wn lot, which took her away from this brave tender man
who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless
suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was
obliged to cling to him.

At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take
her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she
felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards
the beginning of new misery.

Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he
did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to
her.

Book Five

Chapter XXXVI

The Journey of Hope

A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.

What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of
definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was
plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty
nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?"

"Who?" said Hetty, rather startled.

"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin'
arter--which is it?"

Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know A