As they left the old farmhouse, yet another kindness was shown to them, for Jane, secretly bidden by the farmer's wife, had made up a bundle of substantial oat-cakes, with a large piece of cheese, and as they passed out of the door she handed it to them.
This last act of kindness to these two poor motherless lads touched their hearts as perhaps nothing else could have done. They had not been used to such kindness, and they expressed their gratitude, not by words, for they couldn't speak, but by the great, big tears that welled up in their eyes, despite their every effort to keep them back now. Ah! nothing penetrates a boy's heart like kindness.
The old farmer pointed out the way, across the moors, and over Lin-Crag--the way he had trodden fifty years ago, and soon they were climbing the steep hill-side, knee-deep in heather, and following the winding sheep tracks. Again and again they turned round to wave their handkerchiefs at the trio standing by the farm-yard gate now far beneath them, until at last, as they stood on the summit of the crag, the house looked like a little speck in the distance and soon disappeared.
Then they footed it gaily across the lonely blue moorlands. Sometimes they started a covey of young grouse, hidden amongst the heather; then the peewits wheeled around them, uttering plaintive cries, as though bidding them good-bye. The scenes of their childhood, and the landscape on which their infant eyes had first gazed, were now left behind. The little lambs frisked about playfully, or cropped the short, green patches of tough grass near the water-courses, while overhead the larks sang joyously, continuously, and the sun shone brilliantly down from that wide expanse of azure dome.
The lads sang, too, blithely, lustily, for nothing could repress that feeling that was bubbling up within them; they trod the earth lightly, for they were in the "Land of Havilah," which is the "Golden Land of Youth," where the sun is always shining, where all the visions and ideals are golden, the enthusiasm and the energy boundless. So life with all its charm was opening out to them, but what was that life to be?
"Let us halt beside this spring, Jamie, for we have come twelve miles since morning," said Jack, about an hour after mid-day.
So they rested awhile, and ate some of the oat-cakes, and drank at the spring, where commenced a little stream of clear water, which sang its way down to the sea. Soon they left the wild moorlands behind them, and descending the western slopes of the Pennines, they entered the county of Lancaster, and passed through several hamlets and villages, where the rude country people spoke a dialect which they could scarcely understand.
Towards evening their footsteps began to lag. They had long ago ceased to sing, or even to whistle. They were tired and footsore, and for the last hour they had trudged on in silence, for they were both very brave, and neither would confess fatigue.
That night they slept under a hayrick in the corner of a field. They slept soundly, too, but next morning they were up early, and after performing their ablutions, and cooling their blistered feet in a neighbouring pond, they finished the oat-cakes and cheese, and started again.
The first day they had covered nearly half the distance between their home and that rising little sea-port town of Liverpool, whose docks and wharves were now crowded with ships from every part of the globe. The second day, however, they were too footsore to travel half that distance, and they had to break into that golden guinea to buy food, but they still persisted and never spake one word about turning back, and in the afternoon of the fourth day their hearts beat with joy, as they reached the top of a little eminence, that is now part and parcel of the great city of Liverpool, but was then merely a country lane, and their eyes were gladdened by a first glimpse of the forest of masts and spars, that lay in the river beneath them, while out there--beyond the bar, where the breakers were rolling in by the lighthouse--was the sea.