She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her day,--and of her whole life. She had no plan,--nothing before her; no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it! To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket,--so that there need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter,--and have no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no duty to accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can draw nigher,--except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase for herself at some poor wayside inn, than she did of her future life. [Illustration: Carry Brattle.] She got a lump of bread and a glass of beer in the middle of the day, and then she walked on and on till the evening came. She went very slowly, stopping often and sitting down when the road side would afford her some spot of green shade. At eight o'clock she had walked fifteen miles, straight along the road, and, as she knew well, had passed the turn which would have taken her by the nearest way from Salisbury to Bullhampton. She had formed no plan, but entertained a hope that if she continued to walk they would not catch her so as to take her to Heytesbury on the morrow. She knew that if she went on she might get to Pycroft Common by this road; and though there was no one in the whole world whom she hated worse than Mrs. Burrows, still at Pycroft Common she might probably be taken in and sheltered. At eight she reached a small village which she remembered to have seen before, of which she saw the name written up on a board, and which she knew to be six miles from Bullhampton. She was so tired and weary that she could go no further, and here she asked for a bed. She told them that she was walking from Salisbury to the house of a friend who lived near Devizes, and that she had thought she could do it in one day and save her railway fare. She was simply asked to pay for her bed and supper beforehand, and then she was taken in and fed and sheltered. On the next morning she got up very late and was unwilling to leave the house. She paid for her breakfast, and, as she was not told to go her way, she sat on the chair in which she had been