The summer days passed wearily enough to lonely little Tan. He missed Jack’s kind thoughtfulness in many ways, but especially in shielding him from the rough treatment, which was now only too common. Ever since that bright spring morning, when the resolve had taken hold of him to run away and seek to find his protector, he had watched for some favorable opportunity, but had always been frustrated when the way looked clear.
The little fellow — wise beyond his years — began to think that Jack by this time would probably be far away. Yet it was getting unbearable in the rough caravan, and the thought of another winter gave him fresh desire to escape. If he could not find Jack, perhaps someone would take pity, and give him a place in some happy home. There he could learn more about the One who said, “Suffer little children to come unto Me,” and then he would tell them about his friend. Surely they would help him to find out where Jack lived.
From Bedford the caravan journeyed through the summer months into some of the busy, prosperous Midland towns. But as September’s cooler days approached, Mr. Smith told his wife, “ ’ Twould be best to get up London way by the winter, as ’taint so cold as yer country towns.”
Little Tan, to his delight, found the caravan going down the same roads that six months earlier had filled him with anxious desire to run away and look for Jack. Bedford had been “a fine, lucky place,” Meg had observed, so they had decided to spend a few days there.
It had been on a bright September afternoon that Raymond and Vincent Brunton had seen the shabby gypsy child, leaning over the low doorway, and had asked him his name. Their simple, childish question had made Jim Smith angry and he had decided in his own mind that Tan must have beckoned to them secretly. When the child stoutly denied such a charge, the man called him a designing rascal, and said he didn’t believe a word. He declared that Tan only tried to make people think he was ill-treated, when he should have been grateful for his food and bed. He’d teach him to behave differently.
Poor little Tan got a hard whipping, Meg agreeing it “sarved him right.” That night the determination to escape, which so long had filled his mind, turned into action.
Watching closely while pretending to sleep, Tan waited for Meg and her husband to fall asleep. At first it seemed they would never go to sleep. But at last he could hear the heavy and even breathing that signaled they were no longer awake. Sal, having taken over Jack’s bed since he went away, was asleep beside Tan. Creeping around Sal, he very cautiously gathered his few pieces of clothing and hastily dressed. Nothing else remained to him, not even the kitten, who had once delighted his lonely heart. Groping his way carefully to the door, with many frightened glances toward the corner where Meg and her husband lay, he stepped out into the fresh, sharp night air.
The harvest moon lit up the long, white road that Tan knew led to Bedford. There he would find plenty of people. Perhaps someone would take pity on him, he told himself over and over again, and help him find Jack.
For a short time the little feet ran swiftly. Then the steps got shorter and shorter and slower and slower. The caravan was now out of sight. To Tan it seemed a long way behind, and he began to feel comparatively safe. There was no need to constantly steal furtive glances backward as he had done at first.
He strolled along more leisurely now, through the quiet country. Except for the occasional distant bark of some farmhouse dog on guard, no sound disturbed the night or the boy. No one saw the little nondescript figure that so steadily kept on and on in the bright moonlight. Tan was not frightened. He was far too accustomed to the stillness of the country night. The dark shadows, which the moon and surrounding trees cast upon the road, held no terror for a boy who had spent two years in company with a gypsy caravan.
The little wanderer passed a white house standing among many varied colors of dahlias and chrysanthemums, now looking like dark blots in the bright moonlight. Inside, asleep like the gypsies, was a family who yearned to find and clasp with their arms and hearts the adored son and brother they had lost two years before. At night they slept; in the day they never failed to ask God to restore to them their treasure. The searching boy passed on into the night.
The hours sped by. Those little feet that had started with such energy were getting very weary as the early dawn gleamed in the autumn sky. Bedford could be seen only half a mile away, but little Tan, faint from lack of food and unutterably tired, sank down by the roadside, and within a few moments was fast asleep. There he lay while angels kept watch over his stony pillow.
A few hours later Raymond and Vincent Brunton, going down the road on their way to school, came upon the child.
“Why, here’s the little gypsy boy fast asleep,” cried Vincent.
“So it is,” exclaimed the older boy, hurrying up. “How tired he looks, and where can the caravan be? Have they left him here all alone to die!” said Raymond, sympathetically, while tears filled his eyes. “Let’s wake him up, Vin, and ask where the caravan has gone to.”
“Gypsy boy, gypsy boy! Where’s your father gone?” said Vincent, bending over the sleeping child.
Tan opened his eyes, rubbed them, and sat up.
“I’m going to Bedford to find Jack perhaps,” said the child quietly. He was afraid to say much. They might tell someone from the caravan, for he recognized the boys again as having spoken to him previously when he was in the caravan.
