door of the brick house
(which was a dormitory), and a middle-aged porter in
a leather n apron admitted him. “I’d like to see Mr. Jerry
Slingsby,” Toby requested.
“He’s back yonder in the Hall,” the porter said. “The
young gentlemen are at supper. Don’t you hear them?”
“I didn’t know it was suppertime,” Toby said apolo-
getically.
“Then you be ’awlf-witted. Run along now.”
“No, I’ll wait for him,” Toby declared with determina-
tion. “I’ll stay here on this bench if I have to wait all
night.”
The porter looked at Toby appraisingly, decided he
was a knotty problem. “What do you want of Mr.
Jerry?”
“I want to work for him.”
“He’s out of funds I ’appen to know. Couldn’t dig up
the wages.”
“It’s my own worry if the pay’s slow,” Toby told
him.
“If you don’t get out,” the disagreeable man threat-
ened, “I’ll call the groom porter from Inner Temple.”
[176]



“Go and call him, then.” Toby felt sure the long trip
across Fleet Street would not be undertaken, and it was
not. The porter went away and forgot him, and Toby
settled down to wait.
His acquaintance with Jerry Slingsby was limited to
two meetings. One day last year while waiting for Mr.
Pepys to come out of a bookstore in the Strand, he found
a large silver coin on the ground and it was different
from anything he had ever seen. He realized it had been
dropped by a well-dressed young man who had passed
at a loping gait. He sprinted after the man, caught him
by the sleeve, said breathlessly, “Excuse me, I’m Toby
Wayneman——” ‘
“And I’m Jerry Slingsby of Clifford’s Inn. Now that
we’re introduced, what next?”
“Did you lose something, Mr. Slingsby?” (He had no
trouble with the name, as Mr. Pepys had several Slingsby
friends.)
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Didn’t you lose a coin, Mr. Slingsby?” Toby insisted.
Jerry Slingsby searched his pockets, said, “I did, for
a fact,” and described it. “It’s my luck piece,” he said.
“I couldn’t get to be an Utter Barrister without it.”
“Here it is, then.” Toby handed it to him.
“This calls for a reward. Let me see——” He began to
search his pockets.
“I don’t want any reward,” Toby replied, and took
himself off.
When Mr. Pepys came out of the bookstore Toby
told him what had happened and described the coin to
him. Pepys became excited, for he was a collector. “That
[177]


was a Cromwell head, made by Thomas Simon,” he said.
“If it’s the likeness of the Protector I think it is, it’s worth
twenty-five or thirty shillings. It’s as sweet a coin as ever
was stamped. Did you find out who the fellow was?”
“His name’s Jerry Slingsby and he stays at Clifford’s
Inn.”
“Must be a nephew to Henry and Arthur and Sir
Robert. No wonder he collects coins.”
“It’s just his lucky piece, Mr. Peeps.”
Pepys pooh-poohed this. He said all Slingsbys were
avaricious, or why would one of them get to be Comp-
troller of the Navy and another one Master of the Mint?
He said a Slingsby would never carry a coin for senti-
ment. “And possibly it wasn’t his at all,” he concluded.
“Maybe you gave it away foolishly.”
A few days later Pepys told Toby to go to Clifford’s
Inn and try to buy the coin for him. “If young Mr.
Slingsby claimed it by trickery,” he said, “he’ll probably
sell it cheap. You can offer him up to fifteen shillings
in my name.”
Toby went to Clifford’s Inn and managed to locate
Jerry Slingsby, who was in his room preparing for a
mock trial; he was walking up and down, waving his
arms and pretending to address the Benchers when Toby
was admitted by his roommate.
“I’m Toby Wayneman, Mr. Samuel Peeps’ boy,” he
said hastily, for he felt sheepish. “That old silver coin
I found and gave back, would you like to sell it?”
“By no means, Wayneman. I told you it was my luck
piece, didn’t I?”
[178]


(K
Yes, you did, Mr. Slingsby. But Mr. Peeps wants to
nab the coin right bad and he told me I could offer you
up to fifteen shillings.”
Slingsby and his roommate laughed, and Slingsby said:
“In that case you should begin by offering me four or
five shillings and work up to fifteen. As it is, you’ve
shown your hand too soon. I give you this legal advice
absolutely free, my young friend.”
Toby felt more uncomfortable than ever, having given
the young men a laugh, but he plunged ahead. “Well,
now that I’ve shown my hand, Mr. Slingsby, will you
take fifteen shillings for the Cromwell head, or won’t
you?”
“I’d not take ten times that much, little chap, though
I’m reduced to borrowing till my allowance comes down
from Leeds, and a man hates to borrow. Tell your Mr.
Peeps so. The Cromwell was given me by my sister
Elizabeth that’s dead now. Again I thank you for re-
turning it to me.” He wrung Toby’s hand heartily, gave
him some loaf sugar out of a silver dish with a crest on it,
and showed him out. Toby, in recalling these things, felt
that he had some claim on Mr. Jerry Slingsby’s good will.
Anyway, he would try hard to land something. Clifford’s
ought to be a right jolly place to work, judging by the
noise and the savory meat smells that were coming from
the ell at the rear.
After a while the doors were thrown open between
Hall and dormitory and a crowd of students came
through. Toby located his man, remembering his wiry
build, his dark coloring, his loping walk. “Mr. Slingsby,”
[179]


he said firmly, “would you come outside with me and
have a talk?”
“See here, boy,” Slingsby said, running a nervous hand
through his curly black hair, “if a tailor’s sent you to
collect money, it’s no go. I’ve not got it.”
“I’m Wayneman, Mr. Slingsby, the one that found
your coin. I was Peeps’ boy, don’t you remember me?
But I don’t live at his house any more. I’d like to work
for you. You needn’t pay me till it suits you. A place to
sleep is what I need most.”
“Why, you little beggar you!”
“No, sir,” said Toby stiffening. “I’m not a beggar.”
Slingsby laughed and clapped him on the back. “That’s
just a form of address, Wayneman. I beg your pardon.
How about some supper?” He threw his arm carelessly
about Toby’s shoulder, and the worries of the past few
days went entirely out of Toby’s mind, and he felt very
successful indeed.
“I’ll clean all your shoes before I go to bed, Mr.
Slingsby. Do you have some neat’s-foot oil and good
rags?”
“If I can’t find any rags,” Slingsby said, “we’ll use
your shirt. VVhere on earth have you been staying?”
“I’ve had lodgings in East Smithfield,” said Toby with
dignity.
“You have, eh? Well, it must have been a bear pit,
from the looks of you. We’ll have to find you some
clothes. But come get supper before they carry it off to
the kitchen.” Then he added, “You’ll have to work for
two of us, Wayneman. I share lodgings with my cousin
Jack Jenkins. You remember him.”
FIT
[180]


