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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caleb Williams
+       Things As They Are
+
+Author: William Godwin
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2004 [EBook #11323]
+[This File last updated: October 19, 2010]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB WILLIAMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+CALEB WILLIAMS
+
+OR THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+BY WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST A. BAKER, M.A.
+
+
+LONDON
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+
+MR. FERDINANDO FALKLAND, a high-spirited and highly cultured gentleman,
+a country squire in "a remote county of England."
+
+CALEB WILLIAMS, a youth, his secretary, the discoverer of his secret,
+and the supposed narrator of the consequent events.
+
+MR. COLLINS, Falkland's steward and Caleb's friend.
+
+THOMAS, a servant of Falkland's.
+
+MR. FORESTER, Falkland's brother-in-law.
+
+MR. BARNABAS TYRREL, a brutal and tyrannical squire.
+
+MISS EMILY MELVILLE, his cousin and dependent, whom he cruelly maltreats
+and does to death.
+
+GRIMES, a brutal rustic, suborned by Tyrrel to abduct Miss Melville.
+
+DR. WILSON; MRS. HAMMOND, friends of Miss Melville. MR. HAWKINS, farmer;
+YOUNG HAWKINS, his son, Victims of Tyrrel's brutality, and wrongfully
+hanged as his murderers.
+
+GINES, a robber and thief-taker, instrument of Falkland's vengeance upon
+Caleb.
+
+MR. RAYMOND, an "Arcadian" captain of robbers.
+
+LARKINS, one of his band.
+
+AN OLD HAG, housekeeper to the robbers.
+
+A GAOLER.
+
+MISS PEGGY, the gaoler's daughter.
+
+MRS. MARNEY, a poor gentlewoman, Caleb's friend in distress.
+
+MR. SPURREL, a friend who informs on Caleb.
+
+MRS. DENISON, a cultivated lady with whom Caleb is for a while on
+friendly terms.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The reputation of WILLIAM GODWIN as a social philosopher, and the merits
+of his famous novel, "Caleb Williams," have been for more than a century
+the subject of extreme divergencies of judgment among critics. "The
+first systematic anarchist," as he is called by Professor Saintsbury,
+aroused bitter contention with his writings during his own lifetime, and
+his opponents have remained so prejudiced that even the staid
+bibliographer Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a
+place where one would think the most flagitious author safe from
+animosity, speaks of Godwin's private life in terms that are little less
+than scurrilous. Over against this persistent acrimony may be put the
+fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, his biographer, to represent the
+favourable judgment of our own time, whilst I will venture to quote one
+remarkable passage that voices the opinions of many among Godwin's most
+eminent contemporaries.
+
+In "The Letters of Charles Lamb," Sir T.N. Talfourd says:
+
+    "Indifferent altogether to the politics of the age, Lamb could
+    not help being struck with productions of its newborn energies
+    so remarkable as the works and the character of Godwin. He
+    seemed to realise in himself what Wordsworth long afterwards
+    described, 'the central calm at the heart of all agitation.'
+    Through the medium of his mind the stormy convulsions of society
+    were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring
+    wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He
+    foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the
+    inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless
+    voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once
+    to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots
+    than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on
+    the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his species.
+    No one would have suspected the author of those wild theories
+    which startled the wise and shocked the prudent in the calm,
+    gentlemanly person who rarely said anything above the most
+    gentle commonplace, and took interest in little beyond the
+    whist-table."
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) was son and grandson of Dissenting ministers,
+and was destined for the same profession. In theology he began as a
+Calvinist, and for a while was tinctured with the austere doctrines of
+the Sandemanians. But his religious views soon took an unorthodox turn,
+and in 1782, falling out with his congregation at Stowmarket, he came up
+to London to earn his bread henceforward as a man of letters. In 1793
+Godwin became one of the most famous men in England by the publication
+of his "Political Justice," a work that his biographer would place side
+by side with the "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," the "Essay on
+Education," and "Emile," as one of "the unseen levers which have moved
+the changes of the times." Although the book came out at what we should
+call a "prohibitive price," it had an enormous circulation, and brought
+its author in something like 1,000 guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb
+Williams," which was published the next year, he illustrated in scenes
+from real life many of the principles enunciated in his philosophical
+work. "Caleb Williams" went through a number of editions, and was
+dramatized by Colman the younger under the title of "The Iron Chest." It
+has now been out of print for many years. Godwin wrote several other
+novels, but one alone is readable now, "St. Leon," which is
+philosophical in idea and purpose, and contains some passages of
+singular eloquence and beauty.
+
+Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
+Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was
+the gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly
+fond of whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many
+celebrated men and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran were
+among his closest male friends, while the story of his friendships with
+Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia Opie, with the lady immortalized by Shelley as
+Maria Gisborne, and with those literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee,
+authors of the "Canterbury Tales," has a certain sentimental interest.
+Afterwards he became known to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. He
+married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His later years were clouded by great
+embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he put out of reach of the worst
+privations by the gift of a small sinecure, that of yeoman usher of the
+Exchequer. He died in 1836.
+
+Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by Godwin's
+contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir T. N.
+Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey and Allan
+Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity. Hazlitt's
+opinion is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":
+
+    "A masterpiece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic
+    and chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is
+    embodied in the finest possible manner in the character of
+    Falkland; as in Caleb Williams (who is not the first, but the
+    second character in the piece), we see the very demon of
+    curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which these two
+    characters are contrived to relieve and set off each other has
+    never been surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception
+    of the immortal satire of Cervantes."
+
+Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:
+
+    "It has lived--though in comparative obscurity--for over a
+    century, and high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged
+    for that period raises a presumption that a book deserves the
+    title of classic."--_National Review, February_, 1902.
+
+To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
+advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more
+particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
+think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed
+to illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes
+him." He says:
+
+    "I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that
+    should in some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest.
+    Pursuing this idea, I invented first the third volume of my
+    tale, then the second, and, last of all, the first. I bent
+    myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and
+    pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being
+    overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
+    ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the
+    most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume."
+
+He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
+situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
+pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined
+in the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought.
+Falkland is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by
+the social system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of
+that system. The reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the
+extraordinary contest between Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the
+tragic situations that it involves. Compared with these the denunciation
+of the social system is a matter of secondary interest; but it was
+natural that the author of the "Political Justice," with his mind
+preoccupied by the defects of the English social system, should make
+those defects the, evil agencies of his plot. As the essential
+conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which everything
+is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to the
+story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their
+immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of
+the law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and
+ruins his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the
+occasion of Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the
+abandonment of the innocent Hawkinses to the gallows, is the consequence
+of what Godwin expressly denounces, punishment for murder. "I conceived
+it to be in the highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man
+qualified for the most essential and extensive utility, merely out of
+retrospect to an act which, whatever were its merits, could not be
+retrieved." Then a new element is imported into the train of causation,
+Caleb's insatiable curiosity, and the strife begins between these
+well-matched antagonists, the man of wealth and station utilizing all
+the advantages granted him by the state of society to crush his enemy.
+Godwin, then, was justified in declaring that his book comprehended "a
+general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which
+man becomes the destroyer of man." Such were the words of the original
+preface, which was suppressed for a short time owing to the fears caused
+by the trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft and other revolutionists,
+with whom Godwin was in profound sympathy. Had he intended "Caleb
+Williams," however, from its first inception, to be an imaginative
+version of the "Political Justice," he would have had to invent a
+different plan and different characters. The arguments of a sociological
+novel lack cogency unless the characters are fairly representative of
+average mankind. Godwin's principal actors are both, to say the least,
+exceptional. They are lofty idealizations of certain virtues and powers
+of mind. Falkland is like Jean Valjean, a superhuman creature; and,
+indeed, "Caleb Williams" may well be compared on one side with "Les
+Misérables," for Victor Hugo's avowed purpose, likewise, was the
+denunciation of social tyranny. But the characteristics that would have
+weakened the implied theorem, had such been the main object, are the
+very things that make the novel more powerful as drama of a grandiose,
+spiritual kind. The high and concentrated imagination that created such
+a being as Falkland, and the intensity of passion with which Caleb's
+fatal energy of mind is sustained through that long, despairing
+struggle, are of greater artistic value than the mechanical symmetry by
+which morals are illustrated.
+
+E. A. B.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+The following narrative is intended to answer a purpose more general and
+important than immediately appears upon the face of it. The question now
+afloat in the world respecting THINGS AS THEY ARE is the most
+interesting that can be presented to the human mind. While one party
+pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms
+the existing constitution of society. It seemed as if something would be
+gained for the decision of this question if that constitution were
+faithfully developed in its practical effects. What is now presented to
+the public is no refined and abstract speculation; it is a study and
+delineation of things passing in the moral world. It is but of late that
+the inestimable importance of political principles has been adequately
+apprehended. It is now known to philosophers that the spirit and
+character of the Government intrudes itself into every rank of society.
+But this is a truth highly worthy to be communicated to persons whom
+books of philosophy and science are never likely to reach. Accordingly,
+it was proposed, in the invention of the following work, to comprehend,
+as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a
+general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by
+which man becomes the destroyer of man. If the author shall have taught
+a valuable lesson, without subtracting from the interest and passion by
+which a performance of this sort ought to be characterised, he will have
+reason to congratulate himself upon the vehicle he has chosen.
+
+_May_ 12, 1794.
+
+This preface was withdrawn in the original edition, in compliance with
+the alarms of booksellers. "Caleb Williams" made his first appearance in
+the world in the same month in which the sanguinary plot broke out
+against the liberties of Englishmen, which was happily terminated by the
+acquittal of its first intended victims in the close of that year.
+Terror was the order of the day; and it was feared that even the humble
+novelist might be shown to be constructively a traitor.
+
+_October_ 29, 1795.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S LATEST PREFACE.
+
+
+LONDON,
+
+_November_ 20, 1832.
+
+"CALEB WILLIAMS" has always been regarded by the public with an unusual
+degree of favour. The proprietor of "THE STANDARD NOVELS" has therefore
+imagined that even an account of the concoction and mode of writing of
+the work would be viewed with some interest.
+
+I finished the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice," the first work
+which may be considered as written by me in a certain degree in the
+maturity of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in
+January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book was
+published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my
+pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By the
+liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I
+was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these
+expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of
+which, though innocent and in some degree useful, I am rather inclined
+to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my favourite work, and from
+that time gave up every other occupation that might interfere with it.
+My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my wants at a
+specified rate while the book was in the train of composition. Finally,
+I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its
+publication, and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to
+what species of industry I should next devote myself.
+
+I had always felt in myself some vocation towards the composition of a
+narrative of fictitious adventure; and among the things of obscure note
+which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature.
+It is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should
+have suggested itself on the present occasion.
+
+But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had
+been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from
+boyhood, I was perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley:
+
+  "What shall I do to be for ever known,
+  And make the age to come my own?"
+
+But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching my
+object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very
+often I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I felt
+ever and anon impelled to repeat my effort.
+
+At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced
+that my object of building to myself a name would never be attained by
+merely repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said,
+even though I should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a
+more than usual point and elegance. The world, I believed, would accept
+nothing from me with distinguishing favour that did not bear upon the
+face of it the undoubted stamp of originality. Having long ruminated
+upon the principles of Political Justice, I persuaded myself that I
+could offer to the public, in a treatise on this subject, things at once
+new, true, and important. In the progress of the work I became more
+sanguine and confident. I talked over my ideas with a few familiar
+friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous
+encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some
+inconsiderable degree, got before its publication, and a certain number
+of persons were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false
+modesty in me to say that its acceptance, when published, did not nearly
+come up to everything that could soberly have been expected by me. In
+consequence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the period in
+which I was engaged in the work and afterwards, acquired a certain
+elevation, and made me now unwilling to stoop to what was insignificant.
+
+I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
+some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this
+idea, I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and
+last of all the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension
+of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
+ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most
+fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next
+called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to
+account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to
+alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never
+to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I
+apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the
+investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a
+sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might
+deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in
+his power. This constituted the outline of my second volume.
+
+The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account
+for the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer
+should be invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution
+that nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of
+intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my
+tale be answered without his appearing to have been originally endowed
+with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his
+being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
+deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of
+his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him, so to speak, the
+tenant of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel
+prompted almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were ample
+materials for a first volume.
+
+I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention
+from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of
+adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of
+plot would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and
+interest in a tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the
+reader, which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other
+way.
+
+I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down
+hints for my story before I engaged seriously and methodically in its
+composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded
+to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or
+three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these
+memorandums. They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly
+enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the
+time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of
+two, three, four, five, or six lines each.
+
+I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the
+most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the
+afflatus was upon me. I held it for a maxim that any portion that was
+written when I was not fully in the vein told for considerably worse
+than nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than
+industry against the grain. Idleness was only time lost; and the next
+day, it may be, was as promising as ever. It was merely a day perished
+from the calendar. But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong
+spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to
+correct and set right again. I wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for
+a week or ten days not a line. Yet all came to the same thing in the
+sequel. On an average, a volume of "Caleb Williams" cost me four months,
+neither less nor more.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that during the whole period, bating a few
+intervals, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself a
+thousand times, "I will write a tale that shall constitute an epoch in
+the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be
+exactly the same man that he was before."--I put these things down just
+as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it
+will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such
+perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his
+best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vainglorious impulse for
+nearly forty years.
+
+When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume, I was
+prevailed upon by the extreme importunity of an old and intimate friend
+to allow him the perusal of my manuscript. On the second day he returned
+it with a note to this purpose: "I return you your manuscript, because I
+promised to do so. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should
+have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly
+prove the grave of your literary fame."
+
+I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly
+critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety before I
+recovered the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I
+felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But
+it was all I had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed
+decision. It stood in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and
+I did not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I
+tell that the second and third judgment would be more favourable than
+the first? Then what would have been the result? No; I had nothing for
+it but to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint of resolution I
+became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to the end, trusting as I could
+to my own anticipations of the whole, and bidding the world wait its
+time before it should be admitted to the consult.
+
+I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But
+I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making
+the hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted
+in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the
+best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in
+which my imagination revelled the most freely was the analysis of the
+private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical
+dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive,
+and recording the gradually accumulating impulses which led the
+personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of
+proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.
+
+When I had determined on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my
+method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to
+bear on my subject. I never entertained the fear that in this way of
+proceeding I should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors. I
+imagined that I had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which
+would always preserve me from plagiarism. I read other authors, that I
+might see what they had done, or, more properly, that I might forcibly
+hold my mind and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my
+predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time
+that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding the
+direction they pursued, and disdaining to inquire whether by any chance
+it for a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine.
+
+Thus, in the instance of "Caleb Williams," I read over a little old
+book, entitled "The Adventures of Mademoiselle de St. Phale," a French
+Protestant in the times of the fiercest persecution of the Huguenots,
+who fled through France in the utmost terror, in the midst of eternal
+alarms and hair-breadth escapes, having her quarters perpetually beaten
+up, and by scarcely any chance finding a moment's interval of security.
+I turned over the pages of a tremendous compilation, entitled "God's
+Revenge against Murder," where the beam of the eye of Omniscience was
+represented as perpetually pursuing the guilty, and laying open his most
+hidden retreats to the light of day. I was extremely conversant with the
+"Newgate Calendar" and the "Lives of the Pirates." In the meantime no
+works of fiction came amiss to me, provided they were written with
+energy. The authors were still employed upon the same mine as myself,
+however different was the vein they pursued: we were all of us engaged
+in exploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing the various
+rencontres and clashes that may occur between man and man in the
+diversified scene of human life.
+
+I rather amused myself with tracing a certain similitude between the
+story of Caleb Williams and the tale of Bluebeard, than derived any
+hints from that admirable specimen of the terrific. Falkland was my
+Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which, if discovered,
+he might expect to have all the world roused to revenge against him.
+Caleb Williams was the wife who, in spite of warning, persisted in his
+attempts to discover the forbidden secret; and, when he had succeeded,
+struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the wife of
+Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often
+as she cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it showing
+itself with frightful distinctness on the other.
+
+When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of my third volume, I
+found myself completely at a stand. I rested on my arms from the 2nd of
+January, 1794, to the 1st of April following, without getting forward in
+the smallest degree. It has ever been thus with me in works of any
+continuance. The bow will not be for ever bent:
+
+  "Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum."
+
+I endeavoured, however, to take my repose to myself in security, and not
+to inflict a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the
+meantime, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of
+that month carried on my work with unabated speed to the end.
+
+Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and
+mode of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became
+sensible that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and insipid
+parts does the book contain! How terribly unequal does it appear to me!
+From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken
+man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse
+boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up
+by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without
+chewing and digestion. I was in this respect greatly impressed with the
+confession of one of the most accomplished readers and excellent critics
+that any author could have fallen in with (the unfortunate Joseph
+Gerald). He told me that he had received my book late one evening, and
+had read through the three volumes before he closed his eyes. Thus, what
+had cost me twelve months' labour, ceaseless heartaches and industry,
+now sinking in despair, and now roused and sustained in unusual energy,
+he went over in a few hours, shut the book, laid himself on his pillow,
+slept, and was refreshed, and cried,
+
+  "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
+
+I had thought to have said something here respecting the concoction of
+"St. Leon" and "Fleetwood." But all that occurs to me on the subject
+seems to be anticipated in the following
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+_February 14, 1805._
+
+Yet another novel from the same pen, which has twice before claimed the
+patience of the public in this form. The unequivocal indulgence which
+has been extended to my two former attempts, renders me doubly
+solicitous not to forfeit the kindness I have experienced.
+
+One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: "not to repeat
+myself." Caleb Williams was a story of very surprising and uncommon
+events, but which were supposed to be entirely within the laws and
+established course of nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit.
+The story of St. Leon is of the miraculous class; and its design, to
+"mix human feelings and passions with incredible situations, and thus
+render them impressive and interesting."
+
+Some of those fastidious readers--they may be classed among the best
+friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously
+considered--who are willing to discover those faults which do not offer
+themselves to every eye, have remarked that both these tales are in a
+vicious style of writing; that Horace has long ago decided that the
+story we cannot believe we are by all the laws of criticism called upon
+to hate; and that even the adventures of the honest secretary, who was
+first heard of ten years ago, are so much out of the usual road that not
+one reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himself.
+
+Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I have served you
+with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, though I cannot say with any
+sanguine hope of obtaining your approbation.
+
+The following story consists of such adventures as for the most part
+have occurred to at least one half of the Englishmen now existing who
+are of the same rank of life as my hero. Most of them have been at
+college, and shared in college excesses; most of them have afterward run
+a certain gauntlet of dissipation; most have married, and, I am afraid,
+there are few of the married tribe who have not at some time or other
+had certain small misunderstandings with their wives.[A] To be sure,
+they have not all of them felt and acted under these trite adventures as
+my hero does. In this little work the reader will scarcely find anything
+to "elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must consist in
+the liveliness with which it brings things home to the imagination, and
+the reality it gives to the scenes it pourtrays.
+
+[Footnote A: I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a
+catastrophe, such as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I
+have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the
+concluding sheets of my work.]
+
+Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
+novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
+well-known line of Pope; it relates:
+
+  "Things often done, but never yet described."
+
+In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to
+avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
+Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents
+I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If
+I have told them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books
+which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of
+what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much,
+by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It
+is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty
+authors have done before! If I had foreseen from the first all the
+difficulty of my project, my courage would have failed me to undertake
+the execution of it.
+
+Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the
+favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation
+on the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was
+not always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is
+treated in the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of
+their assertion. The answer to this remark is exceedingly simple. The
+production referred to in it, the first foundation of its author's claim
+to public distinction and favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain
+what new institutions in political society might be found more
+conducive to general happiness than those which at present prevail. In
+the course of this disquisition it was enquired whether marriage, as it
+stands described and supported in the laws of England, might not with
+advantage admit of certain modifications. Can anything be more distinct
+than such a proposition on the one hand and a recommendation on the
+other that each man for himself should supersede and trample upon the
+institutions of the country in which he lives? A thousand things might
+be found excellent and salutary, if brought into general practice, which
+would in some cases appear ridiculous, and in others be attended with
+tragical consequences, if prematurely acted upon by a solitary
+individual. The author of "Political Justice," as appears again and
+again in the pages of that work, is the last man in the world to
+recommend a pitiful attempt, by scattered examples, to renovate the face
+of society, instead of endeavouring, by discussion and reasoning, to
+effect a grand and comprehensive improvement in the sentiments of its
+members.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+My life has for several years been a theatre of calamity. I have been a
+mark for the vigilance of tyranny, and I could not escape. My fairest
+prospects have been blasted. My enemy has shown himself inaccessible to
+entreaties, and untired in persecution. My fame, as well as my
+happiness, has become his victim. Every one, as far as my story has been
+known, has refused to assist me in my distress, and has execrated my
+name. I have not deserved this treatment. My own conscience witnesses in
+behalf of that innocence, my pretensions to which are regarded in the
+world as incredible. There is now, however, little hope that I shall
+escape from the toils that universally beset me. I am incited to the
+penning of these memoirs only by a desire to divert my mind from the
+deplorableness of my situation, and a faint idea that posterity may by
+their means be induced to render me a justice which my contemporaries
+refuse. My story will, at least, appear to have that consistency which
+is seldom attendant but upon truth.
