Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 3.djvu/219

 pace, or stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges with his stick. But when he got there, all the people he met—the very children at the doors seemed to view him with suspicion. Back he turned again, without the courage to purchase bit or drop, though he had tasted no food for many hours; and once more he lingered on the Heath, uncertain where to go.

He wandered over miles and miles of ground and still came back to the old place; morning and noon had passed, and the day was on the wane, and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down, and round and round, and still lingered about the same spot. At last he got away, and shaped his course for Hatfield.

It was nine o'clock at night when the man quite tired out, and the dog limping and lame from the unaccastomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little street crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap room, and some country-labourers were