The village was muffled in a heavy, clinging fog. The buoyancy of the previous morning was gone. It was with some difficulty that I found the road which had been pointed out to me as the shortest cut across country to the Hudson. I could not shake off the feeling of homelessness and isolation; and, under its influence, the lot of the farmers' boys, whom I met driving their carts to early market, appeared infinitely to be desired. A life of any honest work which accounts for one, and includes some human fellowship, and a reasonable certainty of food and shelter, began to take on undreamed-of attractiveness, in contrast with vagrancy. I felt outside of the true order of things, and as having no contact with any vital current of the world. Perhaps it was in some measure the Philistine in me asserting himself, in the absence of his customary bath and hot coffee; for, as the fog lifted and the sun appeared, I came upon a brook which I had only to follow a hundred yards or more to a well-shaded pool, where the bath was soon achieved, and I emerged feeling that a vagrant life, with some purpose in it, was, after all, rather desirable. The morning was only fairly begun when I reached the village of Wilton, eight miles from Westport. Already I was tired, and certain muscles of the shoulders and back were in violent revolt. I left my pack at the post-office. Passing up a street, which runs at right angles to the one by which I entered the village, I presently knocked at the last of a row of comfortable cottages. When the door opened I knew instinctively that the gentleman who stood framed in it was the village pastor. I said that I was looking for work. He asked me inside. I thought this a curious change of subject, but willingly followed him into a dim sitting-room, fragrant of perfect cleanliness. I explained that I was on my way to West Point in search of work, but was without money, and so obliged to earn my living by the way, and that I would gladly do anything that offered in payment for bread and board. He questioned me closely, with an evident purpose of drawing me out further, and then he abruptly offered me work on his wood-pile, and appeared surprised at my instant agreement. The wood was green, and the saw, with which it had first to be cut into proper lengths, was not sharp, and it was certainly not skilfully handled. The work was hard, but at noon there was ready for me in the shed, a dinner of beef, and potatoes, and slices of bread, which for lightness and color were like flakes of snow, held by a band of crisp brown crust.