CHAPTER XXXV--HE MISSES AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.--AN ADVENTURE
CONSEQUENT UPON IT
When they had arrived within a little way of the village they
journeyed to, Harley stopped short, and looked steadfastly on the
mouldering walls of a ruined house that stood on the road side.
"Oh, heavens!" he cried, "what do I see: silent, unroofed, and
desolate! Are all thy gay tenants gone? do I hear their hum no more
Edwards, look there, look there? the scene of my infant joys, my
earliest friendships, laid waste and ruinous! That was the very
school where I was boarded when you were at South-hill; 'tis but a
twelve-month since I saw it standing, and its benches filled with
cherubs: that opposite side of the road was the green on which they
sported; see it now ploughed up! I would have given fifty times its
value to have saved it from the sacrilege of that plough."
"Dear sir," replied Edwards, "perhaps they have left it from choice,
and may have got another spot as good."
"They cannot," said Harley, "they cannot; I shall never see the
sward covered with its daisies, nor pressed by the dance of the dear
innocents: I shall never see that stump decked with the garlands
which their little hands had gathered.
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