`You are a foolish fellow to say it, for I know it well, and see it, or I should be a blind and senseless beast,' rejoined Nicholas. `Let me ask you a question while I think of it, and there is no one by,' he added, looking him steadily in the face. `Have you a good memory?'

`I don't know,' said Smike, shaking his head sorrowfully. `I think I had once; but it's all gone now -- all gone.'

`Why do you think you had once?' asked Nicholas, turning quickly upon him as though the answer in some way helped out the purport of his question.

`Because I could remember, when I was a child,' said Smike, `but that is very, very long ago, or at least it seems so. I was always confused and giddy at that place you took me from; and could never remember, and sometimes couldn't even understand, what they said to me. I -- let me see -- let me see!'

`You are wandering now,' said Nicholas, touching him on the arm.

`No,' replied his companion, with a vacant look `I was only thinking how --' He shivered involuntarily as he spoke.

`Think no more of that place, for it is all over,' retorted Nicholas, fixing his eyes full upon that of his companion, which was fast settling into an unmeaning stupefied gaze, once habitual to him, and common even then. `What of the first day you went to Yorkshire?'

`Eh!' cried the lad.

`That was before you began to lose your recollection, you know,' said Nicholas quietly. `Was the weather hot or cold?'

`Wet,' replied the boy. `Very wet. I have always said, when it has rained hard, that it was like the night I came: and they used to crowd round and laugh to see me cry when the rain fell heavily. It was like a child, they said, and that made me think of it more. I turned cold all over sometimes, for I could see myself as I was then, coming in at the very same door.'

`As you were then,' repeated Nicholas, with assumed carelessness; `how was that?'

`Such a little creature,' said Smike, `that they might have had pity and mercy upon me, only to remember it.'

`You didn't find your way there, alone!' remarked Nicholas.

`No,' rejoined Smike, `oh no.'

`Who was with you?'

`A man -- a dark, withered man. I have heard them say so, at the school, and I remembered that before. I was glad to leave him, I was afraid of him; but they made me more afraid of them, and used me harder too.'

`Look at me,' said Nicholas, wishing to attract his full attention.

`There; don't turn away. Do you remember no woman, no kind woman, who hung over you once, and kissed your lips, and called you her child?'

`No,' said the poor creature, shaking his head, `no, never.'

`Nor any house but that house in Yorkshire?'