The Man Who Laughs Part I, Book the Third, Chapter IV - Another Form of Desert

In which a forsaken child, bearing a sleeping infant, navigates the dreary and dismal streets of an ancient, slumbering Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, where the harsh silence of a fearful town deepens his solitude and despair. Amidst the shadowy houses and unyielding rejection of its inhabitants, he is driven by a mysterious, instinctive duty to press onward between the cold, forsaken realms of town and country.