The day I
fainted after winning a steeplechase, he turned a bucket of cold water
over me, and as this roused me into a tingling vitality of pain, he was
quite proud of his treatment, and told me nothing brought a really good
horse round after a hard day like a bucket of clean water. And (so much
are we the creatures of our conditions!) I remember feeling something
approaching to satisfaction at the reflection that I had "gone till I
dropped," and had been brought round after the manner of the
best-conducted stables.
It was not that that made Jem and me run away. (For we did run away.)
Overstrain and collapse, ill-usage short of torture, hard living and
short commons, one got a certain accustomedness to, according to the
merciful law which within certain limits makes a second nature for us
out of use and wont. The one pain that knew no pause, and allowed of no
revival, the evil that overbore us, mind and body, was the evil of
constant dread. Upon us little boys fear lay always, and the terror of
it was that it was uncertain. What would come next, and from whom, we
never knew.
It was I who settled we should run away.
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