Mr. Pepys returned to London on Monday, and it was
ironical that he did not go up by barge but took the very
route Toby had taken to avoid him. At Rochester he
caught a coach, reaching home at four o’clock in the
afternoon. He dressed himself and went up to West-
minster to walk in the Pall Mall and became so taken up
with court gossip that his intended visit to Will Wayne-
man slipped his mind.
Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday were given
to politics, to dispatching two kegs of. sturgeon to his
father in the country, to contracting for tar and deal
planking for the Navy, to watching a ship being sheathed
at Blackwall, to getting a viol head carved at Wapping.
On Friday he went over to the Southwark posthouse.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked Will Wayneman.
Will was startled and showed it. “It surprises me you
ask that,” he said. “Has he quit your service?”
“A month ago. Didn’t you know it?”
“No, sir,” Will replied. “I’m distressed to hear it. Did
you discharge him?”
“No, I didn’t,” Pepys said, but he looked uncom-
fortable. “I was administering a flogging and he ran
away in the midst of it.”
“He never took well to beating, Mr. Peeps! I’m sorry
you didn’t handle him different.”
“I’ve not come here to be lectured, Mr. Wayneman.
I’m here to report a serious matter. Sunday night down
at Chatham I found three boys on an unguarded ship—
she was the London. I could swear one of the rascals was
Toby Wayneman.”
Will stiffened defensively, and his fear was evident.
[181]


remember us by. I’d be happy to do you any favor ex-
cept the one you’ve just asked. Receive that boy again,
I will not!”
“Then won’t you send him to sea?” Jane asked des-
perately. “It’s what he wants most in the world.”
“If there was a ship going out,” Pepys said, shading his
eyes with his hand, “I would. But there’s none sailing.”
He thought how he could hardly afiiict one of His
Majesty’s ships with a cabin boy that he himself had just
denounced to the commissioners.
Jane and Will Wayneman went away heavy-hearted.
They thought Mr. Peeps’ answer was strangely evasive;
a ship sailed every week or so, as soon as it was readied.
Toby’s life at Clifford’s Inn was crowned with success
from the start, his experience with Pepys having shaped
him valuably. Though he had two masters, Wayneman
managed to give impartial service, and Jenkins’ boots
shone as richly as Slingsby’s.
They had some clothes cut down to his size by ]enkins’
tailor (Slingsby’s tailor being temporarily unapproach-
able), and he again looked clean and trim. He slept on a
comfortable feather pallet in his employers’ chambers,
and he ate sedately at the lower end of the lowest table
in the dining hall.
There was a Clifford’s Inn custom at mealtime that
Toby found fascinating. It was an act of grace performed
at the most exclusive table, the Kentish Mess. One of
the members of the Kentish Mess would bow to the
[184]


The deputy sheriff looked confused. “We meant to do
the Inn first,” he complained as he went to summon his
marshal.
“What a lot of time we’ve wasted,” the old principal
remarked. . . . “Now let us resume where he left off,
Mr. Jenkins,” he called across the Hall. “Prosecution
claims the squealing of your client’s swine disturbed
Matins at All Hallows Church. Your defense has shown
a disregard of locality. Faithorne’s map of London and
Westminster hangs on the north wall. Go and look at it.
You can then ascertain the proximity of the Moorfield
slaughter pens to All Hallows in the Wall.”
“Yes, sir,” Jenkins said clearly in reply. “Then if I
might try to locate a certain brief up in my chambers?”
“I would permit that, yes.”
The principal and Jenkins met at the map and quickly
got their heads together. “That redheaded boy,” the
Ancient said, “he couldn’t be involved in any trouble?”
“Matter of fact, he could be, sir. He was caught on a
ship one night down at Chatham but got away. Just
having a little fun, you understand. A couple of Lime-
house boys were with him, about his own age, not bad
boys. He told Slingsby and me about it last week. Says
he came here direct from Chatham.”
“Hasn’t he got a home?”
“Apparently not. Used to work for a man named
Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy Commissioners.
Didn’t get along with him but got some dam’d good
training.”
“A fine of sixpence for the profanity, Jenkins,” said
the old principal absently.
[188]


Jenkins counted out some change and dropped it into
a jar shaped like the head of Satan.
“He must go,” the old principal decided. “He’s prob-
ably innocent of any felony, but our knowing the facts
you’ve just related puts us up a tree.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sorry, Jenkins. A likable little chap, has an active
mind. Humane, too. I watched him fix a rook’s broken
leg with a little splint. Is he up in your chambers now?”
“Yes, sir. Slingsby’s out, seeing Lady Slingsby, his
mother. She came down from Yorkshire. Wayneman’s
copying some old English tax laws for him.”
“Hm-m. Is he studious, then? Would he make a chan-
cery clerk if we got him off?”
“Wayneman’s not studious, no, sir,” Jack Jenkins re-
plied honestly. “I doubt he’d pay you for your trouble,
sir.” One didn’t lie to the Ancient.
The old gentleman took a few coins from his pocket,
emptied Satan’s head, and added that. “Give him these.
Get him going at once. I advise he go to the country, as
far from the docks as he can get. See that he takes a
warm coat. . . . And by the way, Jenkins——”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ve never felt it necessary for students in chancery
inns to have servants. Tell Slingsby so.”
“Very well, sir. I don’t think we’ll want to try it
again. Any boy we’d get would be a letdown after
Wayneman.” He looked depressed, as most persons did
when about to part from Toby.
[189]


Toby’s ejection from Clifford’s happened too suddenly,
he felt. At one moment he was sitting at a table near a
cozy fire in the Slingsby-Jenkins chambers, copying tax
laws onto a ledger and nibbling lump sugar; at the next,
Jack Jenkins was dashing in like a distracted person and
ordering him to flee.
“A search is on!” Jenkins exclaimed, and told why.
“The Ancient says you must get out of London!”
Even while he spoke Jenkins was taking Toby’s coat
off its peg and furnishing the pockets with comforts for
the road. Then he hurried him to a door that opened
toward Fetter Lane and saw him out. “Don’t hang around
here, Wayneman,” he urged.
Toby was dazed and annoyed. For some reason he
thought of the bouncing balls that got batted back and
forth on the King’s tennis courts in St. James’s Park. He
would not be batted about, he decided. He would get
out of London when he was good and ready. He would
go and tell Kip and Amos good-by, and take his time
about it, too.
He went by barge to Limehouse, which was bold of
him but saved effort. At the shanty-boat dwelling of the
Skeet family, only Mrs. Skeet was at home. Kip and
Amos were away delivering herring.
“Tell ’em I’ve left Clifford’s,” Toby said. “Tell ’em
I have to go to the country—-first to Essex, then to Bed-
fordshire—but sometime I’ll come back.”
“Won’t ye eat a meal with us before ye take off?”
Mrs. Skeet invited. She was sober and rational and was
wearing her clothes right side out. “The boys’ll be back
’fore long. They only went to Navy Yard.”
[196]



l
“No, ma’am,” Toby declined hastily. Mention of the
Navy Yard filled him with uneasy emotions. “I’d better
hurry along,” he decided. He handed her a pair of shil-
lings that he had polished while on the barge and told
her they were for Amos and Kip. “They can spend ’em ”
he instructed, “or they can keep ’em for luck pieces all
their life.”
[191]


