'You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o' your life, Master
Marner,' said Dolly- 'that you would. And if there's any light to be
got up the yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this world, and
I'd be glad on it myself, if you could bring it back.'
So, on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Eppie, in their
Sunday clothes, with a small bundle tied in a blue linen handkerchief,
were making their way through the streets of a great manufacturing
town. Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought over
his native place, had stopped several persons in succession to ask
them the name of this town, that he might be sure he was not under a
mistake about it.
'Ask for Lantern Yard, father- ask this gentleman with the
tassels on his shoulders a-standing at the shop-door; he isn't in a
hurry like the rest,' said Eppie, in some distress at her father's
bewilderment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise, the
movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent faces.
'Eh, my child, he won't know anything about it,' said Silas;
'gentlefolks didn't ever go up the Yard. But happen somebody can
tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I know
the way out o' that as if I'd seen it yesterday.'
With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they
reached Prison Street: and the grim walls of the jail, the first
object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him
with the certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had hitherto
given him, that he was in his native place.
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