his feet, and again
walked forward.

He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full four
miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo ere he could
hope to reach his place of destination. As this consideration forced
itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and meditated upon his
means of getting there. He had a crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and
two pairs of stockings, in his bundle. He had a penny too--a gift of
Sowerberry's after some funeral in which he had acquitted himself more
than ordinarily well--in his pocket. 'A clean shirt,' thought Oliver,
'is a very comfortable thing; and so are two pairs of darned stockings;
and so is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles' walk
in winter time.' But Oliver's thoughts, like those of most other
people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out his
difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of
surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular
purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and
trudged on.

Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted nothing
but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water, which he
begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the night came, he
turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined
to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened at first, for the wind
moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and
more alone than he had ever felt before. Being very tired with his
walk, however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles.

He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry that
he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the very
first village through which he passed. He had walked no more than
twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore, and his
legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night passed in
the bleak damp air, made him worse; when he set forward on his journey
next morning he could hardly crawl along.

He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up, and
then begged of the outside passengers; but there were very few who took
any notice of him: and even those told him to wait till they got to the
top of the hill, and then let them see how far he could run for a
halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the coach a little