After that his gait grew slower and more halting, but he set his teeth and pulled himself along, as if it were an enemy he held by the collar; he had made up his mind to sleep some six or eight miles out of Warwick at a hamlet that marked the furthest limit of his school rambles, and his plan should not be altered because he had foolishly slept away precious time. The sun set and left him toiling along the highway; the twilight darkened; and the crescent of the moon was riding low among the stars, when Hugh dragged his tired feet over the threshold of the inn for which he aimed. The house was about closing and there was little welcome for this belated traveller, but from sheer weariness the boy was past resenting uncivil usage. He ate thankfully what was given him, stumbled away to his chamber, and, almost before he had flung off his dusty clothes, was sound asleep. When he woke the mid-morning sun was streaming through the window full in his face, but there was a sharpness in the air of the little chamber that made him pull the blankets up to his chin. The poor inn bed seemed far more comfortable than any he had slept upon at Everscombe; it took an inordinate amount of resolution to rise from it, and an equal courage to drag his shoes on to his swollen feet. But he had already lost the bracing early hours of the day and he must waste no more time in coddling himself, so he took the road at once, as briskly as his limbs would bear him. Sore and stiff as he still was from yesterday’s long march, he made slow progress; it was close on midday when, passing through the town of Coventry, he entered upon the old Roman road, the Fosse, which he was to follow. The sight of the straight way stretching endlessly northeast discouraged him at first, but after a short rest he pulled himself together and, hobbling on, half forgot the pain in his heels in the exhilaration of going forward. It was new country he was now passing through, for he was no traveller; Everscombe to Warwick had been his usual round, save for that one trip into Worcestershire with Frank Pleydall. Since the last year, when Peregrine had been up to London with his father, Hugh had fretted at the narrow range of his journeyings and felt aggrieved at having made his German travels so young that he could cudgel up only scant recollections of them. But now Peregrine might go to London or Staffordshire or whither he pleased; Hugh felt no jealousy, for he knew it was far pleasanter to be an independent traveller, bound to Nottingham and a soldier father.