morning, see that he has
every comfort that his situation requires, and don't leave him; don't
leave him, my dear sir, until you know that there is no longer any
immediate danger. It would be hard, indeed, to part you now. No, no, no!
Tim shall wait upon you tonight, sir; Tim shall wait upon you tonight
with a parting word or two. Brother Ned, my dear fellow, Mr Nickleby
waits to shake hands and say goodbye; Mr Nickleby won't be long gone;
this poor chap will soon get better, very soon get better; and then
he'll find out some nice homely country-people to leave him with, and
will go backwards and forwards sometimes--backwards and forwards you
know, Ned. And there's no cause to be downhearted, for he'll very soon
get better, very soon. Won't he, won't he, Ned?'

What Tim Linkinwater said, or what he brought with him that night, needs
not to be told. Next morning Nicholas and his feeble companion began
their journey.

And who but one--and that one he who, but for those who crowded
round him then, had never met a look of kindness, or known a word
of pity--could tell what agony of mind, what blighted thoughts, what
unavailing sorrow, were involved in that sad parting?

'See,' cried Nicholas eagerly, as he looked from the coach window, 'they
are at the corner of the lane still! And now there's Kate, poor
Kate, whom you said you couldn't bear to say goodbye to, waving her
handkerchief. Don't go without one gesture of farewell to Kate!'

'I cannot make it!' cried his trembling companion, falling back in his
seat and covering his eyes. 'Do you see her now? Is she there still?'

'Yes, yes!' said Nicholas earnestly. 'There! She waves her hand again! I
have answered it for you--and now they are out of sight. Do not give way
so bitterly, dear friend, don't. You will meet them all again.'

He whom he thus encouraged, raised his withered hands and clasped them
fervently together.

'In heaven. I humbly pray to God in heaven.'

It sounded like the prayer of a broken heart.

CHAPTER 56

Ralph Nickleby, baffled by his Nephew in his late Design, hatches a
Scheme of Retaliation which Accident suggests to him, and takes into his
Counsels a tried Auxiliary

The course which these adventures shape out for themselves, and
imperatively call upon the historian to observe, now demands that they
should revert to the point they attained previously to the commencement
of the last chapter, when Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride were