The child felt stiff and weak in every joint the next morning, but the furnace-tender told them that it was two days' journey to the open country and sweet, pure fields, and she felt that they must press forward at any cost. So they started forth, slowly and wearily, for their journey and privations had almost exhausted them, but still with brave hearts. Through long rows of red brick houses that looked exactly alike they wended their way, asking for bread to eat only when obliged to, and meeting little else but scowls from the dirty factory workers.
Finally, to their great joy, the open country began again to appear; and with fresh courage in their hearts they continued to press on.
They were dragging themselves along through the last street, and the child felt that the time was close at hand when her enfeebled powers would bear no more; when there appeared before them, going in the same direction as themselves, a traveller on foot, who, with a portmanteau strapped to his back, leaned upon a stout stick as he walked, and read from a book which he held in his other hand.
It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech his aid, for he walked fast, and was a little distance in advance. At length he stopped to look more attentively at some passage in his book. Animated with a ray of hope, the child shot on before her grandfather, and going close to the stranger without rousing him by the sound of her footsteps, began, in a few faint words, to implore his help.
He turned his head. The child clapped her hands together, uttered a wild shriek, and fell senseless at his feet.
III. AT THE END OF THE JOURNEY
It was the poor schoolmaster. Scarcely less moved and surprised by the sight of the child than she had been on recognizing him, he stood, for a moment, without even the presence of mind to raise her from the ground.
But quickly recovering his self-possession, he threw down his stick and book, and dropping on one knee beside her, endeavored by such simple means as occurred to him to restore her to herself; while her grandfather, standing idly by, wrung his hands, and implored her with many endearing expressions to speak to him, were it only a word.
"She is quite exhausted," said the schoolmaster, glancing upward into his face. "You have taxed her powers too far, friend."
"She is perishing of want," rejoined the old man. "I never thought how weak and ill she was till now."