Towards evening my gall began to grate somewhat with the sense of mine own utter loneliness; and for a moment I Wavered between the resolve to go Forward, and a slavish prompting to return to my Tyrant, and suffer all the torments his cruelty could visit me with. Then, as a middle course, I thought I would creep back to my kennel and die there; but I was happily dissuaded from such a mean surrender to Fortune's Spites through the all-unknowing agency of a Bull, that, spying me from afar off where he was feeding, came thundering across two fields and through a shallow stream, routed me up from my refuge, and chased me into the open. I have often since been thankful to this ungovernable Beast (that would have Tossed, and perchance Gored me sorely, had he got at me), and seldom, in later life, when I have felt weak and wavering in the pursuit of a profitable purpose, have I failed to remember the Bull, and how he chased me out of Distempered Idleness into Activity. The Sun had begun to welk in the west by the time I had mustered up enough courage to come into the High Road, which I had an uncertain idea stretched away from Gnawbit's house, and towards Reading. But suddenly recalling the Danger of travelling by the Highway, where I might be met by Horsemen or Labouring persons sent in quest of me,--for it did not enter my mind that I was too worthless a scholar to be Pursued, and that Gnawbit was, 'tis likely enough, more Pleased than sorry to be Rid of me,--I branched off from the main to the left; so walking, as it seemed to me, many miles, I grew grievously hungry. No more Bread or Apples remained in my pouch; but I still had my Guinea, so I deemed, and resolved that if I came upon any House of Entertainment, I would sup. For indeed, while all Nature round me seemed to be taking some kind of Sustenance, it was hard that I, a Christian, should go to bed (or into another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, and yet had slept in my time in a grand chamber in Hanover Square) with an empty belly. The Earth was beginning to drink up the dews, like an insatiate toper as she is. I passed a flock of sheep biting their hasty supper from the grass; and each one with a little cloud of gnats buzzing around it, that with feeble stings, poor insects, were trying for their supper too. And 'tis effect we have upon another. The birds had taken home their worm-cheer to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the Nightingale,--that I knew,--but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I could not help thinking, as I heard the birds carolling so merrily,--and how they keep so plump upon so little to eat is always to me a marvel,