nd years before, and were raised from the dead
and placed there by a miracle.

CHAPTER 44

The throng of people hurried by, in two opposite streams, with no
symptom of cessation or exhaustion; intent upon their own affairs; and
undisturbed in their business speculations, by the roar of carts and
waggons laden with clashing wares, the slipping of horses' feet upon
the wet and greasy pavement, the rattling of the rain on windows and
umbrella-tops, the jostling of the more impatient passengers, and all
the noise and tumult of a crowded street in the high tide of its
occupation: while the two poor strangers, stunned and bewildered by the
hurry they beheld but had no part in, looked mournfully on; feeling,
amidst the crowd, a solitude which has no parallel but in the thirst of
the shipwrecked mariner, who, tost to and fro upon the billows of a
mighty ocean, his red eyes blinded by looking on the water which hems
him in on every side, has not one drop to cool his burning tongue.

They withdrew into a low archway for shelter from the rain, and watched
the faces of those who passed, to find in one among them a ray of
encouragement or hope. Some frowned, some smiled, some muttered to
themselves, some made slight gestures, as if anticipating the
conversation in which they would shortly be engaged, some wore the
cunning look of bargaining and plotting, some were anxious and eager,
some slow and dull; in some countenances, were written gain; in others,
loss. It was like being in the confidence of all these people to stand
quietly there, looking into their faces as they flitted past. In busy
places, where each man has an object of his own, and feels assured that
every other man has his, his character and purpose are written broadly
in his face. In the public walks and lounges of a town, people go to
see and to be seen, and there the same expression, with little variety,
is repeated a hundred times. The working-day faces come nearer to the
truth, and let it out more plainly.

Falling into that kind of abstraction which such a solitude awakens,
the child continued to gaze upon the passing crowd with a wondering
interest, amounting almost to a temporary forgetfulness of her own
condition. But cold, wet, hunger, want of rest, and lack of any place
in which to lay her aching head, soon brought her thoughts back to the
point whence they had strayed. No one passed who seemed to notice
them, or to whom she durst appeal. Af