d; but at sight of everyone
a feeling rose in him such as he had never had towards human being
before: they seemed somehow of a different kind from those in the
town, and they did not look friendly as they passed. He did not
know that he presented to them a very different countenance from
that which his fellow-citizens had always seen him wear; for the
mingled and conflicting emotions of his spirit had sent out upon it
an expression which, accompanied by the misery of his garments,
might well, to the superficial or inexperienced observer, convey the
idea that he was a fugitive and guilty. He was so uncomfortable at
length from the way the people he met scrutinized him that, when he
saw anyone coming, he would instantly turn aside and take the covert
of thicket, or hedge, or stone wall, until the bearer of eyes had
passed. His accustomed trot, which he kept up for several hours,
made him look the more suspicious; but his feet, hardened from very
infancy as they were, soon found the difference between the smooth
flags and the sharp stones of the road, and before noon he was
walking at quite a sober, although still active, pace. Doubtless it
slackened the sooner that he knew no goal, no end to his wandering.
Up Daurside was the one vague notion he had of his calling, his
destiny, and with his short, quick step, his progress was
considerable; he passed house after house, farm after farm; but,
never in the way of asking for anything, though as little in the way
of refusing, he went nearer none of them than the road led him.
Besides, the houses were very unlike those in the city, and not at
all attractive to him. He came at length to a field, sloping to the
road, which was covered with leaves like some he had often seen in
the market. They drew him; and as there was but a low and imperfect
hedge between, he got over, and found it was a crop of small yellow
turnips. He gathered as many as he could carry, and ate them as he
went along. Happily no agricultural person encountered him for some
distance, though Gibbie knew no special cause to congratulate
himself upon that, having not the slightest conscience of offence in
what he did. His notions of property were all associated with
well-known visible or neighbouring owners, and in the city he would
never have dreamed of touching anything that was not given him,
except it lay plainly a lost thing. But here, where everything was
so different, and he saw none of the signs