is
the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present. That
is _its_ story, Phoebe."

"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with hesitation.

"Not in the least; it is a great high road after all."

"I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe, with a persuasive smile,
"for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me. I
should like you to take it, because that road can never be again, like
any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance of
your having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier!
If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this
great kindness," sounding a faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel,
lying here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a
prosperous end, and bring you back some day."

"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his
destination was the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of
December when he left it. "High time," he reflected, as he seated
himself in the train, "that I started in earnest! Only one clear day
remains between me and the day I am running away from. I'll push onward
for the hill-country to-morrow. I'll go to Wales."

It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable
advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses
from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and
rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he
could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource,
her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now--just at
first--that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of
steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her;
whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of
the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her
so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning
of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a
great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other
similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was
within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from
an object of interest, and cessatio