By the first peep of day coming through the chinks of the barn, he was up and abroad.  Ere long finding himself in the suburbs of a considerable village, the better to guard against detection he supplied himself with a rude crutch, and feigning himself a cripple, hobbled straight through the town, followed by a perverse-minded cur, which kept up a continual, spiteful, suspicious bark.  Israel longed to have one good rap at him with his crutch, but thought it would hardly look in character for a poor old cripple to be vindictive.

A few miles further, and he came to a second village.  While hobbling through its main street, as through the former one, he was suddenly stopped by a genuine cripple, all in tatters, too, who, with a sympathetic air, inquired after the cause of his lameness.

“White swelling,” says Israel.

“That’s just my ailing,” wheezed the other; “but you’re lamer than me,” he added with a forlorn sort of self-satisfaction, critically eyeing Israel’s limp as once, more he stumped on his way, not liking to tarry too long.

“But halloo, what’s your hurry, friend?” seeing Israel fairly departing—­“where’re you going?”

“To London,” answered Israel, turning round, heartily wishing the old fellow any where else than present.

“Going to limp to Lunnun, eh?  Well, success to ye.”

“As much to you, sir,” answers Israel politely.

Nigh the opposite suburbs of this village, as good fortune would have it, an empty baggage-wagon bound for the metropolis turned into the main road from a side one.  Immediately Israel limps most deplorably, and begs the driver to give a poor cripple a lift.  So up he climbs; but after a time, finding the gait of the elephantine draught-horses intolerably slow, Israel craves permission to dismount, when, throwing away his crutch, he takes nimbly to his legs, much to the surprise of his honest friend the driver.

The only advantage, if any, derived from his trip in the wagon, was, when passing through a third village—­but a little distant from the previous one—­Israel, by lying down in the wagon, had wholly avoided being seen.

The villages surprised him by their number and proximity.  Nothing like this was to be seen at home.  Well knowing that in these villages he ran much more risk of detection than in the open country, he henceforth did his best to avoid them, by taking a roundabout course whenever they came in sight from a distance.  This mode of travelling not only lengthened his journey, but put unlooked-for obstacles in his path—­walls, ditches, and streams.

Not half an hour after throwing away his crutch, he leaped a great ditch ten feet wide, and of undiscoverable muddy depth.  I wonder if the old cripple would think me the lamer one now, thought Israel to himself, arriving on the hither side.

CHAPTER IV.

Further wanderings of the refugee, with some account of A good knight of Brentford who befriended him.