ll, more imperative than either of the two former, Nell felt
obliged to comply, and this time a chorus was maintained not only by
the two men together, but also by the third man on horseback, who being
by his position debarred from a nearer participation in the revels of
the night, roared when his companions roared, and rent the very air.
In this way, with little cessation, and singing the same songs again
and again, the tired and exhausted child kept them in good humour all
that night; and many a cottager, who was roused from his soundest sleep
by the discordant chorus as it floated away upon the wind, hid his head
beneath the bed-clothes and trembled at the sounds.

At length the morning dawned. It was no sooner light than it began to
rain heavily. As the child could not endure the intolerable vapours of
the cabin, they covered her, in return for her exertions, with some
pieces of sail-cloth and ends of tarpaulin, which sufficed to keep her
tolerably dry and to shelter her grandfather besides. As the day
advanced the rain increased. At noon it poured down more hopelessly
and heavily than ever without the faintest promise of abatement.

They had, for some time, been gradually approaching the place for which
they were bound. The water had become thicker and dirtier; other
barges, coming from it, passed them frequently; the paths of coal-ash
and huts of staring brick, marked the vicinity of some great
manufacturing town; while scattered streets and houses, and smoke from
distant furnaces, indicated that they were already in the outskirts.
Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of buildings, trembling with the
working of engines, and dimly resounding with their shrieks and
throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting forth a black vapour, which hung
in a dense ill-favoured cloud above the housetops and filled the air
with gloom; the clank of hammers beating upon iron, the roar of busy
streets and noisy crowds, gradually augmenting until all the various
sounds blended into one and none was distinguishable for itself,
announced the termination of their journey.

The boat floated into the wharf to which it belonged. The men were
occupied directly. The child and her grandfather, after waiting in
vain to thank them or ask them whither they should go, passed through a
dirty lane into a crowded street, and stood, amid its din and tumult,
and in the pouring rain, as strange, bewildered, and confused, as if
they had lived a thousa