l blaze; I then drew my cart near the fire, and, seating
myself on one of the shafts, hung over the warmth with feelings of
intense pleasure and satisfaction. Having continued in this posture for
a considerable time, I turned my eyes to the heaven in the direction of a
particular star; I, however, could not find the star, nor indeed many of
the starry train, the greater number having fled, from which
circumstance, and from the appearance of the sky, I concluded that
morning was nigh. About this time I again began to feel drowsy; I
therefore arose, and having prepared for myself a kind of couch in the
tent, I flung myself upon it and went to sleep.

I will not say that I was awakened in the morning by the carolling of
birds, as I perhaps might if I were writing a novel; I awoke because, to
use vulgar language, I had slept my sleep out, not because the birds were
carolling around me in numbers, as they had probably been for hours
without my hearing them. I got up and left my tent; the morning was yet
more bright than that of the preceding day. Impelled by curiosity, I
walked about endeavouring to ascertain to what place chance, or rather
the pony, had brought me; following the drift-way for some time, amidst
bushes and stunted trees, I came to a grove of dark pines, through which
it appeared to lead; I tracked it a few hundred yards, but seeing nothing
but trees, and the way being wet and sloughy, owing to the recent rain, I
returned on my steps, and, pursuing the path in another direction, came
to a sandy road leading over a common, doubtless the one I had traversed
the preceding night. My curiosity satisfied, I returned to my little
encampment, and on the way beheld a small footpath on the left winding
through the bushes, which had before escaped my observation. Having
reached my tent and cart, I breakfasted on some of the provisions which I
had procured the day before, and then proceeded to take a regular account
of the stock formerly possessed by Slingsby the tinker, but now become my
own by right of lawful purchase.

Besides the pony, the cart, and the tent, I found I was possessed of a
mattress stuffed with straw on which to lie, and a blanket to cover me,
the last quite clean and nearly new; then there was a frying pan and a
kettle, the first for cooking any food which required cooking, and the
second for heating any water which I might wish to heat. I likewise
found an earthen teapot and two or three cups;