John rubbed his heated forehead, and looked perplexed. "What's to be done?" said he. "You must take back the cheque and get it signed, of course," said the clerk; "as it is, it is of no more use than blank paper." And having thus summarily dismissed the business, the clerk turned away to attend to a gentleman who had just entered the office. "This ben't the First of April, or I should have thought the Justice had chosen to play me a trick," thought John, as, somewhat mortified and provoked, he replaced the cheque in his pocket-book, and then quitted the bank. "He'd no right to send me on such a fool's errand as this because he'd a twinge in his gouty foot. I'll tell him my mind when I see him to-morrow. I'll just go and refresh myself now a bit; for an hour of walking about this Babel takes more out of a fellow than a day spent in hedging and ditching. I'll buy the few things I want, and then get home as fast as my legs will carry me. I shall be ashamed to tell Dick Brace that I've lost a day's work, and had a twenty miles' walk for my pains; 'twill always be a-coming up as a joke against me." CHAPTER III. In the Dark. JOHN CAREY had enjoyed his walk to London, and had never so much as thought if he were tired or not; but whether from the noise and excitement to which he had been unaccustomed, or whether from the damp on his spirits telling on his bodily frame, the road which he retraced on his return seemed to him a weary long one. The sun set in a bank of clouds, a heavy mist filled the air; it appeared to John as if he should never get beyond the line of streets and villas which stretch, mile after mile, along the suburbs of London. The country was reached at last, but the evening mist lay so heavy upon it, that John could see nothing of the fields, and the hedges and trees which bordered the road loomed dim and indistinct through the increasing darkness. John had no inclination to whistle. "Somehow, everything looks dull to me this evening, and I feel a bit down-hearted," muttered John, as he dragged his weary limbs along. "Mother says as how there's nothing ever comes to us by chance, that there's never a brier thrown across a pilgrim's way but he may pluck a blessing from it. I don't see how that can be, but mayhap that's because I ain't a pilgrim, and don't ask or look for the blessing. I can see nothing in this here matter about the cheque but the stupid blunder of a lazy old glutton, and all I get from it is a waste of shoe-leather, and a loss of time and temper. I suppose that I shall have another trudge up to London to-morrow; no, that there Justice should pay for the coach, if there's anything of justice in him but the name." Darker and darker grew the night, weary and more weary the traveller; one of his shoes hurt his foot, and he painfully limped along.