"Let us trust to Heaven to remove the cankerworm that is gnawing our vitals." Paul felt very sorry for them, and he, too, wiped away a tear.
For many years he remembered that day.

He was alone in his brickfield on a gusty March morning-the Easter holidays had released him from school-squatting by his hole under the lee of a mass of earth and rubbish.

It was a mean expanse, blackened by soot and defiled by refuse.

Here and there bramble and stunted gorse struggled for an existence; but the flora mainly consisted in bits of old boots and foul raiment protruding grotesquely from the soil, half-buried cans, rusty bits of iron, and broken bottles.

On one side the backs of grimy little houses, their yards full of fluttering drab underwear, marked the edge of the hopeless town which rose above them in forbidding buildings, belching chimney shafts and the spikes of a couple of spires.