Who in his boyhood has not felt the delight of freedom and adventure? to have the world of woods and sward before him--to escape restriction-- to lean, for the first time, on his own resources--to rejoice in the wild but manly luxury of independence--to act the Crusoe--and to fancy a Friday in every footprint--an island of his own in every field? Yes, in spite of their desolation, their loss, of the melancholy past, of the friendless future, the orphans were happy--happy in their youth--their freedom--their love--their wanderings in the delicious air of the glorious August. Sometimes they came upon knots of reapers lingering in the shade of the hedge-rows over their noonday meal; and, grown sociable by travel, and bold by safety, they joined and partook of the rude fare with the zest of fatigue and youth. Sometimes, too, at night, they saw, gleam afar and red by the woodside, the fires of gipsy tents. But these, with the superstition derived from old nursery-tales, they scrupulously shunned, eying them with a mysterious awe! What heavenly twilights belong to that golden month!--the air so lucidly serene, as the purple of the clouds fades gradually away, and up soars, broad, round, intense, and luminous, the full moon which belongs to the joyous season! The fields then are greener than in the heats of July and June,--they have got back the luxury of a second spring. And still, beside the paths of the travellers, lingered on the hedges the clustering honeysuckle--the convolvulus glittered in the tangles of the brake--the hardy heathflower smiled on the green waste. And ever, at evening, they came, field after field, upon those circles which recall to children so many charmed legends, and are fresh and frequent in that month--the Fairy Rings! They thought, poor boys! that it was a good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected them, as in the old time they had often protected the desolate and outcast. They avoided the main roads, and all towns, with suspicious care. But sometimes they paused, for food and rest, at the obscure hostel of some scattered hamlet: though, more often, they loved to spread the simple food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their flight, and that solely for the purchase of ruder clothes, and a change of linen for Sidney, with some articles and implements of use necessary in their present course of shift and welcome hardship. A wise precaution; for, thus clad, they escaped suspicion.