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PinkMonkey.com-Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens



722

Chapter 40

In which Nicholas falls in Love. He employs a
Mediator, whose Proceedings are crowned with
unexpected Success, excepting in one solitary
Particular.

Once more out of the clutches of his old persecutor, it
needed no fresh stimulation to call forth the utmost
energy and exertion that Smike was capable of
summoning to his aid. Without pausing for a moment to reflect
upon the course he was taking, or the probability of its leading
him homewards or the reverse, he fled away with surprising
swiftness and constancy of purpose, borne upon such wings as
only Fear can wear, and impelled by imaginary shouts in the well
remembered voice of Squeers, who, with a host of pursuers,
seemed to the poor fellow’s disordered senses to press hard upon
his track; now left at a greater distance in the rear, and now
gaining faster and faster upon him, as the alternations of hope and
terror agitated him by turns. Long after he had become assured
that these sounds were but the creation of his excited brain, he
still held on, at a pace which even weakness and exhaustion could
scarcely retard. It was not until the darkness and quiet of a
country road, recalled him to a sense of external objects, and the
starry sky, above, warned him of the rapid flight of time, that,
covered with dust and panting for breath, he stopped to listen and
look about him.

All was still and silent. A glare of light in the distance, casting a

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PinkMonkey.com-Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens



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