seen wi’ me. ’T might bring thee into trouble, fur no good.”

“ ’Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know’st our old agreement. ’Tis for that.”

“Well, well,” said he. “ ’Tis better, onnyways.”

“Thou’lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?”

“Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi’ thee, Heaven bless thee, Heaven thank thee and reward thee!”

“May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee peace and rest at last!”

“I towd thee, my dear,” said Stephen Blackpool—“that night—that I would never see or think o’ onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better than me, should’st be beside it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me see it wi’ a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!”

It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn and make an end of you.

Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from anyone, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before. At the end of the second day he saw land; at the end of the third his loom stood empty.

He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank on each of the two first evenings, and nothing had happened there, good or bad. That he might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait full two hours on this third and last night.

There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby’s house, sitting at the first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the blind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and standing on the steps for a breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the light porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing.

Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day’s labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to everyone that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable character.

Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down the long perspective of the street until they were blended and lost in the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first-floor window, drew down the blind, and went upstairs. Presently, a light went upstairs after her, passing first the fan-light of the door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its way up. By-and-by, one corner of the second-floor blind was disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit’s eye were there; also the other corner, as if the light porter’s eye were on that side. Still, no communication was made to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were at last accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering.

He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary bed upon the floor, for his bundle was made up for tomorrow, and all was arranged for his departure. He meant to be clear of the town very early, before the Hands were in the streets.

It was barely daybreak when, with a parting look around his room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.

By the