“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.”  He cast on me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from his loaf, and gave it to me.  I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf.  As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.

I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to.  But my night was wretched, my rest broken:  the ground was damp, the air cold:  besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters; no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me.  Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet.  Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.  At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough.  “Will you give me that?” I asked.

She stared at me.  “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge.”

“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar.  T’ pig doesn’t want it.”

The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously.

As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more.

“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy.  “I feel I cannot go much farther.  Shall I be an outcast again this night?  While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?  I fear I cannot do otherwise:  for who will receive me?  But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation —­ this total prostration of hope.  In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning.  And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death?  Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?  Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living:  and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively.  Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer!  Aid! —­ direct me!”

My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape.  I saw I had strayed far from the village:  it was quite out of sight.  The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared.  I had, by cross-ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.

“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,” I reflected.  “And far better that crows and ravens —­ if any ravens there be in these regions —­ should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave.”