+
+I was born of humble parents, in a remote county of England. Their
+occupations were such as usually fall to the lot of peasants, and they
+had no portion to give me, but an education free from the usual sources
+of depravity, and the inheritance, long since lost by their unfortunate
+progeny! of an honest fame. I was taught the rudiments of no science,
+except reading, writing, and arithmetic. But I had an inquisitive mind,
+and neglected no means of information from conversation or books. My
+improvement was greater than my condition in life afforded room to
+expect.
+
+There are other circumstances deserving to be mentioned as having
+influenced the history of my future life. I was somewhat above the
+middle stature. Without being particularly athletic in appearance, or
+large in my dimensions, I was uncommonly vigorous and active. My joints
+were supple, and I was formed to excel in youthful sports. The habits of
+my mind, however, were to a certain degree at war with the dictates of
+boyish vanity. I had considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of
+the village gallants, and contrived to satisfy my love of praise with an
+unfrequent apparition at their amusements. My excellence in these
+respects, however, gave a turn to my meditations. I delighted to read of
+feats of activity, and was particularly interested by tales in which
+corporeal ingenuity or strength are the means resorted to for supplying
+resources and conquering difficulties. I inured myself to mechanical
+pursuits, and devoted much of my time to an endeavour after mechanical
+invention.
+
+The spring of action which, perhaps more than any other, characterised
+the whole train of my life, was curiosity. It was this that gave me my
+mechanical turn; I was desirous of tracing the variety of effects which
+might be produced from given causes. It was this that made me a sort of
+natural philosopher; I could not rest till I had acquainted myself with
+the solutions that had been invented for the phenomena of the universe.
+In fine, this produced in me an invincible attachment to books of
+narrative and romance. I panted for the unravelling of an adventure with
+an anxiety, perhaps almost equal to that of the man whose future
+happiness or misery depended on its issue. I read, I devoured
+compositions of this sort. They took possession of my soul; and the
+effects they produced were frequently discernible in my external
+appearance and my health. My curiosity, however, was not entirely
+ignoble: village anecdotes and scandal had no charms for me: my
+imagination must be excited; and when that was not done, my curiosity
+was dormant.
+
+The residence of my parents was within the manor of Ferdinando Falkland,
+a country squire of considerable opulence. At an early age I attracted
+the favourable notice of Mr. Collins, this gentleman's steward, who used
+to call in occasionally at my father's. He observed the particulars of
+my progress with approbation, and made a favourable report to his master
+of my industry and genius.
+
+In the summer of the year ----, Mr. Falkland visited his estate in our
+county after an absence of several months. This was a period of
+misfortune to me. I was then eighteen years of age. My father lay dead
+in our cottage. I had lost my mother some years before. In this forlorn
+situation I was surprised with a message from the squire, ordering me to
+repair to the mansion-house the morning after my father's funeral.
+
+Though I was not a stranger to books, I had no practical acquaintance
+with men. I had never had occasion to address a person of this elevated
+rank, and I felt no small uneasiness and awe on the present occasion. I
+found Mr. Falkland a man of small stature, with an extreme delicacy of
+form and appearance. In place of the hard-favoured and inflexible
+visages I had been accustomed to observe, every muscle and petty line of
+his countenance seemed to be in an inconceivable degree pregnant with
+meaning. His manner was kind, attentive, and humane. His eye was full of
+animation; but there was a grave and sad solemnity in his air, which,
+for want of experience, I imagined was the inheritance of the great, and
+the instrument by which the distance between them and their inferiors
+was maintained. His look bespoke the unquietness of his mind, and
+frequently wandered with an expression of disconsolateness and anxiety.
+
+My reception was as gracious and encouraging as I could possibly desire.
+Mr. Falkland questioned me respecting my learning, and my conceptions of
+men and things, and listened to my answers with condescension and
+approbation. This kindness soon restored to me a considerable part of my
+self-possession, though I still felt restrained by the graceful, but
+unaltered dignity of his carriage. When Mr. Falkland had satisfied his
+curiosity, he proceeded to inform me that he was in want of a secretary,
+that I appeared to him sufficiently qualified for that office, and that,
+if, in my present change of situation, occasioned by the death of my
+father, I approved of the employment, he would take me into his family.
+
+I felt highly flattered by the proposal, and was warm in the expression
+of my acknowledgments. I set eagerly about the disposal of the little
+property my father had left, in which I was assisted by Mr. Collins. I
+had not now a relation in the world, upon whose kindness and
+interposition I had any direct claim. But, far from regarding this
+deserted situation with terror, I formed golden visions of the station
+I was about to occupy. I little suspected that the gaiety and lightness
+of heart I had hitherto enjoyed were upon the point of leaving me for
+ever, and that the rest of my days were devoted to misery and alarm.
+
+My employment was easy and agreeable. It consisted partly in the
+transcribing and arranging certain papers, and partly in writing from my
+master's dictation letters of business, as well as sketches of literary
+composition. Many of these latter consisted of an analytical survey of
+the plans of different authors and conjectural speculations upon hints
+they afforded, tending either to the detection of their errors, or the
+carrying forward their discoveries. All of them bore powerful marks of a
+profound and elegant mind, well stored with literature, and possessed of
+an uncommon share of activity and discrimination.
+
+My station was in that part of the house which was appropriated for the
+reception of books, it being my duty to perform the functions of
+librarian as well as secretary. Here my hours would have glided in
+tranquillity and peace, had not my situation included in it
+circumstances totally different from those which attended me in my
+father's cottage. In early life my mind had been much engrossed by
+reading and reflection: my intercourse with my fellow mortals was
+occasional and short. But, in my new residence, I was excited by every
+motive of interest and novelty to study my master's character; and I
+found in it an ample field for speculation and conjecture.
+
+His mode of living was in the utmost degree recluse and solitary. He had
+no inclination to scenes of revelry and mirth. He avoided the busy
+haunts of men; nor did he seem desirous to compensate for this privation
+by the confidence of friendship. He appeared a total stranger to every
+thing which usually bears the appellation of pleasure. His features were
+scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, nor did that air which spoke the
+unhappiness of his mind at any time forsake them: yet his manners were
+by no means such as denoted moroseness and misanthropy. He was
+compassionate and considerate for others, though the stateliness of his
+carriage and the reserve of his temper were at no time interrupted. His
+appearance and general behaviour might have strongly interested all
+persons in his favour; but the coldness of his address, and the
+impenetrableness of his sentiments, seemed to forbid those
+demonstrations of kindness to which one might otherwise have been
+prompted.
+
+Such was the general appearance of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was
+extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant
+gloom had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and
+tyrannical; but this proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than
+an unfeeling disposition; and when reflection recurred, he appeared
+willing that the weight of his misfortune should fall wholly upon
+himself. Sometimes he entirely lost his self-possession, and his
+behaviour was changed into frenzy: he would strike his forehead, his
+brows became knit, his features distorted, and his teeth ground one
+against the other. When he felt the approach of these symptoms, he would
+suddenly rise, and, leaving the occupation, whatever it was, in which he
+was engaged, hasten into a solitude upon which no person dared to
+intrude.
+
+It must not be supposed that the whole of what I am describing was
+visible to the persons about him; nor, indeed, was I acquainted with it
+in the extent here stated but after a considerable time, and in gradual
+succession. With respect to the domestics in general, they saw but
+little of their master. None of them, except myself, from the nature of
+my functions, and Mr. Collins, from the antiquity of his service and the
+respectableness of his character, approached Mr. Falkland, but at stated
+seasons and for a very short interval. They knew him only by the
+benevolence of his actions, and the principles of inflexible integrity
+by which he was ordinarily guided; and though they would sometimes
+indulge their conjectures respecting his singularities, they regarded
+him upon the whole with veneration, as a being of a superior order.
+
+One day, when I had been about three months in the service of my patron,
+I went to a closet, or small apartment, which was separated from the
+library by a narrow gallery that was lighted by a small window near the
+roof. I had conceived that there was no person in the room, and intended
+only to put any thing in order that I might find out of its place. As I
+opened the door, I heard at the same instant a deep groan, expressive of
+intolerable anguish. The sound of the door in opening seemed to alarm
+the person within; I heard the lid of a trunk hastily shut, and the
+noise as of fastening a lock. I conceived that Mr. Falkland was there,
+and was going instantly to retire; but at that moment a voice, that
+seemed supernaturally tremendous, exclaimed, Who is there? The voice was
+Mr. Falkland's. The sound of it thrilled my very vitals. I endeavoured
+to answer, but my speech failed, and being incapable of any other reply,
+I instinctively advanced within the door into the room. Mr. Falkland was
+just risen from the floor upon which he had been sitting or kneeling.
+His face betrayed strong symptoms of confusion. With a violent effort,
+however, these symptoms vanished, and instantaneously gave place to a
+countenance sparkling with rage.
+
+"Villain!" cried he, "what has brought you here?" I hesitated a
+confused and irresolute answer. "Wretch!" interrupted Mr. Falkland, with
+uncontrollable impatience, "you want to ruin me. You set yourself as a
+spy upon my actions; but bitterly shall you repent your insolence. Do
+you think you shall watch my privacies with impunity?" I attempted to
+defend myself. "Begone, devil!" rejoined he. "Quit the room, or I will
+trample you into atoms." Saying this, he advanced towards me. But I was
+already sufficiently terrified, and vanished in a moment. I heard the
+door shut after me with violence; and thus ended this extraordinary
+scene.
+
+I saw him again in the evening, and he was then tolerably composed. His
+behaviour, which was always kind, was now doubly attentive and soothing.
+He seemed to have something of which he wished to disburthen his mind,
+but to want words in which to convey it. I looked at him with anxiety
+and affection. He made two unsuccessful efforts, shook his head, and
+then putting five guineas into my hand, pressed it in a manner that I
+could feel proceeded from a mind pregnant with various emotions, though
+I could not interpret them. Having done this, he seemed immediately to
+recollect himself, and to take refuge in the usual distance and
+solemnity of his manner.
+
+I easily understood that secrecy was one of the things expected from me;
+and, indeed, my mind was too much disposed to meditate upon what I had
+heard and seen, to make it a topic of indiscriminate communication. Mr.
+Collins, however, and myself happened to sup together that evening,
+which was but seldom the case, his avocations obliging him to be much
+abroad. He could not help observing an uncommon dejection and anxiety in
+my countenance, and affectionately enquired into the reason. I
+endeavoured to evade his questions, but my youth and ignorance of the
+world gave me little advantage for that purpose. Beside this, I had been
+accustomed to view Mr. Collins with considerable attachment, and I
+conceived from the nature of his situation that there could be small
+impropriety in making him my confident in the present instance. I
+repeated to him minutely every thing that had passed, and concluded with
+a solemn declaration that, though treated with caprice, I was not
+anxious for myself; no inconvenience or danger should ever lead me to a
+pusillanimous behaviour; and I felt only for my patron, who, with every
+advantage for happiness, and being in the highest degree worthy of it,
+seemed destined to undergo unmerited distress.
+
+In answer to my communication, Mr. Collins informed me that some
+incidents, of a nature similar to that which I related, had fallen under
+his own knowledge, and that from the whole he could not help concluding
+that our unfortunate patron, was at times disordered in his intellects.
+"Alas!" continued he, "it was not always thus! Ferdinando Falkland was
+once the gayest of the gay. Not indeed of that frothy sort, who excite
+contempt instead of admiration, and whose levity argues thoughtlessness
+rather than felicity. His gaiety was always accompanied with dignity. It
+was the gaiety of the hero and the scholar. It was chastened with
+reflection and sensibility, and never lost sight either of good taste or
+humanity. Such as it was however, it denoted a genuine hilarity of
+heart, imparted an inconceivable brilliancy to his company and
+conversation, and rendered him the perpetual delight of the diversified
+circles he then willingly frequented. You see nothing of him, my dear
+Williams, but the ruin of that Falkland who was courted by sages, and
+adored by the fair. His youth, distinguished in its outset by the most
+unusual promise, is tarnished. His sensibility is shrunk up and withered
+by events the most disgustful to his feelings. His mind was fraught with
+all the rhapsodies of visionary honour; and, in his sense, nothing but
+the grosser part, the mere shell of Falkland, was capable of surviving
+the wound that his pride has sustained."
+
+These reflections of my friend Collins strongly tended to inflame my
+curiosity, and I requested him to enter into a more copious explanation.
+With this request he readily complied; as conceiving that whatever
+delicacy it became him to exercise in ordinary cases, it would be out of
+place in my situation; and thinking it not improbable that Mr. Falkland,
+but for the disturbance and inflammation of his mind, would be disposed
+to a similar communication. I shall interweave with Mr. Collins's story
+various information which I afterwards received from other quarters,
+that I may give all possible perspicuity to the series of events. To
+avoid confusion in my narrative, I shall drop the person of Collins, and
+assume to be myself the historian of our patron. To the reader it may
+appear at first sight as if this detail of the preceding life of Mr.
+Falkland were foreign to my history. Alas! I know from bitter experience
+that it is otherwise. My heart bleeds at the recollection of his
+misfortunes, as if they were my own. How can it fail to do so? To his
+story the whole fortune of my life was linked: because he was miserable,
+my happiness, my name, and my existence have been irretrievably blasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Among the favourite authors of his early years were the heroic poets of
+Italy. From them he imbibed the love of chivalry and romance. He had too
+much good sense to regret the times of Charlemagne and Arthur. But,
+while his imagination was purged by a certain infusion of philosophy, he
+conceived that there was in the manners depicted by these celebrated
+poets something to imitate, as well as something to avoid. He believed
+that nothing was so well calculated to make men delicate, gallant, and
+humane, as a temper perpetually alive to the sentiments of birth and
+honour. The opinions he entertained upon these topics were illustrated
+in his conduct, which was assiduously conformed to the model of heroism
+that his fancy suggested.
+
+With these sentiments he set out upon his travels, at the age at which
+the grand tour is usually made; and they were rather confirmed than
+shaken by the adventures that befel him. By inclination he was led to
+make his longest stay in Italy; and here he fell into company with
+several young noblemen whose studies and principles were congenial to
+his own. By them he was assiduously courted, and treated with the most
+distinguished applause. They were delighted to meet with a foreigner,
+who had imbibed all the peculiarities of the most liberal and honourable
+among themselves. Nor was he less favoured and admired by the softer
+sex. Though his stature was small, his person had an air of uncommon
+dignity. His dignity was then heightened by certain additions which were
+afterwards obliterated,--an expression of frankness, ingenuity, and
+unreserve, and a spirit of the most ardent enthusiasm. Perhaps no
+Englishman was ever in an equal degree idolised by the inhabitants of
+Italy.
+
+It was not possible for him to have drunk so deeply of the fountain of
+chivalry without being engaged occasionally in affairs of honour, all of
+which were terminated in a manner that would not have disgraced the
+chevalier Bayard himself. In Italy, the young men of rank divide
+themselves into two classes,--those who adhere to the pure principles of
+ancient gallantry, and those who, being actuated by the same acute sense
+of injury and insult, accustom themselves to the employment of hired
+bravoes as their instruments of vengeance. The whole difference, indeed,
+consists in the precarious application of a generally received
+distinction. The most generous Italian conceives that there are certain
+persons whom it would be contamination for him to call into the open
+field. He nevertheless believes that an indignity cannot be expiated but
+with blood, and is persuaded that the life of a man is a trifling
+consideration, in comparison of the indemnification to be made to his
+injured honour. There is, therefore, scarcely any Italian that would
+upon some occasions scruple assassination. Men of spirit among them,
+notwithstanding the prejudices of their education, cannot fail to have a
+secret conviction of its baseness, and will be desirous of extending as
+far as possible the cartel of honour. Real or affected arrogance teaches
+others to regard almost the whole species as their inferiors, and of
+consequence incites them to gratify their vengeance without danger to
+their persons. Mr. Falkland met with some of these. But his undaunted
+spirit and resolute temper gave him a decisive advantage even in such
+perilous rencounters. One instance, among many, of his manner of
+conducting himself among this proud and high-spirited people it may be
+proper to relate. Mr. Falkland is the principal agent in my history; and
+Mr. Falkland in the autumn and decay of his vigour, such as I found him,
+cannot be completely understood without a knowledge of his previous
+character, as it was in all the gloss of youth, yet unassailed by
+adversity, and unbroken in upon by anguish or remorse.
+
+At Rome he was received with particular distinction at the house of
+marquis Pisani, who had an only daughter, the heir of his immense
+fortune, and the admiration of all the young nobility of that
+metropolis. Lady Lucretia Pisani was tall, of a dignified form, and
+uncommonly beautiful. She was not deficient in amiable qualities, but
+her soul was haughty, and her carriage not unfrequently contemptuous.
+Her pride was nourished by the consciousness of her charms, by her
+elevated rank, and the universal adoration she was accustomed to
+receive.
+
+Among her numerous lovers count Malvesi was the individual most favoured
+by her father, nor did his addresses seem indifferent to her. The count
+was a man of considerable accomplishments, and of great integrity and
+benevolence of disposition. But he was too ardent a lover, to be able
+always to preserve the affability of his temper. The admirers whose
+addresses were a source of gratification to his mistress, were a
+perpetual uneasiness to him. Placing his whole happiness in the
+possession of this imperious beauty, the most trifling circumstances
+were capable of alarming him for the security of his pretensions. But
+most of all he was jealous of the English cavalier. Marquis Pisani, who
+had spent many years in France, was by no means partial to the
+suspicious precautions of Italian fathers, and indulged his daughter in
+considerable freedoms. His house and his daughter, within certain
+judicious restraints, were open to the resort of male visitants. But,
+above all, Mr. Falkland, as a foreigner, and a person little likely to
+form pretensions to the hand of Lucretia, was received upon a footing of
+great familiarity. The lady herself, conscious of innocence, entertained
+no scruple about trifles, and acted with the confidence and frankness of
+one who is superior to suspicion.
+
+Mr. Falkland, after a residence of several weeks at Rome, proceeded to
+Naples. Meanwhile certain incidents occurred that delayed the intended
+nuptials of the heiress of Pisani. When he returned to Rome Count
+Malvesi was absent. Lady Lucretia, who had been considerably amused
+before with the conversation of Mr. Falkland, and who had an active and
+enquiring mind, had conceived, in the interval between his first and
+second residence at Rome, a desire to be acquainted with the English
+language, inspired by the lively and ardent encomiums of our best
+authors that she had heard from their countryman. She had provided
+herself with the usual materials for that purpose, and had made some
+progress during his absence. But upon his return she was forward to make
+use of the opportunity, which, if missed, might never occur again with
+equal advantage, of reading select passages of our poets with an
+Englishman of uncommon taste and capacity.
+
+This proposal necessarily led to a more frequent intercourse. When Count
+Malvesi returned, he found Mr. Falkland established almost as an inmate
+of the Pisani palace. His mind could not fail to be struck with the
+criticalness of the situation. He was perhaps secretly conscious that
+the qualifications of the Englishman were superior to his own; and he
+trembled for the progress that each party might have made in the
+affection of the other, even before they were aware of the danger. He
+believed that the match was in every respect such as to flatter the
+ambition of Mr. Falkland; and he was stung even to madness by the idea
+of being deprived of the object dearest to his heart by this tramontane
+upstart.
