into his waistcoat pocket, and went out of the shrubbery by the
wicket close by into the wood.

"As he walked along his wandering eye at last settled upon that spot of
ground, at the foot of the round hill with the crown of fir-trees,
where the carriage which had taken away his parents had disappeared. He
thought then of his nurse, and that she had been one of those to whom
he had behaved ill.

"'Poor nurse!' he said to himself, 'I will go to beg her pardon, and I
will get her to let me live with her, and never let me come back to
this place again. Nurse will give me bread, and I shall want nothing
else. I will go;' and he got up and looked to see which was the
shortest way to get to the round hill. When he fancied he had made this
out, he got up and set off slowly, for by this time the stripes given
him by the switch had got stiff; but he had set his mind on going to
nurse's, and, indeed, he did not dare to go home.

"Oh, what a long and dreary way did he find it! The first half-mile was
tolerably level, but the next two miles and a half were all uphill,
only with a very little going down sometimes. The sun was shining
without clouds, and his bones were sore, and he was getting hungry; and
what was worse than all, his heart was very sad, and the road was
solitary. He scarcely met anyone, excepting a party of people with
asses; still he often caught sight of the round hill, and found himself
getting nearer to it: he thought it looked higher, and higher, and
higher as he went on, and he had to go beyond it. It was quite noonday
before he reached the foot of it; and there he had to ask a man, who
was breaking stones on the road, the nearest way to the common. The man
showed him a deep lane a little further, up which he was to go, and
when he had got to the end of it, he saw the common and the
rabbit-burrows, and sheep, and geese, and many cottages. He asked at
many doors before he could learn where nurse lived; but when he saw her
house he was pleased, because it looked larger and neater than the
others, and he thought there would be room for him. It stood in a
pretty garden, surrounded with a neat quickset hedge, nicely shorn.

"He opened the wicket-gate without fear, and walked up to the door. He
saw a neat kitchen within, for the door was half open; he knocked, and
called, 'Is nurse at home?' No one answered at first, but soon he heard
a step, and nurse's daughter-in-law appeared.

"She was a tall, hard-looking wo