“Are you hungry?” queried thoughtful Raymond.
“Very!” came the answer, and even had he not replied, the expression in his eloquent eyes would have convinced even the most unobservant that he was.
“Here’s something for you,” said the boy, and, thrusting his lunch into the little fellow’s hand, called out to his brother, “Come along, Vin, we shall be late if we stop any longer. Good-bye,” he shouted, looking back, “I hope you’ll find him all right.”
Tan opened the parcel, and his little eyes brightened at the sight of jam sandwiches.
“He was a kind boy,” he whispered to himself, “and I forgot to thank him; but I’ll thank God now for it.”
Kneeling down on the dusty roadside, the child sent up a simple message of thanks to the One who had sent His ministering angels to protect and guide the little wanderer, even as He led His people, the children of Abraham, long before by the “right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.”
After his simple breakfast, Tan walked on into the town. Several, as they passed, gazed at the shabby little lad, but there were plenty of young boys, some almost as shabby and poor as he, going to school and older ones going to work, so no one stopped to question the child about who he was or where he was going.
In vain he searched for someone, among the many crowding the streets, whom he could stop and ask if they would help him find Jack. They all appeared too busy, and he was afraid he might ask the wrong person. No one seemed to pay any attention to him or give him more than a passing glance as they hurried about their business. All around were people, but no one to help. He felt lost and confused.
At length his hunger overcame his fear. Going up to a tidy-looking woman, standing in her doorway on a side street, he summoned up courage to beg for a piece of bread. She looked at him suspiciously.
“Where’s your mother? Dead, I suppose you’ll say.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said little Tan.
“Yes! the same old tale,” said the woman, “but here is a penny for you, and don’t come begging again.”
Turning to a neighbor she observed, “Those gypsies always have some story ready.”
Tan quickly exchanged the coin at the nearest baker’s for a small loaf of bread. Finding himself close by the public gardens, where children and their nurses were congregated, he slipped in. He found a secluded spot and sat down. The bread quickly disappeared, but not his feelings of loneliness.
He almost wished himself back again in the caravan. Where to go or what to do he did not know. Hour after hour passed by, and Tan still sat in the park watching the children at play. They looked happy; he felt left out. He couldn’t remember if he had ever played with anyone his own age. He wanted to see his mother. His heart ached for her. But Meg had told him she was dead. If he could only die and go to Jesus, he would see Mamma there. Around and around the thoughts went in his head, but none of them told him what to do next.
Unlike August, the September days lost their warmth as evening approached. As the sun disappeared on the horizon, the air turned cool. Anxious to get home in the daylight, the park keeper came across to little Tan, still sitting disconsolately on the seat he had occupied since noon, and told him he must be off, for they were going to close the park gates.
How quickly it got dark, and how completely lost Tan felt now! Too tired to wander any more, and at a loss where to go or what to do, Tan just sat on a doorstep outside the park and the tears, which had been held back all day, followed one another rapidly down his cheeks.
As he was no longer thinking, but just feeling, Tan did not shrink away when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a gruff voice said, though not unkindly, “Now, then, you must move on!” The sound of a voice and the touch of a human hand aroused little Tan from solitude. Looking up through his tears, he saw a tall, stalwart policeman bending over him.
“Oh, please, I haven’t anywhere to go. Will you take me somewhere, because I haven’t any place to sleep in now. I ran away from the caravan yesterday.”
He said it without thinking, and the pleading eyes looked up into the face of the officer of the law, free from that fear which many have when stopped by a policeman.
“Come along w’ me, little un; I’ll take you to a safe place,” said the kindhearted man. The child rose with difficulty, being stiff and weary and weak too from lack of food.
The policeman held his hand all the way to the nearby police station. Once there, he was carefully questioned as to how and why he came to be sitting so sad and alone on the doorstep, apparently with no one to look after him and no home to go to. With childlike frankness Tan told the story as far as he knew: His home was a caravan, but the man whipped him, now that Jack was gone. His own mother “lived with Jesus.” To the query as to whether he always lived in the van, the little fellow replied, “No, not always,” but he was quite unable to give any answer as to where he had lived before.
At that moment, Ethel and Ferndale had entirely passed out of his thoughts. Though only two years had passed, his life before the caravan was a complete blank to his confused mind and suffering heart. He knew the gypsy caravan was not his first home, for Jack had often reminded him that Meg was not his own mother; his real mother was dead. He could remember coming to live with the gypsy family, but nothing before that. More about Mr. Smith he did not say, lest he be sent back for more beatings.
Tan slept soundly that night. The next morning a paragraph appeared in the daily paper, describing a little wanderer who had been found and who gave his name as “Tan.”