+
+He had, however, sufficient discretion first to demand an explanation of
+Lady Lucretia. She, in the gaiety of her heart, trifled with his
+anxiety. His patience was already exhausted, and he proceeded in his
+expostulation, in language that she was by no means prepared to endure
+with apathy. Lady Lucretia had always been accustomed to deference and
+submission; and, having got over something like terror, that was at
+first inspired by the imperious manner in which she was now catechised,
+her next feeling was that of the warmest resentment. She disdained to
+satisfy so insolent a questioner, and even indulged herself in certain
+oblique hints calculated to strengthen his suspicions. For some time she
+described his folly and presumption in terms of the most ludicrous
+sarcasm, and then, suddenly changing her style, bid him never let her
+see him more except upon the footing of the most distant acquaintance,
+as she was determined never again to subject herself to so unworthy a
+treatment. She was happy that he had at length disclosed to her his true
+character, and would know how to profit of her present experience to
+avoid a repetition of the same danger. All this passed in the full
+career of passion on both sides, and Lady Lucretia had no time to
+reflect upon what might be the consequence of thus exasperating her
+lover.
+
+Count Malvesi left her in all the torments of frenzy. He believed that
+this was a premeditated scene, to find a pretence for breaking off an
+engagement that was already all but concluded; or, rather, his mind was
+racked with a thousand conjectures: he alternately thought that the
+injustice might be hers or his own; and he quarrelled with Lady
+Lucretia, himself, and the whole world. In this temper he hastened to
+the hotel of the English cavalier. The season of expostulation was now
+over, and he found himself irresistibly impelled to justify his
+precipitation with the lady, by taking for granted that the subject of
+his suspicion was beyond the reach of doubt.
+
+Mr. Falkland was at home. The first words of the count were an abrupt
+accusation of duplicity in the affair of Lady Lucretia, and a challenge.
+The Englishman had an unaffected esteem for Malvesi, who was in reality
+a man of considerable merit, and who had been one of Mr. Falkland's
+earliest Italian acquaintance, they having originally met at Milan. But
+more than this, the possible consequence of a duel in the present
+instance burst upon his mind. He had the warmest admiration for Lady
+Lucretia, though his feelings were not those of a lover; and he knew
+that, however her haughtiness might endeavour to disguise it, she was
+impressed with a tender regard for Count Malvesi. He could not bear to
+think that any misconduct of his should interrupt the prospects of so
+deserving a pair. Guided by these sentiments, he endeavoured to
+expostulate with the Italian. But his attempts were ineffectual. His
+antagonist was drunk with choler, and would not listen to a word that
+tended to check the impetuosity of his thoughts. He traversed the room
+with perturbed steps, and even foamed with anguish and fury. Mr.
+Falkland, finding that all was to no purpose, told the count, that, if
+he would return to-morrow at the same hour, he would attend him to any
+scene of action he should think proper to select.
+
+From Count Malvesi Mr. Falkland immediately proceeded to the palace of
+Pisani. Here he found considerable difficulty in appeasing the
+indignation of Lady Lucretia. His ideas of honour would by no means
+allow him to win her to his purpose by disclosing the cartel he had
+received; otherwise that disclosure would immediately have operated as
+the strongest motive that could have been offered to this disdainful
+beauty. But, though she dreaded such an event, the vague apprehension
+was not strong enough to induce her instantly to surrender all the
+stateliness of her resentment. Mr. Falkland, however, drew so
+interesting a picture of the disturbance of Count Malvesi's mind, and
+accounted in so flattering a manner for the abruptness of his conduct,
+that this, together with the arguments he adduced, completed the
+conquest of Lady Lucretia's resentment. Having thus far accomplished his
+purpose, he proceeded to disclose to her every thing that had passed.
+
+The next day Count Malvesi appeared, punctual to his appointment, at Mr.
+Falkland's hotel. Mr. Falkland came to the door to receive him, but
+requested him to enter the house for a moment, as he had still an affair
+of three minutes to despatch. They proceeded to a parlour. Here Mr.
+Falkland left him, and presently returned leading in Lady Lucretia
+herself, adorned in all her charms, and those charms heightened upon the
+present occasion by a consciousness of the spirited and generous
+condescension she was exerting. Mr. Falkland led her up to the
+astonished count; and she, gently laying her hand upon the arm of her
+lover, exclaimed with the most attractive grace, "Will you allow me to
+retract the precipitate haughtiness into which I was betrayed?" The
+enraptured count, scarcely able to believe his senses, threw himself
+upon his knees before her, and stammered out his reply, signifying that
+the precipitation had been all his own, that he only had any forgiveness
+to demand, and, though they might pardon, he could never pardon himself
+for the sacrilege he had committed against her and this god-like
+Englishman. As soon as the first tumults of his joy had subsided, Mr.
+Falkland addressed him thus:--
+
+"Count Malvesi, I feel the utmost pleasure in having thus by peaceful
+means disarmed your resentment, and effected your happiness. But I must
+confess, you put me to a severe trial. My temper is not less impetuous
+and fiery than your own, and it is not at all times that I should have
+been thus able to subdue it. But I considered that in reality the
+original blame was mine. Though your suspicion was groundless, it was
+not absurd. We have been trifling too much in the face of danger. I
+ought not, under the present weakness of our nature and forms of
+society, to have been so assiduous in my attendance upon this enchanting
+woman. It would have been little wonder, if, having so many
+opportunities, and playing the preceptor with her as I have done, I had
+been entangled before I was aware, and harboured a wish which I might
+not afterwards have had courage to subdue. I owed you an atonement for
+this imprudence.
+
+"But the laws of honour are in the utmost degree rigid; and there was
+reason to fear that, however anxious I were to be your friend, I might
+be obliged to be your murderer. Fortunately, the reputation of my
+courage is sufficiently established, not to expose it to any impeachment
+by my declining your present defiance. It was lucky, however, that in
+our interview of yesterday you found me alone, and that accident by
+that means threw the management of the affair into my disposal. If the
+transaction should become known, the conclusion will now become known
+along with the provocation, and I am satisfied. But if the challenge had
+been public, the proofs I had formerly given of courage would not have
+excused my present moderation; and, though desirous to have avoided the
+combat, it would not have been in my power. Let us hence each of us
+learn to avoid haste and indiscretion, the consequences of which may be
+inexpiable but with blood; and may Heaven bless you in a consort of whom
+I deem you every way worthy!"
+
+I have already said that this was by no means the only instance, in the
+course of his travels, in which Mr. Falkland acquitted himself in the
+most brilliant manner as a man of gallantry and virtue. He continued
+abroad during several years, every one of which brought some fresh
+accession to the estimation in which he was held, as well as to his own
+impatience of stain or dishonour. At length he thought proper to return
+to England, with the intention of spending the rest of his days at the
+residence of his ancestors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+From the moment he entered upon the execution of this purpose, dictated
+as it probably was by an unaffected principle of duty, his misfortunes
+took their commencement. All I have further to state of his history is
+the uninterrupted persecution of a malignant destiny, a series of
+adventures that seemed to take their rise in various accidents, but
+pointing to one termination. Him they overwhelmed with an anguish he
+was of all others least qualified to bear; and these waters of
+bitterness, extending beyond him, poured their deadly venom upon others.
+I being myself the most unfortunate of their victims.
+
+The person in whom these calamities originated was Mr. Falkland's
+nearest neighbour, a man of estate equal to his own, by name Barnabas
+Tyrrel. This man one might at first have supposed of all others least
+qualified from instruction, or inclined by the habits of his life, to
+disturb the enjoyments of a mind so richly endowed as that of Mr.
+Falkland. Mr. Tyrrel might have passed for a true model of the English
+squire. He was early left under the tuition of his mother, a woman of
+narrow capacity, and who had no other child. The only remaining member
+of the family it may be necessary to notice was Miss Emily Melville, the
+orphan daughter of Mr. Tyrrel's paternal aunt; who now resided in the
+family mansion, and was wholly dependent on the benevolence of its
+proprietors.
+
+Mrs. Tyrrel appeared to think that there was nothing in the world so
+precious as her hopeful Barnabas. Every thing must give way to his
+accommodation and advantage; every one must yield the most servile
+obedience to his commands. He must not be teased or restricted by any
+forms of instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the
+arts of writing and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he
+was muscular and sturdy; and, confined to the _ruelle_ of his mother, he
+made much such a figure as the whelp-lion that a barbarian might have
+given for a lap-dog to his mistress.
+
+But he soon broke loose from these trammels, and formed an acquaintance
+with the groom and the game-keeper. Under their instruction he proved as
+ready a scholar, as he had been indocile and restive to the pedant who
+held the office of his tutor. It was now evident that his small
+proficiency in literature was by no means to be ascribed to want of
+capacity. He discovered no contemptible sagacity and quick-wittedness in
+the science of horse-flesh, and was eminently expert in the arts of
+shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor did he confine himself to these, but
+added the theory and practice of boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff.
+These exercises added ten-fold robustness and vigour to his former
+qualifications.
+
+His stature, when grown, was somewhat more than five feet ten inches in
+height, and his form might have been selected by a painter as a model
+for that hero of antiquity, whose prowess consisted in felling an ox
+with his fist, and devouring him at a meal. Conscious of his advantage
+in this respect, he was insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his
+inferiors, and insolent to his equals. The activity of his mind being
+diverted from the genuine field of utility and distinction, showed
+itself in the rude tricks of an overgrown lubber. Here, as in all his
+other qualifications, he rose above his competitors; and if it had been
+possible to overlook the callous and unrelenting disposition which they
+manifested, one could scarcely have denied his applause to the invention
+these freaks displayed, and the rough, sarcastic wit with which they
+were accompanied.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was by no means inclined to permit these extraordinary merits
+to rust in oblivion. There was a weekly assembly at the nearest
+market-town, the resort of all the rural gentry. Here he had hitherto
+figured to the greatest advantage as grand master of the _coterie_, no
+one having an equal share of opulence, and the majority, though still
+pretending to the rank of gentry, greatly his inferior in this essential
+article. The young men in this circle looked up to this insolent bashaw
+with timid respect, conscious of the comparative eminence that
+unquestionably belonged to the powers of his mind; and he well knew how
+to maintain his rank with an inflexible hand. Frequently indeed he
+relaxed his features, and assumed a temporary appearance of affableness
+and familiarity; but they found by experience, that if any one,
+encouraged by his condescension, forgot the deference which Mr. Tyrrel
+considered as his due, he was soon taught to repent his presumption. It
+was a tiger that thought proper to toy with a mouse, the little animal
+every moment in danger of being crushed by the fangs of his ferocious
+associate. As Mr. Tyrrel had considerable copiousness of speech, and a
+rich, but undisciplined imagination, he was always sure of an audience.
+His neighbours crowded round, and joined in the ready laugh, partly from
+obsequiousness, and partly from unfeigned admiration. It frequently
+happened, however; that, in the midst of his good humour, a
+characteristic refinement of tyranny would suggest itself to his mind.
+When his subjects, encouraged by his familiarity, had discarded their
+precaution, the wayward fit would seize him, a sudden cloud overspread
+his brow, his voice transform from the pleasant to the terrible, and a
+quarrel of a straw immediately ensue with the first man whose face he
+did not like. The pleasure that resulted to others from the exuberant
+sallies of his imagination was, therefore, not unalloyed with sudden
+qualms of apprehension and terror. It may be believed that this
+despotism did not gain its final ascendancy without being contested in
+the outset. But all opposition was quelled with a high hand by this
+rural Antaeus. By the ascendancy of his fortune, and his character among
+his neighbours, he always reduced his adversary to the necessity of
+encountering him at his own weapons, and did not dismiss him without
+making him feel his presumption through every joint in his frame. The
+tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently endured, had not
+his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of that authority
+which his rank and prowess originally obtained.
+
+The situation of our squire with the fair was still more enviable than
+that which he maintained among persons of his own sex. Every mother
+taught her daughter to consider the hand of Mr. Tyrrel as the highest
+object of her ambition. Every daughter regarded his athletic form and
+his acknowledged prowess with a favourable eye. A form eminently
+athletic is, perhaps, always well proportioned; and one of the
+qualifications that women are early taught to look for in the male sex,
+is that of a protector. As no man was adventurous enough to contest his
+superiority, so scarcely any woman in this provincial circle would have
+scrupled to prefer his addresses to those of any other admirer. His
+boisterous wit had peculiar charms for them; and there was no spectacle
+more flattering to their vanity, than seeing this Hercules exchange his
+club for a distaff. It was pleasing to them to consider, that the fangs
+of this wild beast, the very idea of which inspired trepidation into the
+boldest hearts, might be played with by them with the utmost security.
+
+Such was the rival that Fortune, in her caprice, had reserved for the
+accomplished Falkland. This untamed, though not undiscerning brute, was
+found capable of destroying the prospects of a man the most eminently
+qualified to enjoy and to communicate happiness. The feud that sprung up
+between them was nourished by concurring circumstances, till it attained
+a magnitude difficult to be paralleled; and, because they regarded each
+other with a deadly hatred, I have become an object of misery and
+abhorrence.
+
+The arrival of Mr. Falkland gave an alarming shock to the authority of
+Mr. Tyrrel in the village assembly and in all scenes of indiscriminate
+resort. His disposition by no means inclined him to withhold himself
+from scenes of fashionable amusement; and he and his competitor were
+like two stars fated never to appear at once above the horizon. The
+advantages Mr. Falkland possessed in the comparison are palpable; and
+had it been otherwise, the subjects of his rural neighbour were
+sufficiently disposed to revolt against his merciless dominion. They had
+hitherto submitted from fear, and not from love; and, if they had not
+rebelled, it was only for want of a leader. Even the ladies regarded Mr.
+Falkland with particular complacence. His polished manners were
+peculiarly in harmony with feminine delicacy. The sallies of his wit
+were far beyond those of Mr. Tyrrel in variety and vigour; in addition
+to which they had the advantage of having their spontaneous exuberance
+guided and restrained by the sagacity of a cultivated mind. The graces
+of his person were enhanced by the elegance of his deportment; and the
+benevolence and liberality of his temper were upon all occasions
+conspicuous. It was common indeed to Mr. Tyrrel, together with Mr.
+Falkland, to be little accessible to sentiments of awkwardness and
+confusion. But for this Mr. Tyrrel was indebted to a self-satisfied
+effrontery, and a boisterous and over-bearing elocution, by which he was
+accustomed to discomfit his assailants; while Mr. Falkland, with great
+ingenuity and candour of mind, was enabled by his extensive knowledge of
+the world, and acquaintance with his own resources, to perceive almost
+instantaneously the proceeding it most became him to adopt.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival with uneasiness and
+aversion. He often commented upon it to his particular confidents as a
+thing altogether inconceivable. Mr. Falkland he described as an animal
+that was beneath contempt. Diminutive and dwarfish in his form, he
+wanted to set up a new standard of human nature, adapted to his
+miserable condition. He wished to persuade people that the human species
+were made to be nailed to a chair, and to pore over books. He would have
+them exchange those robust exercises which make us joyous in the
+performance, and vigorous in the consequences, for the wise labour of
+scratching our heads for a rhyme and counting our fingers for a verse.
+Monkeys were as good men as these. A nation of such animals would have
+no chance with a single regiment of the old English votaries of beef and
+pudding. He never saw any thing come of learning but to make people
+foppish and impertinent; and a sensible man would not wish a worse
+calamity to the enemies of his nation, than to see them run mad after
+such pernicious absurdities. It was impossible that people could
+seriously feel any liking for such a ridiculous piece of goods as this
+outlandish foreign-made Englishman. But he knew very well how it was: it
+was a miserable piece of mummery that was played only in spite of him.
+But God for ever blast his soul, if he were not bitterly revenged upon
+them all!
+
+If such were the sentiments of Mr. Tyrrel, his patience found ample
+exercise in the language which was held by the rest of his neighbours on
+the same subject. While he saw nothing in Mr. Falkland but matter of
+contempt, they appeared to be never weary of recounting his praises.
+Such dignity, such affability, so perpetual an attention to the
+happiness of others, such delicacy of sentiment and expression! Learned
+without ostentation, refined without foppery, elegant without
+effeminacy! Perpetually anxious to prevent his superiority from being
+painfully felt, it was so much the more certainly felt to be real, and
+excited congratulation instead of envy in the spectator. It is scarcely
+necessary to remark, that the revolution of sentiment in this rural
+vicinity belongs to one of the most obvious features of the human mind.
+The rudest exhibition of art is at first admired, till a nobler is
+presented, and we are taught to wonder at the facility with which before
+we had been satisfied. Mr. Tyrrel thought there would be no end to the
+commendation; and expected when their common acquaintance would fall
+down and adore the intruder. The most inadvertent expression of applause
+inflicted upon him the torment of demons. He writhed with agony, his
+features became distorted, and his looks inspired terror. Such suffering
+would probably have soured the kindest temper; what must have been its
+effect upon Mr. Tyrrel's, always fierce, unrelenting, and abrupt?
+
+The advantages of Mr. Falkland seemed by no means to diminish with their
+novelty. Every new sufferer from Mr. Tyrrel's tyranny immediately went
+over to the standard of his adversary. The ladies, though treated by
+their rustic swain with more gentleness than the men, were occasionally
+exposed to his capriciousness and insolence. They could not help
+remarking the contrast between these two leaders in the fields of
+chivalry, the one of whom paid no attention to any one's pleasure but
+his own, while the other seemed all good-humour and benevolence. It was
+in vain that Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured to restrain the ruggedness of his
+character. His motive was impatience, his thoughts were gloomy, and his
+courtship was like the pawings of an elephant. It appeared as if his
+temper had been more human while he indulged in its free bent, than now
+that he sullenly endeavoured to put fetters upon its excesses.
+
+Among the ladies of the village-assembly already mentioned, there was
+none that seemed to engage more of the kindness of Mr. Tyrrel than Miss
+Hardingham. She was also one of the few that had not yet gone over to
+the enemy, either because she really preferred the gentleman who was her
+oldest acquaintance, or that she conceived from calculation this conduct
+best adapted to insure her success in a husband. One day, however, she
+thought proper, probably only by way of experiment, to show Mr. Tyrrel
+that she could engage in hostilities, if he should at any time give her
+sufficient provocation. She so adjusted her manoeuvres as to be engaged
+by Mr. Falkland as his partner for the dance of the evening, though
+without the smallest intention on the part of that gentleman (who was
+unpardonably deficient in the sciences of anecdote and match-making) of
+giving offence to his country neighbour. Though the manners of Mr.
+Falkland were condescending and attentive, his hours of retirement were
+principally occupied in contemplations too dignified for scandal, and
+too large for the altercations of a vestry, or the politics of an
+election-borough.
+
+A short time before the dances began, Mr. Tyrrel went up to his fair
+inamorata, and entered into some trifling conversation with her to fill
+up the time, as intending in a few minutes to lead her forward to the
+field. He had accustomed himself to neglect the ceremony of soliciting
+beforehand a promise in his favour, as not supposing it possible that
+any one would dare dispute his behests; and, had it been otherwise, he
+would have thought the formality unnecessary in this case, his general
+preference to Miss Hardingham being notorious.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Mr. Falkland came up. Mr. Tyrrel always
+regarded him with aversion and loathing. Mr. Falkland, however, slided
+in a graceful and unaffected manner into the conversation already begun;
+and the animated ingenuousness of his manner was such, as might for the
+time have disarmed the devil of his malice. Mr. Tyrrel probably
+conceived that his accosting Miss Hardingham was an accidental piece of
+general ceremony, and expected every moment when he would withdraw to
+another part of the room.
+
+The company now began to be in motion for the dance, and Mr. Falkland
+signified as much to Miss Hardingham. "Sir," interrupted Mr. Tyrrel
+abruptly, "that lady is my partner."--"I believe not, sir: that lady has
+been so obliging as to accept my invitation."--"I tell you, sir, no.
+Sir, I have an interest in that lady's affections; and I will suffer no
+man to intrude upon my claims."--"The lady's affections are not the
+subject of the present question."--"Sir, it is to no purpose to parley.
+Make room, sir!"--Mr. Falkland gently repelled his antagonist. "Mr.
+Tyrrel!" returned he, with some firmness, "let us have no altercation in
+this business: the master of the ceremonies is the proper person to
+decide in a difference of this sort, if we cannot adjust it: we can
+neither of us intend to exhibit our valour before the ladies, and shall
+therefore cheerfully submit to his verdict."--"Damn me, sir, if I
+understand--" "Softly, Mr. Tyrrel; I intended you no offence. But, sir,
+no man shall prevent my asserting that to which I have once acquired a
+claim!"
