m, from his
unselfishness, his willingness to read to them, and to render them
many little services, and, perhaps, as much as anything, by his
habitual silence, which made him a convenient recipient of all their
garrulousness. So before the time for his departure came, he had the
opportunity of one more interview with the warden, of a more
friendly character than that in which he gave up his bedesmanship.
And so far it was well; and Philip turned his back upon St
Sepulchre's with his sore heart partly healed by his four months'
residence there.

He was stronger, too, in body, more capable of the day-after-day
walks that were required of him. He had saved some money from his
allowance as bedesman and from his pension, and might occasionally
have taken an outside place on a coach, had it not been that he
shrank from the first look of every stranger upon his disfigured
face. Yet the gentle, wistful eyes, and the white and faultless
teeth always did away with the first impression as soon as people
became a little acquainted with his appearance.

It was February when Philip left St Sepulchre's. It was the first
week in April when he began to recognize the familiar objects
between York and Monkshaven. And now he began to hang back, and to
question the wisdom of what he had done--just as the warden had
prophesied that he would. The last night of his two hundred mile
walk he slept at the little inn at which he had been enlisted nearly
two years before. It was by no intention of his that he rested at
that identical place. Night was drawing on; and, in making, as he
thought, a short cut, he had missed his way, and was fain to seek
shelter where he might find it. But it brought him very straight
face to face with his life at that time, and ever since. His mad,
wild hopes--half the result of intoxication, as he now knew--all
dead and gone; the career then freshly opening shut up against him
now; his youthful strength and health changed into premature
infirmity, and the home and the love that should have opened wide
its doors to console him for all, why in two years Death might have
been busy, and taken away from him his last feeble chance of the
faint happiness of seeing his beloved without being seen or known of
her. All that night and all the next day, the fear of Sylvia's
possible death overclouded his heart. It was strange that he had
hardly ever thought of this before; so strange, that now, when the
terror came, it took po