and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take charge
on't.'

'Have you read it?' said I.

He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:

'I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your
good and blessed kindness to me!

'I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die.
They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over
them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what
uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.

'Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this
world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come
to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.'

This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

'May I tell her as you doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so kind
as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?' said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it.
'Unquestionably,' said I--'but I am thinking--'

'Yes, Mas'r Davy?'

'I am thinking,' said I, 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth. There's
time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My
mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter
of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her,
in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to
both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and
cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am
restless, and shall be better in motion. I'll go down tonight.'

Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my
mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would
have had the effect. He went round to the coach office, at my request,
and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started,
by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many
vicissitudes.

'Don't you think that,' I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of
London, 'a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have seen one like
it.'

'Nor I--not equal to it,' he replied. 'That's wind, sir. There'll be
mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.'

It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like the
colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds, tossed up into
most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than
there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollow