d painfully than they had done yet,
for another mile or thereabouts, when they heard the sound of wheels
behind them, and looking round observed an empty cart approaching
pretty briskly. The driver on coming up to them stopped his horse and
looked earnestly at Nell.

'Didn't you stop to rest at a cottage yonder?' he said.

'Yes, sir,' replied the child.

'Ah! They asked me to look out for you,' said the man. 'I'm going
your way. Give me your hand--jump up, master.'

This was a great relief, for they were very much fatigued and could
scarcely crawl along. To them the jolting cart was a luxurious
carriage, and the ride the most delicious in the world. Nell had
scarcely settled herself on a little heap of straw in one corner, when
she fell asleep, for the first time that day.

She was awakened by the stopping of the cart, which was about to turn
up a bye-lane. The driver kindly got down to help her out, and
pointing to some trees at a very short distance before them, said that
the town lay there, and that they had better take the path which they
would see leading through the churchyard. Accordingly, towards this
spot, they directed their weary steps.

CHAPTER 16

The sun was setting when they reached the wicket-gate at which the path
began, and, as the rain falls upon the just and unjust alike, it shed
its warm tint even upon the resting-places of the dead, and bade them
be of good hope for its rising on the morrow. The church was old and
grey, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the porch. Shunning
the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble
men: twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths
less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some
which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms
of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last to
executors and mourning legatees.

The clergyman's horse, stumbling with a dull blunt sound among the
graves, was cropping the grass; at once deriving orthodox consolation
from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last Sunday's text that this
was what all flesh came to; a lean ass who had sought to expound it
also, without being qualified and ordained, was pricking his ears in an
empty pound hard by, and looking with hungry eyes upon his priestly
neighbour.

The old man and the child quitted the gravel path, and strayed among
the tombs; for there the g