noon
It must be that I am very like Fridtjof in looks . It may be that it would not be unadvisable now for me to ask advice of the next person how I can come to the camp . '' The asking had become a matter of necessity by the time she found anyone capable of answering the question . Three foreign merchants whom she overtook near noon could give her no information , and she covered the next five miles without seeing a living creature ; then it was only a beggar , who crawled out of the bushes to offer to sell the child beside him for a crust of bread . The petition brought back to Randalin her own famished condition so sharply that her answer was unnecessarily petulant , and the man disappeared before the question could even be put to him . Two miles more , and nothing was in front of her but a flock of ragged blackbirds circling over a trampled wheat-field . Already the sun 's round chin rested on the crest of the farthest hill .