security of possession the stolidity of ownership!

Many times that day I stopped by a field side or at the end of a
lane, or at a house-gate, and considered the possibilities of
making an attack. Oh, I measured the houses and barns I saw with
a new eye! The kind of country I had known so long and familiarly
became a new and foreign land, full of strange possibilities. I
spied out the men in the fields and did not fail, also, to see
what I could of the commissary department of each farmstead as I
passed. I walked for miles looking thus for a favourable
opening--and with a sensation of embarrassment at once
disagreeable and pleasurable. As the afternoon began to deepen I
saw that I must absolutely do something: a whole day tramping in
the open air without a bite to eat is an irresistible argument.

Presently I saw from the road a farmer and his son planting
potatoes in a sloping field. There was no house at all in view.
At the bars stood a light wagon half filled with bags of seed
potatoes, and the horse which had drawn it stood quietly, not far
off, tied to the fence. The man and the boy, each with a basket
on his arm, were at the farther end of the field, dropping
potatoes. I stood quietly watching them. They stepped quickly and
kept their eyes on the furrows: good workers. I liked the looks
of them. I liked also the straight, clean furrows; I liked the
appearance of the horse.

"I will stop here," I said to myself.

I cannot at all convey the sense of high adventure I had as I
stood there. Though I had not the slightest idea of what I should