+
+Mr. Falkland uttered these words with the most unruffled temper in the
+world. The tone in which he spoke had acquired elevation, but neither
+roughness nor impatience. There was a fascination in his manner that
+made the ferociousness of his antagonist subside into impotence. Miss
+Hardingham had begun to repent of her experiment, but her alarm was
+speedily quieted by the dignified composure of her new partner. Mr.
+Tyrrel walked away without answering a word. He muttered curses as he
+went, which the laws of honour did not oblige Mr. Falkland to overhear,
+and which indeed it would have been no easy task to have overheard with
+accuracy. Mr. Tyrrel would not, perhaps, have so easily given up his
+point, had not his own good sense presently taught him, that, however
+eager he might be for revenge, this was not the ground he should desire
+to occupy. But, though he could not openly resent this rebellion against
+his authority, he brooded over it in the recesses of a malignant mind;
+and it was evident enough that he was accumulating materials for a
+bitter account, to which he trusted his adversary should one day be
+brought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+This was only one out of innumerable instances, that every day seemed to
+multiply, of petty mortifications which Mr. Tyrrel was destined to
+endure on the part of Mr. Falkland. In all of them Mr. Falkland
+conducted himself with such unaffected propriety, as perpetually to add
+to the stock of his reputation. The more Mr. Tyrrel struggled with his
+misfortune, the more conspicuous and inveterate it became. A thousand
+times he cursed his stars, which took, as he apprehended, a malicious
+pleasure in making Mr. Falkland, at every turn, the instrument of his
+humiliation. Smarting under a succession of untoward events, he
+appeared to feel, in the most exquisite manner, the distinctions paid to
+his adversary, even in those points in which he had not the slightest
+pretensions. An instance of this now occurred.
+
+Mr. Clare, a poet whose works have done immortal honour to the country
+that produced him, had lately retired, after a life spent in the
+sublimest efforts of genius, to enjoy the produce of his economy, and
+the reputation he had acquired, in this very neighbourhood. Such an
+inmate was looked up to by the country gentlemen with a degree of
+adoration. They felt a conscious pride in recollecting that the boast of
+England was a native of their vicinity; and they were by no means
+deficient in gratitude when they saw him, who had left them an
+adventurer, return into the midst of them, in the close of his days,
+crowned with honours and opulence. The reader is acquainted with his
+works: he has, probably, dwelt upon them with transport; and I need not
+remind him of their excellence: but he is, perhaps, a stranger to his
+personal qualifications; he does not know that his productions were
+scarcely more admirable than his conversation. In company he seemed to
+be the only person ignorant of the greatness of his fame. To the world
+his writings will long remain a kind of specimen of what the human mind
+is capable of performing; but no man perceived their defects so acutely
+as he, or saw so distinctly how much yet remained to be effected: he
+alone appeared to look upon his works with superiority and indifference.
+One of the features that most eminently distinguished him was a
+perpetual suavity of manners, a comprehensiveness of mind, that regarded
+the errors of others without a particle of resentment, and made it
+impossible for any one to be his enemy. He pointed out to men their
+mistakes with frankness and unreserve, his remonstrances produced
+astonishment and conviction, but without uneasiness, in the party to
+whom they were addressed: they felt the instrument that was employed to
+correct their irregularities, but it never mangled what it was intended
+to heal. Such were the moral qualities that distinguished him among his
+acquaintance. The intellectual accomplishments he exhibited were,
+principally, a tranquil and mild enthusiasm, and a richness of
+conception which dictated spontaneously to his tongue, and flowed with
+so much ease, that it was only by retrospect you could be made aware of
+the amazing variety of ideas that had been presented.
+
+Mr. Clare certainly found few men in this remote situation that were
+capable of participating in his ideas and amusements. It has been among
+the weaknesses of great men to fly to solitude, and converse with woods
+and groves, rather than with a circle of strong and comprehensive minds
+like their own. From the moment of Mr. Falkland's arrival in the
+neighbourhood, Mr. Clare distinguished him in the most flattering
+manner. To so penetrating a genius there was no need of long experience
+and patient observation to discover the merits and defects of any
+character that presented itself. The materials of his judgment had long
+since been accumulated; and, at the close of so illustrious a life, he
+might almost be said to see through nature at a glance. What wonder that
+he took some interest in a mind in a certain degree congenial with his
+own? But to Mr. Tyrrel's diseased imagination, every distinction
+bestowed on his neighbour seemed to be expressly intended as an insult
+to him. On the other hand, Mr. Clare, though gentle and benevolent in
+his remonstrances to a degree that made the taking offence impossible,
+was by no means parsimonious of praise, or slow to make use of the
+deference that was paid him, for the purpose of procuring justice to
+merit.
+
+It happened at one of those public meetings at which Mr. Falkland and
+Mr. Tyrrel were present, that the conversation, in one of the most
+numerous sets into which the company was broken, turned upon the
+poetical talents of the former. A lady, who was present, and was
+distinguished for the acuteness of her understanding, said, she had been
+favoured with a sight of a poem he had just written, entitled _An Ode to
+the Genius of Chivalry_, which appeared to her of exquisite merit. The
+curiosity of the company was immediately excited, and the lady added,
+she had a copy in her pocket, which was much at their service, provided
+its being thus produced would not be disagreeable to the author. The
+whole circle immediately entreated Mr. Falkland to comply with their
+wishes, and Mr. Clare, who was one of the company, enforced their
+petition. Nothing gave this gentleman so much pleasure as to have an
+opportunity of witnessing and doing justice to the exhibition of
+intellectual excellence. Mr. Falkland had no false modesty or
+affectation, and therefore readily yielded his consent.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel accidentally sat at the extremity of this circle. It cannot
+be supposed that the turn the conversation had taken was by any means
+agreeable to him. He appeared to wish to withdraw himself, but there
+seemed to be some unknown power that, as it were by enchantment,
+retained him in his place, and made him consent to drink to the dregs
+the bitter potion which envy had prepared for him.
+
+The poem was read to the rest of the company by Mr. Clare, whose
+elocution was scarcely inferior to his other accomplishments.
+Simplicity, discrimination, and energy constantly attended him in the
+act of reading, and it is not easy to conceive a more refined delight
+than fell to the lot of those who had the good fortune to be his
+auditors. The beauties of Mr. Falkland's poem were accordingly exhibited
+with every advantage. The successive passions of the author were
+communicated to the hearer. What was impetuous, and what was solemn,
+were delivered with a responsive feeling, and a flowing and unlaboured
+tone. The pictures conjured up by the creative fancy of the poet were
+placed full to view, at one time overwhelming the soul with
+superstitious awe, and at another transporting it with luxuriant beauty.
+
+The character of the hearers upon this occasion has already been
+described. They were, for the most part, plain, unlettered, and of
+little refinement. Poetry in general they read, when read at all, from
+the mere force of imitation, and with few sensations of pleasure; but
+this poem had a peculiar vein of glowing inspiration. This very poem
+would probably have been seen by many of them with little effect; but
+the accents of Mr. Clare carried it home to the heart. He ended: and, as
+the countenances of his auditors had before sympathised with the
+passions of the composition, so now they emulated each other in
+declaring their approbation. Their sensations were of a sort to which
+they were little accustomed. One spoke, and another followed by a sort
+of uncontrollable impulse; and the rude and broken manner of their
+commendations rendered them the more singular and remarkable. But what
+was least to be endured was the behaviour of Mr. Clare. He returned the
+manuscript to the lady from whom he had received it, and then,
+addressing Mr. Falkland, said with emphasis and animation, "Ha! this is
+as it should be. It is of the right stamp. I have seen too many hard
+essays strained from the labour of a pedant, and pastoral ditties
+distressed in lack of a meaning. They are such as you sir, that we want.
+Do not forget, however, that the Muse was not given to add refinements
+to idleness, but for the highest and most invaluable purposes. Act up to
+the magnitude of your destiny."
+
+A moment after, Mr. Clare quitted his seat, and with Mr. Falkland and
+two or three more withdrew. As soon as they were gone, Mr. Tyrrel edged
+further into the circle. He had sat silent so long that he seemed ready
+to burst with gall and indignation. "Mighty pretty verses!" said he,
+half talking to himself, and not addressing any particular person: "why,
+ay, the verses are well enough. Damnation! I should like to know what a
+ship-load of such stuff is good for."
+
+"Why, surely," said the lady who had introduced Mr. Falkland's Ode on
+the present occasion, "you must allow that poetry is an agreeable and
+elegant amusement."
+
+"Elegant, quotha!--Why, look at this Falkland! A puny bit of a thing! In
+the devil's name, madam, do you think he would write poetry if he could
+do any thing better?"
+
+The conversation did not stop here. The lady expostulated. Several other
+persons, fresh from the sensation they had felt, contributed their
+share. Mr. Tyrrel grew more violent in his invectives, and found ease in
+uttering them. The persons who were able in any degree to check his
+vehemence were withdrawn. One speaker after another shrunk back into
+silence, too timid to oppose, or too indolent to contend with, the
+fierceness of his passion. He found the appearance of his old
+ascendancy; but he felt its deceitfulness and uncertainty, and was
+gloomily dissatisfied.
+
+In his return from this assembly he was accompanied by a young man,
+whom similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents,
+and whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have
+thought that Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the
+dialogue he had just been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his
+recollection the anguish he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What
+a pitiful scoundrel is here to make all this bustle about! But women and
+fools always will be fools; there is no help for that! Those that set
+them on have most to answer for; and most of all, Mr. Clare. He is a man
+that ought to know something of the world, and past being duped by
+gewgaws and tinsel. He seemed, too, to have some notion of things: I
+should not have suspected him of hallooing to a cry of mongrels without
+honesty or reason. But the world is all alike. Those that seem better
+than their neighbours, are only more artful. They mean the same thing,
+though they take a different road. He deceived me for a while, but it is
+all out now. They are the makers of the mischief. Fools might blunder,
+but they would not persist, if people that ought to set them right did
+not encourage them to go wrong."
+
+A few days after this adventure Mr. Tyrrel was surprised to receive a
+visit from Mr. Falkland. Mr. Falkland proceeded, without ceremony, to
+explain the motive of his coming.
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, "I am come to have an amicable explanation with
+you."
+
+"Explanation! What is my offence?"
+
+"None in the world, sir; and for that reason I conceive this the fittest
+time to come to a right understanding."
+
+"You are in a devil of a hurry, sir. Are you clear that this haste will
+not mar, instead of make an understanding?"
+
+"I think I am, sir. I have great faith in the purity of my intentions,
+and I will not doubt, when you perceive the view with which I come, that
+you will willingly co-operate with it."
+
+"Mayhap, Mr. Falkland, we may not agree about that. One man thinks one
+way, and another man thinks another. Mayhap I do not think I have any
+great reason to be pleased with you already."
+
+"It may be so. I cannot, however, charge myself with having given you
+reason to be displeased."
+
+"Well, sir, you have no right to put me out of humour with myself. If
+you come to play upon me, and try what sort of a fellow you shall have
+to deal with, damn me if you shall have any reason to hug yourself upon
+the experiment."
+
+"Nothing, sir, is more easy for us than to quarrel. If you desire that,
+there is no fear that you will find opportunities."
+
+"Damn me, sir, if I do not believe you are come to bully me."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel! sir--have a care!"
+
+"Of what, sir!--Do you threaten me? Damn my soul! who are you? what do
+you come here for?"
+
+The fieriness of Mr. Tyrrel brought Mr. Falkland to his recollection.
+
+"I am wrong," said he. "I confess it. I came for purposes of peace. With
+that view I have taken the liberty to visit you. Whatever therefore
+might be my feelings upon another occasion, I am bound to suppress them
+now."
+
+"Ho!--Well, sir: and what have you further to offer?"
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," proceeded Mr. Falkland, "you will readily imagine that
+the cause that brought me was not a slight one. I would not have
+troubled you with a visit, but for important reasons. My coming is a
+pledge how deeply I am myself impressed with what I have to communicate.
+
+"We are in a critical situation. We are upon the brink of a whirlpool
+which, if once it get hold of us, will render all further deliberation
+impotent. An unfortunate jealousy seems to have insinuated itself
+between us, which I would willingly remove; and I come to ask your
+assistance. We are both of us nice of temper; we are both apt to kindle,
+and warm of resentment. Precaution in this stage can be dishonourable to
+neither; the time may come when we shall wish we had employed it, and
+find it too late. Why should we be enemies? Our tastes are different;
+our pursuits need not interfere. We both of us amply possess the means
+of happiness; We may be respected by all, and spend a long life of
+tranquillity and enjoyment. Will it be wise in us to exchange this
+prospect for the fruits of strife? A strife between persons with our
+peculiarities and our weaknesses, includes consequences that I shudder
+to think of. I fear, sir, that it is pregnant with death at least to one
+of us, and with misfortune and remorse to the survivor."
+
+"Upon my soul, you are a strange man! Why trouble me with your
+prophecies and forebodings?"
+
+"Because it is necessary to your happiness! Because it becomes me to
+tell you of our danger now, rather than wait till my character will
+allow this tranquillity no longer!
+
+"By quarrelling we shall but imitate the great mass of mankind, who
+could easily quarrel in our place. Let us do better. Let us show that we
+have the magnanimity to contemn petty misunderstandings. By thus
+judging we shall do ourselves most substantial honour. By a contrary
+conduct we shall merely present a comedy for the amusement of our
+acquaintance."
+
+"Do you think so? there may be something in that. Damn me, if I consent
+to be the jest of any man living."
+
+"You are right, Mr. Tyrrel. Let us each act in the manner best
+calculated to excite respect. We neither of us wish to change roads; let
+us each suffer the other to pursue his own track unmolested. Be this our
+compact; and by mutual forbearance let us preserve mutual peace."
+
+Saying this, Mr. Falkland offered his hand to Mr. Tyrrel in token of
+fellowship. But the gesture was too significant. The wayward rustic, who
+seemed to have been somewhat impressed by what had preceded, taken as he
+now was by surprise, shrunk back. Mr. Falkland was again ready to take
+fire upon this new slight, but he checked himself.
+
+"All this is very unaccountable," cried Mr. Tyrrel. "What the devil can
+have made you so forward, if you had not some sly purpose to answer, by
+which I am to be overreached?"
+
+"My purpose," replied Mr. Falkland, "is a manly and an honest purpose.
+Why should you refuse a proposition dictated by reason, and an equal
+regard to the interest of each?"
+
+Mr. Tyrrel had had an opportunity for pause, and fell back into his
+habitual character.
+
+"Well, sir, in all this I must own there is some frankness. Now I will
+return you like for like. It is no matter how I came by it, my temper is
+rough, and will not be controlled. Mayhap you may think it is a
+weakness, but I do not desire to see it altered. Till you came, I found
+myself very well: I liked my neighbours, and my neighbours humoured me.
+But now the case is entirely altered; and, as long as I cannot stir
+abroad without meeting with some mortification in which you are directly
+or remotely concerned, I am determined to hate you. Now, sir, if you
+will only go out of the county or the kingdom, to the devil if you
+please, so as I may never hear of you any more, I will promise never to
+quarrel with you as long as I live. Your rhymes and your rebusses, your
+quirks and your conundrums, may then be every thing that is grand for
+what I care."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, be reasonable! Might not I as well desire you to leave the
+county, as you desire me? I come to you, not as to a master, but an
+equal. In the society of men we must have something to endure, as well
+as to enjoy. No man must think that the world was made for him. Let us
+take things as we find them; and accommodate ourselves as we can to
+unavoidable circumstances."
+
+"True, sir; all this is fine talking. But I return to my text: we are as
+God made us. I am neither a philosopher nor a poet, to set out upon a
+wild-goose chase of making myself a different man from what you find me.
+As for consequences, what must be must be. As we brew we must bake. And
+so, do you see? I shall not trouble myself about what is to be, but
+stand up to it with a stout heart when it comes. Only this I can tell
+you, that as long as I find you thrust into my dish every day I shall
+hate you as bad as senna and valerian. And damn me, if I do not think I
+hate you the more for coming to-day in this pragmatical way, when nobody
+sent for you, on purpose to show how much wiser you are than all the
+world besides."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, I have done. I foresaw consequences, and came as a friend.
+I had hoped that, by mutual explanation, we should have come to a better
+understanding. I am disappointed; but, perhaps, when you coolly reflect
+on what has passed, you will give me credit for my intentions, and think
+that my proposal was not an unreasonable one."
+
+Having said this, Mr. Falkland departed. Through the interview he, no
+doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the
+warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he
+was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that
+was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he
+suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent.
+The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it
+unquestionably served to widen the breach it was intended to heal.
+
+For Mr. Tyrrel, he had recourse to his old expedient, and unburthened
+the tumult of his thoughts to his confidential friend. "This," cried he,
+"is a new artifice of the fellow, to prove his imagined superiority. We
+knew well enough that he had the gift of the gab. To be sure, if the
+world were to be governed by words, he would be in the right box. Oh,
+yes, he had it all hollow! But what signifies prating? Business must be
+done in another guess way than that. I wonder what possessed me that I
+did not kick him! But that is all to come. This is only a new debt
+added to the score, which he shall one day richly pay. This Falkland
+haunts me like a demon. I cannot wake but I think of him. I cannot sleep
+but I see him. He poisons all my pleasures. I should be glad to see him
+torn with tenter-hooks, and to grind his heart-strings with my teeth. I
+shall know no joy till I see him ruined. There may be some things right
+about him; but he is my perpetual torment. The thought of him hangs
+like a dead weight upon my heart, and I have a right to shake it off.
+Does he think I will feel all that I endure for nothing?"
+
+In spite of the acerbity of Mr. Tyrrel's feelings, it is probable,
+however, he did some justice to his rival. He regarded him, indeed, with
+added dislike; but he no longer regarded him as a despicable foe. He
+avoided his encounter; he forbore to treat him with random hostility; he
+seemed to lie in wait for his victim, and to collect his venom for a
+mortal assault.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+It was not long after that a malignant distemper broke out in the
+neighbourhood, which proved fatal to many of the inhabitants, and was of
+unexampled rapidity in its effects. One of the first persons that was
+seized with it was Mr. Clare. It may be conceived, what grief and alarm
+this incident spread through the vicinity. Mr. Clare was considered by
+them as something more than mortal. The equanimity of his behaviour, his
+unassuming carriage, his exuberant benevolence and goodness of heart,
+joined with his talents, his inoffensive wit, and the comprehensiveness
+of his intelligence, made him the idol of all that knew him. In the
+scene of his rural retreat, at least, he had no enemy. All mourned the
+danger that now threatened him. He appeared to have had the prospect of
+long life, and of going down to his grave full of years and of honour.
+Perhaps these appearances were deceitful. Perhaps the intellectual
+efforts he had made, which were occasionally more sudden, violent, and
+unintermitted, than a strict regard to health would have dictated, had
+laid the seed of future disease. But a sanguine observer would
+infallibly have predicted, that his temperate habits, activity of mind,
+and unabated cheerfulness, would be able even to keep death at bay for a
+time, and baffle the attacks of distemper, provided their approach were
+not uncommonly rapid and violent. The general affliction, therefore, was
+doubly pungent upon the present occasion.
+
+But no one was so much affected as Mr. Falkland. Perhaps no man so well
+understood the value of the life that was now at stake. He immediately
+hastened to the spot; but he found some difficulty in gaining admission.
+Mr. Clare, aware of the infectious nature of his disease, had given
+directions that as few persons as possible should approach him. Mr.
+Falkland sent up his name. He was told that he was included in the
+general orders. He was not, however, of a temper to be easily repulsed;
+he persisted with obstinacy, and at length carried his point, being only
+reminded in the first instance to employ those precautions which
+experience has proved most effectual for counteracting infection.
+
+He found Mr. Clare in his bed-chamber, but not in bed. He was sitting in
+his night-gown at a bureau near the window. His appearance was composed
+and cheerful, but death was in his countenance. "I had a great
+inclination, Falkland," said he, "not to have suffered you to come in;
+and yet there is not a person in the world it could give me more
+pleasure to see. But, upon second thoughts, I believe there are few
+people that could run into a danger of this kind with a better prospect
+of escaping. In your case, at least, the garrison will not, I trust, be
+taken through the treachery of the commander. I cannot tell how it is
+that I, who can preach wisdom to you, have myself been caught. But do
+not be discouraged by my example. I had no notice of my danger, or I
+would have acquitted myself better."
