Whereas in my former life,
when I was assailed by a Man of the Road, whether tramp or
peddler or poet, I had only to stand stock-still within my fences
and say nothing--though indeed I never could do that, being far
too much interested in every one who came my way--and the invader
was soon repelled. There is nothing so resistant as the dull
security of possession the stolidity of ownership!
Many times that day I stopped by a field side or at the end of a
lane, or at a house-gate, and considered the possibilities of
making an attack. Oh, I measured the houses and barns I saw with
a new eye! The kind of country I had known so long and familiarly
became a new and foreign land, full of strange possibilities. I
spied out the men in the fields and did not fail, also, to see
what I could of the commissary department of each farmstead as I
passed. I walked for miles looking thus for a favourable
opening--and with a sensation of embarrassment at once
disagreeable and pleasurable. As the afternoon began to deepen I
saw that I must absolutely do something: a whole day tramping in
the open air without a bite to eat is an irresistible argument.
Presently I saw from the road a farmer and his son planting
potatoes in a sloping field. There was no house at all in view.
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