Welsh Journals

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WHAT CANNOT LOVE DO. 121 while London was a limitless world. He would try Chester first, and thither he went. Thinking over the chances, he speedily narrowed them to two. The next train to Chester would probably be the one they took, and he might again find a guard who remembered them. If this entirely failed, he must then walk the streets till dark in the evening, and, if he saw or heard nothing of them, over a great part of next day, in the hope they or one of them would be moving about. The face of each was so distinctly imprinted on his brain that he was certain he should know if either came near. Neither the guard in the train, nor the porter, when Larry got out of it, nor the keeper of the cloak-room, where he fondly hoped they might have found occasion temporarily to deposit their luggage, and possibly be well-known, were able to render him any help. His hurried run through the streets was equally fruitless, and darkness soon stopped even the trial. It happened that there was a concert of a very distinguished character that evening at Chester, as Larry had seen by the big posters that stared him in the face, soon after leaving the station. Now, might not Mr. Blake have had reason through this- hurried journey to be specially anxious for some occasion of pleasing the ladies at the end of it, if Chester was their end,, and the concert have given him the opportunity. ? He went there; heard for the first time in his life without caring for it, music and songs by some of the finest English executants and singers, and left the place at the end of the first part, quite certain those whom he sought were not there. He felt the same inability to think of anything but Norah Blake during his renewed search through the picturesque streets and " rows " of Chester next day. Nothing interested him, however fine, in the absence of any trace of the one being in the world that, were she found, would have made all things interesting, even the humblest, if in any way associated with her. London remained. And blank, indeed, was the prospect in that direction, if they had gone thither. Not solely for its vastness, and for the fact that Larry had never been there—never indeed left his own country before ;. and, consequently, felt as if he would be lost amidst its- wildernesses of brick and mortar, but also for that other disturbing fact—that London was a place of all places for travellers from every point of the compass to arrive only again to depart; often without quitting the platform on which they set foot on leaving their carriage. Again, he laid himself out for a talk with the guard who-