pe?

He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have
his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow--to be within
his own knowledge such a miserable tool--was like being paralysed. With
an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated
himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else.

Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and
again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so
persuaded of this, that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss of
ground to such uncertainty.

The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.

'The devil!' cried the driver, looking over his shoulder, 'what's the
matter?'

'Hark! What's that?'

'What?'

'That noise?'

'Ah Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!' to a horse who shook his bells
'What noise?'

'Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what's that?'
Miscreant with a Pig's head, stand still!' to another horse, who bit
another, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. 'There is
nothing coming.'

'Nothing.'

'No, nothing but the day yonder.'

'You are right, I think. I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!'

The entangled equipage, half hidden in the reeking cloud from the
horses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver, checked unnecessarily
in his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and puts a new lash
to his whip. Then 'Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!' Away once more, savagely.

And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in the
carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had
come, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all the
heavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine
on cornfields and vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from little
temporary huts by heaps of stones upon the road, were, here and there,
at work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there were
peasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at the
doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then there
was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast
outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense,
old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded,
and green damp crawling l