ar friends and familiar faces with
which it was associated, cannot be told. To prepare the mind for such
a heavy sleep, its growth must be stopped by rigour and cruelty in
childhood; there must be years of misery and suffering, lightened by no
ray of hope; the chords of the heart, which beat a quick response to the
voice of gentleness and affection, must have rusted and broken in their
secret places, and bear the lingering echo of no old word of love or
kindness. Gloomy, indeed, must have been the short day, and dull the
long, long twilight, preceding such a night of intellect as his.

There were voices which would have roused him, even then; but their
welcome tones could not penetrate there; and he crept to bed the same
listless, hopeless, blighted creature, that Nicholas had first found him
at the Yorkshire school.

CHAPTER 39

In which another old Friend encounters Smike, very opportunely and to
some Purpose

The night, fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul, had given
place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country
mail-coach traversed, with cheerful noise, the yet silent streets
of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively
winding of the guard's horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard
by the Post Office.

The only outside passenger was a burly, honest-looking countryman on
the box, who, with his eyes fixed upon the dome of St Paul's Cathedral,
appeared so wrapt in admiring wonder, as to be quite insensible to all
the bustle of getting out the bags and parcels, until one of the coach
windows being let sharply down, he looked round, and encountered a
pretty female face which was just then thrust out.

'See there, lass!' bawled the countryman, pointing towards the object of
his admiration. 'There be Paul's Church. 'Ecod, he be a soizable 'un, he
be.'

'Goodness, John! I shouldn't have thought it could have been half the
size. What a monster!'

'Monsther!--Ye're aboot right theer, I reckon, Mrs Browdie,' said the
countryman good-humouredly, as he came slowly down in his huge top-coat;
'and wa'at dost thee tak yon place to be noo--thot'un owor the wa'? Ye'd
never coom near it 'gin you thried for twolve moonths. It's na' but a
Poast Office! Ho! ho! They need to charge for dooble-latthers. A Poast
Office! Wa'at dost thee think o' thot? 'Ecod, if thot's on'y a Poast
Office, I'd loike to see where the Lord Mayor o' Lunnun lives.'

So saying, J