ished, and passing
several groups of men, each gathered round a stooping figure to hide
him from those who passed, but unable to repress the clanking sound of
hammers, which told that they too were busy at the same work,--the two
fugitives made towards Clerkenwell, and passing thence to Islington, as
the nearest point of egress, were quickly in the fields. After wandering
about for a long time, they found in a pasture near Finchley a poor
shed, with walls of mud, and roof of grass and brambles, built for
some cowherd, but now deserted. Here, they lay down for the rest of the
night.

They wandered to and fro when it was day, and once Barnaby went off
alone to a cluster of little cottages two or three miles away, to
purchase some bread and milk. But finding no better shelter, they
returned to the same place, and lay down again to wait for night.

Heaven alone can tell, with what vague hopes of duty, and affection;
with what strange promptings of nature, intelligible to him as to a man
of radiant mind and most enlarged capacity; with what dim memories of
children he had played with when a child himself, who had prattled
of their fathers, and of loving them, and being loved; with how many
half-remembered, dreamy associations of his mother's grief and tears and
widowhood; he watched and tended this man. But that a vague and shadowy
crowd of such ideas came slowly on him; that they taught him to be sorry
when he looked upon his haggard face, that they overflowed his eyes when
he stooped to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a tearful gladness,
shading him from the sun, fanning him with leaves, soothing him when he
started in his sleep--ah! what a troubled sleep it was--and wondering
when SHE would come to join them and be happy, is the truth. He sat
beside him all that day; listening for her footsteps in every breath
of air, looking for her shadow on the gently-waving grass, twining the
hedge flowers for her pleasure when she came, and his when he awoke; and
stooping down from time to time to listen to his mutterings, and wonder
why he was so restless in that quiet place. The sun went down, and night
came on, and he was still quite tranquil; busied with these thoughts, as
if there were no other people in the world, and the dull cloud of smoke
hanging on the immense city in the distance, hid no vices, no crimes, no
life or death, or cause of disquiet--nothing but clear air.

But the hour had now come when he must go alon