“I know little of the country,” he said, shaking his head, “for such as I pass all our lives before our furnace doors, and seldom go forth to breathe. But there are such places yonder.”
“And far from here?” said Nell.
“Aye surely. How could they be near us, and be green and fresh? The road lies too, through miles and miles, all lighted up by fires like ours—a strange black road, and one that would frighten you by night.”
“We are here and must go on,” said the child boldly, for she saw that the old man listened with anxious ears to this account.
“Rough people—paths never made for little feet like yours—a dismal, blighted way—is there no turning back, my child?”
“There is none,” cried Nell, pressing forward. “If you can direct us, do. If not, pray do not seek to turn us from our purpose. Indeed you do not know the danger that we shun, and how right and true we are in flying from it, or you would not try to stop us, I am sure you would not.”
“God forbid, if it is so!” said their uncouth protector, glancing from the eager child to her grandfather, who hung his head and bent his eyes upon the ground. “I’ll direct you from the door, the best I can. I wish I could do more.”
He showed them, then, by which road they must leave the town, and what course they should hold when they had gained it. He lingered so long on these instructions, that the child with a fervent blessing tore herself away, and stayed to hear no more.
But before they had reached the corner of the lane, the man came running after them, and pressing her hand, left something in it—two old, battered, smoke-encrusted penny pieces. Who knows but they shone as brightly in the eyes of angels as golden gifts that have been chronicled on tombs?
And thus they separated; the child to lead her sacred charge further from guilt and shame, and the labourer to attach a fresh interest to the spot where his guests had slept; and read new histories in his furnace fire.
XLV
In all their journeying, they had never longed so ardently, they had never so pined and wearied, for the freedom of pure air and open country, as now. No, not even on that memorable morning, when, deserting their old home, they abandoned themselves to the mercies of a strange world, and left all the dumb and senseless things they had known and loved, behind—not even then, had they so yearned for the fresh solitudes of wood, hillside, and field, as now; when the noise and dirt and vapour, of the great manufacturing town, reeking with lean misery and hungry wretchedness, hemmed them in on every side, and seemed to shut out hope, and render escape impossible.
“Two days and nights!” thought the child. “He said two days and nights we should have to spend among such scenes as these. Oh! if we live to reach the country once again, if we get clear of these dreadful places though it is only to lie down and die, with what a grateful heart I shall thank God for so much mercy!”
With thoughts like this, and with some vague design of travelling to a great distance among streams and mountains, where only very poor and simple people lived, and where they might maintain themselves by very humble helping work in farms, free from such terrors as that from which they fled—the child, with no resource but the poor man’s gift, and no encouragement but that which flowed from her own heart, and its sense of the truth and right of what she did, nerved herself to this last journey and boldly pursued her task.
“We shall be very slow today, dear,” she said, as they toiled painfully through the streets; “my feet are sore, and I have pains in all my limbs from the wet of yesterday. I saw that he looked at us and thought of that, when he said how long we should be upon the road.”
“It was a dreary way, he told us of,” returned her grandfather, piteously. “Is there no other road? Will you not let me go some other way than this?”
“Places lie beyond these,” said the child, firmly, “where we may live in peace, and be tempted to do no harm. We will take the road that promises to have that end, and we would not turn out of it, if it were a hundred times worse than our fears lead us to expect. We would not, dear, would we?”
“No,” replied the old man, wavering in his voice, no less than in his manner. “No. Let us go on. I am ready. I am quite ready, Nell.”
The child walked with more difficulty than she had led her companion to expect, for the pains that racked her joints were of no common severity, and every exertion increased them. But they wrung from her no complaint, or look of suffering; and though the two travellers proceeded very slowly, they did proceed; and clearing the town in course of time, began to feel that they were fairly on their way.
A long suburb of red brick houses—some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers; and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by its presence seem yet more blighting and unwholesome than in the town itself—a long, flat, straggling suburb passed, they came by slow degrees upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow; where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring;
