r!' cried Tom, 'are you going?'

'Going!' he echoed. 'Going!'

'I didn't so much mean that, as were you going now at once--in this bad
weather--on foot--without your clothes--with no money?' cried Tom.

'Yes,' he answered sternly, 'I am.'

'And where?' cried Tom. 'Oh where will you go?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Yes, I do. I'll go to America!'

'No, no,' cried Tom, in a kind of agony. 'Don't go there. Pray don't.
Think better of it. Don't be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don't
go to America!'

'My mind is made up,' he said. 'Your friend was right. I'll go to
America. God bless you, Pinch!'

'Take this!' cried Tom, pressing a book upon him in great agitation.
'I must make haste back, and can't say anything I would. Heaven be with
you. Look at the leaf I have turned down. Good-bye, good-bye!'

The simple fellow wrung him by the hand, with tears stealing down his
cheeks; and they parted hurriedly upon their separate ways.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF MARTIN AND HIS DESPARATE RESOLVE, AFTER HE LEFT
MR PECKSNIFF'S HOUSE; WHAT PERSONS HE ENCOUNTERED; WHAT ANXIETIES HE
SUFFERED; AND WHAT NEWS HE HEARD

Carrying Tom Pinch's book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not
even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain, Martin
went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had passed the
finger-post, and was on the high road to London. He slackened very
little in his speed even then, but he began to think, and look about
him, and to disengage his senses from the coil of angry passions which
hitherto had held them prisoner.

It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable
employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was
dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds
came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet
mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little
gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and
punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It
fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel
of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature was anywhere
to be seen. The prospect could hardly have been more desolate if
animated nature had been dissolved in water, and poured down upon the
earth again in that form.

The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite