midnight
If any creature in the world had cared a straw for the poor child , he must have been lost over and over : nobody did care for him , and he was as sure to turn up as a bad guinea . He has been cried like _ Found _ Goods in Belford Market : advertised like a strayed donkey in the _ H -- shire Courant _ ; put for safe keeping into compters , cages , roundhouses , and bridewells : passed , by different constables , through half the parishes in the county ; and so frequently and minutely described in handbills and the _ Hue and Cry _ , that by the time he was twelve years old , his stature , features , and complexion were as well known to the rural police as those of some great state criminal . In a word , `` the lad _ would _ live ; '' and the Aberleigh overseers , who would doubtless have been far from inconsolable if they had never happened to hear of him again , were reluctantly obliged to make the best of their bargain . Accordingly , they placed him as a sort of boy of all-work at `` the shop '' at Hinton , where he remained , upon an accurate computation , somewhere about seven hours ; they then put him with a butcher at Langley , where he staid about five hours and a-half , arriving at dusk , and escaping before midnight : then with a baker at Belford , in which good town he sojourned the -LRB- for him -RRB- unusual space of two nights and a day ; and then they apprenticed him to Master Samuel Goddard , an eminent dealer in cattle leaving his new master to punish him according to law , provided he should run away again . Run away of course he did ; but as he had contrived to earn for himself a comfortably bad character for stupidity and laziness , and as he timed his evasion well -- during the interval between the sale of a bargain of Devonshire stots , and the purchase of a lot of Scotch kyloes , when his services were little needed -- and as Master Samuel Goddard had too much to do and to think of , to waste his time and his trouble on a search after a heavy-looking under-drover , with a considerable reputation for laziness , Jesse , for the first time in his life , escaped his ordinary penalties of pursuit and discovery -- the parish officers contenting themselves by notifying to Master Samuel Goddard , that they considered their responsibility , legal as well as moral , completely transferred to him in virtue of their indentures , and that whatever might be the future destiny of his unlucky apprentice , whether frozen or famished , hanged or drowned , the blame would rest with the cattle-dealer aforesaid , to whom they resolved to refer all claims on their protection , whether advanced by Jesse himself or by others . Small intention had Jesse Cliffe to return to their protection or their workhouse ! The instinct of freedom was strong in the poor boy -- quick and strong as in the beast of the field , or the bird of the air .