He was pleased to see tears come to Mrs. Skeet’s kind
and bleary eyes; it showed she held him in high esteem
and did not consider him a detriment to her sons. “Is that
my pewter cup?” he inquired, pointing it out among
some other cups on the table.
“Yes, that be yours. The boys found it in yer barrel.
Would ye like to have it back?”
Toby said that he would.
“Will ye want yer blanket and pillow too?” Mrs.
Skeet asked. “If so, take ’em.”
Toby thanked her and declined. “When I make a
present, I make a present,” he assured her.
He went directly away from the river and picked
up the old Ermyn Street out of London. Later he turned
west on a little road that led toward Epping. Late that
night he knocked on the door of his old house at
Loughton.
“Well, well,” said Mrs. Snell-Wayneman, “how you’ve
grown.” She stood in the doorway inspecting him, hold-
ing a lighted candle toward his face. “Come in!” she
invited, as if something pleased her. “I never thought
to lay eyes on you again.”
Toby went indoors, and they sat on the edge of two
chairs and looked at each other suspiciously.
“Did Jane give you the advice I sent?” asked Mrs.
Wayneman.
Toby could not recall it. Jane’s only warnings, as far
as he remembered, came directly from herself: help the
housemaid polish the brass, Jane had urged, and “con-
tinue at the Peeps house, safe from harm and danger.”
“I sent you this message,” Mrs. Snell-Wayneman stated
[191]



get in a lot of trouble in four months. What’ve you
been workin’ at lately?”
How did she mean that? Toby decided she meant it
literally. “I was a footboy at Clifford’s Inn for a while.
That’s a law school. I gave satisfaction, but now I’m
takin’ a little holiday. I thought I’d go to see Jane and
Dulcie Lane, if I could find ’em. Where is it Dulcie lives
in Ipswich, Aunt Huldah? ” His manner was conciliatory,
for he knew she might withhold the information out of
pure spite. That would force him to go looking for Mrs.
Lane, who had married Widower York, a man he re-
membered as stern and forbidding even before he, Toby,
had earned a bad reputation.
“What parish in Ipswich does Dulcie’s aunt live in,
Aunt Huldah, and what’s her name?”
“Her name’s Mrs. Obadiah Staples, but much good it’ll
do you. She and her husband’s gone to the colonies,
takin’ Dulcie with ’em. They went last year. They’ve
got a little plantation on the Skoolkill River, wherever
that is. It’s spelled funny, too. I laugh myself almost
to death ever’ time I say that river’s name—the Lanes
taught me how.” She said the river’s name again and
laughed as she had promised, not quite to death, but so
heartily that her cap came off.
Toby looked at her dejectedly. He too said the river’s
name, but without mirth. Skoolkill. Skoolkill. Mr. and
Mrs. Obadiah Staples on the Skoolkill River, and Dulcie
I00.
“It’s too bad you put off your trip to Bedford till so
late in the year,” Mrs. Wayneman said. “But I notice
you’ve got a good coat and stout shoes.” Then she added
[195]


grudgingly, “Do you want to stay the night here? The
boys don’t live at home any more and I’ve got some
lodgers. I could put down a pallet for you in this room,
I suppose.”
“Never mind,” Toby told her. “I’l1 stay at the tavern.
I’ve got money enough.”
“Nobody goes to the Golden Pear any more,” Mrs.
Wayneman said. “Strangers owns it. Your father
wouldn’t like it, the way it is now.”
But Toby found it pleasant at the Golden Pear and de-
cided to remain several days. Not only was he not ques-
tioned, he was not recognized. The inn had new keepers,
a Mr. and Mrs. Solby, and it catered to transients. There
was no longer a quiet pub for local folk to gather in,
though there was a brisk bar in the dining room. A coach
change had been added, and everything was lively.
Toby spent much of his time in the dining room,
eating heartily, sipping ale, listening to travelers, and
showing off. He thought he was educating himself to be
a man. He would make inquiries for work and would
recommend himself highly to some guest as a clerk or
secretary. But none took him up, the inevitable verdict
being that he was too young. He began to think of his
youth as a hopeless blight, not realizing that a few years
would cure him of it, and not being willing to wait it out.
No doubt he could have had work in the kitchen or stable
if he had asked for it, but his aims were too high. His
London positions had spoiled him for that sort of mo-
notony and oblivion.
[196]


At breakfast on the third morning of his residence at
the taver n he was telling a well-dressed merchant from
Ely how he used to wear a sword in London.
“The man I worked for made me carry it,” he said.
“I had to protect him and his wife from footpads.”
“Can you ride a horse?” asked a soft-spoken man on
the other side of him. He spoke lazily. His leather gloves
lay beside his plate; his beaver hat lay on the floor.
Though his materials were excellent, his colors were so
drab and his manner was so subdued that Toby had
hardly noticed him during the past days.
Turning now to look at him, Toby was impressed. The
gentleman had remarkable eyes, peculiarly bright and
darting. “I never rode a horse but once,” Toby confessed,
“and I didn’t take to it.”
“But you’re looking for work, I understand.”
“Yes, sir, almost any kind of work if the place is right.
I would travel, or I would stay put.” i
“Here, let me pay for your breakfast,” the quiet man
said, “and we’ll take a walk while I smoke.”
When they were out of doors they had to turn up their
coat collars against a rnizzling rain that had started. Toby
waited respectfully for the gentleman to begin and
presently he did.
“It’s a bad time for you to be out of work,” he said,
“with winter coming on. You’re almost out of money,
too. You have to dig rather deep to pay your chips, I
notice.”
Toby nodded admission, then said in self-defense, “I
pay as I go, I even pay for my bed ahead of time. I’m
not tryin’ to beat the innkeeper.”
[197]


which he said was thirteen and some odd months. He
appeared to be traveling alone, but maybe he wasn't.
Maybe he was with that highwayman all the time. Yes,
I see now he could ’ave been.”
In Southwark that day Will Wayneman, who had died
suddenly of a lung fever, was being laid to rest. There
was a respectable gathering at the parish church, and
afterward the widow, who had saved for this social
emergency, gave mourning rings to several friends. Mrs.
Tim Browne of Bedfordshire could not be reached in
time, so she was not present at the burial. Neither was
the deceased man’s brother, Toby Wayneman.
A week previous to Will Wayneman’s illness some
boys from Limehouse, with the family name of Skeet,
paid him a call. They were passing the livery stable, they
said, and heard him called “Wayneman”; was he any kin
to a boy named Toby?
Will talked with them and was made glad by the news
that Toby had a good position at Clifford’s Inn, working
for two young gentlemen that valued him highly.
“Glory be!” Will said.
But after Will’s death Will’s widow sent the parish
beadle to Clifford’s to find Toby and bid him to the
funeral, and word came back that he had quit the place
several days ago.
“They don’t know where he’s gone,” the beadle re-
ported.
Mrs. Wayneman said it was God’s blessing Will didn’t
[zoo]


