if he was sure of success, he would
not dirty his fingers with coal. "I believe," said he, "the northern
nobility descend to this sort of thing; but then they have not smelled
powder, and seen glory, and served her Majesty. _I have_."

Hope tried to reason with him, tried to get round him. But he was
unassailable as Gibraltar, and soon cut the whole thing short by
saying: "There, that's enough. I am much obliged to you, sir, for
bringing me information you think valuable. You are travelling--on
foot--short of funds perhaps. Please accept this trifle,
and--and--good-morning." He retreated at marching pace, and the hot
blood burned his visitor's face. An alms!

But on second thoughts he said: "Well, I have offered him a fortune, and
he gives me ten shillings. One good turn deserves another." So he
pocketed the half-sovereign, and bought his little Grace a
neck-handkerchief, blue with white spots; and so this unlucky man and his
child fought their way from west to east, till they reached that place
where we introduced them to the reader.

That was an era in their painful journey, because until then Hope's only
anxiety was to find food and some little comfort for his child. But this
morning little Grace had begun to cough, a little dry cough that struck
on the father's heart like a knell. Her mother had died of consumption:
were the seeds of that fatal malady in her child? If so, hardship,
fatigue, cold, and privation would develop them rapidly, and she would
wither away into the grave before his eyes. So he looked down on her in
an agony of foreboding, and shivered in his shirt sleeves, not at the
cold, but at the future. She, poor girl, was, like the animals, blessed
with ignorance of everything beyond the hour; and soon she woke her
father from his dire reverie with a cry of delight.

"Oh, what's they?" said she, and beamed with pleasure. Hope followed the
direction of her blue eyes, open to their full extent; and lo! there was
a little fleet of swans coming round a bend of the river. Hope told her
all about the royal birds, and that they belonged to sovereigns in one
district, to cities in another. Meantime the fair birds sailed on, and
passed stately, arching their snowy necks. Grace gloated on them, and for
a day or two her discourse was of swans.

At last, when very near the goal, misfortunes multiplied. They came into
a town on a tidal river, whence they could hope to drift down to their
destination for a shill