It was a long and toilsome road that led from the town of Thanshope, through some outlying suburbs, to a large manufacturing village, called Hamerton, which lay on the very skirts of Yorkshire, closed in on all sides by the great ridges of Blackrigg, and some neighbouring wild and desolate moors. He took the road along which Hugo and Sebastian had once driven, and the sun had set as he turned his face towards the hills with that strange sensation of oppressive apathy and indifference ever at his heart. The night was descending, the ‘stars rushed out,’ as he at length gained the complete solitude of the moors, and, turning aside from the road, plunged half knee-deep into the thick heather and ling, which was the only vegetation about there. He walked, for a very short time as it seemed to him--really, for hours--battling with the horrible sensations of a great, black, yawning, hideous blank, a huge emptiness, an _ewiges Nichts_, which completely overpowered him. He was unconscious how far he had gone, or where he was, or that he was even weary, when suddenly he found himself stumbling over the knolls of heather, and looking up, found that it was dark. The summer night had closed in, and he, for aught he knew, might be twenty miles away, or thirty, from Thanshope. He thought he would sit down and rest a little, so he sank down upon the friendly heather, and found that it formed a soft and yielding bed, and that the air which played around his head and face was cool, and pure, and sweet. For a moment he found a blessed sensation of rest and relief, and then all things seemed softly to swim and fade around him; with sweeping wing sleep came upon him, and laid her finger upon his eyelids, and bade the weary brain rest. He sank gradually down in the hollow of the heather, and a deep, dreamless slumber overcame him, and saved him. Never had sleep been a more beneficent visitant; never had kindly Nature taken to her soft arms a more weary, heart-sick child of hers, than she did that summer night, when she offered to Myles Heywood rest upon her own broad bosom. CHAPTER XIII. SUNRISE. Mary Heywood, all the weary afternoon of that weary day, sat beside Edmund’s bed and nursed him, with fear at her heart that the nursing would be of no long duration. The fever which had consumed him was over, but the weakness which remained was terrible--it was a weakness from which, as Mary dimly felt, there would never be any rallying. She had brought sewing and knitting upstairs into the little bedroom, and she drew down the blind ‘to keep the sun out,’ as they both said. Edmund lay perfectly still. She asked him if she should read to him, but he smiled a little, and shook his head. Neither of them knew how very near the end was. Edmund, if he could have known, would have been very glad, and Mary would have been so miserable, that it was well she did not know.