His eyes were fixed on the roofs.  There was life there.  He never took his eyes off them.  A dead man might gaze thus on what might appear through the half-opened lid of his sepulchre.  There were the chimneys of which he had seen the smoke.

No smoke arose from them now.  He was not long before he reached the houses.  He came to the outskirts of a town—­an open street.  At that period bars to streets were falling into disuse.

The street began by two houses.  In those two houses neither candle nor lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole street; nor in the whole town, so far as eye could reach.  The house to the right was a roof rather than a house; nothing could be more mean.  The walls were of mud, the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than wall.  A large nettle, springing from the bottom of the wall, reached the roof.  The hovel had but one door, which was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was but a hole.  All was shut up.  At the side an inhabited pig-sty told that the house was also inhabited.

The house on the left was large, high, built entirely of stone, with a slated roof.  It was also closed.  It was the rich man’s home, opposite to that of the pauper.

The boy did not hesitate.  He approached the great mansion.  The double folding-door of massive oak, studded with large nails, was of the kind that leads one to expect that behind it there is a stout armoury of bolts and locks.  An iron knocker was attached to it.  He raised the knocker with some difficulty, for his benumbed hands were stumps rather than hands.  He knocked once.

No answer.

He struck again, and two knocks.

No movement was heard in the house.

He knocked a third time.

There was no sound.  He saw that they were all asleep, and did not care to get up.

Then he turned to the hovel.  He picked up a pebble from the snow, and knocked against the low door.

There was no answer.

He raised himself on tiptoe, and knocked with his pebble against the pane too softly to break the glass, but loud enough to be heard.

No voice was heard; no step moved; no candle was lighted.

He saw that there, as well, they did not care to awake.

The house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally deaf to the wretched.

The boy decided on pushing on further, and penetrating the strait of houses which stretched away in front of him, so dark that it seemed more like a gulf between two cliffs than the entrance to a town.

CHAPTER IV.

ANOTHER FORM OF DESERT.

It was Weymouth which he had just entered.  Weymouth then was not the respectable and fine Weymouth of to-day.