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. He betook
himself to the Moors (one of his earliest and favourite haunts) with a
vague assurance of safety in the deep solitude of those wide-spreading
meadows, and the close coppices that surrounded them: and at little
more than twelve years of age he began a course of lonely, half-savage,
self-dependent life, such as has been rarely heard of in this civilised
country. How he lived is to a certain point a mystery. Not by stealing.
That was agreed on all hands--except indeed, so far as a few roots of
turnips and potatoes, and a few ears of green corn, in their several
seasons, may be called theft. Ripe corn for his winter's hoard, he
gleaned after the fields were cleared, with a scrupulous honesty that
might have read a lesson to peasant children of a happier nurture.
And they who had opportunities to watch the process, said that it was
curious to see him bruise the grain between large stones, knead the rude
flour with fair water, mould his simple cakes, and then bake them in a
primitive oven formed by his own labour in a dry bank of the coppice,
and heated by rotten wood shaken from the tops of the trees, (which he
climbed like a squirrel,) and kindled by a flint and a piece of an old
horse-shoe:--such was his unsophisticated cookery! Nuts and berries from
the woods; fish from the Kennett--caught with such tackle as might be
constructed of a stick and a bit of packthread, with a strong pin
or needle formed into a hook; and perhaps an occasional rabbit or
partridge, entrapped by some such rough and inartificial contrivance,
formed his principal support; a modified, and, according to his vague
notions of right and wrong, an innocent form of poaching, since he
sought only what was requisite for his own consumption, and would have
shunned as a sin the killing game to sell. Money, indeed, he little
needed. He formed his bed of fern or dead grass, in the deepest recesses
of the coppice--a natural shelter; and the renewal of raiment, which
warmth and decency demanded, he obtained by emerging from his solitude,
and joining such parties as a love of field sports brought into his
vicinity in the pursuit of game--an inspiring combination of labour
and diversion, which seemed to awaken something