It
lay downhill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly
bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So
it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest
ends of Europe, there skirting the sea-surge, here gleaming in the
lights of cities; and the innumerable army of tramps and travellers
moved upon it in all lands as by a common impulse, and were now in
all places drawing near to the inn door and the night's rest. The
pictures swarmed and vanished in his brain; a surge of temptation, a
beat of all his blood, went over him, to set spur to the mare and to
go on into the unknown for ever. And then it passed away; hunger
and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which we call common
sense, resumed their empire; and in that changed mood his eye
lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between the road
and river.
He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking
with his whip on the door of a large farmhouse, and a chorus of dogs
from the farmyard were making angry answer. A very tall, old,
white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had
been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance;
but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice
when he spoke was broken and falsetto.
'You will pardon me,' said Otto. 'I am a traveller and have
entirely lost my way.
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