know Toby was wandering again. “He died happy about
that boy,” she said. “He’d been in some trouble, but at
Clifford’s Inn he was doing well. Some river boys told
Will so. They’re chums of Toby’s, mannerly boys that
deliver fish for their mother.”
“I’m sorry I can’t locate him for you,” the beadle
said, “but at Clifford’s I got no help from the principal.
He just teetered on his toes and said Wayneman had
left for parts unknown.”
“I call that right unfriendly of the gentleman.”
“I pushed him for facts,” the beadle said. “ ‘Is that all
you can tell me about this boy that’s been delinquent
to his family?’ I asked him. ‘Quite,’ was his answer to
me. . . . I’ve learned in my work as a parish beadle, Mrs.
Wayneman, that there’s never such a hard nut to crack
as an old gentleman that says ‘Quite.’ ”
“I think I ought to go back and get my cap,” Toby said
to Captain Dudley, “my head’s getting wet. If you’ll take
it slow, sir, I’ll run to the inn and pick it up and over-
take you.”
“Let your cap go. Can’t you take a little water on the
head?” A sharp note had come into the lazy voice. “I
don’t choose to walk slowly. In fact, I’ll ask you to
stretch your stride a bit.”
“Yes, sir,” Toby said. “I reckon you don’t want to
keep your friends waiting.”
Dudley laughed. “I rather like to keep people waiting.
My two friends have been waiting for me since sunup.”
[ 2 o 1 ]


Toby was puzzled. Mr. Peeps used to keep people
waiting, and so did Slingsby and Jenkins, but they never
seemed to enjoy it.
Dudley wheeled sharply onto a side road, a mere lane,
and Toby followed. After a quarter hour of walking
Dudley said, “There they are,” and pointed to an oak
grove. Two men were there, drooping as if asleep on
the backs of handsome horses. Dudley gave a whistle
and the men came awake. Dudley and Toby went into
the grove.
Toby looked at Captain Dudley’s two friends with
profound interest, and they looked back at him. The
older one had clay-colored skin, like that of a white man
who has been overlong in the tropics. His features were
un-English and flattened; his eyes were darkly dull.
Dudley called him “Ben.”
The other man was young. He was small and undis-
tinguished in appearance and he seemed very decent.
Dudley addressed him as Dr. McKnight, emphasizing the
title, Toby thought, as if it were more important than
the name.
“This boy is the answer to our problem,” Dudley told
his two friends. “His name’s Wayneman. He grew up
around here, but now he’s on the loose.”
Dr. McKnight lifted his eyebrows, inspected Toby,
and said to Dudley, “Why must we bother with this
mere lad? It’s unsuitable, to say the least.”
Toby’s spirits suffered a decline and he said hastily,
“I’m brighter than I look and I write a good hand. If you
want any lists made, I can keep a ledger.”
It had occurred to him that these men might be ap-
[202]


The man called Ben nodded without speaking and
began to gather firewood.
Toby offered to help him, but he declined with a
shake of the head, and Toby went over and sat down
beside Dr. McKnight on a plaid horse blanket.
“Is this the McKnight plaid?” Toby asked for some-
thing to say.
“No, lad. I’m no Highlander.” He sat there looking
at the fields beyond the grove, and the little stone tenant
houses that dotted the fields, and even at the clouds and
trees and fences, as if all were matters of concern. He
had a square green bottle at his side with a willow stopper
in it. From the bottle he poured some strong spirits into
a silver mug and he began to drink it.
After a long while he said, “You can’t get away, you
know. Ben is watching you.”
“I don’t want to get away,” Toby said. “Captain Dud-
ley promised me a job.”
Young Dr. McKnight poured himself some more
spirits. “This is scotch whisky,” he said, “my solace.”
He was about to become drunk, Toby feared, as Mr.
Peeps and Admiral Penn used to do, though more dis-
mally. But breakfast was almost ready, from the smell
of things; that might stop him. Ben was beginning to
cook the bacon. The smoke from the fire, oddly enough,
had no effect on his lackluster eyes, for when he turned
them toward McKnight and Toby, as he did frequently,
they were always wide and unblinking.
“Dudley’s a highwayman, you know,” McKnight said
to Toby in a low voice.
“What, sir?” Toby asked, not comprehending.
|| —.—..—.-:: . . .. +|—|—
[204]


“You heard what I said. Think it over.”
Toby thought it over, managed to ask, “Are you one
too?”
“Oh yes, but new at it.”
“I think I’d better leave here fast,” Toby said, and he
got to his feet.
“Sit down,” said McKnight. “The foreigner’s watch-
ing you.”
Toby sat down. “What does Captain Dudley want
me to do?”
“He wants you to open up Loughton Hall from the
inside tonight and show us where the library is, or the
morning room, or whatever it’s called. The room that’s
paneled in teakwood.”
“But I couldn’t do that. It’s against my principles.”
McKnight shrugged and replied while keeping his eyes
on the man at the fire, “So is it against mine. But I’m
committed. I failed my medical degree at Edinburgh.
I was a laughingstock, so I joined Dudley.”
“Couldn’t you take the courses over?” Toby asked.
“Couldn’t you change tutors?” He had heard Pepys ar-
range such matters for his brother, John Pepys, who
was a student at Cambridge and none too bright. “That
would be better, sir,” he said earnestly.
“No, I’ve got a faulty set of nerves, lad. When I start
to amputate, I funk it. Three generations of Scot sur-
geons back of me, yet I funk it. Dudley knows that. It’s
why he calls me Doctor McKnight when he addresses
me.”
“Here comes Captain Dudley, I think,” Toby said
nervously. “He’s riding a bay horse with a white face.”
[=05]


