Stranica 65 [65]
37
The stone by which he was seated, bore
m large characters an mtimation that it
was just seventy miles from that spot to
London. The name awakened a new train
of ideas in the boy’s mind. London !—
that great large place !—nobody—not even
Mr. Bumble—could ever find him there.
He had often heard the old men in the
workhouse, too, say that no lad of spirit
need want in London, and that there were
ways of living in that vast city which
those who had been bred up in country
parts had no idea of. It was the very place
for a homeless boy, who must die in the
streets unless some one helped him. As
these things passed through his thoughts,
he jumped upon his feet, and again walk¬
ed forward.
He had diminished the distance between
himself and London by full four miles
more, before he recollected how much he
must undergo ere he could hope to reach
his place of destination. As this consi¬
deration forced itself upon him, he slack¬
ened his pace a little, and meditated upon
his means of getting there. He had a
crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and two
pairs of ne: in his bundle; and a
penny—a gift of Sowerberry’s after some
funeral in which he had acquitted himself
more than ordinarily well—in his pocket.
“A clean shirt,” thought Oliver, “is a
very comfortable thine,—very ; and so are
two pairs of darned stockings, and so is a
penny ; but they are small helps to a sixty¬
five miles’ walk in winter time.” But
Oliver’s thoughts, like those of most other
people, although they were extremel
ready and active to point out his difficul¬
ties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any
feasible mode of surmounting them; so,
after a good deal of thinking to no parti¬
cular purpose, he changed his little bundle
over to the other shoulder, and trudged on.
Oliver walked twenty miles that day;
and all that time tasted nothing but the
crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of
water which he begged at the cottage¬
doors by the road-side. When the night
came, he turned into a meadow, and,
creeping close under a hay-rick, deter¬
mined to lie there till morning. He felt
frightened at first, for the wind moaned
dismally over the empty fields, and he was
cold and hungry, and more alone than he
had ever felt before. Being very tired
with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep
and forgot his troubles.
He felt cold and stiff when he got up
next morning, and so hungry that he was
obliged to exchange the penny for a small
loaf in ye very first village through which
he passed. He had walked no more than
twelve miles, when night closed in again ;
for his feet were sore, and his legs so weak
that they trembled beneath him. Another
night passed in the bleak damp air only
made him worse; and, when he set for¬
ward on his journey next morning, he
could hardly crawl along.
He waited at the bottom of a steep hill
till a stage-coach came up, and then beg¬
ged of the outside passengers; but there
were very few who took any notice of him,
and even those, told him to wait till they
got to the top of the hill, and then let
them see how far he could run for a half¬
penny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with
the coach a little way, but was unable to
do it, by reason of his fatigue and sore
feet. When the outsides saw this, they
put their halfpence back into their pockets
again, declaring that he was an idle young
dog, and didn’t deserve anything ; and the
coach rattled away, and left only a cloud
of dust behind.
In some villages, large painted boards
were fixed up, warning all persons who
begged within the district that they would
be sent to jail, which frightened Oliver
very much, and made him very glad to get
out of them with all possible expedition. In
others he would stand about the inn-yards,
and look mournfully at every one who
passed ; a proceeding which generally ter¬
minated in the landlady’s ordering one of
the post-boys who were lounging about, to
drive that strange boy out of the place,
for she was sure he had come to steal
something. If he begged at a farmer’s
house, ten to one but they threatened to
set the dog on him; and when he showed
his nose in a shop, they talked about the
beadle, which brought Oliver’s heart up
into his mouth,—very often the only thing
he had there for many hours together.
In fact, if it had not been for a good¬
hearted turnpike-man, and a benevolent
old lady, Oliver’s troubles would have
been shortened by the very same process
which put an end to his mother’s; in other
words, he would most assuredly have fallen
dead upon the king’s ‘highway. But the
turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread
and cheese ; and the old lady, who had a
shipwrecked grandson wandering bare¬
footed in some distant part of the earth,
took pity upon the poor orphan, and gave ~
him what little she could afford—and
more—with such kind and gentle words,
and such tears of sympathy and compas¬
sion, that they sank deeper into Oliver's
soul than all the sufferings he had ever
undergone.