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Chapter 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 to-day, 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
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