H
Yes, it’s he. . . . Listen to me, Wayneman, and don’t
be misled. Dudley’s a brilliant and amusing gentleman,
but he’s got a madness. He was put out of the English
Army at Tangier for bashing in a sergeant’s skull, one
of his own men that happened to annoy him. Don’t cross
him. Do your job tonight, then cut. If he tries to get
you onto his horse or Ben’s horse or even mine, stumble
and fall. Injure yourself. In that case he’ll leave you.”
Dudley rode into the grove, and he rode superbly.
None of the other Dudleys, his fine and upright kinsmen,
could have matched him in grace. He dismounted and
smiled engagingly and made himself agreeable. He par-
took of breakfast, contributing a loaf of oat bread he
had picked up at the inn, and a pat of yellow butter.
He urged McKnight to leave off drinking for his health’s
sake. He examined his horse’s hoof for a stone bruise. He
gave the rind of bacon to a stray hound. He set up a
game of battledore and shuttlecock with equipment from
his saddlebags. He permitted Toby to beat him by the
slightest margin.
After a while Toby thought how it must be: Dr.
McKnight was the mad one, mad from scotch whisky.
Yet if McKnight was the mad one, who had killed the
sergeant at Tangier? But perhaps it wasn’t a sergeant that
had his skull broken. Perhaps it was a medical man, and
McKnight had to flee Edinburgh University after he did
it; criminals often laid their crimes on others.
Toby began to give a wide berth to McKnight; and
once, toward evening, when the gloomy young man
tried to draw him aside and speak to him, Toby openly
side-stepped him.
[206]


What, though, Toby pondered, was Captain Dudley’s
occupation? What was the job he had to offer? Why
did he travel about with these unattractive friends?
Having exonerated Dudley in his mind (because the
youthful mind craves normality, which is only goodness
in various forms), Toby was anxious for Captain Dudley
to explain himself. Night was coming on. The silent and
expressionless Ben had been sent to Chigwell for meat
pies and a pot of chocolate, all very tasty, but it seemed
to Toby that this outdoor festival had gone on long
enough.
And so it had. When they had finished eating, Dudley
looked up at the sky and spoke in an inaudible voice to
Ben and helped him extinguish the campfire. Then he
came over to Toby, who was trying to occupy himself
usefully and at the same time keep away from McKnight.
“Wayneman,” Dudley said, “I’m in Essex to pick up
a map I need. It’s at Loughton Hall. Yesterday at the
Pear you spoke of Squire Wroth’s maps. I’m going to
take you to Loughton Hall before the moon comes up.
You’ll find a way to enter and let us in, and you’ll take
us to the room where the maps are kept.”
So Captain Dudley was a bad one after all. McKnight
was right. Dudley wanted a boy for housebreaking. And
yet, thought Toby, recovering and grasping at a straw,
Dudley wasn’t after money or plate; all he wanted was
an old map. Squire Wroth’s maps couldn’t be so valuable,
or why would he have let a carpenter borrow them?
“Captain Dudley,” Toby said, “if you want to see a
map of Squire Wroth’s, I think he’d let you. He used
to lend ’em to my father. I’ll go and ask him for you.
I’d rather do that than break in.”
[107]


rise, take hold of my shoulder. Careful of my pistols!”
He now wore a brace of them and carried a small lantern.
If he had anything to be thankful for, Toby thought,
it was that Dudley did not ride a big Irish hunter like
William Penn’s. This horse was small, possibly of a racing
strain, and its back did not seem too far off the ground.
After Toby had made several successful mountings
and dismountings, Dudley said they were ready. “You
and I will go ahead,” he explained. “McKnight and Ben
will follow, but not at our heels. Three horses would be
noticed.” (His explanations were formal and polite.)
They rode slowly, for darkness had fallen and they were
following a series of intricate lanes bordered by high
hedges. It was apparent that Dudley had charted his
course and memorized it.
To such forethought as this, Dudley owed the success
of his robberies. Though his taste in dress was extrava-
gant, he held himself to subdued colors and styles when
staying at country inns, and so was able to ride about the
countryside without attracting attention. He could give
faultless imitations of a land agent or a family solicitor
as he approached a country manor in broad daylight and
looked it over; you would never think he had any more
on his mind than where to lay the tiles. He would even
brazenly take out a notebook and punch diagrams of the
buildings with a nutpick that he carried, while his horse
grazed.
Toby felt the need of conversation in order to assure
himself of reality. “I never went such a roundabout way
as this,” he said.
“Don’t speak,” Dudley replied like a sharp breath of
[210]


mantel in the Italian style. A brass fire screen closed the
cavity, as if the fireplace had not been lately used. The
wood of the paneled room had a strange smell: a linger-
ing fragrance or a faint stink, however your fancy re-
ceived it—the smell of teakwood.
Dudley moved his lanter n slowly about the room. Two
walls were shelved for books. The fourth had a different
use. Parchments and papers of great size and flamboyancy
covered it, suspended from wooden rollers, in some
places overlapping.
“The maps!” Dudley exclaimed with a triumphant
oath. “There they are, unrolled for me!” The lantem
shook in his hand.
“Wait here,” he said to Toby. “Shade the lantern with
this book, the best you can. Keep the light from that
oriel window. I’ll go get the others.”
He went out, closing the door soundlessly behind him.
Except for the click of the great filigreed key as he
turned it in the lock.
What do you know? Toby said to himself. It was the
final indignity.
He found a way to ease his task of shielding the lantern
by propping his hand and arm on a box while he sat on
the table’s edge. He was then able to think, and he asked
himself how he could cut loose from Dudley after this
business was over. McKnight’s advice was good as far
as it went. But how could you stumble and fall and in-
jure yourself without knocking yourself out?
Being unable to think of the answer, Toby let his
thoughts wander, and they went to Squire Wroth’s
money hidden in Northamptonshire. The buried money
[113]


and Dudley’s pursuit of it were not fantastic to him, for
about a year ago he had helped Mr. Pepys dig for treasure
in the Tower of London. A Mr. Barkstead, a Cromwell
man, had fled England when the King came back, and
as he took ship he told a crony of his that he had buried
a large sum of money (in butter firkins) in one of the
cellars of the Tower and would never come back for it.
The news got around, and Mr. Pepys obtained permis-
sion from the lieutenant of the Tower to dig for it. A
number of persons were going to split the booty: a Mr.
Wade (Barkstead’s friend), a Mr. Lee, Sir Harry Bennet,
Captain Evett (the guide), and Lord Montagu. Even
King Charles had asked for a cut-in and was promised
three thousand pounds. The digging went on spasmodi-
cally from Halloween till mid-December, with Toby
hanging around and waiting on the diggers and offering
suggestions. Nothing came of it except deflated hopes
and sore muscles, but it was fun while it lasted.
In this case, though, the man who had buried his
money, Squire Wroth, had no wish to share it. He had
put it in Northamptonshire for safekeeping, and any man
who touched it was a thief. Toby recognized the dis-
tinction here, even without the added complication of
housebreaking.
He was startled to hear voices outside the house, and
for a moment he thought Dudley and McKnight and
the other one had forgotten themselves and were com-
mitting this indiscretion. But after a moment of listening
he knew otherwise. It was some of Squire Wroth’s men
passing the Hall. As they came nearer, one of the voices
[214]


