ts, but
in a while I turned away and left him sprawled in his sottish slumber.

CHAPTER III

TELLS HOW I STOLE MY BREAKFAST

The mist lay very thick all about me, but when I had climbed to higher
ground it thinned away somewhat, so that as the pallid light grew I
began to see something of the havoc wrought by the storm; here and
there lay trees uprooted, while everywhere was a tangle of broken
boughs and trailing branches, insomuch that I found my going no small
labour. But presently as I forced a way through these leafy tangles,
the birds, awaking, began to fill the dim world with blithe chirpings
that grew and grew to a sweet clamour, ever swelling until the dark
woods thrilled with gladsome music and I, beholding the first beam of
sun, felt heartened thereby 'spite my lack of sleep and the gnawing of
hunger's sharp fangs, and hastened with blither steps. Thus in a while
I brake forth of the desolate trees and came out upon a fair, rolling
meadow with blooming hedgerows before me and, beyond, the high road.
And now as I stayed to get my bearings, up rose the sun in majesty, all
glorious in purple and pink and gold, whose level beams turned the
world around me into a fair garden all sweet and fresh and green,
while, in the scowling woods behind, the sullen mists crept furtive
away till they were vanished quite and those leafy solitudes became a
very glory.

But my hunger was very sore, a need I purposed to satisfy soon and at
all hazards; therefore, having marked my direction, I went at speed
and, crossing the meadow, came into the highway and struck south. On
my going through the woods I had chosen me a cudgel in place of the one
lost, shortish and knotted and very apt for quick wrist-play, and I
plucked forth my sailor's knife meaning to trim my staff therewith; but
with it poised in my hand, I stopped all at once, for I saw that the
point of the stout blade (the which I had sharpened and whetted to an
extreme keenness), I perceived, I say, that the blade was bent somewhat
and the point turned, hook-like. Now as I strode on again, the early
sun flashing back from the steel, I fell to wondering how this had
chanced, and bethinking me of those two deadly blows I had struck in
the dark I scrutinised my knife, blade and haft, yet found nowhere on
it any trace of blood, so that 'twas manifest the fellow had worn some
protection--chain-shirts were common enough and many a rogue went with
a steel skull to line