Morning came--much weaker, yet the child made no complaint--she
felt a hopelessness of their ever being extricated together from that
forlorn place; a dull conviction that she was very ill, perhaps dying;
but no fear or anxiety. Objects appeared more dim, the noise less, the
path more uneven, for sometimes she stumbled, and became roused, as it
were, in the effort to prevent herself from falling. Poor child! The
cause was in her tottering feet.
They were dragging themselves along toward evening and the child felt
that the time was close at hand when she could bear no more. Before them
she saw a traveller reading from a book which he carried.
It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech his aid, for
he walked fast. 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 faintly to implore his help.
He turned his head. Nell clapped her hands together, uttered a wild
shriek, and fell senseless at his feet. It was no other than the poor
schoolmaster. Scarcely less moved and surprised than the child herself,
he stood for a moment, silent and confounded by the unexpected
apparition, without even presence of mind to raise her from the ground.
But, quickly recovering his self-possession, and dropping on one knee
beside her, he endeavored to restore her to herself.
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