+
+Mr. Falkland having once established himself in the apartment of his
+friend, would upon no terms consent to retire. Mr. Clare considered that
+there was perhaps less danger in this choice, than in the frequent
+change from the extremes of a pure to a tainted air, and desisted from
+expostulation. "Falkland," said he, "when you came in, I had just
+finished making my will. I was not pleased with what I had formerly
+drawn up upon that subject, and I did not choose in my present situation
+to call in an attorney. In fact, it would be strange if a man of sense,
+with pure and direct intentions, should not be able to perform such a
+function for himself."
+
+Mr. Clare continued to act in the same easy and disengaged manner as in
+perfect health. To judge from the cheerfulness of his tone and the
+firmness of his manner, the thought would never once have occurred that
+he was dying. He walked, he reasoned, he jested, in a way that argued
+the most perfect self-possession. But his appearance changed perceptibly
+for the worse every quarter of an hour. Mr. Falkland kept his eye
+perpetually fixed upon him, with mingled sentiments of anxiety and
+admiration.
+
+"Falkland," said he, after having appeared for a short period absorbed
+in thought, "I feel that I am dying. This is a strange distemper of
+mine. Yesterday I seemed in perfect health, and to-morrow I shall be an
+insensible corpse. How curious is the line that separates life and death
+to mortal men! To be at one moment active, gay, penetrating, with stores
+of knowledge at one's command, capable of delighting, instructing, and
+animating mankind, and the next, lifeless and loathsome, an incumbrance
+upon the face of the earth! Such is the history of many men, and such
+will be mine.
+
+"I feel as if I had yet much to do in the world; but it will not be. I
+must be contented with what is past. It is in vain that I muster all my
+spirits to my heart. The enemy is too mighty and too merciless for me;
+he will not give me time so much as to breathe. These things are not yet
+at least in our power: they are parts of a great series that is
+perpetually flowing. The general welfare, the great business of the
+universe, will go on, though I bear no further share in promoting it.
+That task is reserved for younger strengths, for you, Falkland, and such
+as you. We should be contemptible indeed if the prospect of human
+improvement did not yield us a pure and perfect delight, independently
+of the question of our existing to partake of it. Mankind would have
+little to envy to future ages, if they had all enjoyed a serenity as
+perfect as mine has been for the latter half of my existence."
+
+Mr. Clare sat up through the whole day, indulging himself in easy and
+cheerful exertions, which were perhaps better calculated to refresh and
+invigorate the frame, than if he had sought repose in its direct form.
+Now and then he was visited with a sudden pang; but it was no sooner
+felt, than he seemed to rise above it, and smiled at the impotence of
+these attacks. They might destroy him, but they could not disturb. Three
+or four times he was bedewed with profuse sweats; and these again were
+succeeded by an extreme dryness and burning heat of the skin. He was
+next covered with small livid spots: symptoms of shivering followed, but
+these he drove away with a determined resolution. He then became
+tranquil and composed, and, after some time, decided to go to bed, it
+being already night. "Falkland," said he, pressing his hand, "the task
+of dying is not so difficult as some imagine. When one looks back from
+the brink of it, one wonders that so total a subversion can take place
+at so easy a price."
+
+He had now been some time in bed, and, as every thing was still, Mr.
+Falkland hoped that he slept; but in that he was mistaken. Presently Mr.
+Clare threw back the curtain, and looked in the countenance of his
+friend. "I cannot sleep," said he. "No, if I could sleep, it would be
+the same thing as to recover; and I am destined to have the worst in
+this battle.
+
+"Falkland, I have been thinking about you. I do not know any one whose
+future usefulness I contemplate with greater hope. Take care of
+yourself. Do not let the world be defrauded of your virtues. I am
+acquainted with your weakness as well as your strength. You have an
+impetuosity, and an impatience of imagined dishonour, that, if once set
+wrong, may make you as eminently mischievous as you will otherwise be
+useful. Think seriously of exterminating this error!
+
+"But if I cannot, in the brief expostulation my present situation will
+allow, produce this desirable change in you, there is at least one thing
+I can do. I can put you upon your guard against a mischief I foresee to
+be imminent. Beware of Mr. Tyrrel. Do not commit the mistake of
+despising him as an unequal opponent. Petty causes may produce great
+mischiefs. Mr. Tyrrel is boisterous, rugged, and unfeeling; and you are
+too passionate, too acutely sensible of injury. It would be truly to be
+lamented, if a man so inferior, so utterly unworthy to be compared with
+you, should be capable of changing your whole history into misery and
+guilt. I have a painful presentiment upon my heart, as if something
+dreadful would reach you from that quarter. Think of this. I exact no
+promise from you. I would not shackle you with the fetters of
+superstition; I would have you governed by justice and reason."
+
+Mr. Falkland was deeply affected with this expostulation. His sense of
+the generous attention of Mr. Clare at such a moment, was so great as
+almost to deprive him of utterance. He spoke in short sentences, and
+with visible effort. "I will behave better," replied he. "Never fear me!
+Your admonitions shall not be thrown away upon me."
+
+Mr. Clare adverted to another subject. "I have made you my executor; you
+will not refuse me this last office of friendship. It is but a short
+time that I have had the happiness of knowing you; but in that short
+time I have examined you well, and seen you thoroughly. Do not
+disappoint the sanguine hope I have entertained!
+
+"I have left some legacies. My former connections, while I lived amidst
+the busy haunts of men, as many of them as were intimate, are all of
+them dear to me. I have not had time to summon them about me upon the
+present occasion, nor did I desire it. The remembrances of me will, I
+hope, answer a better purpose than such as are usually thought of on
+similar occasions."
+
+Mr. Clare, having thus unburthened his mind, spoke no more for several
+hours. Towards morning Mr. Falkland quietly withdrew the curtain, and
+looked at the dying man. His eyes were open, and were now gently turned
+towards his young friend. His countenance was sunk, and of a death-like
+appearance. "I hope you are better," said Falkland in a half whisper, as
+if afraid of disturbing him. Mr. Clare drew his hand from the
+bed-clothes, and stretched it forward; Mr. Falkland advanced, and took
+hold of it. "Much better," said Mr. Clare, in a voice inward and hardly
+articulate; "the struggle is now over; I have finished my part;
+farewell! remember!" These were his last words. He lived still a few
+hours; his lips were sometimes seen to move; he expired without a groan.
+
+Mr. Falkland had witnessed the scene with much anxiety. His hopes of a
+favourable crisis, and his fear of disturbing the last moments of his
+friend, had held him dumb. For the last half hour he had stood up, with
+his eyes intently fixed upon Mr. Clare. He witnessed the last gasp, the
+last little convulsive motion of the frame. He continued to look; he
+sometimes imagined that he saw life renewed. At length he could deceive
+himself no longer, and exclaimed with a distracted accent, "And is this
+all?" He would have thrown himself upon the body of his friend; the
+attendants withheld, and would have forced him into another apartment.
+But he struggled from them, and hung fondly over the bed. "Is this the
+end of genius, virtue, and excellence? Is the luminary of the world thus
+for ever gone? Oh, yesterday! yesterday! Clare, why could not I have
+died in your stead? Dreadful moment! Irreparable loss! Lost in the very
+maturity and vigour of his mind! Cut off from a usefulness ten thousand
+times greater than any he had already exhibited! Oh, his was a mind to
+have instructed sages, and guided the moral world! This is all we have
+left of him! The eloquence of those lips is gone! The incessant activity
+of that heart is still! The best and wisest of men is gone, and the
+world is insensible of its loss!"
+
+Mr. Tyrrel heard the intelligence of Mr. Clare's death with emotion, but
+of a different kind. He avowed that he had not forgiven him his partial
+attachment to Mr. Falkland, and therefore could not recall his
+remembrance with kindness. But if he could have overlooked his past
+injustice, sufficient care, it seems, was taken to keep alive his
+resentment. "Falkland, forsooth, attended him on his death-bed, as if
+nobody else were worthy of his confidential communications." But what
+was worst of all was this executorship. "In every thing this pragmatical
+rascal throws me behind. Contemptible wretch, that has nothing of the
+man about him! Must he perpetually trample upon his betters? Is every
+body incapable of saying what kind of stuff a man is made of? caught
+with mere outside? choosing the flimsy before the substantial? And upon
+his death-bed too? [Mr. Tyrrel with his uncultivated brutality mixed, as
+usually happens, certain rude notions of religion.] Sure the sense of
+his situation might have shamed him. Poor wretch! his soul has a great
+deal to answer for. He has made my pillow uneasy; and, whatever may be
+the consequences, it is he we have to thank for them."
+
+The death of Mr. Clare removed the person who could most effectually
+have moderated the animosities of the contending parties, and took away
+the great operative check upon the excesses of Mr. Tyrrel. This rustic
+tyrant had been held in involuntary restraint by the intellectual
+ascendancy of his celebrated neighbour: and, notwithstanding the general
+ferocity of his temper, he did not appear till lately to have
+entertained a hatred against him. In the short time that had elapsed
+from the period in which Mr. Clare had fixed his residence in the
+neighbourhood, to that of the arrival of Mr. Falkland from the
+Continent, the conduct of Mr. Tyrrel had even shown tokens of
+improvement. He would indeed have been better satisfied not to have had
+even this intruder into a circle where he had been accustomed to reign.
+But with Mr. Clare he could have no rivalship; the venerable character
+of Mr. Clare disposed him to submission: this great man seemed to have
+survived all the acrimony of contention, and all the jealous subtleties
+of a mistaken honour.
+
+The effects of Mr. Clare's suavity however, so far as related to Mr.
+Tyrrel, had been in a certain degree suspended by considerations of
+rivalship between this gentleman and Mr. Falkland. And, now that the
+influence of Mr. Clare's presence and virtues was entirely removed, Mr.
+Tyrrel's temper broke out into more criminal excesses than ever. The
+added gloom which Mr. Falkland's neighbourhood inspired, overflowed upon
+all his connections; and the new examples of his sullenness and tyranny
+which every day afforded, reflected back upon this accumulated and
+portentous feud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The consequences of all this speedily manifested themselves. The very
+next incident in the story was in some degree decisive of the
+catastrophe. Hitherto I have spoken only of preliminary matters,
+seemingly unconnected with each other, though leading to that state of
+mind in both parties which had such fatal effects. But all that remains
+is rapid and tremendous. The death-dealing mischief advances with an
+accelerated motion, appearing to defy human wisdom and strength to
+obstruct its operation.
+
+The vices of Mr. Tyrrel, in their present state of augmentation, were
+peculiarly exercised upon his domestics and dependents. But the
+principal sufferer was the young lady mentioned on a former occasion,
+the orphan daughter of his father's sister. Miss Melville's mother had
+married imprudently, or rather unfortunately, against the consent of her
+relations, all of whom had agreed to withdraw their countenance from her
+in consequence of that precipitate step. Her husband had turned out to
+be no better than an adventurer; had spent her fortune, which in
+consequence of the irreconcilableness of her family was less than he
+expected, and had broken her heart. Her infant daughter was left without
+any resource. In this situation the representations of the people with
+whom she happened to be placed, prevailed upon Mrs. Tyrrel, the mother
+of the squire, to receive her into her family. In equity, perhaps, she
+was entitled to that portion of fortune which her mother had forfeited
+by her imprudence, and which had gone to swell the property of the male
+representative. But this idea had never entered into the conceptions of
+either mother or son. Mrs. Tyrrel conceived that she performed an act of
+the most exalted benevolence in admitting Miss Emily into a sort of
+equivocal situation, which was neither precisely that of a domestic, nor
+yet marked with the treatment that might seem due to one of the family.
+
+She had not, however, at first been sensible of all the mortifications
+that might have been expected from her condition. Mrs. Tyrrel, though
+proud and imperious, was not ill-natured. The female, who lived in the
+family in the capacity of housekeeper, was a person who had seen better
+days, and whose disposition was extremely upright and amiable. She early
+contracted a friendship for the little Emily, who was indeed for the
+most part committed to her care. Emily, on her side, fully repaid the
+affection of her instructress, and learned with great docility the few
+accomplishments Mrs. Jakeman was able to communicate. But most of all
+she imbibed her cheerful and artless temper, that extracted the
+agreeable and encouraging from all events, and prompted her to
+communicate her sentiments, which were never of the cynical cast,
+without modification or disguise. Besides the advantages Emily derived
+from Mrs. Jakeman, she was permitted to take lessons from the masters
+who were employed at Tyrrel Place for the instruction of her cousin; and
+indeed, as the young gentleman was most frequently indisposed to attend
+to them, they would commonly have had nothing to do, had it not been for
+the fortunate presence of Miss Melville. Mrs. Tyrrel therefore
+encouraged the studies of Emily on that score; in addition to which she
+imagined that this living exhibition of instruction might operate as an
+indirect allurement to her darling Barnabas, the only species of motive
+she would suffer to be presented. Force she absolutely forbade; and of
+the intrinsic allurements of literature and knowledge she had no
+conception.
+
+Emily, as she grew up, displayed an uncommon degree of sensibility,
+which under her circumstances would have been a source of perpetual
+dissatisfaction, had it not been qualified with an extreme sweetness and
+easiness of temper. She was far from being entitled to the appellation
+of a beauty. Her person was _petite_ and trivial; her complexion
+savoured of the _brunette_; and her face was marked with the small-pox,
+sufficiently to destroy its evenness and polish, though not enough to
+destroy its expression. But, though her appearance was not beautiful, it
+did not fail to be in a high degree engaging. Her complexion was at once
+healthful and delicate; her long dark eye-brows adapted themselves with
+facility to the various conceptions of her mind; and her looks bore the
+united impression of an active discernment and a good-humoured
+frankness. The instruction she had received, as it was entirely of a
+casual nature, exempted her from the evils of untutored ignorance, but
+not from a sort of native wildness, arguing a mind incapable of guile
+itself, or of suspecting it in others. She amused, without seeming
+conscious of the refined sense which her observations contained; or
+rather, having never been debauched with applause, she set light by her
+own qualifications, and talked from the pure gaiety of a youthful heart
+acting upon the stores of a just understanding, and not with any
+expectation of being distinguished and admired.
+
+The death of her aunt made very little change in her situation. This
+prudent lady, who would have thought it little less than sacrilege to
+have considered Miss Melville as a branch of the stock of the Tyrrels,
+took no more notice of her in her will than barely putting her down for
+one hundred pounds in a catalogue of legacies to her servants. She had
+never been admitted into the intimacy and confidence of Mrs. Tyrrel; and
+the young squire, now that she was left under his sole protection,
+seemed inclined to treat her with even more liberality than his mother
+had done. He had seen her grow up under his eye, and therefore, though
+there were but six years difference in their ages, he felt a kind of
+paternal interest in her welfare. Habit had rendered her in a manner
+necessary to him, and, in every recess from the occupations of the field
+and the pleasures of the table, he found himself solitary and forlorn
+without the society of Miss Melville. Nearness of kindred, and Emily's
+want of personal beauty, prevented him from ever looking on her with the
+eyes of desire. Her accomplishments were chiefly of the customary and
+superficial kind, dancing and music. Her skill in the first led him
+sometimes to indulge her with a vacant corner in his carriage, when he
+went to the neighbouring assembly; and, in whatever light he might
+himself think proper to regard her, he would have imagined his
+chambermaid, introduced by him, entitled to an undoubted place in the
+most splendid circle. Her musical talents were frequently employed for
+his amusement. She had the honour occasionally of playing him to sleep
+after the fatigues of the chase; and, as he had some relish for
+harmonious sounds, she was frequently able to soothe him by their means
+from the perturbations of which his gloomy disposition was so eminently
+a slave. Upon the whole, she might be considered as in some sort his
+favourite. She was the mediator to whom his tenants and domestics, when
+they had incurred his displeasure, were accustomed to apply; the
+privileged companion, that could approach this lion with impunity in the
+midst of his roarings. She spoke to him without fear; her solicitations
+were always good-natured and disinterested; and when he repulsed her, he
+disarmed himself of half his terrors, and was contented to smile at her
+presumption.
+
+Such had been for some years the situation of Miss Melville. Its
+precariousness had been beguiled by the uncommon forbearance with which
+she was treated by her savage protector. But his disposition, always
+brutal, had acquired a gradual accession of ferocity since the
+settlement of Mr. Falkland in his neighbourhood. He now frequently
+forgot the gentleness with which he had been accustomed to treat his
+good-natured cousin. Her little playful arts were not always successful
+in softening his rage; and he would sometimes turn upon her
+blandishments with an impatient sternness that made her tremble. The
+careless ease of her disposition, however, soon effaced these
+impressions, and she fell without variation into her old habits.
+
+A circumstance occurred about this time which gave peculiar strength to
+the acrimony of Mr. Tyrrel, and ultimately brought to its close the
+felicity that Miss Melville, in spite of the frowns of fortune, had
+hitherto enjoyed. Emily was exactly seventeen when Mr. Falkland returned
+from the continent. At this age she was peculiarly susceptible of the
+charms of beauty, grace, and moral excellence, when united in a person
+of the other sex. She was imprudent, precisely because her own heart was
+incapable of guile. She had never yet felt the sting of the poverty to
+which she was condemned, and had not reflected on the insuperable
+distance that custom has placed between the opulent and the poorer
+classes of the community. She beheld Mr. Falkland, whenever he was
+thrown in her way at any of the public meetings, with admiration; and,
+without having precisely explained to herself the sentiments she
+indulged, her eyes followed him through all the changes of the scene,
+with eagerness and impatience. She did not see him, as the rest of the
+assembly did, born to one of the amplest estates in the county, and
+qualified to assert his title to the richest heiress. She thought only
+of Falkland, with those advantages which were most intimately his own,
+and of which no persecution of adverse fortune had the ability to
+deprive him. In a word, she was transported when he was present; he was
+the perpetual subject of her reveries and her dreams; but his image
+excited no sentiment in her mind beyond that of the immediate pleasure
+she took in his idea.
+
+The notice Mr. Falkland bestowed on her in return, appeared sufficiently
+encouraging to a mind so full of prepossession as that of Emily. There
+was a particular complacency in his looks when directed towards her. He
+had said in a company, of which one of the persons present repeated his
+remarks to Miss Melville, that she appeared to him amiable and
+interesting; that he felt for her unprovided and destitute situation;
+and that he should have been glad to be more particular in his attention
+to her, had he not been apprehensive of doing her a prejudice in the
+suspicious mind of Mr. Tyrrel. All this she considered as the ravishing
+condescension of a superior nature; for, if she did not recollect with
+sufficient assiduity his gifts of fortune, she was, on the other hand,
+filled with reverence for his unrivalled accomplishments. But, while she
+thus seemingly disclaimed all comparison between Mr. Falkland and
+herself, she probably cherished a confused feeling as if some event,
+that was yet in the womb of fate, might reconcile things apparently the
+most incompatible. Fraught with these prepossessions, the civilities
+that had once or twice occurred in the bustle of a public circle, the
+restoring her fan which she had dropped, or the disembarrassing her of
+an empty tea-cup, made her heart palpitate, and gave birth to the
+wildest chimeras in her deluded imagination.
+
+About this time an event happened, that helped to give a precise
+determination to the fluctuations of Miss Melville's mind. One evening,
+a short time after the death of Mr. Clare, Mr. Falkland had been at the
+house of his deceased friend in his quality of executor, and, by some
+accidents of little intrinsic importance, had been detained three or
+four hours later than he expected. He did not set out upon his return
+till two o'clock in the morning. At this time, in a situation so remote
+from the metropolis, every thing is as silent as it would be in a
+region wholly uninhabited. The moon shone bright; and the objects around
+being marked with strong variations of light and shade, gave a kind of
+sacred solemnity to the scene. Mr. Falkland had taken Collins with him,
+the business to be settled at Mr. Clare's being in some respects similar
+to that to which this faithful domestic had been accustomed in the
+routine of his ordinary service. They had entered into some
+conversation, for Mr. Falkland was not then in the habit of obliging the
+persons about him by formality and reserve to recollect who he was. The
+attractive solemnity of the scene made him break off the talk somewhat
+abruptly, that he might enjoy it without interruption. They had not
+ridden far, before a hollow wind seemed to rise at a distance, and they
+could hear the hoarse roarings of the sea. Presently the sky on one side
+assumed the appearance of a reddish brown, and a sudden angle in the
+road placed this phenomenon directly before them. As they proceeded, it
+became more distinct, and it was at length sufficiently visible that it
+was occasioned by a fire. Mr. Falkland put spurs to his horse; and, as
+they approached, the object presented every instant a more alarming
+appearance. The flames ascended with fierceness; they embraced a large
+portion of the horizon; and, as they carried up with them numerous
+little fragments of the materials that fed them, impregnated with fire,
+and of an extremely bright and luminous colour, they presented some
+feeble image of the tremendous eruption of a volcano.
