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cold bright sky with its countless stars, and downward at the driver's

lantern dancing on like its namesake Jack of the swamps and marshes,

and sideways at the dark grim trees, and forward at the long bare road

rising up, up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a sharp high ridge as

if there were no more road, and all beyond was sky--and the stopping at

the inn to bait, and being helped out, and going into a room with fire

and candles, and winking very much, and being agreeably reminded that

the night was cold, and anxious for very comfort's sake to think it

colder than it was!--What a delicious journey was that journey in the

waggon.

Then the going on again--so fresh at first, and shortly afterwards so

sleepy. The waking from a sound nap as the mail came dashing past like

a highway comet, with gleaming lamps and rattling hoofs, and visions of

a guard behind, standing up to keep his feet warm, and of a gentleman

in a fur cap opening his eyes and looking wild and stupefied--the

stopping at the turnpike where the man was gone to bed, and knocking at

the door until he answered with a smothered shout from under the

bed-clothes in the little room above, where the faint light was

burning, and presently came down, night-capped and shivering, to throw

the gate wide open, and wish all waggons off the road except by day.

The cold sharp interval between night and morning--the distant streak

of light widening and spreading, and turning from grey to white, and

from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red--the presence of

day, with all its cheerfulness and life--men and horses at the

plough--birds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields,

frightening them away with rattles. The coming to a town--people busy

in the markets; light carts and chaises round the tavern yard;

tradesmen standing at their doors; men running horses up and down the

street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting in the dirty distance,

getting off with long strings at their legs, running into clean

chemists' shops and being dislodged with brooms by 'prentices; the

night coach changing horses--the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and

discontented, with three months' growth of hair in one night--the

coachman fresh as from a band-box, and exquisitely beautiful by

contrast:--so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of

incidents--when was there a journey with so many delights as that

journey in the waggon!

Sometimes walking for a mile or two while her grandfather rode inside,

and sometimes even prevailing upon the schoolmaster to take her place

and lie down to rest, Nell travelled on very happily until they came to

a large town, where the waggon stopped, and where they spent a night.

They passed a large church; and in the streets were a number of old

houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed and re-crossed in

a great many directions with black beams, which gave them a remarkable

and very ancient look. The doors, too, were arched and low, some with

oaken portals and quaint benches, where the former inhabitants had sat

on summer evenings. The windows were latticed in little diamond panes,

that seemed to wink and blink upon the passengers as if they were dim

of sight. They had long since got clear of the smoke and furnaces,

except in one or two solitary instances, where a factory planted among

fields withered the space about it, like a burning mountain. When they

had passed through this town, they entered again upon the country, and

began to draw near their place of destination.

It was not so near, however, but that they spent another night upon the

road; not that their doing so was quite an act of necessity, but that

the schoolmaster, when they approached within a few miles of his

village, had a fidgety sense of his dignity as the new clerk, and was

unwilling to make his entry in dusty shoes, and travel-disordered

dress. It was a fine, clear, autumn morning, when they came upon the

scene of his promotion, and stopped to contemplate its beauties.

'See--here's the church!' cried the delighted schoolmaster in a low

voice; 'and that old building close beside it, is the schoolhouse, I'll

be sworn. Five-and-thirty pounds a-year in this beautiful place!'

They admired everything--the old grey porch, the mullioned windows, the

venerable gravestones dotting the green churchyard, the ancient tower,

the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of cottage, barn, and

homestead, peeping from among the trees; the stream that rippled by the

distant water-mill; the blue Welsh mountains far away. It was for such

a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark, miserable haunts of

labour. Upon her bed of ashes, and amidst the squalid horrors through

which they had forced their way, visions of such scenes--beautiful

indeed, but not more beautiful than this sweet reality--had been always

present to her mind. They had seemed to melt into a dim and airy

distance, as the prospect of ever beholding them again grew fainter;

but, as they receded, she had loved and panted for them more.

'I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes,' said the schoolmaster,

at length breaking the silence into which they had fallen in their

gladness. 'I have a letter to present, and inquiries to make, you

know. Where shall I take you? To the little inn yonder?'

'Let us wait here,' rejoined Nell. 'The gate is open. We will sit in

the church porch till you come back.'

'A good place too,' said the schoolmaster, leading the way towards it,

disencumbering himself of his portmanteau, and placing it on the stone

seat. 'Be sure that I come back with good news, and am not long gone!'

So, the happy schoolmaster put on a bran-new pair of gloves which he

had carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way, and hurried

off, full of ardour and excitement.

The child watched him from the porch until the intervening foliage hid

him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the old

churchyard--so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress upon the

fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps noiseless,

seemed an invasion of its silence. It was a very aged, ghostly place;

the church had been built many hundreds of years ago, and had once had

a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel

windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while

other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen

down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass,

as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes

with the dust of men. Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and

forming a part of the ruin which some pains had been taken to render

habitable in modern times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows

and oaken doors, fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate.

Upon these tenements, the attention of the child became exclusively

riveted. She knew not why. The church, the ruin, the antiquated

graves, had equal claims at least upon a stranger's thoughts, but from

the moment when her eyes first rested on these two dwellings, she could

turn to nothing else. Even when she had made the circuit of the

enclosure, and, returning to the porch, sat pensively waiting for their

friend, she took her station where she could still look upon them, and

felt as if fascinated towards that spot.

