d Idleness into Activity.

The Sun had begun to welk in the west by the time I had mustered up
enough courage to come into the High Road, which I had an uncertain idea
stretched away from Gnawbit's house, and towards Reading. But suddenly
recalling the Danger of travelling by the Highway, where I might be met
by Horsemen or Labouring persons sent in quest of me,--for it did not
enter my mind that I was too worthless a scholar to be Pursued, and that
Gnawbit was, 'tis likely enough, more Pleased than sorry to be Rid of
me,--I branched off from the main to the left; so walking, as it seemed
to me, many miles, I grew grievously hungry. No more Bread or Apples
remained in my pouch; but I still had my Guinea, so I deemed, and
resolved that if I came upon any House of Entertainment, I would sup.
For indeed, while all Nature round me seemed to be taking some kind of
Sustenance, it was hard that I, a Christian, should go to bed (or into
another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, and yet had slept in my time in a
grand chamber in Hanover Square) with an empty belly. The Earth was
beginning to drink up the dews, like an insatiate toper as she is. I
passed a flock of sheep biting their hasty supper from the grass; and
each one with a little cloud of gnats buzzing around it, that with
feeble stings, poor insects, were trying for their supper too. And 'tis
effect we have upon another. The birds had taken home their worm-cheer
to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper
songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the
Nightingale,--that I knew,--but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather
and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to
feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a
Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I
could not help thinking, as I heard the birds carolling so merrily,--and
how they keep so plump upon so little to eat is always to me a marvel,
until I remember with what loving care Heaven daily spreads their table
from Nature's infinite ordinary,--how choice a Refection a dish of
birds' eggs, so often idly stolen and blown hollow by us boys, would
make. The feathered creatures are a forgiving folk; and 'tis not
unlikely that the Children in the Wood had often gone birds'-nesting:
but when they were dead, the kindly Red Jerkins forgave all their little
maraudings, and covered them with leaves, as th