Taking nothing with me but cap, stick and the simple suit of clothes I had on, I descended the stairs with a firm tread and passed the open door of the sitting-room. There was silence there, and in silence I walked by it without a glance in its direction. It held but bitter memories for me now and was scarce less haunted in its way than the other. And so to me would it always be--haunted by the beautiful wild memory of a changeling, whose coming had wrought the great evil of my life, to whom I, going, attributed no blame, but loved her then as I had loved her from the first. The booming of the wheel shook, like a voice of mockery, at me as I passed the room of silence. Its paddles, I thought, seemed reeling with wicked merriment, and its creaking thunder to spin monotonously the burden of one chant. “I let you go, but not to escape--I let you go, but not to escape.” The fancy haunted my mind for weeks to come. In the darkness of the passage a hand seized mine and wrung it fiercely. “You don’t mean to let the grass grow on your resolve, then, Renalt?” said my father’s voice, rough and subdued. “No, dad; I can do no good by delaying.” “I’m sore to let you go, my boy. But it’s for the best--it’s for the best. Don’t think hardly of me; and be a fine lad and strike out a path for yourself.” “God bless you, dad,” I said, and so left him. As I stepped into the frosty air the cathedral bells rung out like iron on an anvil. The city roofs and towers sparkled with white; the sun looked through a shining mist, giving earnest of gracious hours to come. It was a happy omen. I turned my back on the old decaying past and set my face toward London. CHAPTER XIII. MY FRIEND THE CRIPPLE. In the year 1860, of which I now write, so much of prejudice against railways still existed among many people of a pious or superstitious turn of mind, that I can quote much immediate precedent in support of my resolve to walk to London rather than further tempt a Providence I had already put to so severe a strain. It must be borne in mind of course that we Trenders were little more than barbarians of an unusual order, who had been nourished on a scorn of progress and redeemed only by a natural leaning toward picturesqueness of a pagan kind. Moreover, the sense of mystery, which was an integral part of our daily experience, had ingrained in us all a general antagonism toward unconstructed agencies. Lastly, not one of us had ever as yet been in a train. Still, it was with no feeling of inability to carve a road for myself through the barriers to existence that I drew, on the evening of my third day’s tramp, toward the overlapping pall that was the roof of the “City of Dreadful Night.”