Deprived of his rightful
inheritance - a good portion of which he had already spent - Mr. Headstone
deemed it politic to quit Coketown before his creditors were apprised of his reduced
pecuniary state. Without waiting for any further explanation of the facts of
the case from Mr. Bounderby (the gentleman with the great puffed head), the
pedagogue left the bank and walked down the street in the opposite direction to
the railway station, resolving to evade pursuit by making his way across open
country. The landscape beyond the town was blotted here and there with heaps of
coal, and mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where nettles, brambles,
and dock-weed were confusedly heaped together. The local people knew to avoid
these clumps of vegetation; for dismal stories were told in that country of the
old pits hidden beneath such indications. Following an untrodden way, Mr.
Headstone was obliged to beat his own path with a length of stick, and so
absorbed was he by these exertions that he failed to observe a rotten sign by
the wayside on which was painted the legend Old Hell Shaft. The pedagogue would
have missed the opportunity of viewing this celebrated local landmark had not
chance intervened by directing his footsteps to the very brink of a black
ragged chasm, hidden by the thick grass, into which he fell as soundlessly as a
stone dropped into a deep well.
