that road can never. be again, like any other road
to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance
of your having done me so much good:
of your having made me so much happier! If
you leave me by the road you travelled when
you went to do me this great kindness," sounding
a faint chord as she spoke, " I shall feel,
lying here watching at my window, as if it must
conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you
back some day."

"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be
done."

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a
ticket for Somewhere, and his destination was
the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction
that it was the eighteenth of December when
he left it. "High time," he reflected, as he
seated himself in the train, " that I started in
earnest! Only one clear day remains between me
and the day I am running away from. I'll
push onward for the hill-country to-morrow.
I'll go to Wales."

It was with some pains that he placed before
himself the undeniable advantages to be gained
in the way of novel occupation for his senses
from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain,
cold, a wild seashore, and rugged roads. And
yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he
could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in
spite of her new resource, her music, would
have any feeling of loneliness upon her now—-
just at first—- that she had not had before;
whether she saw those very puffs of steam and
smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking
of her; whether her face would have any
pensive shadow on it as they died out of the
distant view from her window; whether, in telling
him he had done her so much good, she had
not unconsciously corrected his old moody
bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him
thinking that a man might be a great healer, if
he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these
and other similar meditations got between him
and his Welsh picture. There was within
him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows
separation from an object of interest,
and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this
sense, being quite new to him, made him
restless. Further, in losing Mugby Junction
he had found himself again; and he was not
the more enamoured of himself for having lately
passed his time in better company.

But surely, here not far ahead, must be the
great ingenious town. This crashing and clashing
that the train was undergoing, and this
coupling on to it of a multitude of new echoes,
could mean nothing less than approach to the
great station. It did mean nothing less. After
some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way
of swift revelations of red-brick blocks of houses,
high red-brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red-
brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blots of
smoke, valleys of canal, and hills of coal, there
came the thundering in at the journey's end.

Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed
in the hotel he chose, and having appointed his
dinner-hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a
walk in the busy streets. And now it began to
be suspected by him that Mugby Junction was
a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as
visible, and had joined him to an endless number
of byways. For, whereas he would, but a little
while ago, have walked these streets blindly
brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a
new external world. How the many toiling
people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful
it was to consider the various trainings of eye
and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and
touch, that separated them into classes of workers,
and even into classes of workers at subdivisions
of one complete whole which combined
their many intelligences and forces, though of
itself but some cheap object of use or ornament
in common life; how good it was to know that
such assembling in a multitude on their part,
and such contribution of their several dexterities
towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them
as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies
of humanity to pretend, but engendered
among them a self-respect and yet a modest
desire to be much wiser than they were (the
first, evinced in their well-balanced bearing and
manner of speech when he stopped to ask a
question; the second, in the announcements of
their popular studies and amusements on the
public walls); these considerations, and a host
of such, made his walk a memorable one. " I
too am but a little part of a great whole," he
began to think; " and to be serviceable to
myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast
my interest into, and draw it out of, the common
stock."

Although he had arrived at his journey's end
for the day by noon, he had since insensibly
walked about the town so far and so long that
the lamplighters were now at their work in the
streets, and the shops were sparkling up
brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his
quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a
very little hand crept into his, and a very little
voice said:

"O! If you please, I am lost!"

He looked down, and saw a very little fair-
haired girL

"Yes," she said, confirming her words with
a serious nod. " I am indeed. I am lost."

Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about
him for help, descried none, and said, bending
low: " Where do you, live, my child?"

"I don't know where I live," she returned.
"I am lost."

"What is your name?"

"Polly."

"What is your- other name?"

The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.

Imitating the sound, as he caught it, he
hazarded the guess, " Trivits?"

"O no!" said the child, shaking her head.
"Nothing like that."

"Say it again, little one."

An unpromising business. For this time it
had quite a different sound.

He made the venture: "Paddens?"