The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected were, after all, in nowise assisted by his investigations.  For, he had connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference.  Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.

“But, sir,” remarked Phoebe, “we have only six roads after all.  Is the seventh road dumb?”

“The seventh road?  Oh!” said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin.  “That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present.  That is its story.  Phoebe.”

“Would you mind taking that road again, sir?” she asked with hesitation.

“Not in the least; it is a great high-road after all.”

“I should like you to take it,” returned Phoebe with a persuasive smile, “for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me.  I should like you to take it, because that road can never be again like any other road to me.  I should like you to take it, in remembrance of your having done me so much good:  of your having made me so much happier!  If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this great kindness,” sounding a faint chord as she spoke, “I shall feel, lying here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you back some day.”

“It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done.”

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of December when he left it.  “High time,” he reflected, as he seated himself in the train, “that I started in earnest!  Only one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away from.  I’ll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow.  I’ll go to Wales.”

It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and rugged roads.  And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he could have wished.  Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now—­just at first—­that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that