CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Alec held his head in his hands, trying to stop his headache, as the carriage, packed with boys, jolted roughly along the country road, as it had been doing all night long. The bumps and ditches never seemed to end, and this primitive wooden cart, with its iron bars and wooden wheels, seemed to have been constructed to inflict the maximum possible discomfort. With each bump, Alec’s head slammed into the wood behind him. After the first bump, he had been sure it could not go on like this for long, that the road must end sometime soon.
But hour after hour had passed, and if anything, the road only seemed to worsen. He had been awake all night long, with no hope of sleep, if not from the bumps then from the stink of the other boys, from their elbowing and jostling him awake