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he should be invited to take a tur n at the iron box, must
he decline on principle? Or ought he scoop up a handful
for the unknown needs ahead?
He was never called upon to make that decision, for
the unguarded door was thrown open and two of Squire
Wroth’s servants entered. The foremost carried a pistol
that he leveled at the room in general. His hand was
shaking badly, but he spoke firmly.
“I’m the steward here,” he said. “Whatever you’ve
taken, give over, then be gone.”
Dudley moved like a flash and knocked the pistol from
his hand. Then the second man came on with a pickax,
right bravely and clumsily. McKnight wrenched it from
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him with surprising agility and threw it into a corner.
McKnight and Dudley escaped then into the corridor,
with the two servants in pursuit.
The noise was unusual, and another servant came on
the run. He was an elderly man whom Toby remembered
from his childhood, the butler emeritus of Loughton
Hall who used to tell the other servants how to do their
work. He sought to take charge now, thinking only of his
master’s welfare and property, not of any danger to
himself. He unfortunately got in the way of Rajbendi,
blocking his exit at the door. Rajbendi still carried the
knife, and he thrust it into the old man’s heart and with-
drew it with a twist. When the old butler fell to the
floor he pushed him aside with his foot. Toby saw with
horror that Rajbendi’s face had at last taken on expres-
sion; it was a sort of exultation.
The running in the corridors faded away, but Toby
heard the chase resumed outdoors across the turf. Pres-
ently he heard the sound of horses running fleetly. Three
horses, he thought. Well, he had been left behind, and
he had not had to stumble and injure himself to accom-
plish it. It had merely come about.
He went to the old butler and felt his pulse and saw
that he was dead. He closed his eyes as he had seen his
father do for a dead neighbor, and then he went out of
the room and began to retrace the steps he had taken
when he entered the Hall.
In the kitchen he was apprehended by the two servants
who had surprised the robbery.
“The old butler’s dead!” Toby told them. “The
foreigner was the one that did it.”
[220]


The steward went on a run, calling an alarm as he
ran. The other man remained in the kitchen and held
fast to Toby. He was the one who had carried the
mattock.
“If you’d please take me to the sheriff at Chigwell,”
Toby said, “I’d be much obliged.” All he wanted in the
world now was that Squire Wroth and Luke Snell and
Farmer York would not lay eyes on him.
The servant tried to question him. He was the head
cowherd, an intelligent and resourceful man, but under-
standably confused. He lived elsewhere and had only
been at the Hall on an errand when called on to lend
assistance. “Do you belong with that bunch of felons?”
he asked Toby. “Was you the boy that was with ’em?”
“I’ll tell the sheriff everything,” Toby bargained, “but
I’ll not tell anybody else. I’ll talk to the sheriff at Chig-
well. Not to you, not to Squire Wroth, just to the
sheriff.”
From the distant library came a commotion that made
them stop and listen. A feminine lament arose above the
other sounds, chambermaid Ann crying out rebelliously,
“No matter about the money! They’ve killed my grand-
father, they’ve killed this good old man!”
“Take me away from here,” Toby requested again in
a plea that reached the kitchen rafters. “If you will, I’ll
tell the sheriff how it happened.”
The cowherd, acting on his own initiative, heeded
the boy’s urgency. Both rode the man’s horse to Chig-
well, Toby fastened to his captor by a leather thong of
unquestionable strength.
Inside the she1iff’s house, Toby talked while the cow-
[221]


herd waited in the road. The sheriff was at first sleepy
from a glass of canary he had had, but Toby got his
attention right quickly when he said he had been on a
raid with Captain Richard Dudley.
“Dick Dudley?” the sheriff asked doubtfully. “Here
in Essex?”
Toby’s report was colorful, but on some points he was
peculiarly reticent; he refused to divulge his own name,
and he claimed he knew one of his recent companions
only as “Doctor.” But regarding Captain Richard Dudley
and his man Rajbendi, he was specific. He reproduced
Dudley’s flippant gestures and his lazy drawl. He re-
ported every word Dudley had spoken and every act
Dudley and Rajbendi had committed since seven o’clock
that morning.
The sheriff put on his hat and pistols and went out-
doors, taking Toby with him. He called the Loughton
Hall cowherd aside in the big road. “This kid is a great
talker,” he said. “He may be a boy that reads too many
chap books.” (He referred to the confessions of high-
waymen sold in penny editions.) “In that case, he’s
making a fool of me.”
“No, sir,” the cowherd said. “Squire Wroth’s butler
lies dead and the money box is rifled in the book room.
We surprised three men and a boy there, red-handed.
The boy was this one. The men got away. We caught
the little chap in the kitchen, on his way out. When he
saw he was done for, he begged me to take ’im to the
sheriff.”
“The way he tells it, he was the only one that saw
the murder. That’s strange.” i
[222]


“For a fact, though, he were the only one. The steward
and me went after the men that attacked us. We didn’t
hardly notice the man that stayed in the room. But that
was the one that done in poor old Harkwith. He left
the Hall and joined the others. We heard the three of
’em ride off together, hell for leather.”
“On the strength of your word, then, I’ll take the
boy to London in the morning. Session Court’s sitting
at Old Bailey. The judges know how to handle these
cases. Out here in Essex, we’re not qualified.”
They escorted Toby to the Chigwell and told the
jailer to give him a berth of clean straw.
The cowherd bade Toby good-by with warmth and
feeling. “You’ll tell your story at Old Bailey tomorrow,”
he said. “I wish you Godspeed.”
Toby thanked him briefly. He had run out of words.
When the candle had been taken away and he was
locked in, he unwound the black scarf from about his
red hair, scratched his tingling ears, and lay down. As
usual, he was optimistic about his future. He went to
sleep.
Toby and the sheriff left Chigwell soon after sunrise.
They traveled in the sheriff’s coach, drawn by a pair
of mules and driven by a stableman of noticeable brawn.
Usually a guard rode on the perch over the boot when
the sheriff carried a prisoner, but in the conveyance of
Toby Wayneman, this precaution was dispensed with.
[H3]


Come now. Keep to the right side of me. There’ll be a
crowd in here.”
It was midmorning when they entered. A criminal case
involving a thieving housemaid was being heard. The
Sessions House was full of spectators, and Toby and the
sheriff had to stand against a wall. The prosecuting
lawyer summarized the woman’s case, which was the
taking of a silver porringer and a silver tankard from
one of her employers, and also a habit which she had of
operating under assumed names.
The summary was listened to attentively by the judge
sitting on the case, and he told the woman she had wasted
the court’s time by hiding out; she had been tried Sep-
tember second in absentia, he said, after her indictment.
Did she acknowledge herself to be the woman of the
thefts and the several names? She said she did not, but
four of her former employers came forward and so
identified her; and the judge, with a good deal of fine
language, sentenced her to be hanged on Monday next.
The woman was led away to Newgate Prison, fol-
lowed by some weeping relatives. Then the judge said
a Latin phrase rapidly, left the bench, and went through
a stone archway, out of sight.
Toby, greatly moved by the ordeal they had wit-
nessed, asked the sheriff where the judge had gone.
“To Short’s alehouse here in Old Bailey, probably.
The court’s recessed.”
He told Toby to follow him, and they made a tour
of the building. “I’m looking for somebody to turn you
over to,” he explained. “I can’t tarry, myself.”
Presently, through an open door the sheriff spied
[=15]


