At length he got to his feet and started down the hillside by the path the man had shown him, slowly, for all the spring had gone out of his gait now, and his knees felt weak and shook so that more than once he had to pause to rest. During such a halt a sickening fear seized him: suppose after all he should never reach his father? There was no danger of his dying of starvation yet, for he had had food as late as the previous morning; but what if strength failed him and he fell down in the fields or lonely woods and slowly perished there? That fear still staying with him, he made his night’s resting-place under a hedge, almost within hail of a farmhouse. He lay down early in the twilight, too exhausted to make the day’s march longer, but he could not sleep for very hunger. In the first hours of his waking the dim light in the distant farmhouse gave him company, but after that he had only the stars. He lay huddled in a heap for warmth and stared up into the sky at Charles’s Wain and the North Star, that were shining clear as on the night when he quitted Everscombe. He lost sight of the stars at last, slept, and woke in white moonlight, then slept and woke again, and, finding the chilly dawn breaking, rose and plodded painfully out into the highway. The farmhouse in the gray morning did not bear out the hospitable promise of its candle of the night before; so, sick with hunger though he was, Hugh went by it without so much as asking for a drink of water. But a few rods farther on, when he caught sight of some apple trees, he crawled through the hedge and helped himself, then hurried away guiltily and tramped the next quarter mile so fearful of apprehension that he durst not taste the plunder. When he did so he found that the apples were half sour and hard, so he could scarcely swallow a mouthful, and that little sickened him. When he resumed his walk he felt dizzier and weaker even than before. About eleven of the morning he passed through a small village, where he met people coming to their midday meal. He loitered along slowly and rested a time by a well in the centre of the place; it was in his mind to go boldly to some cottage and ask for food, but he could not decide which house looked least inhospitable. While he was still debating, the shameful realization of what he was doing came over him; he jumped up and, pulling his battered felt hat over his face, walked away with something of his old dignified step. But once outside the village his pace slackened, as he told himself unsparingly that begging befitted a gentleman far better than stealing, and he must now do one or the other.