The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge

badgers, and all sorts of birds. She did not yet know the names of the birds and beasts, but the little pictures made her love them. In one corner she found a bed of dried heather spread with old sacks and near it some roughly made wooden dishes, a clay pot full of wild flowers and a basket of plaited osiers containing dry wrinkled apples, nuts, and queer-looking roots. But no Betsy. She was on the point of going out again when she noticed a curtain of hide hanging on the wall, lifted it and saw a narrow fissure in the wall of the cave, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and beyond it a roughly made wooden ladder ascending a sloping chimney in the rock. Pale green light filtered down the chimney, so she supposed it led up to the hillside above. She dropped the curtain and drew back, for the ladder was so steep and the rungs so far apart that she did not think Betsy could possibly have gone up it.
    But after a moment or two she realised that someone was coming down it, for she heard heavy footsteps slowly descending. Had it not been for Betsy she would have run away, but she had to ask whoever it was whether he, or it, had seen Betsy. So, trembling, she stood her ground.
    He came out backwards from behind the curtain and with deep relief she saw he was a man, not a thing, a tall man with bent shoulders and tawny hair and beard. He turned round, straightened up and saw her. His jaw dropped in consternation and a look of alarm came into his golden-brown eyes. He was dressed in the oddest assortment of ragged garments and seemed to be what Grandmama called a tramp. She did not like them and had a notice on her gate which said, ‘No tramps. No hawkers. Beware of the dog.’ But Nan liked this man on sight, just as she liked Ezra and Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. He was big and strong, and golden like a lion, yet at sight of her he had begun to tremble too, and because he was frightened she ceased to be afraid, and to reassure him she held out to him the flowers she was still carrying. He took them with joy, his whole face lighting up, counted them carefully and added them to the other flowers in the clay pot.

    ‘You dropped them?’ asked Nan. He nodded and smiled at her and taking a wrinkled apple from a basket he held it out to her. To please him she took it and ate it, but it was as dry as a bit of leather. He opened his mouth and made a strange sound and an expression of deep sorrow came over his face, and Nan knew that he was dumb. She knew because they had had a dumb servant in India, and he had made those samestrange noises and his face had worn that same look of bewildered sorrow. Nan had grown very clever at saying for him what he wanted to say and she found she could do the same for this man. ‘You were picking flowers in the wood down below,’ she said, ‘and you heard voices and a dog barking and you ran away and climbed up above the treetops home again, but in your hurry you dropped some of the flowers. One must not drop flowers, for then they die. It was only my voice you heard, and Ezra’s, and our dog barking, and we wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.’
    An expression of relief came over the tramp’s face, and taking her hand he bent down and kissed it. His gesture was gentle and courteous and she thought that after all he couldn’t be quite an ordinary tramp, not the sort you warn off by notices on the gate about savage dogs that aren’t there, and he would understand how anxious she was about Betsy. And so leaving her hand in his, she told him about Betsy being lost. He looked sad and shook his head to show her that Betsy was not there, and he pointed up the ladder down which he had come and shook his head again to tell her that Betsy was not up there with the sheep on the hillside, and then taking Nan with him, he went to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out, his hand over his eyes. They saw no one at first and then the tramp gave a croak of pleasure, for down below them in the small