Larry had told but a small portion of the particulars concerning that quarrel—leaving out how Job Dowling had struck him senseless with his cane, and how he had recovered to find himself a prisoner in the garret of the cottage, with his step-uncle gone off to swear out a warrant for his arrest. It had been an easy matter for the lad to escape from the garret by dropping from the window to the roof of the kitchen addition, and with the housekeeper also gone, to the market, the boy had had matters his own way in supplying himself with food. The chase to the freight yard had been a close one, and he had been all but exhausted when the door was shut and locked and the long train rolled on its way.
The train had taken him only as far as Oakland, and there he had remained for several days, with not enough money to take him across the bay to the metropolis of the Golden Gate. Hard times had followed,—for runaways do not always fare so well as boys imagine they do,—and more than once Larry had crept away to some secluded corner, to go to sleep whenever the pangs of hunger would allow. It was hunger as much as anything else which had driven him to accept the offer to ship
