he made up his
mind since he had left his sister, and that was that he would not
return to the house. He knew that he could do nothing there to serve
his purpose; his threats would be vain impotence; he had no longer
any friend in the house. He could hardly tell himself what line of
conduct he would pursue, but he thought that he would hurry back
to London, and grasp at whatever money he could get from Alice. He
was still, at this moment, a Member of Parliament; and as the rain
drenched him through and through, he endeavoured to get consolation
from the remembrance of that fact in his favour.

As he got near the village he overtook a shepherd boy coming down
from the hills, and learned his whereabouts from him. "Baampton,"
said the boy, with an accent that was almost Scotch, when he was
asked the name of the place. When Vavasor further asked whether a
gig were kept there, the boy simply stared at him, not knowing a
gig by that name. At last, however, he was made to understand the
nature of his companion's want, and expressed his belief that "John
Applethwaite, up at the Craigs yon, had got a mickle cart." But the
Craigs was a farm-house, which now came in view about a mile off, up
across the valley; and Vavasor, hoping that he might still find a
speedier conveyance than John Applethwaite's mickle cart, went on to
the public-house in the village. But, in truth, neither there, nor
yet from John Applethwaite, to whom at last an application was sent,
could he get any vehicle; and between six and seven he started off
again, through the rain, to make his weary way on foot to Shap. The
distance was about five miles, and the little byways, lying between
walls, were sticky, and almost glutinous with light-coloured, chalky
mud. Before he started he took a glass of hot rum-and-water, but the
effect of that soon passed away from him, and then he became colder
and weaker than he had been before.

Wearily and wretchedly he plodded on. A man may be very weary in such
a walk as that, and yet be by no means wretched. Tired, hungry, cold,
wet, and nearly penniless, I have sat me down and slept among those
mountain tracks,--have slept because nature refused to allow longer
wakefulness. But my heart has been as light as my purse, and there
has been something in the air of the hills that made me buoyant and
happy in the midst of my weariness. But George Vavasor was wretched
as well as weary, and every step that he took, plodding through t