+
+The flames proceeded from a village directly in their road. There were
+eight or ten houses already on fire, and the whole seemed to be
+threatened with immediate destruction. The inhabitants were in the
+utmost consternation, having had no previous experience of a similar
+calamity. They conveyed with haste their moveables and furniture into
+the adjoining fields. When any of them had effected this as far as it
+could be attempted with safety, they were unable to conceive any further
+remedy, but stood wringing their hands, and contemplating the ravages of
+the fire in an agony of powerless despair. The water that could be
+procured, in any mode practised in that place, was but as a drop
+contending with an element in arms. The wind in the mean time was
+rising, and the flames spread with more and more rapidity.
+
+Mr. Falkland contemplated this scene for a few moments, as if ruminating
+with himself as to what could be done. He then directed some of the
+country people about him to pull down a house, next to one that was
+wholly on fire, but which itself was yet untouched. They seemed
+astonished at a direction which implied a voluntary destruction of
+property, and considered the task as too much in the heart of the danger
+to be undertaken. Observing that they were motionless, he dismounted
+from his horse, and called upon them in an authoritative voice to follow
+him. He ascended the house in an instant, and presently appeared upon
+the top of it, as if in the midst of the flames. Having, with the
+assistance of two or three of the persons that followed him most
+closely, and who by this time had supplied themselves with whatever
+tools came next to hand, loosened the support of a stack of chimneys, he
+pushed them headlong into the midst of the fire. He passed and repassed
+along the roof; and, having set people to work in all parts, descended
+in order to see what could be done in any other quarter. At this moment
+an elderly woman burst from the midst of a house in flames: the utmost
+consternation was painted in her looks; and, as soon as she could
+recollect herself enough to have a proper idea of her situation, the
+subject of her anxiety seemed, in an instant, to be totally changed.
+"Where is my child?" cried she, and cast an anxious and piercing look
+among the surrounding crowd. "Oh, she is lost! she is in the midst of
+flames! Save her! save her! my child!" She filled the air with
+heart-rending shrieks. She turned towards the house. The people that
+were near endeavoured to prevent her, but she shook them off in a
+moment. She entered the passage; viewed the hideous ruin; and was then
+going to plunge into the blazing staircase. Mr. Falkland saw, pursued,
+and seized her by the arm; it was Mrs. Jakeman. "Stop!" he cried, with a
+voice of grand, yet benevolent authority. "Remain you in the street! I
+will seek, and will save her!" Mrs. Jakeman obeyed. He charged the
+persons who were near to detain her; he enquired which was the apartment
+of Emily. Mrs. Jakeman was upon a visit to a sister who lived in the
+village, and had brought Emily along with her. Mr. Falkland ascended a
+neighbouring house, and entered that in which Emily was, by a window in
+the roof.
+
+He found her already awaked from her sleep; and, becoming sensible of
+her danger, she had that instant wrapped a loose gown round her. Such is
+the almost irresistible result of feminine habits; but, having done
+this, she examined the surrounding objects with the wildness of despair.
+Mr. Falkland entered the chamber. She flew into his arms with the
+rapidity of lightning. She embraced and clung to him, with an impulse
+that did not wait to consult the dictates of her understanding. Her
+emotions were indescribable. In a few short moments she had lived an age
+in love. In two minutes Mr. Falkland was again in the street with his
+lovely, half-naked burthen in his arms. Having restored her to her
+affectionate protector, snatched from the immediate grasp of death, from
+which, if he had not, none would have delivered her, he returned to his
+former task. By his presence of mind, by his indefatigable humanity and
+incessant exertions, he saved three fourths of the village from
+destruction.
+
+The conflagration being at length abated, he sought again Mrs. Jakeman
+and Emily, who by this time had obtained a substitute for the garments
+she had lost in the fire. He displayed the tenderest solicitude for the
+young lady's safety, and directed Collins to go with as much speed as he
+could, and send his chariot to attend her. More than an hour elapsed in
+this interval. Miss Melville had never seen so much of Mr. Falkland upon
+any former occasion; and the spectacle of such humanity, delicacy,
+firmness, and justice in the form of man, as he crowded into this small
+space, was altogether new to her, and in the highest degree fascinating.
+She had a confused feeling as if there had been something indecorous in
+her behaviour or appearance, when Mr. Falkland had appeared to her
+relief; and this combined with her other emotions to render the whole
+critical and intoxicating.
+
+Emily no sooner arrived at the family mansion, than Mr. Tyrrel ran out
+to receive her. He had just heard of the melancholy accident that had
+taken place at the village, and was terrified for the safety of his
+good-humoured cousin. He displayed those unpremeditated emotions which
+are common to almost every individual of the human race. He was greatly
+shocked at the suspicion that Emily might possibly have become the
+victim of a catastrophe which had thus broken out in the dead of night.
+His sensations were of the most pleasing sort when he folded her in his
+arms, and fearful apprehension was instantaneously converted into
+joyous certainty. Emily no sooner entered under the well known roof than
+her spirits were brisk, and her tongue incessant in describing her
+danger and her deliverance. Mr. Tyrrel had formerly been tortured with
+the innocent eulogiums she pronounced of Mr. Falkland. But these were
+lameness itself, compared with the rich and various eloquence that now
+flowed from her lips. Love had not the same effect upon her, especially
+at the present moment, which it would have had upon a person instructed
+to feign a blush, and inured to a consciousness of wrong. She described
+his activity and resources, the promptitude with which every thing was
+conceived, and the cautious but daring wisdom with which it was
+executed. All was fairy-land and enchantment in the tenour of her
+artless tale; you saw a beneficent genius surveying and controlling the
+whole, but could have no notion of any human means by which his purposes
+were effected.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel listened for a while to these innocent effusions with
+patience; he could even bear to hear the man applauded, by whom he had
+just obtained so considerable a benefit. But the theme by amplification
+became nauseous, and he at length with some roughness put an end to the
+tale. Probably, upon recollection, it appeared still more insolent and
+intolerable than while it was passing; the sensation of gratitude wore
+off, but the hyperbolical praise that had been bestowed still haunted
+his memory, and sounded in his ear;--Emily had entered into the
+confederacy that disturbed his repose. For herself, she was wholly
+unconscious of offence, and upon every occasion quoted Mr. Falkland as
+the model of elegant manners and true wisdom. She was a total stranger
+to dissimulation; and she could not conceive that any one beheld the
+subject of her admiration with less partiality than herself. Her
+artless love became more fervent than ever. She flattered herself that
+nothing less than a reciprocal passion could have prompted Mr. Falkland
+to the desperate attempt of saving her from the flames; and she trusted
+that this passion would speedily declare itself, as well as induce the
+object of her adoration to overlook her comparative unworthiness.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured at first with some moderation to check Miss
+Melville in her applauses, and to convince her by various tokens that
+the subject was disagreeable to him. He was accustomed to treat her with
+kindness. Emily, on her part, was disposed to yield an unreluctant
+obedience, and therefore it was not difficult to restrain her. But upon
+the very next occasion her favourite topic would force its way to her
+lips. Her obedience was the acquiescence of a frank and benevolent
+heart; but it was the most difficult thing in the world to inspire her
+with fear. Conscious herself that she would not hurt a worm, she could
+not conceive that any one would harbour cruelty and rancour against her.
+Her temper had preserved her from obstinate contention with the persons
+under whose protection she was placed; and, as her compliance was
+unhesitating, she had no experience of a severe and rigorous treatment.
+As Mr. Tyrrel's objection to the very name of Falkland became more
+palpable and uniform, Miss Melville increased in her precaution. She
+would stop herself in the half-pronounced sentences that were meant to
+his praise. This circumstance had necessarily an ungracious effect; it
+was a cutting satire upon the imbecility of her kinsman. Upon these
+occasions she would sometimes venture upon a good-humoured
+expostulation:--"Dear sir! well, I wonder how you can be so ill-natured!
+I am sure Mr. Falkland would do you any good office in the
+world:"--till she was checked by some gesture of impatience and
+fierceness.
+
+At length she wholly conquered her heedlessness and inattention. But it
+was too late. Mr. Tyrrel already suspected the existence of that passion
+which she had thoughtlessly imbibed. His imagination, ingenious in
+torment, suggested to him all the different openings in conversation, in
+which she would have introduced the praise of Mr. Falkland, had she not
+been placed under this unnatural restraint. Her present reserve upon the
+subject was even more insufferable than her former loquacity. All his
+kindness for this unhappy orphan gradually subsided. Her partiality for
+the man who was the object of his unbounded abhorrence, appeared to him
+as the last persecution of a malicious destiny. He figured himself as
+about to be deserted by every creature in human form; all men, under the
+influence of a fatal enchantment, approving only what was sophisticated
+and artificial, and holding the rude and genuine offspring of nature in
+mortal antipathy. Impressed with these gloomy presages, he saw Miss
+Melville with no sentiments but those of rancorous aversion; and,
+accustomed as he was to the uncontrolled indulgence of his propensities,
+he determined to wreak upon her a signal revenge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Mr. Tyrrel consulted his old confident respecting the plan he should
+pursue; who, sympathising as he did in the brutality and insolence of
+his friend, had no idea that an insignificant girl, without either
+wealth or beauty, ought to be allowed for a moment to stand in the way
+of the gratifications of a man of Mr. Tyrrel's importance. The first
+idea of her now unrelenting kinsman was to thrust her from his doors,
+and leave her to seek her bread as she could. But he was conscious that
+this proceeding would involve him in considerable obloquy; and he at
+length fixed upon a scheme which, at the same time that he believed it
+would sufficiently shelter his reputation, would much more certainly
+secure her mortification and punishment.
+
+For this purpose he fixed upon a young man of twenty, the son of one
+Grimes, who occupied a small farm, the property of his confident. This
+fellow he resolved to impose as a husband on Miss Melville, who, he
+shrewdly suspected, guided by the tender sentiments she had
+unfortunately conceived for Mr. Falkland, would listen with reluctance
+to any matrimonial proposal. Grimes he selected as being in all respects
+the diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of
+vicious propensities, but in an inconceivable degree boorish and
+uncouth. His complexion was scarcely human; his features were coarse,
+and strangely discordant and disjointed from each other. His lips were
+thick, and the tone of his voice broad and unmodulated. His legs were of
+equal size from one end to the other, and his feet misshapen and clumsy.
+He had nothing spiteful or malicious in his disposition, but he was a
+total stranger to tenderness; he could not feel for those refinements in
+others, of which he had no experience in himself. He was an expert
+boxer: his inclination led him to such amusements as were most
+boisterous; and he delighted in a sort of manual sarcasm, which he could
+not conceive to be very injurious, as it left no traces behind it. His
+general manners were noisy and obstreperous; inattentive to others; and
+obstinate and unyielding, not from any cruelty and ruggedness of
+temper, but from an incapacity to conceive those finer feelings, that
+make so large a part of the history of persons who are cast in a gentler
+mould.
+
+Such was the uncouth and half-civilised animal, which the industrious
+malice of Mr. Tyrrel fixed upon as most happily adapted to his purpose.
+Emily had hitherto been in an unusual degree exempted from the
+oppression of despotism. Her happy insignificance had served her as a
+protection. No one thought it worth his while to fetter her with those
+numerous petty restrictions with which the daughters of opulence are
+commonly tormented. She had the wildness, as well as the delicate frame,
+of the bird that warbles unmolested in its native groves.
+
+When therefore she heard from her kinsman the proposal of Mr. Grimes for
+a husband, she was for a moment silent with astonishment at so
+unexpected a suggestion. But as soon as she recovered her speech, she
+replied, "No, sir, I do not want a husband."
+
+"You do! Are not you always hankering after the men? It is high time you
+should be settled."
+
+"Mr. Grimes! No, indeed! when I do have a husband, it shall not be such
+a man as Mr. Grimes neither."
+
+"Be silent! How dare you give yourself such unaccountable liberties?"
+
+"Lord, I wonder what I should do with him. You might as well give me
+your great rough water-dog, and bid me make him a silk cushion to lie in
+my dressing-room. Besides, sir, Grimes is a common labouring man, and I
+am sure I have always heard my aunt say that ours is a very great
+family."
+
+"It is a lie! Our family! have you the impudence to think yourself one
+of our family?"
+
+"Why, sir, was not your grandpapa my grandpapa? How then can we be of a
+different family?"
+
+"From the strongest reason in the world. You are the daughter of a
+rascally Scotchman, who spent every shilling of my aunt Lucy's fortune,
+and left you a beggar. You have got an hundred pounds, and Grimes's
+father promises to give him as much. How dare you look down upon your
+equals?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am not proud. But, indeed and indeed, I can never love
+Mr. Grimes. I am very happy as I am: why should I be married?"
+
+"Silence your prating! Grimes will be here this afternoon. Look that you
+behave well to him. If you do not, he will remember and repay, when you
+least like it."
+
+"Nay, I am sure, sir--you are not in earnest?"
+
+"Not in earnest! Damn me, but we will see that. I can tell what you
+would be at. You had rather be Mr. Falkland's miss, than the wife of a
+plain downright yeoman. But I shall take care of you.--Ay, this comes of
+indulgence. You must be taken down, miss. You must be taught the
+difference between high-flown notions and realities. Mayhap you may take
+it a little in dudgeon or so; but never mind that. Pride always wants a
+little smarting. If you should be brought to shame, it is I that shall
+bear the blame of it."
+
+The tone in which Mr. Tyrrel spoke was so different from any thing to
+which Miss Melville had been accustomed, that she felt herself wholly
+unable to determine what construction to put upon it. Sometimes she
+thought he had really formed a plan for imposing upon her a condition
+that she could not bear so much as to think of. But presently she
+rejected this idea as an unworthy imputation upon her kinsman, and
+concluded that it was only his way, and that all he meant was to try
+her. To be resolved however, she determined to consult her constant
+adviser, Mrs. Jakeman, and accordingly repeated to her what had passed.
+Mrs. Jakeman saw the whole in a very different light from that in which
+Emily had conceived it, and trembled for the future peace of her beloved
+ward.
+
+"Lord bless me, my dear mamma!" cried Emily, (this was the appellation
+she delighted to bestow upon the good housekeeper,) "you cannot think
+so? But I do not care. I will never marry Grimes, happen what will."
+
+"But how will you help yourself? My master will oblige you."
+
+"Nay, now you think you are talking to a child indeed. It is I am to
+have the man, not Mr. Tyrrel. Do you think I will let any body else
+choose a husband for me? I am not such a fool as that neither."
+
+"Ah, Emily! you little know the disadvantages of your situation. Your
+cousin is a violent man, and perhaps will turn you out of doors, if you
+oppose him."
+
+"Oh, mamma! it is very wicked of you to say so. I am sure Mr. Tyrrel is
+a very good man, though he be a little cross now and then. He knows very
+well that I am right to have a will of my own in such a thing as this,
+and nobody is punished for doing what is right."
+
+"Nobody ought, my dear child. But there are very wicked and tyrannical
+men in the world."
+
+"Well, well, I will never believe my cousin is one of these."
+
+"I hope he is not."
+
+"And if he were, what then? To be sure I should he very sorry to make
+him angry."
+
+"What then! Why then my poor Emily would be a beggar. Do you think I
+could bear to see that?"
+
+"No, no. Mr. Tyrrel has just told me that I have a hundred pounds. But
+if I had no fortune, is not that the case with a thousand other folks?
+Why should I grieve, for what they bear and are merry? Do not make
+yourself uneasy, mamma. I am determined that I will do any thing rather
+than marry Grimes; that is what I will."
+
+Mrs. Jakeman could not bear the uneasy state of suspense in which this
+conversation left her mind, and went immediately to the squire to have
+her doubts resolved. The manner in which she proposed the question,
+sufficiently indicated the judgment she had formed of the match.
+
+"That is true," said Mr. Tyrrel, "I wanted to speak to you about this
+affair. The girl has got unaccountable notions in her head, that will be
+the ruin of her. You perhaps can tell where she had them. But, be that
+as it will, it is high time something should be done. The shortest way
+is the best, and to keep things well while they are well. In short, I am
+determined she shall marry this lad: you do not know any harm of him, do
+you? You have a good deal of influence with her, and I desire, do you
+see, that you will employ it to lead her to her good: you had best, I
+can tell you. She is a pert vixen! By and by she would be a whore, and
+at last no better than a common trull, and rot upon a dunghill, if I
+were not at all these pains to save her from destruction. I would make
+her an honest farmer's wife, and my pretty miss cannot bear the thoughts
+of it!"
+
+In the afternoon Grimes came according to appointment, and was left
+alone with the young lady.
+
+"Well, miss," said he, "it seems the squire has a mind to make us man
+and wife. For my part, I cannot say I should have thought of it. But,
+being as how the squire has broke the ice, if so be as you like of the
+match, why I am your man. Speak the word; a nod is as good as a wink to
+a blind horse."
+
+Emily was already sufficiently mortified at the unexpected proposal of
+Mr. Tyrrel. She was confounded at the novelty of the situation, and
+still more at the uncultivated rudeness of her lover, which even
+exceeded her expectation. This confusion was interpreted by Grimes into
+diffidence.
+
+"Come, come, never be cast down. Put a good face upon it. What though?
+My first sweetheart was Bet Butterfield, but what of that? What must be
+must be; grief will never fill the belly. She was a fine strapping
+wench, that is the truth of it! five foot ten inches, and as stout as a
+trooper. Oh, she would do a power of work! Up early and down late;
+milked ten cows with her own hands; on with her cardinal, rode to market
+between her panniers, fair weather and foul, hail, blow, or snow. It
+would have done your heart good to have seen her frost-bitten cheeks, as
+red as a beefen from her own orchard! Ah! she was a maid of mettle;
+would romp with the harvestmen, slap one upon the back, wrestle with
+another, and had a rogue's trick and a joke for all round. Poor girl!
+she broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be sure I shall
+never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that
+I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful
+as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have
+touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss,
+whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a
+millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at
+the bait, never doubt it. Yes, yes, we shall rub on main well together."
+
+Emily by this time had in some degree mustered up her spirits, and
+began, though with hesitation, to thank Mr. Grimes for his good opinion,
+but to confess that she could never be brought to favour his addresses.
+She therefore entreated him to desist from all further application. This
+remonstrance on her part would have become more intelligible, had it not
+been for his boisterous manners and extravagant cheerfulness, which
+indisposed him to silence, and made him suppose that at half a word he
+had sufficient intimation of another's meaning. Mr. Tyrrel, in the mean
+time, was too impatient not to interrupt the scene before they could
+have time to proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in the
+sequel to prevent the young folks from being too intimately acquainted
+with each other's inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the
+reluctance of Miss Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness
+of an unbroken filly. Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable
+that it would have made any effectual impression upon him; as he was
+always accustomed to consider women as made for the recreation of the
+men, and to exclaim against the weakness of people who taught them to
+imagine they were to judge for themselves.
+
+As the suit proceeded, and Miss Melville saw more of her new admirer,
+her antipathy increased. But, though her character was unspoiled by
+those false wants, which frequently make people of family miserable
+while they have every thing that nature requires within their reach, yet
+she had been little used to opposition, and was terrified at the growing
+sternness of her kinsman. Sometimes she thought of flying from a house
+which was now become her dungeon; but the habits of her youth, and her
+ignorance of the world, made her shrink from this project, when she
+contemplated it more nearly, Mrs. Jakeman, indeed, could not think with
+patience of young Grimes as a husband for her darling Emily; but her
+prudence determined her to resist with all her might the idea on the
+part of the young lady of proceeding to extremities. She could not
+believe that Mr. Tyrrel would persist in such an unaccountable
+persecution, and she exhorted Miss Melville to forget for a moment the
+unaffected independence of her character, and pathetically to deprecate
+her cousin's obstinacy. She had great confidence in the ingenuous
+eloquence of her ward. Mrs. Jakeman did not know what was passing in the
+breast of the tyrant.
+
+Miss Melville complied with the suggestion of her mamma. One morning
+immediately after breakfast, she went to her harpsichord, and played one
+after another several of those airs that were most the favourites of Mr.
