Loitering in the wood till nightfall, he then stole out and made the best of his way towards the house of that good natured farmer in whose corn-loft he had received his first message from Squire Woodcock.  Rousing this man up a little before midnight, he informed him somewhat of his recent adventures, but carefully concealed his having been employed as a secret courier, together with his escape from Squire Woodcock’s.  All he craved at present was a meal.  The meal being over, Israel offered to buy from the farmer his best suit of clothes, and displayed the money on the spot.

“Where did you get so much money?” said his entertainer in a tone of surprise; “your clothes here don’t look as if you had seen prosperous times since you left me.  Why, you look like a scarecrow.”

“That may well be,” replied Israel, very soberly.  “But what do you say? will you sell me your suit?—­here’s the cash.”

“I don’t know about it,” said the farmer, in doubt; “let me look at the money.  Ha!—­a silk purse come out of a beggars pocket!—­Quit the house, rascal, you’ve turned thief.”

Thinking that he could not swear to his having come by his money with absolute honesty—­since indeed the case was one for the most subtle casuist—­Israel knew not what to reply.  This honest confusion confirmed the farmer, who with many abusive epithets drove him into the road, telling him that he might thank himself that he did not arrest him on the spot.

In great dolor at this unhappy repulse, Israel trudged on in the moonlight some three miles to the house of another friend, who also had once succored him in extremity.  This man proved a very sound sleeper.  Instead of succeeding in rousing him by his knocking, Israel but succeeded in rousing his wife, a person not of the greatest amiability.  Raising the sash, and seeing so shocking a pauper before her, the woman upbraided him with shameless impropriety in asking charity at dead of night, in a dress so improper too.  Looking down at his deplorable velveteens, Israel discovered that his extensive travels had produced a great rent in one loin of the rotten old breeches, through which a whitish fragment protruded.

Remedying this oversight as well as he might, he again implored the woman to wake her husband.

“That I shan’t!” said the woman, morosely.  “Quit the premises, or I’ll throw something on ye.”

With that she brought some earthenware to the window, and would have fulfilled her threat, had not Israel prudently retreated some paces.  Here he entreated the woman to take mercy on his plight, and since she would not waken her husband, at least throw to him (Israel) her husband’s breeches, and he would leave the price of them, with his own breeches to boot, on the sill of the door.

“You behold how sadly I need them,” said he; “for heaven’s sake befriend me.”

“Quit the premises!” reiterated the woman.

“The breeches, the breeches! here is the money,” cried Israel, half furious with anxiety.