When the outsides saw this, they put their halfpence back into their pockets again, declaring that he was an idle young dog, and didn't deserve anything and the coach rattled away and left only a cloud of dust behind. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the coach a little way, but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue and sore feet. He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up, and then begged of the outside passengers but there were very few who took any notice of him: and even those told him to wait till they got to the top of the hill, and then let them see how far he could run for a halfpenny. Another night passed in the bleak damp air, made him worse when he set forward on his journey next morning, he could hardly crawl along. His feet were sore, and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. He had walked no more than twelve miles, when night closed in again. He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry that he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the very first village through which he passed. Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles. He felt frightened at first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before. When the night came, he turned into a meadow and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. Oliver walked twenty miles that day and all that time tasted nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water, which he begged at the cottage-doors by the roadside. "A clean shirt," thought Oliver, "is a very comfortable thing and so are two pairs of darned stockings and so is a penny but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles' walk in winter time." But Oliver's thoughts, like those of most other people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out his difficulties, were wholly at loss to suggest any feasible mode of surmounting them so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and trudged on. He had a penny too- a gift of Sowerberry's after some funeral in which he had acquitted himself more than ordinarily well- in his pocket. He had a crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and two pairs of stockings, in his bundle. As this consideration forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and meditated upon his means of getting there. He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full four miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo ere he could hope to reach his place of destination. As these things passed through his thoughts, he jumped upon his feet, and again walked forward. It was the very place for a homeless boy, who must die in the streets unless some one helped him. Bumble- could ever find him there! He had often heard the old men in the workhouse, too, say that no lad of spirit need want in London and that there were ways of living in that vast city, which those who had been bred up in country parts had no idea of. London!- that great large place!- nobody- not even Mr. The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy's mind. The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London. Then he sat down to rest by the side of the milestone, and began to think, for the first time, where he had better go and try to live. Though he was nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges, by turns, till noon: fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken. Oliver reached the stile at which the by-path terminated and once more gained the high-road. He encounters on the road a strange sort of young gentleman.
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