ugging in his arms.

Jo goes on, down to Blackfriars Bridge, where he finds a baking stony
corner wherein to settle his repast. There he sits munching and
gnawing--the sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by
him in two streams--everything passing on to some purpose, and to one end,
until he is stirred up, and told to move on again.

Desperate with being moved on so many times, Jo tramps out of London down
to St. Albans, where, exhausted from hunger and from exposure to extreme
cold, he takes refuge in the cottage of a bricklayer's wife. A young lady
who happens to be making a charity call on the woman in the cottage--sees
his feverish, excited condition, and questions him.

"I am a-being froze," said the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze
wandering about. "And then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up,
ever so many times in an hour, and my head's all sleepy, and all a-going
mad like--I'm so dry--and my bones isn't half as much bones as pains."

"When did he come from London?" the young lady asked.

"I come from London yesterday," said the boy himself, now flushed and hot.
"I'm a-going somewheres. Somewheres," he repeated in a louder tone. "I
have been moved on and moved on, more nor I wos afore. Mrs. Snagsby, she's
allus a-watching and a-driving of me. What have I done to her? And they're
all a-watching and a-driving of me. Everyone of them's doing of it from
the time when I don't get up to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm
a-going somewheres, that's where I'm a-going!"

So in an oblivious half-insensible way he shuffled out of the house. The
young lady hurried after him, and presently came up with him. He must have
begun his journey with some small bundle under his arm, and must have lost
it or had it stolen, for he still carried his wretched fragment of a fur
cap like a bundle, though he went bareheaded through the rain, which now
fell fast.

He stopped when she called him, standing with his lustrous eyes fixed on
her, and even arrested in his shivering fit. She urged him to go with her,
and though at first he shook his head, at last he turned and followed her.
She led the way to her home, where the servants, sorry for his pitiable
condition, made a bed for him in a warm loft-room by the stable, where he
was safely housed for the night and cared for.

The next morning the young lady was awakened at an early hour by an
unusual noise outside her window, and called out to one of