H ‘ 77
There was the time down at Chatham—— Toby said
in a cold sweat, for four pairs of eyes under four white
wigs were fixed on him compellingly. He told of his
boarding the ships as if he had been alone in the under-
taking, of his being seen by “an oflicer,” and of his having
to flee. “I laid low for a while,” he said. “Then I went
to Essex and got mixed up with Captain Dudley, the
way I told you, and saw the robbery and the murder
done at Loughton Hall.”
He sighed with relief. It was all told now, all that
mattered. What he had withheld was his own business,
the names of persons who need not be bothered. But his
brother Will could not be spared. Presently they would
ask his brother’s name, and he must give it. Will might
even have to come to his aid.
“Have you passed your twelfth birthday?”
“Yes, sir, and one more. I’m thirteen years old.”
“Write down twelve years of age,” the justice told the
clerk. He was not interested in Toby’s claims to a greater
age, but only in putting him past the barrier that made
his testimony legal.
Toby was apprehensive. He had expected just to
clarify the crimes of Dudley and Rajbendi, but now a
document was being written about his own life. It would
soon be fixed up in red sealing wax, like something called
the privy seal.
“Is there a relative willing to be your guardian?”
Toby replied that there was, the brother he had men-
tioned.
“His name and place of residence?”
[228]


“Mr. William Wayneman, sir, at the Southwark post-
house. He’s head ostler there.”
A porter was summoned, given some money, and told
to go to the Southwark posthouse by hackney coach and
fetch one William Wayneman, chief ostler.
A wait ensued. The justice and the serjeants-at-law
all had dinner engagements at three o’clock, it turned out;
and the justice, who was to dine at Whitehall, said he
must put on his violet-colored robe first. As they con-
versed with one another, engrossed in their great affairs,
Toby nodded sleepily in his chair. He felt relaxed be-
cause Will would soon be coming to take him away. He
was thankful that he had a brother who was a good and
worthy man, even if a poor one. Hereafter he would
put himself in Will’s hands; if Will wanted to apprentice
him in a humble trade, he would let him do it. This
trouble he was in had happened because he wanted to
be a big shot, like a gun on the Soveraigne. Maybe, he
thought drowsily, he was meant to be a small fowling
piece, with just enough range to pot a rabbit for dinner.
He then imagined the rabbit, nicely dressed, turning and
browning on a spit, becoming edible. His mind made
these images because he was weakly hungry. In the Chig-
well jail he had had only a bowl of gruel. That was
seven hours ago.
He slept awhile with his head against the stone wall of
the council chamber and so did not see the porter enter.
He wakened to something the man was saying:
“—and this man Will Wayneman was buried yester-
day.”
Toby cried out in protest, the way a person will do
I119]


when he rejects a piece of news. “No, no,” he said, “my
brother’s not dead! He’s at the posthouse!”
“What confinnation of this have you?” the justice
asked the porter. “Did you pick up a rumor?”
“I got it from the widow. She was in ’er flat, apackin’
of ’er belongings. The parish beadle was there, ’avin’
brought some money from the vestry on account of ’er
little child that’s sick. They both said this boy’s a bother-
some case. ’E’s run away from several folks ’e worked for.
The widow says ’e’s got a grown sister in Bedfordshire,
but she can’t name the place she gets ’er mail.”
“Can you name it?” the justice asked Toby prod-
dingly. “Try to remember.”
“I never knew the place, sir.” He could think of
nothing except Will’s having died. He thought of it not
as it related to his present difficulties but as it related to
Will himself.
“My brother had weak lungs,” he said pityingly to the
four men at the table. “The livery stable was dusty be-
cause of the hay and all. It kept him coughing. I didn’t
go to see him often enough.”
“We extend you our sympathy, lad,” said one of the
serjeants-at-law feelingly. He blew his nose.
They looked at one another, and then the justice
looked at his watch. It was a watch like Admiral Batten’s,
Toby saw, a larger watch than Mr. Peeps’.
“His Majesty’s responsibility?” the justice said to the
three serjeants-at-law.
They nodded, and the justice told the clerk to enter
his subsequent sayings on another piece of paper.
“Whereas——”
[=36]


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Some legal phrases followed in English and Latin, but
they meant nothing to Toby, the shock of Will’s death
having reached him. Some signing of names took place,
and he even signed one paper, himself, before the clerk
took it away.
“That was your testimony,” the justice explained
kindly.
“Can I go now?” Toby asked.
“Yes. A guard will take you in a hackney coach.”
“Where?”
“You’ll get regular meals there,” the justice said
hurriedly. “You’ll not have to worry about anything. If
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ll 77
Take the bed betwixt that boy and the wall, the
jailer told Toby. “It’s the only one left.”
“Where are the rest of the boys?” Toby asked.
“Out playing, to be sure. There’s a courtyard.”
“Oh, that place. I saw it one time.”
“And your young lordship didn’t hardly fancy it?”
“Nobody could like it,” Toby replied with dignity.
“But I’ll go there, it’s better than this room.”
The bed next to Toby’s was not empty all week, for
the boy who occupied it was too ill to get up. One day
the jailer brought a doctor, and because the invalid was
flushed and feverish, the physician bled him and left a
physic. For a little while the boy seemed better, but later
he became very weak, and the prison food revolted him
and hurt his throat.
“Can you think of anything you’d like to eat?” Toby
asked him. “I’ve got some money in my pocket and I’ll
tell the porter to go and buy whatever you crave.”
The sick boy said he had once eaten oranges off a
ship when he was young and his father was alive. He
would like some oranges.
Toby went to the prison office and told the jailer his
wish. “I’ve got a shilling here. Please ask the porter to
spend it all on oranges for that sick boy.”
“He mayn’t be able to find oranges in the Poultry,”
the jailer said. “He might have to go to a playhouse,
where young women sells ’em. You’ll have to pay the
porter for his trouble.”
Toby produced his other shilling.
That night the sick boy had his treat. Though it pained
[=34]


him to swallow, he ate two or three oranges with a bliss-
ful sort of determination.
“Look!” Toby said. “I’ll save all the rest of ’em for
you.” He put them under his bed, against the wall.
But there was no need of it. The boy died in his sleep.
There was a service for him next day in the stark little
chapel of the prison, and some of the older and less
hardened inmates attended, as well as the King’s Wards.
Toby sat in the place reserved for chief mourners, for
he saw there was none to sit there and, after all, he had
bought the boy some oranges. The chaplain, a very old
man with a quavering voice, read the beautiful Order for
the Burial of the Dead, the same as is read for an earl,
and afterward the King’s Wards were told to go to the
courtyard and have a mug of small beer and a piece of
Stilton cheese, a treat reserved for funerals. Somebody
had left money for this in his will.
The King’s Wards, to a boy, behaved well at the
memorial party, and Toby introduced a game that was
pretty successful. It required no devices but imagination
and a bit of courage. Toby said the game was called
“Who Do I Be?” Anybody who wished to do so could
ask the question, then step out and imitate a familiar
character.
Daring volunteers took off the chaplain, the porter,
the turnkey, the judge on the bench. Toby did the jailer.
He reproduced the man’s sideways glance, his sneer, his
unpleasant laugh. And when the subject’s identity was
established by shouts of “jailer,” Toby showed him go-
ing through the pockets of a new arrival in search of
stray coins. Even a listless boy named Nolly laughed
[135]