CHAPTER 47

Kit's mother and the single gentleman--upon whose track it is expedient

to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be chargeable

with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its characters in

situations of uncertainty and doubt--Kit's mother and the single

gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise-and-four whose departure

from the Notary's door we have already witnessed, soon left the town

behind them, and struck fire from the flints of the broad highway.

The good woman, being not a little embarrassed by the novelty of her

situation, and certain material apprehensions that perhaps by this time

little Jacob, or the baby, or both, had fallen into the fire, or

tumbled down stairs, or had been squeezed behind doors, or had scalded

their windpipes in endeavouring to allay their thirst at the spouts of

tea-kettles, preserved an uneasy silence; and meeting from the window

the eyes of turnpike-men, omnibus-drivers, and others, felt in the new

dignity of her position like a mourner at a funeral, who, not being

greatly afflicted by the loss of the departed, recognizes his every-day

acquaintance from the window of the mourning coach, but is constrained

to preserve a decent solemnity, and the appearance of being indifferent

to all external objects.

To have been indifferent to the companionship of the single gentleman

would have been tantamount to being gifted with nerves of steel. Never

did chaise inclose, or horses draw, such a restless gentleman as he.

He never sat in the same position for two minutes together, but was

perpetually tossing his arms and legs about, pulling up the sashes and

letting them violently down, or thrusting his head out of one window to

draw it in again and thrust it out of another. He carried in his

pocket, too, a fire-box of mysterious and unknown construction; and as

sure as ever Kit's mother closed her eyes, so surely--whisk, rattle,

fizz--there was the single gentleman consulting his watch by a flame of

fire, and letting the sparks fall down among the straw as if there were

no such thing as a possibility of himself and Kit's mother being

roasted alive before the boys could stop their horses. Whenever they

halted to change, there he was--out of the carriage without letting

down the steps, bursting about the inn-yard like a lighted cracker,

pulling out his watch by lamp-light and forgetting to look at it before

he put it up again, and in short committing so many extravagances that

Kit's mother was quite afraid of him. Then, when the horses were to,

in he came like a Harlequin, and before they had gone a mile, out came

the watch and the fire-box together, and Kit's mother as wide awake

again, with no hope of a wink of sleep for that stage.

'Are you comfortable?' the single gentleman would say after one of

these exploits, turning sharply round.

'Quite, Sir, thank you.'

'Are you sure? An't you cold?'

'It is a little chilly, Sir,' Kit's mother would reply.

'I knew it!' cried the single gentleman, letting down one of the front

glasses. 'She wants some brandy and water! Of course she does. How

could I forget it? Hallo! Stop at the next inn, and call out for a

glass of hot brandy and water.'

It was in vain for Kit's mother to protest that she stood in need of

nothing of the kind. The single gentleman was inexorable; and whenever

he had exhausted all other modes and fashions of restlessness, it

invariably occurred to him that Kit's mother wanted brandy and water.

In this way they travelled on until near midnight, when they stopped to

supper, for which meal the single gentleman ordered everything eatable

that the house contained; and because Kit's mother didn't eat

everything at once, and eat it all, he took it into his head that she

must be ill.

'You're faint,' said the single gentleman, who did nothing himself but

walk about the room. 'I see what's the matter with you, ma'am. You're

faint.'

'Thank you, sir, I'm not indeed.'

'I know you are. I'm sure of it. I drag this poor woman from the

bosom of her family at a minute's notice, and she goes on getting

fainter and fainter before my eyes. I'm a pretty fellow! How many

children have you got, ma'am?'

'Two, sir, besides Kit.'

'Boys, ma'am?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are they christened?'

'Only half baptised as yet, sir.'

'I'm godfather to both of 'em. Remember that, if you please, ma'am.

You had better have some mulled wine.'

'I couldn't touch a drop indeed, sir.'

'You must,' said the single gentleman. 'I see you want it. I ought to

have thought of it before.'

Immediately flying to the bell, and calling for mulled wine as

impetuously as if it had been wanted for instant use in the recovery of

some person apparently drowned, the single gentleman made Kit's mother

swallow a bumper of it at such a high temperature that the tears ran

down her face, and then hustled her off to the chaise again, where--not

impossibly from the effects of this agreeable sedative--she soon became

insensible to his restlessness, and fell fast asleep. Nor were the

happy effects of this prescription of a transitory nature, as,

notwithstanding that the distance was greater, and the journey longer,

than the single gentleman had anticipated, she did not awake until it

was broad day, and they were clattering over the pavement of a town.

'This is the place!' cried her companion, letting down all the glasses.

'Drive to the wax-work!'

The boy on the wheeler touched his hat, and setting spurs to his horse,

to the end that they might go in brilliantly, all four broke into a

smart canter, and dashed through the streets with a noise that brought

the good folks wondering to their doors and windows, and drowned the

sober voices of the town-clocks as they chimed out half-past eight.

They drove up to a door round which a crowd of persons were collected,

and there stopped.

'What's this?' said the single gentleman thrusting out his head. 'Is

anything the matter here?'

'A wedding Sir, a wedding!' cried several voices. 'Hurrah!'

The single gentleman, rather bewildered by finding himself the centre

of this noisy throng, alighted with the assistance of one of the

postilions, and handed out Kit's mother, at sight of whom the populace