the heavy door, and laid myself down to sleep, with a log for pillow.

Though sleep seemed long in coming, it came at last, and it was heavy
and dreamless, until the sun shone through the chinks between the logs
whereof the hut was built, and I woke.

Then I rose up, opened the door, and looked out on the morning. The
level sunbeams crept through the trees and made everything very fresh
and fair, and a little light frost hung over twigs and young fern fronds
everywhere, so that I seemed in the land of fairy instead of the
Quantocks. The birds were singing loudly, and a squirrel came and
chattered at me, and then, running up a bough, sat up, still as if
carved from the wood it was resting on, and watched me seemingly without
fear. Then I went down the combe and sought a pool, and bathed, and ate
the last of the food the collier had given me. Where I should get more I
knew not, nor cared just then, for it was enough to carry me on for the
next day and night, if need be, seeing that I had been bred to a
hunter's life in the open, and a Saxon should need but one full meal in
the day, whether first or last.

Now while I ate and thought, it seemed harder to me to leave these hills
and combes that I loved than it had seemed overnight; and at last I
thought I would traverse them once again, and so make to the headland,
above Watchet and Quantoxhead on either side, and then down along the
shore, always deserted there, to the hills above Minehead, by skirting
round Watchet, and so on into the great and lonely moors beyond, where I
could go into house or hamlet without fear of being known.

Then I remembered that to seek help in the villages must be to ask
charity. That would be freely given, doubtless, but would lead to