It hurt him as much or more to hear the stick raining blows on them as it did to feel it on his own poor battered body, for his poor skin was hardened, but his feelings were not.
On each side of the wide road which ran past the coppice and away from it were sunk ditches and high hedges, separating it from a bit of wild moorland, which stretched away on either side as far as eye could see.

Here and there in the hedges were gaps, through which a person or an animal could pass from the road to the moor, and back again.

To Dick, who did not understand it, this was very bewildering.

Ahead of him a black shadow would flit for a moment, dark against the dazzling white road, then it would disappear.
It moved so swiftly and so close to the ground, that if it had not been for the scent he might have thought it was some animal dodging about among the ditches and dry grasses.

Dick could not know that when it had slipped through a gap in the hedge it became, instead of a shadow, a solid little dingy brown figure.
Dick was puzzled.