When the boys went to chapel on Sunday afternoon
Toby begged Nolly to speak to the chaplain afterward.
“Ask him if he’s got a message for me. Do that, Nolly!
Ask Mr. Ely if he’s got a message for Toby Wayne-
man!”
When Nolly returned he shook Toby from a feverish
sleep. “The old un weren’t at chapel,” he said. “The
other one was there in his place, the Newgate preacher.
‘Where is the old un?’ I asked ’im. ‘Sick,’ he said. . . .
Do ye want anything else?”
“Some water.”
Next day the jailer sent for the crass and ignorant
prison physician and told him to take a look at Wayne-
man. The man did that, and little else. Hurrying to the
office, he took the jailer aside.
“It’s smallpox. Maybe the other one had it too. He
wasn’t broken out when he died, but this one’s got the
blisters on his chest. I’ll see if there’s room for him in
the Moorfield pesthouse. Then you can have him moved.”
The jailer spent some thoughtful moments communing
with himself. He had small hope of the prison doctor’s
returning: one villain knows another. But there might
be another way, if he could locate that man. McKnight
was his name. The address he had mentioned was Mitre
Tavern. Early in the past week he had come to Compter
and inquired for Wayneman and asked to see him. He
had been denied the interview, as out of hours. But he
had left a half crown for the boy and said he would
come back if his affairs permitted. . . .
The jailer called the porter. “There’s three Mitre
Taverns,” he said. “One’s in Wood Street, one’s in
[140]


“If ye nae have the heart to use it yoursel’, another
wilderness man will. How long will ye be gone?”
“Three years,” John McKnight said. “I’ll come back
for your ninetieth birthday. I only want to make a little
honest money to invest in London shipping.”
He would sail from London because of a ship’s cap-
tain he knew there.
As he approached the city he could not resist stopping
at Chigwell to ask a few cautious questions, the red-
haired boy he had deserted being on his mind. The
Chigwell sheriff gave him some information. “I hear he
ended up in the Poultry Compter prison as a King’s
Ward,” he said. “I was sorry about that.”
And so McKnight had gone to the Compter and tried
to see Toby and had not succeeded. He had expected
to try again but was soon head over heels, buying equip-
ment for his voyage. He would surely try again, though,
before he sailed. He wanted to “part friends” with the
boy if possible.
While he was paying his check in the dining room of
the Mitre he saw that the innkeeper was pointing him
out to a bloated man in a filthy apron. He went to the
stranger and asked his business.
“If yer name’s McKnight, ye’re wanted at Poultry
Compter,” the man said. “Jailer told me to fetch ye. It’s
about a boy ye know there named Wayneman.”
“Very well,” McKnight said, puzzled at being sent
for. “I went to see him last week and wasn’t pennitted to.
What’s up now?”
“Wayneman’s sick, is all I know.”
The jailer received John McKnight suavely. “The
[=41]


H
If it weren’t for my smallpox I wouldn’t be at
Chatham at all,” Toby remarked. “I’d be at Poultry
Compter.”
“That’s so, fellow. So I’m reconciled.”
Toby looked at himself in McKnight’s shaving mirror
that first day out and studied his face thoughtfully. He
saw that he was somewhat scarred. “I’m glad Mr. and
Mis’ Peeps can’t see me now, Dr. McKnight. They don’t
like pitted people.”
“Who in thunder are Mr. and Mrs. Peeps?”
“They had a good deal to do with me, Dr. McKnight.”
“While we’re making this crossing, Toby, we’ll have
time to get acquainted. All I know of you begins when
you walked into the grove with Dudley, the highway-
man, and he said you were a boy on the loose that used
to live at Loughton.”
“That’s so, ain’t it?”
“It seems odd I know so little about you when we’ve
had such narrow squeaks together.”
“You told me about yourself, though. You said you
failed your medical degree at Edinburgh because you
have faulty nerves and can’t amputate.”
“Yes, I remember telling you. The green bottle set
my tongue loose there in the grove. Well, I’m letting
the bottle alone, Toby, and my nerves aren’t as faulty
as they used to be. I aim to practice medicine in America,
surgery too.”
Toby was having another look at his face in the
shaving mirror, frowning at himself.
“Quit moping about your looks!” McKnight exclaimed
impatiently. “You were too blasted pretty before you
[=47]


still want to go there. It’s the most promising port in
America. I plan to be a physician there.”
“See here, Doctor, it’s safe enough to tell you now.
The English fleet is hard on her way here to take New
Amsterdam from Stuyvesant. If you think I’m going to
run into that harbor, that beehive, you’re mistaken.
We’re going up the Delaware River, and no mistake.
There’s a nice Swedish and English settlement there on
the Schuylkill River. I’ll sell my cargo there. You can
take a horseback trip up to New York if you want to.
I’ll pay your overland passage, yours and the boy’s.”
Toby came closer. “What river is that settlement on,
Captain?” he asked.
“On the Schuylkill, lad, where it enters the Delaware.
Run along now. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Did you hear that, Dr. McKnight?” Toby asked
tensely.
“Yes, I did, Toby. But it’s all pretty confusing. It’s
big news, though, the English taking over from the
Dutch. Everybody’ll speak English. It’ll eliminate a lot
of bother. It’ll certainly facilitate my medical prac-
tice——”
Toby interrupted to explain in a clear voice: “Mr.
and Mrs. Obadiah Staples on the Skoolkill River—that’s
where Dulcie Lane lives. I’ll stay right there.”
Among the prominent and useful citizens to watch Mr.
William Penn take possession of his American grant in
1682 was a young man a little past thirty years old; tall,
[149]


well built, genial, with even features (slightly pock-
marked), and curly red hair.
William Penn, still handsome, somewhat corpulent,
wore his Quaker clothes with distinction. When he had
finished making his speech (which was practical, though
laced with brotherly love and fine ideals), and when he
had formally declared the region to be named Pennsyl-
vania, he announced himself ready to meet the people
who had settled there.
The first to step up was the red-haired young man; he

(fl 1”.‘