Five times she had already counted the friendly mile-stone, since she had quitted Romsey: one mile only remained to be trodden, ere she reached the New Forest; but that mile was replete with obstacles, to which its five sisters had been strangers.
It was now noon; and a gentle breeze, which hitherto had fanned her passage, and wafted to her refreshment, suddenly ceased its playful benignity; chaced to a distance by the burning rays of a vertical sun, just bursting forth with meridianal fire and splendour; and dispersing the flying clouds which, in obstructing its refulgence, had softened its intenseness.
This quick change of temperature, operating, materially, like an effective change of climate, annihilated, for the moment, all the strength of Juliet; who, as yet, from the freshness of the morning air, the vivacity of mental courage, had been a stranger of fatigue.
Upon looking around, to seek a spot where she might obtain a few instants' rest, and some passing succour; she observed that the road, but just before so busily peopled, appeared to be abruptly forsaken. The labourers were no longer working at the high ways, or at the hedges; the harvest-men were vanished; the market-women were gone; the road retained merely here and there an idle straggler; and the fields exhibited only a solitary boy, left to frighten away the birds.
A sensation nearly of famine with which next, from long fasting, joined to vigourous exercise in the open air, she felt assailed, soon pointed out to her that the cause of this general desertion was the rural hour of repast.
Initiated, now, by her own exertions, in the necessity both of support, and of rest, she, too, felt that this was the hour of nature for recruit. But where stop? and how procure sustenance with safety and prudence?
She looked about for some cottage, and was not long ere she found one; but, upon begging for a glass of water from a husbandman, who was standing upon the threshold, he answered that she should have it, if she would pay him with a kiss.
She walked on to another; but some men were smoaking at the door, and she had not courage to make her demand.
At a third, she was disconcerted, by a familiar invitation to partake of a cup of cyder.