第 54 页

weak voice, as they turned away from this last repulse; 'and to-morrow

we will beg our way to some quiet part of the country, and try to earn

our bread in very humble work.'

'Why did you bring me here?' returned the old man fiercely. 'I cannot

bear these close eternal streets. We came from a quiet part. Why did

you force me to leave it?'

'Because I must have that dream I told you of, no more,' said the

child, with a momentary firmness that lost itself in tears; 'and we

must live among poor people, or it will come again. Dear grandfather,

you are old and weak, I know; but look at me. I never will complain if

you will not, but I have some suffering indeed.'

'Ah! poor, houseless, wandering, motherless child!' cried the old man,

clasping his hands and gazing as if for the first time upon her anxious

face, her travel-stained dress, and bruised and swollen feet; 'has all

my agony of care brought her to this at last! Was I a happy man once,

and have I lost happiness and all I had, for this!'

'If we were in the country now,' said the child, with assumed

cheerfulness, as they walked on looking about them for a shelter, we

should find some good old tree, stretching out his green arms as if he

loved us, and nodding and rustling as if he would have us fall asleep,

thinking of him while he watched. Please God, we shall be there

soon--to-morrow or next day at the farthest--and in the meantime let us

think, dear, that it was a good thing we came here; for we are lost in

the crowd and hurry of this place, and if any cruel people should

pursue us, they could surely never trace us further. There's comfort

in that. And here's a deep old doorway--very dark, but quite dry, and

warm too, for the wind don't blow in here--What's that!'

Uttering a half shriek, she recoiled from a black figure which came

suddenly out of the dark recess in which they were about to take

refuge, and stood still, looking at them.

'Speak again,' it said; 'do I know the voice?'

'No,' replied the child timidly; 'we are strangers, and having no money

for a night's lodging, were going to rest here.'

There was a feeble lamp at no great distance; the only one in the

place, which was a kind of square yard, but sufficient to show how poor

and mean it was. To this, the figure beckoned them; at the same time

drawing within its rays, as if to show that it had no desire to conceal

itself or take them at an advantage. The form was that of a man,

miserably clad and begrimed with smoke, which, perhaps by its contrast

with the natural colour of his skin, made him look paler than he really

was. That he was naturally of a very wan and pallid aspect, however,

his hollow cheeks, sharp features, and sunken eyes, no less than a

certain look of patient endurance, sufficiently testified. His voice

was harsh by nature, but not brutal; and though his face, besides

possessing the characteristics already mentioned, was overshadowed by a

quantity of long dark hair, its expression was neither ferocious nor

bad.

'How came you to think of resting there?' he said. 'Or how,' he added,

looking more attentively at the child, 'do you come to want a place of

rest at this time of night?'

'Our misfortunes,' the grandfather answered, 'are the cause.'

'Do you know,' said the man, looking still more earnestly at Nell, 'how

wet she is, and that the damp streets are not a place for her?'

'I know it well, God help me,' he replied. 'What can I do!'

The man looked at Nell again, and gently touched her garments, from

which the rain was running off in little streams. 'I can give you

warmth,' he said, after a pause; 'nothing else. Such lodging as I

have, is in that house,' pointing to the doorway from which he had

emerged, 'but she is safer and better there than here. The fire is in

a rough place, but you can pass the night beside it safely, if you'll

trust yourselves to me. You see that red light yonder?'

They raised their eyes, and saw a lurid glare hanging in the dark sky;

the dull reflection of some distant fire.

'It's not far,' said the man. 'Shall I take you there? You were going

to sleep upon cold bricks; I can give you a bed of warm ashes--nothing

better.'

Without waiting for any further reply than he saw in their looks, he

took Nell in his arms, and bade the old man follow.

Carrying her as tenderly, and as easily too, as if she had been an

infant, and showing himself both swift and sure of foot, he led the way

through what appeared to be the poorest and most wretched quarter of

the town; and turning aside to avoid the overflowing kennels or running

waterspouts, but holding his course, regardless of such obstructions,

and making his way straight through them. They had proceeded thus, in

silence, for some quarter of an hour, and had lost sight of the glare

to which he had pointed, in the dark and narrow ways by which they had

come, when it suddenly burst upon them again, streaming up from the

high chimney of a building close before them.

'This is the place,' he said, pausing at a door to put Nell down and

take her hand. 'Don't be afraid. There's nobody here will harm you.'

It needed a strong confidence in this assurance to induce them to

enter, and what they saw inside did not diminish their apprehension and

alarm. In a large and lofty building, supported by pillars of iron,

with great black apertures in the upper walls, open to the external

air; echoing to the roof with the beating of hammers and roar of

furnaces, mingled with the hissing of red-hot metal plunged in water,

and a hundred strange unearthly noises never heard elsewhere; in this

gloomy place, moving like demons among the flame and smoke, dimly and

fitfully seen, flushed and tormented by the burning fires, and wielding

great weapons, a faulty blow from any one of which must have crushed

some workman's skull, a number of men laboured like giants. Others,

reposing upon heaps of coals or ashes, with their faces turned to the

black vault above, slept or rested from their toil. Others again,

opening the white-hot furnace-doors, cast fuel on the flames, which

came rushing and roaring forth to meet it, and licked it up like oil.

