I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all
alone. I am afraid— sore afraid— that this
purpose originated in my sense of the contrast
there would be between me and Joe, if we
went to the coach together. I had pretended
with myself that there was nothing of this taint
in the arrangement; but when I went up to my
little room on this last night I felt compelled to
admit that it might be so, and had an impulse
upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to
walk with me in the morning. I did not.

All night there were coaches in my broken
sleep, going to wrong places instead of to London,
and having in the traces, now dogs, now
cats, now pigs, now men— never horses.
Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the
day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I
got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window
to take a last look out, and in taking it fell
asleep.

Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast,
that, although I did not sleep at the window
an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen fire
when I started up with a terrible idea that it
must be late in the afternoon. But long after
that, and long after I had heard the clinking of
the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted
the resolution to go down stairs. After all, I
remained up there, repeatedly unlocking and
unstrapping my small portmanteau and locking
and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to
me that I was late.

It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it.
I got up from the meal, saying with a sort of
briskness, as if it had only just occurred to me,
"Well! I suppose I must be off!" and then I
kissed my sister who was laughing and nodding
and shaking in her usual chair, and kissed Biddy,
and threw my arms around Joe's neck. Then I
took up my little portmanteau and walked out.
The last I saw of them was when I presently
heard a scuffle behind me, and looking back, saw
Joe throwing an old shoe after me and Biddy
throwing another old shoe. I stopped then,
to wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his
strong right arm above his head, crying huskily
"Hooroar!" and Biddy put her apron to her
face.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was
easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and
reflecting that it would never have done to have
had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of
all the High-street. I whistled and made nothing
of going. But the village was very peaceful and
quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising
as if to show me the world, and I had been so
innocent and little there, and all beyond was so
unknown and great, that in a moment with
a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It
was by the finger-post at the end of the village,
and I laid my hand upon it, and said, "Good-by
O my dear, dear friend!"

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed
of our tears, for they are rain upon the
blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard
hearts. I was better after I had cried, than
before— more sorry, more aware of my own
ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I
should have had Joe with me then.

So subdued I was by those tears, and
by their breaking out again in the course
of the quiet walk, that when I was on the
coach, and it was clear of the town, I deliberated
with an aching heart whether I would not get
down when we changed horses, and walk back,
and have another evening at home, and a better
parting. We changed, and I had not made up
my mind, and still reflected for my comfort
that it would be quite practicable to get down
and walk back, when we changed again. And
while I was occupied with these deliberations,
I would fancy an exact resemblance to Joe in
some man coming along the road towards us,
and my heart would beat high.— As if he could
possibly be there!

We changed again, and yet again, and it was
now too late and too far to go back, and I went
on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now,
and the world lay spread before me.

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS.

SCENERY OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

OF "the old thirteen" states, perhaps not one
is generally so disregarded by American poets
and novelists as North Carolina, in spite of its
fierce Indian wars, and of Sir Walter Raleigh's
attempts to colonise it; in spite of its stormy
capes of Hatteras and Look-out, of its woodmen
and turpentine-gatherers; in spite of its
gold region and copper-lands, its shad fisheries,
and its great Dismal Swamp. Though North
Carolina was the first state that solemnly
renounced allegiance to the English crown, that
historical fact is not attractive to travellers, and
they seldom venture up the Great Pedee and the
Wateree rivers. Even the rocks that still show
traces of Indian paintings, and the bold precipices
of Hickory-nut Gap, fail to allure any one
but the pedlar and the omnipresent bagman.

But South Carolina has claims that are already
recognised by the poet and historian as well as
by the trader and pedlar. In 1678, when the
English first settled amid the great pine tracts
and broad lagunes that girdle Charleston, Locke
framed a constitution for the infant colony,
and modelled it upon the Promised Land of
Plato. Amid Shaftesbury's turbulent intrigues,
and the vices of Whitehall, the mind of that
amiable philosopher was absorbed in dreams
of purer faith and purer life in the bright
unstained new country, where men had room
at once to widen their tents and enlarge their
frontiers.

Twenty years later, and the brave sturdy
men who felled the pines and irrigated the rice
in South Carolina, were recruited by bands of
honest French Huguenots, driven from
Languedoc by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,