+Tyrrel. Mrs. Jakeman had retired; the servants were gone to their
+respective employments. Mr. Tyrrel would have gone also; his mind was
+untuned, and he did not take the pleasure he had been accustomed to take
+in the musical performances of Emily. But her finger was now more
+tasteful than common. Her mind was probably wrought up to a firmer and
+bolder tone, by the recollection of the cause she was going to plead; at
+the same time that it was exempt from those incapacitating tremors which
+would have been felt by one that dared not look poverty in the face. Mr.
+Tyrrel was unable to leave the apartment. Sometimes he traversed it with
+impatient steps; then he hung over the poor innocent whose powers were
+exerted to please him; at length he threw himself in a chair opposite,
+with his eyes turned towards Emily. It was easy to trace the progress of
+his emotions. The furrows into which his countenance was contracted were
+gradually relaxed; his features were brightened into a smile; the
+kindness with which he had upon former occasions contemplated Emily
+seemed to revive in his heart.
+
+Emily watched her opportunity. As soon as she had finished one of the
+pieces, she rose and went to Mr. Tyrrel.
+
+"Now, have not I done it nicely? and after this will not you give me a
+reward?"
+
+"A reward! Ay, come here, and I will give you a kiss."
+
+"No, that is not it. And yet you have not kissed me this many a day.
+Formerly you said you loved me, and called me your Emily. I am sure you
+did not love me better than I loved you. You have not forgot all the
+kindness you once had for me?" added she anxiously.
+
+"Forgot? No, no. How can you ask such a question? You shall be my dear
+Emily still!"
+
+"Ah, those were happy times!" she replied, a little mournfully. "Do you
+know, cousin, I wish I could wake, and find that the last month--only
+about a month--was a dream?"
+
+"What do you mean by that?" said Mr. Tyrrel with an altered voice. "Have
+a care! Do not put me out of humour. Do not come with your romantic
+notions now."
+
+"No, no: I have no romantic notions in my head. I speak of something
+upon which the happiness of my life depends."
+
+"I see what you would be at. Be silent. You know it is to no purpose to
+plague me with your stubbornness. You will not let me be in good humour
+with you for a moment. What my mind is determined upon about Grimes, all
+the world shall not move me to give up."
+
+"Dear, dear cousin! why, but consider now. Grimes is a rough rustic
+lout, like Orson in the story-book. He wants a wife like himself. He
+would be as uneasy and as much at a loss with me, as I with him. Why
+should we both of us be forced to do what neither of us is inclined to?
+I cannot think what could ever have put it into your head. But now, for
+goodness' sake, give it up! Marriage is a serious thing. You should not
+think of joining two people for a whim, who are neither of them fit for
+one another in any respect in the world. We should feel mortified and
+disappointed all our lives. Month would go after month, and year after
+year, and I could never hope to be my own, but by the death of a person
+I ought to love. I am sure, sir, you cannot mean me all this harm. What
+have I done, that I should deserve to have you for an enemy?"
+
+"I am not your enemy. I tell you that it is necessary to put you out of
+harm's way. But, if I were your enemy, I could not be a worse torment to
+you than you are to me. Are not you continually singing the praises of
+Falkland? Are not you in love with Falkland? That man is a legion of
+devils to me! I might as well have been a beggar! I might as well have
+been a dwarf or a monster! Time was when I was thought entitled to
+respect. But now, debauched by this Frenchified rascal, they call me
+rude, surly, a tyrant! It is true that I cannot talk in finical phrases,
+flatter people with hypocritical praise, or suppress the real feelings
+of my mind. The scoundrel knows his pitiful advantages, and insults me
+upon them without ceasing. He is my rival and my persecutor; and, at
+last, as if all this were not enough, he has found means to spread the
+pestilence in my own family. You, whom we took up out of charity, the
+chance-born brat of a stolen marriage! you must turn upon your
+benefactor, and wound me in the point that of all others I could least
+bear. If I were your enemy, should not I have reason? Could I ever
+inflict upon you such injuries as you have made me suffer? And who are
+you? The lives of fifty such cannot atone for an hour of my uneasiness.
+If you were to linger for twenty years upon the rack, you would never
+feel what I have felt. But I am your friend. I see which way you are
+going; and I am determined to save you from this thief, this
+hypocritical destroyer of us all. Every moment that the mischief is left
+to itself, it does but make bad worse; and I am determined to save you
+out of hand."
+
+The angry expostulations of Mr. Tyrrel suggested new ideas to the tender
+mind of Miss Melville. He had never confessed the emotions of his soul
+so explicitly before; but the tempest of his thoughts suffered him to be
+no longer master of himself. She saw with astonishment that he was the
+irreconcilable foe of Mr. Falkland, whom she had fondly imagined it was
+the same thing to know and admire; and that he harboured a deep and
+rooted resentment against herself. She recoiled, without well knowing
+why, before the ferocious passions of her kinsman, and was convinced
+that she had nothing to hope from his implacable temper. But her alarm
+was the prelude of firmness, and not of cowardice.
+
+"No, sir," replied she, "indeed I will not be driven any way that you
+happen to like. I have been used to obey you, and, in all that is
+reasonable, I will obey you still. But you urge me too far. What do you
+tell me of Mr. Falkland? Have I ever done any thing to deserve your
+unkind suspicions? I am innocent, and will continue innocent. Mr. Grimes
+is well enough, and will no doubt find women that like him; but he is
+not fit for me, and torture shall not force me to be his wife."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was not a little astonished at the spirit which Emily
+displayed upon this occasion. He had calculated too securely upon the
+general mildness and suavity of her disposition. He now endeavoured to
+qualify the harshness of his former sentiments.
+
+"God damn my soul! And so you can scold, can you? You expect every body
+to turn out of his way, and fetch and carry, just as you please? I could
+find in my heart--But you know my mind. I insist upon it that you let
+Grimes court you, and that you lay aside your sulks, and give him a fair
+hearing. Will you do that? If then you persist in your wilfulness, why
+there, I suppose, is an end of the matter. Do not think that any body is
+going to marry you, whether you will or no. You are no such mighty
+prize, I assure you. If you knew your own interest, you would be glad to
+take the young fellow while he is willing."
+
+Miss Melville rejoiced in the prospect, which the last words of her
+kinsman afforded her, of a termination at no great distance to her
+present persecutions. Mrs. Jakeman, to whom she communicated them,
+congratulated Emily on the returning moderation and good sense of the
+squire, and herself on her prudence in having urged the young lady to
+this happy expostulation. But their mutual felicitations lasted not
+long. Mr. Tyrrel informed Mrs. Jakeman of the necessity in which he
+found himself of sending her to a distance, upon a business which would
+not fail to detain her several weeks; and, though the errand by no means
+wore an artificial or ambiguous face, the two friends drew a melancholy
+presage from this ill-timed separation. Mrs. Jakeman, in the mean time,
+exhorted her ward to persevere, reminded her of the compunction which
+had already been manifested by her kinsman, and encouraged her to hope
+every thing from her courage and good temper. Emily, on her part, though
+grieved at the absence of her protector and counsellor at so interesting
+a crisis, was unable to suspect Mr. Tyrrel of such a degree either of
+malice or duplicity as could afford ground for serious alarm. She
+congratulated herself upon her delivery from so alarming a persecution,
+and drew a prognostic of future success from this happy termination of
+the first serious affair of her life. She exchanged a state of fortitude
+and alarm for her former pleasing dreams respecting Mr. Falkland. These
+she bore without impatience. She was even taught by the uncertainty of
+the event to desire to prolong, rather than abridge, a situation which
+might be delusive, but which was not without its pleasures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Nothing could be further from Mr. Tyrrel's intention than to suffer his
+project to be thus terminated. No sooner was he freed from the fear of
+his housekeeper's interference, than he changed the whole system of his
+conduct. He ordered Miss Melville to be closely confined to her
+apartment, and deprived of all means of communicating her situation to
+any one out of his own house. He placed over her a female servant, in
+whose discretion he could confide, and who, having formerly been
+honoured with the amorous notices of the squire, considered the
+distinctions that were paid to Emily at Tyrrel Place as an usurpation
+upon her more reasonable claims. The squire himself did every thing in
+his power to blast the young lady's reputation, and represented to his
+attendants these precautions as necessary, to prevent her from eloping
+to his neighbour, and plunging herself in total ruin.
+
+As soon as Miss Melville had been twenty-four hours in durance, and
+there was some reason to suppose that her spirit might be subdued to the
+emergency of her situation, Mr. Tyrrel thought proper to go to her, to
+explain the grounds of her present treatment, and acquaint her with the
+only means by which she could hope for a change. Emily no sooner saw
+him, than she turned towards him with an air of greater firmness than
+perhaps she had ever assumed in her life, and accosted him thus:--
+
+"Well, sir, is it you? I wanted to see you. It seems I am shut up here
+by your orders. What does this mean? What right have you to make a
+prisoner of me? What do I owe you? Your mother left me a hundred pounds:
+have you ever offered to make any addition to my fortune? But, if you
+had, I do not want it. I do not pretend to be better than the children
+of other poor parents; I can maintain myself as they do. I prefer
+liberty to wealth. I see you are surprised at the resolution I exert.
+But ought I not to turn again, when I am trampled upon? I should have
+left you before now, if Mrs. Jakeman had not over-persuaded me, and if I
+had not thought better of you than by your present behaviour I find you
+deserve. But now, sir, I intend to leave your house this moment, and
+insist upon it, that you do not endeavour to prevent me."
+
+Thus saying, she rose, and went towards the door, while Mr. Tyrrel stood
+thunderstruck at her magnanimity. Seeing, however, that she was upon the
+point of being out of the reach of his power, he recovered himself and
+pulled her back.
+
+"What is in the wind now? Do you think, strumpet; that you shall get
+the better of me by sheer impudence? Sit down! rest you satisfied!--So
+you want to know by what right you are here, do you? By the right of
+possession. This house is mine, and you are in my power. There is no
+Mrs. Jakeman now to spirit you away; no, nor no Falkland to bully for
+you. I have countermined you, damn me! and blown up your schemes. Do you
+think I will be contradicted and opposed for nothing? When did you ever
+know any body resist my will without being made to repent? And shall I
+now be browbeaten by a chitty-faced girl?--I have not given you a
+fortune! Damn you! who brought you up? I will make you a bill for
+clothing and lodging. Do not you know that every creditor has a right to
+stop his runaway debtor. You may think as you please; but here you are
+till you marry Grimes. Heaven and earth shall not prevent but I will get
+the better of your obstinacy!"
+
+"Ungenerous, unmerciful man! and so it is enough for you that I have
+nobody to defend me! But I am not so helpless as you may imagine. You
+may imprison my body, but you cannot conquer my mind. Marry Mr. Grimes!
+And is this the way to bring me to your purpose? Every hardship I suffer
+puts still further distant the end for which I am thus unjustly treated.
+You are not used to have your will contradicted! When did I ever
+contradict it? And, in a concern that is so completely my own, shall my
+will go for nothing? Would you lay down this rule for yourself, and
+suffer no other creature to take the benefit of it? I want nothing of
+you: how dare you refuse me the privilege of a reasonable being, to live
+unmolested in poverty and innocence? What sort of a man do you show
+yourself, you that lay claim to the respect and applause of every one
+that knows you?"
+
+The spirited reproaches of Emily had at first the effect to fill Mr.
+Tyrrel with astonishment, and make him feel abashed and overawed in the
+presence of this unprotected innocent. But his confusion was the result
+of surprise. When the first emotion wore off, he cursed himself for
+being moved by her expostulations; and was ten times more exasperated
+against her, for daring to defy his resentment at a time when she had
+every thing to fear. His despotic and unforgiving propensities
+stimulated him to a degree little short of madness. At the same time his
+habits, which were pensive and gloomy, led him to meditate a variety of
+schemes to punish her obstinacy. He began to suspect that there was
+little hope of succeeding by open force, and therefore determined to
+have recourse to treachery.
+
+He found in Grimes an instrument sufficiently adapted to his purpose.
+This fellow, without an atom of intentional malice, was fitted, by the
+mere coarseness of his perceptions, for the perpetration of the greatest
+injuries. He regarded both injury and advantage merely as they related
+to the gratifications of appetite; and considered it an essential in
+true wisdom, to treat with insult the effeminacy of those who suffer
+themselves to be tormented with ideal misfortunes. He believed that no
+happier destiny could befal a young woman than to be his wife; and he
+conceived that that termination would amply compensate for any
+calamities she might suppose herself to undergo in the interval. He was
+therefore easily prevailed upon, by certain temptations which Mr. Tyrrel
+knew how to employ, to take part in the plot into which Miss Melville
+was meant to be betrayed.
+
+Matters being thus prepared, Mr. Tyrrel proceeded, through the means of
+the gaoler (for the experience he already had of personal discussion did
+not incline him to repeat his visits), to play upon the fears of his
+prisoner. This woman, sometimes under the pretence of friendship, and
+sometimes with open malice, informed Emily, from time to time, of the
+preparations that were making for her marriage. One day, "the squire had
+rode over to look at a neat little farm which was destined for the
+habitation of the new-married couple;" and at another, "a quantity of
+live stock and household furniture was procured, that every thing might
+be ready for their reception." She then told her "of a licence that was
+bought, a parson in readiness, and a day fixed for the nuptials." When
+Emily endeavoured, though with increased misgivings, to ridicule these
+proceedings as absolutely nugatory without her consent, her artful
+gouvernante related several stories of forced marriages, and assured her
+that neither protestations, nor silence, nor fainting, would be of any
+avail, either to suspend the ceremony, or to set it aside when
+performed.
+
+The situation of Miss Melville was in an eminent degree pitiable. She
+had no intercourse but with her persecutors. She had not a human being
+with whom to consult, who might afford her the smallest degree of
+consolation and encouragement. She had fortitude; but it was neither
+confirmed nor directed by the dictates of experience. It could not
+therefore be expected to be so inflexible, as with better information it
+would, no doubt, have been found. She had a clear and noble spirit; but
+she had some of her sex's errors. Her mind sunk under the uniform
+terrors with which she was assailed, and her health became visibly
+impaired.
+
+Her firmness being thus far undermined, Grimes, in pursuance of his
+instructions, took care, in his next interview, to throw out an
+insinuation that, for his own part, he had never cared for the match,
+and since she was so averse to it, would be better pleased that it
+should never take place. Between one and the other however, he was got
+into a scrape, and now he supposed he must marry, will he, nill he. The
+two squires would infallibly ruin him upon the least appearance of
+backwardness on his part, as they were accustomed to do every inferior
+that resisted their will. Emily was rejoiced to find her admirer in so
+favourable a disposition; and earnestly pressed him to give effect to
+this humane declaration. Her representations were full of eloquence and
+energy. Grimes appeared to be moved at the fervency of her manner; but
+objected the resentment of Mr. Tyrrel and his landlord. At length,
+however, he suggested a project, in consequence of which he might assist
+her in her escape, without its ever coming to their knowledge, as,
+indeed, there was no likelihood that their suspicions would fix upon
+him. "To be sure," said he, "you have refused me in a disdainful sort of
+a way, as a man may say. Mayhap you thought I was no better 'an a brute:
+but I bear you no malice, and I will show you that I am more
+kind-hearted 'an you have been willing to think. It is a strange sort of
+a vagary you have taken, to stand in your own light, and disoblige all
+your friends. But if you are resolute, do you see? I scorn to be the
+husband of a lass that is not every bit as willing as I; and so I will
+even help to put you in a condition to follow your own inclinations."
+
+Emily listened to these suggestions at first with eagerness and
+approbation. But her fervency somewhat abated, when they came to discuss
+the minute parts of the undertaking. It was necessary, as Grimes
+informed her, that her escape should be effected in the dead of the
+night. He would conceal himself for that purpose in the garden, and be
+provided with false keys, by which to deliver her from her prison. These
+circumstances were by no means adapted to calm her perturbed
+imagination. To throw herself into the arms of the man whose intercourse
+she was employing every method to avoid, and whom, under the idea of a
+partner for life, she could least of all men endure, was, no doubt, an
+extraordinary proceeding. The attendant circumstances of darkness and
+solitude aggravated the picture. The situation of Tyrrel Place was
+uncommonly lonely; it was three miles from the nearest village, and not
+less than seven from that in which Mrs. Jakeman's sister resided, under
+whose protection Miss Melville was desirous of placing herself. The
+ingenuous character of Emily did not allow her once to suspect Grimes of
+intending to make an ungenerous and brutal advantage of these
+circumstances; but her mind involuntarily revolted against the idea of
+committing herself, alone, to the disposal of a man, whom she had lately
+been accustomed to consider as the instrument of her treacherous
+relation.
+
+After having for some time revolved these considerations, she thought of
+the expedient of desiring Grimes to engage Mrs. Jakeman's sister to wait
+for her at the outside of the garden. But this Grimes peremptorily
+refused. He even flew into a passion at the proposal. It showed very
+little gratitude, to desire him to disclose to other people his concern
+in this dangerous affair. For his part, he was determined, in
+consideration of his own safety, never to appear in it to any living
+soul. If Miss did not believe him, when he made this proposal out of
+pure good-nature, and would not trust him a single inch, she might even
+see to the consequences herself. He was resolved to condescend no
+further to the whims of a person who, in her treatment of him, had
+shown herself as proud as Lucifer himself.
+
+Emily exerted herself to appease his resentment; but all the eloquence
+of her new confederate could not prevail upon her instantly to give up
+her objection. She desired till the next day to consider of it. The day
+after was fixed by Mr. Tyrrel for the marriage ceremony. In the mean
+time she was pestered with intimations, in a thousand forms, of the fate
+that so nearly awaited her. The preparations were so continued,
+methodical, and regular, as to produce in her the most painful and
+aching anxiety. If her heart attained a moment's intermission upon the
+subject, her female attendant was sure, by some sly hint or sarcastical
+remark, to put a speedy termination to her tranquillity. She felt
+herself, as she afterwards remarked, alone, uninstructed, just broken
+loose, as it were, from the trammels of infancy, without one single
+creature to concern himself in her fate. She, who till then never knew
+an enemy, had now, for three weeks, not seen the glimpse of a human
+countenance, that she had not good reason to consider as wholly
+estranged to her at least, if not unrelentingly bent on her destruction.
+She now, for the first time, experienced the anguish of never having
+known her parents, and being cast upon the charity of people with whom
+she had too little equality, to hope to receive from them the offices of
+friendship.
+
+The succeeding night was filled with the most anxious thoughts. When a
+momentary oblivion stole upon her senses, her distempered imagination
+conjured up a thousand images of violence and falsehood; she saw herself
+in the hands of her determined enemies, who did not hesitate by the most
+daring treachery to complete her ruin. Her waking thoughts were not more
+consoling. The struggle was too great for her constitution. As morning
+approached, she resolved, at all hazards, to put herself into the hands
+of Grimes. This determination was no sooner made, than she felt her
+heart sensibly lightened. She could not conceive any evil which could
+result from this proceeding, that deserved to be put in the balance
+against those which, under the roof of her kinsman, appeared
+unavoidable.
+
+When she communicated her determination to Grimes, it was not possible
+to say whether he received pleasure or pain from the intimation. He
+smiled indeed; but his smile was accompanied by a certain abrupt
+ruggedness of countenance, so that it might equally well be the smile of
+sarcasm or of congratulation. He, however, renewed his assurances of
+fidelity to his engagements and punctuality of execution. Meanwhile the
+day was interspersed with nuptial presents and preparations, all
+indicating the firmness as well as security of the directors of the
+scene. Emily had hoped that, as the crisis approached, they might have
+remitted something of their usual diligence. She was resolved, in that
+case, if a fair opportunity had offered, to give the slip both to her
+jailors, and to her new and reluctantly chosen confederate. But, though
+extremely vigilant for that purpose, she found the execution of the idea
+impracticable.
+
+At length the night, so critical to her happiness, approached. The mind
+of Emily could not fail, on this occasion, to be extremely agitated. She
+had first exerted all her perspicacity to elude the vigilance of her
+attendant. This insolent and unfeeling tyrant, instead of any
+relentings, had only sought to make sport of her anxiety. Accordingly,
+in one instance she hid herself, and, suffering Emily to suppose that
+the coast was clear, met her at the end of the gallery, near the top of
+the staircase. "How do you do, my dear?" said she, with an insulting
+tone. "And so the little dear thought itself cunning enough to outwit
+me, did it? Oh, it was a sly little gipsy! Go, go back, love; troop!"
