Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/476

 CHERRY. 465 thropic female lamented that she could not farnish him with a bed, but offered to lend him her husband's cloke, and to procure a bundle of dry hay, that he might sleep in an empty room in her house. His heart was too full to pay his gratitude in words; his eyes thanked her; he wept bitterly, accepted her kind offer, and retired to rest. The intruding any further on her kindness was painful t him, as she was struggling to maintain a numerous off spring. He therefore carefully avoided the house at meal- times, and wandered through the fields or streets, until he supposed their repasts were finished: at last, so overcome by fasting and fatigue, that he could not rest, he rose from his trooper's cloke in the dead of the night, and explored the kitchen, searching the dresser and all its shelves and drawers, in hopes of inding something that might satisfy the cravings of his appetite, but in vain. On his return to his hay truss, he aceidentally struck against the kitchen table, the noise of which he feared might alarm the family and, uncertain of the real cause of his leaving his apart- ment at that hour, they might naturally suppose that his purpose was to rob the house, as a reward for their hospi- tality: the idea added to the misery he then suffered; he trembled, he listened, but all was quiet; and then renewed his search (for his hunger overcame his fears), and to his gratification he found a large crust of stale bread, which he was afterwards informed had been used for rubbing out some spots of white paint from the very cloke that com- posed his bedding; he, however, ate it with avidity, as he was entering on the fourth day without the least refresh- ment, and returned heartfelt thanks to Providence, whose omnipotent hand was stretched in the very critical mo- ment, to save him from the most direful of all possible deaths,-starving! At length, after enduring, in all probability, not more than the usual and every-day hardships attendant on the life of a strolling player, he quitted the stage, and even now " returned to reason and the shop," remaining at home for upwards of three years. The "strutting and VOL. I. НН