distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months
still, however, between him and _it_.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

OUT OF THE WORLD.

This tedious, shameful travel came to an end at nightfall. Their way had
lain all day through landscapes of great beauty, though about to lose
the last remnants of their autumn splendor; but when they left the rail,
the woods, and glens, and rivers were seen no more. All was dreary
moorland, where winter had already begun to reign. A village or two were
passed, among whose scanty population their appearance created little
excitement: such sights were common in that locality. They were on the
high-road that leads to Lingmoor, and to nowhere else. The way seemed as
typical of their outcast life-path as a page out of the _Pilgrim's
Progress_. Vanity Fair, where they would fain have tarried if they
could, was left far behind them, while to some of them the road was
doomed to be the veritable Valley of the Shadow. They were never to see
the world, nor partake of its coarse and brutal pleasures--the only ones
they cared for, or perhaps had experienced--any more. How bare, and
desolate, and wretched was the prospect! There was no living thing in
sight; only the wild moorland streams hurried by, as if themselves
desirous to escape from the barren solitude. Not a tree was to be seen
save Bergen Wood, which Richard's companion indicated to him, as they
neared it, by a movement of the eyelid. It had been the tomb of many a
convict, who had striven for freedom, and found death. As they emerged
from it, Lingmoor prison presented itself, solid, immense, and gloomy,
as though it were built of steel--"Castle of Giant Despair." Its guarded
gate was swung back, and all were marched into a paved courtyard, where
their names were called over, and their irons removed. Then each was
stripped and searched, and another uniform substituted for that they had
worn at Cross Key. The old hands seemed to take a pride in knowing what
was about to be done beforehand; in being recognized by the warders,
though their greeting was but a contemptuous shrug; and in threading the
windings of the stone labyrinths with an accustomed step. Richard was
ushered into a cell the exact counterpart of that he had lately
inhabited; and yet he regarded it with the interest which one can not
fail to feel in what is to be one's home for years.

Home! Frightful misnomer for that place, warm and well-ventilated as it