f the candle shining on her.
Phillotson did not approach her, or attempt to ascend himself till he
heard her enter her room. Then he fastened up the front door, and
returning, sat down on the lower stairs, holding the newel with one
hand, and bowing his face into the other. Thus he remained for a
long long time--a pitiable object enough to one who had seen him;
till, raising his head and sighing a sigh which seemed to say that
the business of his life must be carried on, whether he had a wife or
no, he took the candle and went upstairs to his lonely room on the
other side of the landing.

No further incident touching the matter between them occurred till
the following evening, when, immediately school was over, Phillotson
walked out of Shaston, saying he required no tea, and not informing
Sue where he was going. He descended from the town level by a steep
road in a north-westerly direction, and continued to move downwards
till the soil changed from its white dryness to a tough brown clay.
He was now on the low alluvial beds

Where Duncliffe is the traveller's mark,
And cloty Stour's a-rolling dark.

More than once he looked back in the increasing obscurity of evening.
Against the sky was Shaston, dimly visible

On the grey-topp'd height
Of Paladore, as pale day wore
Away... [William Barnes.]

The new-lit lights from its windows burnt with a steady shine as if
watching him, one of which windows was his own. Above it he could
just discern the pinnacled tower of Trinity Church. The air down
here, tempered by the thick damp bed of tenacious clay, was not as it
had been above, but soft and relaxing, so that when he had walked a
mile or two he was obliged to wipe his face with his handkerchief.

Leaving Duncliffe Hill on the left he proceeded without hesitation
through the shade, as a man goes on, night or day, in a district over
which he has played as a boy. He had walked altogether about four
and a half miles

Where Stour receives her strength,
From six cleere fountains fed, [Drayton.]

when he crossed a tributary of the Stour, and reached Leddenton--a
little town of three or four thousand inhabitants--where he went
on to the boys' school, and knocked at the door of the master's
residence.

A boy pupil-teacher opened it, and to Phillotson's inquiry if Mr.
Gillingham was at home replied that he was, going at once off to his
own house, and leaving Phillotson to find his way