who were free; to see the happy meetings of lovers and friends, of parents and children; and the partings that were scarcely partings at all compared with his own length of exile from all mankind:  these were things the bitterness of which Richard felt to the uttermost; his very blood ran gall.  His friend Balfour was among his fellow-travelers, but they did not journey in the same van nor railway carriage.  Had it been otherwise Richard might have felt some sense of companionship; whereas the contact of this man Rolfe seemed to degrade him to his level, and isolate him from humanity itself.  At the same time, he shrank with sensitiveness from the gaze of the gaping crowd.  It is so difficult, even with the strongest will to do so, to become callous and hardened to shame except by slow degrees:  every finger seemed to point at him in recognition, every tongue to be telling of his disgrace and doom; whereas, in simple fact, his own mother would scarcely have known him in such a garb, and with those iron ornaments about his limbs; his fine hair cropped to the roots; his delicate features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—­almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears.  There were nineteen years and three months still, however, between him and it.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

OUT OF THE WORLD.

This tedious, shameful travel came to an end at nightfall.  Their way had lain all day through landscapes of great beauty, though about to lose the last remnants of their autumn splendor; but when they left the rail, the woods, and glens, and rivers were seen no more.  All was dreary moorland, where winter had already begun to reign.  A village or two were passed, among whose scanty population their appearance created little excitement:  such sights were common in that locality.  They were on the high-road that leads to Lingmoor, and to nowhere else.  The way seemed as typical of their outcast life-path as a page out of the Pilgrim’s Progress.  Vanity Fair, where they would fain have tarried if they could, was left far behind them, while to some of them the road was doomed to be the veritable Valley of the Shadow.  They were never to see the world, nor partake of its coarse and brutal pleasures—­the only ones they cared for, or perhaps had experienced—­any more.  How bare, and desolate, and wretched was the prospect!  There was no living thing in sight; only the wild moorland streams hurried by, as if themselves desirous to escape from the barren solitude.  Not a tree was to be seen save Bergen Wood, which Richard’s companion indicated to him, as they neared it, by a movement of the eyelid.  It had been the tomb of many a convict, who had striven for freedom, and found death.  As they emerged from it, Lingmoor