Presently remembering his environment and the events which were a part of it, he quickly aroused himself, and carefully packing up all the bundles of straw in the shed, exactly as he had found them, he again went forth upon what he was disposed to consider now a penitential pilgrimage.
"In old times," he said to himself, as he bathed his face and hands in a little running stream by the roadside--"kings, when they found themselves miserable and did not know why they were so, went to the church for consolation, and were told by the priests that they had sinned--and that it was their sins that made them wretched.

And a journey taken with fasting was prescribed--much in the way that our fashionable physicians prescribe change of air, a limited diet and plenty of exercise to the luxurious feeders of our social hive.

And the weary potentates took off their crowns and their royal robes, and trudged along as they were told--became tramps for the nonce, like me.
But I need no priest to command what I myself ordain!" He resumed his onward way ploddingly and determinedly, though he was beginning to be conscious of an increasing weariness and lassitude which seemed to threaten him with a break-down ere long.

But he would not think of this.
"Other men have no doubt felt just as weak," he thought.

"There are many on the road as old as I am and even older.