Others drew forth, with clashing noise, upon the ground, great sheets

of glowing steel, emitting an insupportable heat, and a dull deep light

like that which reddens in the eyes of savage beasts.

Through these bewildering sights and deafening sounds, their conductor

led them to where, in a dark portion of the building, one furnace burnt

by night and day--so, at least, they gathered from the motion of his

lips, for as yet they could only see him speak: not hear him. The man

who had been watching this fire, and whose task was ended for the

present, gladly withdrew, and left them with their friend, who,

spreading Nell's little cloak upon a heap of ashes, and showing her

where she could hang her outer-clothes to dry, signed to her and the

old man to lie down and sleep. For himself, he took his station on a

rugged mat before the furnace-door, and resting his chin upon his

hands, watched the flame as it shone through the iron chinks, and the

white ashes as they fell into their bright hot grave below.

The warmth of her bed, hard and humble as it was, combined with the

great fatigue she had undergone, soon caused the tumult of the place to

fall with a gentler sound upon the child's tired ears, and was not long

in lulling her to sleep. The old man was stretched beside her, and

with her hand upon his neck she lay and dreamed.

It was yet night when she awoke, nor did she know how long, or for how

short a time, she had slept. But she found herself protected, both

from any cold air that might find its way into the building, and from

the scorching heat, by some of the workmen's clothes; and glancing at

their friend saw that he sat in exactly the same attitude, looking with

a fixed earnestness of attention towards the fire, and keeping so very

still that he did not even seem to breathe. She lay in the state

between sleeping and waking, looking so long at his motionless figure

that at length she almost feared he had died as he sat there; and

softly rising and drawing close to him, ventured to whisper in his ear.

He moved, and glancing from her to the place she had lately occupied,

as if to assure himself that it was really the child so near him,

looked inquiringly into her face.

'I feared you were ill,' she said. 'The other men are all in motion,

and you are so very quiet.'

'They leave me to myself,' he replied. 'They know my humour. They

laugh at me, but don't harm me in it. See yonder there--that's my

friend.'

'The fire?' said the child.

'It has been alive as long as I have,' the man made answer. 'We talk

and think together all night long.'

The child glanced quickly at him in her surprise, but he had turned his

eyes in their former direction, and was musing as before.

'It's like a book to me,' he said--'the only book I ever learned to

read; and many an old story it tells me. It's music, for I should know

its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It

has its pictures too. You don't know how many strange faces and

different scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It's my memory, that

fire, and shows me all my life.'

The child, bending down to listen to his words, could not help

remarking with what brightened eyes he continued to speak and muse.

'Yes,' he said, with a faint smile, 'it was the same when I was quite a

baby, and crawled about it, till I fell asleep. My father watched it

then.'

'Had you no mother?' asked the child.

'No, she was dead. Women work hard in these parts. She worked herself

to death they told me, and, as they said so then, the fire has gone on

saying the same thing ever since. I suppose it was true. I have

always believed it.'

'Were you brought up here, then?' said the child.

'Summer and winter,' he replied. 'Secretly at first, but when they

found it out, they let him keep me here. So the fire nursed me--the

same fire. It has never gone out.'

'You are fond of it?' said the child.

'Of course I am. He died before it. I saw him fall down--just there,

where those ashes are burning now--and wondered, I remember, why it

didn't help him.'

'Have you been here ever since?' asked the child.

'Ever since I came to watch it; but there was a while between, and a

very cold dreary while it was. It burned all the time though, and

roared and leaped when I came back, as it used to do in our play days.

You may guess, from looking at me, what kind of child I was, but for

all the difference between us I was a child, and when I saw you in the

street to-night, you put me in mind of myself, as I was after he died,

and made me wish to bring you to the fire. I thought of those old

times again, when I saw you sleeping by it. You should be sleeping

now. Lie down again, poor child, lie down again!'

With that, he led her to her rude couch, and covering her with the

clothes with which she had found herself enveloped when she woke,

returned to his seat, whence he moved no more unless to feed the

furnace, but remained motionless as a statue. The child continued to

watch him for a little time, but soon yielded to the drowsiness that

came upon her, and, in the dark strange place and on the heap of ashes,

slept as peacefully as if the room had been a palace chamber, and the

bed, a bed of down.

When she awoke again, broad day was shining through the lofty openings

in the walls, and, stealing in slanting rays but midway down, seemed to

make the building darker than it had been at night. The clang and

tumult were still going on, and the remorseless fires were burning

fiercely as before; for few changes of night and day brought rest or

quiet there.

Her friend parted his breakfast--a scanty mess of coffee and some

coarse bread--with the child and her grandfather, and inquired whither

they were going. She told him that they sought some distant country

place remote from towns or even other villages, and with a faltering

tongue inquired what road they would do best to take.

'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