The fact was I had caught sight of the direction, which was in her handwriting, and had quite forgotten Joe, as I was cutting it off to put it in my pocket-book. “Well, that’s a rum start,” said Joe, “but every one has their own notions about travelling;” and so, with a cheery good-bye to me, off he drove along the dark road; and in another minute the train came up, and I and my luggage were on our way to London. We went away up through the cold night, eastward, towards the great city which had been my home from childhood. I felt that another man was journeying back from the one who had come down a fortnight before; that he who was travelling eastward had learnt to look beyond his own narrow cellar in the great world-city, to believe in other things than cash payments and shorthand for making his cellar liveable in, to have glimpses of and to sympathize with the life of other men, in his own time, and in the old times before him. These thoughts crowded on me, but all under the shadow of and subordinated to the one great rising hope, in which I had first found and felt my new life. Together they lifted up my heart during the first stages of that night journey, and I opened the window and leant out into the rushing night air, for the carriage was too small for me, and my grand visions and resolves. But soon it began to feel cold, and I shut up the window and squeezed myself into a corner with my feet up on the opposite seat, and felt very thankful that I had on Joe’s great coat. Then the lamp went out, and it got colder as the dawn came on, and my visions and resolves began to get less bright and firm. The other side of the picture rose up in ugly colours, and I thought of the dirty dark clerks’ room, and the hours of oil-lamps and bad air, and the heartless whirl and din of the great city. And to crown all came the more than doubt whether my hope would not fade out and die in the recesses of my own heart. What was I? and what my prospects, that any one should ever give me a thought again of those whom I was so fast leaving behind, much more that she, the flower of them all, should single me out before all others? It was absurd, I should most likely never see Elm Close, or the Vale, or the great mysterious Hill again--I had better make up my mind to live the next twenty years as I had the last. With some such meaning spoke the doleful voices, but I was never much of a hand at looking at the doleful side of things, and I made good strong fight on that night ride; and took out my pipe, and lit it, and pressed my back firmer into my corner.