CHAPTER XIV PADDING IT
"A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,
And every step of the journey driving it further in;
Then out on the great long roadway, you'll find when you go abroad,
The nearer you go to nature, the further you go from God."
—A Song of the Dead End.
Out on tramp, homeless in a strange country, with twopence in my pocket! The darkness lay around me and the snow was white on the ground. Whenever I took my hands out of my pockets the chill air nipped them like pincers. One knee was out through my trousers, and my boots were leaking. The snow melted as it came through the torn uppers, and I could hear the water gurgling between my toes as I walked. When I passed a lighted house I felt a hunger that was not of the belly kind. I came to the village of Bishopton, and went into a little shop, where I asked for a pennyworth of biscuits. The man weighed them in scales that shone like gold, and broke one in halves to make the exact weight.
"There's nothin' like fair measure, laddie," he said.