CHAPTER 39

In which another old Friend encounters Smike, very opportunely and to some Purpose The night, fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul, had given place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country mail-coach traversed, with cheerful noise, the yet silent streets of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively winding of the guard’s horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard by the Post Office. The only outside passenger was a burly, honest-looking countryman on t…