+Emily felt deeply the trick that was played upon her. She sighed, but
+disdained to return any answer to this low vulgarity. Being once more in
+her chamber, she sat down in a chair, and remained buried in reverie for
+more than two hours. After this she went to her drawers, and turned
+over, in a hurrying confused way, her linen and clothes, having in her
+mind the provision it would be necessary to make for her elopement. Her
+jailor officiously followed her from place to place, and observed what
+she did for the present in silence. It was now the hour of rest. "Good
+night, child," said this saucy girl, in the act of retiring. "It is time
+to lock up. For the few next hours, the time is your own. Make the best
+use of it! Do'ee think ee can creep out at the key-hole, lovey? At eight
+o'clock you see me again. And then, and then," added she, clapping her
+hands, "it is all over. The sun is not surer to rise, than you and your
+honest man to be made one."
+
+There was something in the tone with which this slut uttered her
+farewell, that suggested the question to Emily, "What does she mean? Is
+it possible that she should know what has been planned for the few next
+hours?"--This was the first moment that suspicion had offered itself,
+and its continuance was short. With an aching heart she folded up the
+few necessaries she intended to take with her. She instinctively
+listened, with an anxiety that would almost have enabled her to hear the
+stirring of a leaf. From time to time she thought her ear was struck
+with the sound of feet; but the treading, if treading it were, was so
+soft, that she could never ascertain whether it were a real sound, or
+the mere creature of the fancy. Then all was still, as if the universal
+motion had been at rest. By and by she conceived she overheard a noise
+as of buzzing and low-muttered speech. Her heart palpitated; for a
+second time she began to doubt the honesty of Grimes. The suggestion was
+now more anxious than before; but it was too late. Presently she heard
+the sound of a key in her chamber-door, and the rustic made his
+appearance. She started, and cried, "Are we discovered? did not I hear
+you speak?" Grimes advanced on tiptoe with his finger to his lip. "No,
+no," replied he, "all is safe!" He took her by the hand, led her in
+silence out of the house, and then across the garden. Emily examined
+with her eye the doors and passages as they proceeded, and looked on all
+sides with fearful suspicion; but every thing was as vacant and still as
+she herself could have wished. Grimes opened a back-door of the garden
+already unlocked, that led into an unfrequented lane. There stood two
+horses ready equipped for the journey, and fastened by their bridles to
+a post not six yards distant from the garden. Grimes pushed the door
+after them.
+
+"By Gemini," said he, "my heart was in my mouth. As I comed along to
+you, I saw Mun, coachey, pop along from the back-door to the stables. He
+was within a hop, step, and jump of me. But he had a lanthorn in his
+hand, and he did not see me, being as I was darkling." Saying this, he
+assisted Miss Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the
+route; on the contrary, he was remarkably silent and contemplative, a
+circumstance by no means disagreeable to Emily, to whom his conversation
+had never been acceptable.
+
+After having proceeded about two miles, they turned into a wood, through
+which the road led to the place of their destination. The night was
+extremely dark, at the same time that the air was soft and mild, it
+being now the middle of summer. Under pretence of exploring the way,
+Grimes contrived, when they had already penetrated into the midst of
+this gloomy solitude, to get his horse abreast with that of Miss
+Melville, and then, suddenly reaching out his hand, seized hold of her
+bridle. "I think we may as well stop here a bit," said he.
+
+"Stop!" exclaimed Emily with surprise; "why should we stop? Mr. Grimes,
+what do you mean?"
+
+"Come, come," said he, "never trouble yourself to wonder. Did you think
+I were such a goose, to take all this trouble merely to gratify your
+whim? I' faith, nobody shall find me a pack-horse, to go of other folks'
+errands, without knowing a reason why. I cannot say that I much minded
+to have you at first; but your ways are enough to stir the blood of my
+grand-dad. Far-fetched and dear-bought is always relishing. Your consent
+was so hard to gain, that squire thought it was surest asking in the
+dark. A' said however, a' would have no such doings in his house, and
+so, do ye see, we are comed here."
+
+"For God's sake, Mr. Grimes, think what you are about! You cannot be
+base enough to ruin a poor creature who has put herself under your
+protection!
+
+"Ruin! No, no, I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done.
+Nay, none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as
+safe AS a horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a
+mile of us; and, if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you
+are a delicate morsel, and there is no time to be lost!"
+
+Miss Melville had but an instant in which to collect her thoughts. She
+felt that there was little hope of softening the obstinate and
+insensible brute in whose power she was placed. But the presence of mind
+and intrepidity annexed to her character did not now desert her. Grimes
+had scarcely finished his harangue, when, with a strong and unexpected
+jerk, she disengaged the bridle from his grasp, and at the same time put
+her horse upon full speed. She had scarcely advanced twice the length of
+her horse, when Grimes recovered from his surprise, and pursued her,
+inexpressibly mortified at being so easily overreached. The sound of his
+horse behind served but to rouse more completely the mettle of that of
+Emily; whether by accident or sagacity, the animal pursued without a
+fault the narrow and winding way; and the chase continued the whole
+length of the wood.
+
+At the extremity of this wood there was a gate. The recollection of this
+softened a little the cutting disappointment of Grimes, as he thought
+himself secure of putting an end, by its assistance, to the career of
+Emily; nor was it very probable that any body would appear to interrupt
+his designs, in such a place, and in the dead and silence of the night.
+By the most extraordinary accident, however, they found a man on
+horseback in wait at this gate. "Help, help!" exclaimed the affrighted
+Emily; "thieves! murder! help!" The man was Mr. Falkland. Grimes knew
+his voice; and therefore, though he attempted a sort of sullen
+resistance, it was feebly made. Two other men, whom, by reason of the
+darkness, he had not at first seen, and who were Mr. Falkland's
+servants, hearing the bustle of the rencounter, and alarmed for the
+safety of their master, rode up; and then Grimes, disappointed at the
+loss of his gratification, and admonished by conscious guilt, shrunk
+from farther parley, and rode off in silence.
+
+It may seem strange that Mr. Falkland should thus a second time have
+been the saviour of Miss Melville, and that under circumstances the most
+unexpected and singular. But in this instance it is easily to be
+accounted for. He had heard of a man who lurked about this wood for
+robbery or some other bad design, and that it was conjectured this man
+was Hawkins, another of the victims of Mr. Tyrrel's rural tyranny, whom
+I shall immediately have occasion to introduce. Mr. Falkland's
+compassion had already been strongly excited in favour of Hawkins; he
+had in vain endeavoured to find him, and do him good; and he easily
+conceived that, if the conjecture which had been made in this instance
+proved true, he might have it in his power not only to do what he had
+always intended, but further, to save from a perilous offence against
+the laws and society a man who appeared to have strongly imbibed the
+principles of justice and virtue. He took with him two servants,
+because, going with the express design of encountering robbers, if
+robbers should be found, he believed he should be inexcusable if he did
+not go provided against possible accidents. But he had directed them, at
+the same time that they kept within call, to be out of the reach of
+being seen; and it was only the eagerness of their zeal that had brought
+them up thus early in the present encounter.
+
+This new adventure promised something extraordinary. Mr. Falkland did
+not immediately recognise Miss Melville; and the person of Grimes was
+that of a total stranger, whom he did not recollect to have ever seen.
+But it was easy to understand the merits of the case, and the propriety
+of interfering. The resolute manner of Mr. Falkland, conjoined with the
+dread which Grimes, oppressed with a sense of wrong, entertained of the
+opposition of so elevated a personage, speedily put the ravisher to
+flight. Emily was left alone with her deliverer. He found her much more
+collected and calm, than could reasonably have been expected from a
+person who had been, a moment before, in the most alarming situation.
+She told him of the place to which she desired to be conveyed, and he
+immediately undertook to escort her. As they went along, she recovered
+that state of mind which inclined her to make a person to whom she had
+such repeated obligations, and who was so eminently the object of her
+admiration, acquainted with the events that had recently befallen her.
+Mr. Falkland listened with eagerness and surprise. Though he had already
+known various instances of Mr. Tyrrel's mean jealousy and unfeeling
+tyranny, this surpassed them all; and he could scarcely credit his ears
+while he heard the tale. His brutal neighbour seemed to realise all that
+has been told of the passions of fiends. Miss Melville was obliged to
+repeat, in the course of her tale, her kinsman's rude accusation against
+her, of entertaining a passion for Mr. Falkland; and this she did with
+the most bewitching simplicity and charming confusion. Though this part
+of the tale was a source of real pain to her deliverer, yet it is not to
+be supposed but that the flattering partiality of this unhappy girl
+increased the interest he felt in her welfare, and the indignation he
+conceived against her infernal kinsman.
+
+They arrived without accident at the house of the good lady under whose
+protection Emily desired to place herself. Here Mr. Falkland willingly
+left her as in a place of security. Such conspiracies as that of which
+she was intended to have been the victim, depend for their success upon
+the person against whom they are formed being out of the reach of help;
+and the moment they are detected, they are annihilated. Such reasoning
+will, no doubt, be generally found sufficiently solid; and it appeared
+to Mr. Falkland perfectly applicable to the present case. But he was
+mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Mr. Falkland had experienced the nullity of all expostulation with Mr.
+Tyrrel, and was therefore content in the present case with confining his
+attention to the intended victim. The indignation with which he thought
+of his neighbour's character was now grown to such a height, as to fill
+him with reluctance to the idea of a voluntary interview. There was
+indeed another affair which had been contemporary with this, that had
+once more brought these mortal enemies into a state of contest, and had
+contributed to raise into a temper little short of madness, the already
+inflamed and corrosive bitterness of Mr. Tyrrel.
+
+There was a tenant of Mr. Tyrrel, one Hawkins;--I cannot mention his
+name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it!
+This Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Tyrrel, with a view of
+protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire,
+though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr.
+Tyrrel himself. The first ground of their connection was this:--Hawkins,
+beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned squire, had a
+small freehold estate that he inherited from his father. This of course
+entitled him to a vote in the county elections; and, a warmly contested
+election having occurred, he was required by his landlord to vote for
+the candidate in whose favour he had himself engaged. Hawkins refused
+to obey the mandate, and soon after received notice to quit the farm he
+at that time rented.
+
+It happened that Mr. Tyrrel had interested himself strongly in behalf of
+the opposite candidate; and, as Mr. Tyrrel's estate bordered upon the
+seat of Hawkins's present residence, the ejected countryman could think
+of no better expedient than that of riding over to this gentleman's
+mansion, and relating the case to him. Mr. Tyrrel heard him through with
+attention. "Well, friend," said he, "it is very true that I wished Mr.
+Jackman to carry his election; but you know it is usual in these cases
+for tenants to vote just as their landlords please. I do not think
+proper to encourage rebellion."--"All that is very right, and please
+you," replied Hawkins, "and I would have voted at my landlord's bidding
+for any other man in the kingdom but Squire Marlow. You must know one
+day his huntsman rode over my fence, and so through my best field of
+standing corn. It was not above a dozen yards about if he had kept the
+cart-road. The fellow had served me the same sauce, an it please your
+honour, three or four times before. So I only asked him what he did that
+for, and whether he had not more conscience than to spoil people's crops
+o' that fashion? Presently the squire came up. He is but a poor,
+weazen-face chicken of a gentleman, saving your honour's reverence. And
+so he flew into a woundy passion, and threatened to horsewhip me. I will
+do as much in reason to pleasure my landlord as arr a tenant he has; but
+I will not give my vote to a man that threatens to horsewhip me. And so,
+your honour, I and my wife and three children are to be turned out of
+house and home, and what I am to do to maintain them God knows. I have
+been a hard-working man, and have always lived well, and I do think the
+case is main hard. Squire Underwood turns me out of my farm; and if your
+honour do not take me in, I know none of the neighbouring gentry will,
+for fear, as they say, of encouraging their own tenants to run rusty
+too."
+
+This representation was not without its effect upon Mr. Tyrrel. "Well,
+well, man," replied he, "we will see what can be done. Order and
+subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to
+require. As you tell the story, I cannot see that you are greatly to
+blame. Marlow is a coxcombical prig, that is the truth on't; and if a
+man will expose himself, why, he must even take what follows. I do hate
+a Frenchified fop with all my soul: and I cannot say that I am much
+pleased with my neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a
+rascal. Hawkins, I think, is your name? You may call on Barnes, my
+steward, to-morrow, and he shall speak to you."
+
+While Mr. Tyrrel was speaking, he recollected that he had a farm vacant,
+of nearly the same value as that which Hawkins at present rented under
+Mr. Underwood. He immediately consulted his steward, and, finding the
+thing suitable in every respect, Hawkins was installed out of hand in
+the catalogue of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants. Mr. Underwood extremely resented
+this proceeding, which indeed, as being contrary to the understood
+conventions of the country gentlemen, few people but Mr. Tyrrel would
+have ventured upon. There was an end, said Mr. Underwood, to all
+regulation, if tenants were to be encouraged in such disobedience. It
+was not a question of this or that candidate, seeing that any gentleman,
+who was a true friend to his country, would rather lose his election
+than do a thing which, if once established into a practice, would
+deprive them for ever of the power of managing any election. The
+labouring people were sturdy and resolute enough of their own accord; it
+became every day more difficult to keep them under any subordination;
+and, if the gentlemen were so ill advised as to neglect the public good,
+and encourage them in their insolence, there was no foreseeing where it
+would end.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was not of a stamp to be influenced by these remonstrances.
+Their general spirit was sufficiently conformable to the sentiments he
+himself entertained; but he was of too vehement a temper to maintain the
+character of a consistent politician; and, however wrong his conduct
+might be, he would by no means admit of its being set right by the
+suggestions of others. The more his patronage of Hawkins was criticised,
+the more inflexibly he adhered to it; and he was at no loss in clubs and
+other assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute, his
+censurers. Beside which, Hawkins had certain accomplishments which
+qualified him to be a favourite with Mr. Tyrrel. The bluntness of his
+manner and the ruggedness of his temper gave him some resemblance to his
+landord; and, as these qualities were likely to be more frequently
+exercised on such persons as had incurred Mr. Tyrrel's displeasure, than
+upon Mr. Tyrrel himself, they were not observed without some degree of
+complacency. In a word, he every day received new marks of distinction
+from his patron, and after some time was appointed coadjutor to Mr.
+Barnes under the denomination of bailiff. It was about the same period
+that he obtained a lease of the farm of which he was tenant.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel determined, as occasion offered, to promote every part of the
+family of this favoured dependent. Hawkins had a son, a lad of
+seventeen, of an agreeable person, a ruddy complexion, and of quick and
+lively parts. This lad was in an uncommon degree the favourite of his
+father, who seemed to have nothing so much at heart as the future
+welfare of his son. Mr. Tyrrel had noticed him two or three times with
+approbation; and the boy, being fond of the sports of the field, had
+occasionally followed the hounds, and displayed various instances, both
+of agility and sagacity, in presence of the squire. One day in
+particular he exhibited himself with uncommon advantage; and Mr. Tyrrel
+without further delay proposed to his father, to take him into his
+family, and make him whipper-in to his hounds, till he could provide him
+with some more lucrative appointment in his service.
+
+This proposal was received by Hawkins with various marks of
+mortification. He excused himself with hesitation for not accepting the
+offered favour; said the lad was in many ways useful to him; and hoped
+his honour would not insist upon depriving him of his assistance. This
+apology might perhaps have been sufficient with any other man than Mr.
+Tyrrel; but it was frequently observed of this gentleman that, when he
+had once formed a determination, however slight, in favour of any
+measure, he was never afterwards known to give it up, and that the only
+effect of opposition was to make him eager and inflexible, in pursuit of
+that to which he had before been nearly indifferent. At first he seemed
+to receive the apology of Hawkins with good humour, and to see nothing
+in it but what was reasonable; but afterwards, every time he saw the
+boy, his desire of retaining him in his service was increased, and he
+more than once repeated to his father the good disposition in which he
+felt himself towards him. At length he observed that the lad was no more
+to be seen mingling in his favourite sports, and he began to suspect
+that this originated in a determination to thwart him in his projects.
+
+Roused by this suspicion, which, to a man of Mr. Tyrrel's character,
+was not of a nature to brook delay, he sent for Hawkins to confer with
+him. "Hawkins," said he, in a tone of displeasure, "I am not satisfied
+with you. I have spoken to you two or three times about this lad of
+yours, whom I am desirous of taking into favour. What is the reason,
+sir, that you seem unthankful and averse to my kindness? You ought to
+know that I am not to be trifled with. I shall not be contented, when I
+offer my favours, to have them rejected by such fellows as you. I made
+you what you are; and, if I please, can make you more helpless and
+miserable than you were when I found you. Have a care!"
+
+"An it please your honour," said Hawkins, "you have been a very good
+master to me, and I will tell you the whole truth. I hope you will na be
+angry. This lad is my favourite, my comfort, and the stay of my age."
+
+"Well, and what then? Is that a reason you should hinder his
+preferment?"
+
+"Nay, pray your honour, hear me. I may be very weak for aught I know in
+this case, but I cannot help it. My father was a clergyman. We have all
+of us lived in a creditable way; and I cannot bear to think that this
+poor lad of mine should go to service. For my part, I do not see any
+good that comes by servants. I do not know, your honour, but, I think, I
+should not like my Leonard to be such as they. God forgive me, if I
+wrong them! But this is a very dear case, and I cannot bear to risk my
+poor boy's welfare, when I can so easily, if you please, keep him out or
+harm's way. At present he is sober and industrious, and, without being
+pert or surly, knows what is due to him. I know, your honour, that it is
+main foolish of me to talk to you thus; but your honour has been a good
+master to me, and I cannot bear to tell you a lie."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel had heard the whole of this harangue in silence, because he
+was too much astonished to open his mouth. If a thunderbolt had fallen
+at his feet, he could not have testified greater surprise. He had
+thought that Hawkins was so foolishly fond of his son, that he could not
+bear to trust him out of his presence; but had never in the slightest
+degree suspected what he now found to be the truth.
+
+"Oh, ho, you are a gentleman, are you? A pretty gentleman truly! your
+father was a clergyman! Your family is too good to enter into my
+service! Why you impudent rascal! was it for this that I took you up,
+when Mr. Underwood dismissed you for your insolence to him? Have I been
+nursing a viper in my bosom? Pretty master's manners will be
+contaminated truly? He will not know what is due to him, but will be
+accustomed to obey orders! You insufferable villain! Get out of my
+sight! Depend upon it, I will have no gentlemen on my estate! I will off
+with them, root and branch, bag and baggage! So do you hear, sir? come
+to me to-morrow morning, bring your son, and ask my pardon; or, take my
+word for it, I will make you so miserable, you shall wish you had never
+been born."
+
+This treatment was too much for Hawkins's patience. "There is no need,
+your honour, that I should come to you again about this affair. I have
+taken up my determination, and no time can make any change in it. I am
+main sorry to displease your worship, and I know that you can do me a
+great deal of mischief. But I hope you will not be so hardhearted as to
+ruin a father only for being fond of his child, even if so be that his
+fondness should make him do a foolish thing. But I cannot help it, your
+honour: you must do as you please. The poorest neger, as a man may say,
+has some point that he will not part with. I will lose all that I have,
+and go to day-labour, and my son too, if needs must; but I will not make
+a gentleman's servant of him."
+
+"Very well, friend; very well!" replied Mr. Tyrrel, foaming with rage.
+"Depend upon it, I will remember you! Your pride shall have a downfal!
+God damn it! is it come to this? Shall a rascal that farms his forty
+acres, pretend to beard the lord of the manor? I will tread you into
+paste! Let me advise you, scoundrel, to shut up your house and fly, as
+if the devil was behind you! You may think yourself happy, if I be not
+too quick for you yet, if you escape in a whole skin! I would not suffer
+such a villain to remain upon my land a day longer, if I could gain the
+Indies by it!"
+
+"Not so fast, your honour," answered Hawkins, sturdily. "I hope you will
+think better of it, and see that I have not been to blame. But if you
+should not, there is some harm that you can do me, and some harm that
+you cannot. Though I am a plain, working man, your honour, do you see?
+yet I am a man still. No; I have got a lease of my farm, and I shall not
+quit it o' thaten. I hope there is some law for poor folk, as well as for
+rich."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel, unused to contradiction, was provoked beyond bearing at the
+courage and independent spirit of his retainer. There was not a tenant
+upon his estate, or at least not one of Hawkins's mediocrity of fortune,
+whom the general policy of landowners, and still more the arbitrary and
+uncontrollable temper of Mr. Tyrrel, did not effectually restrain from
+acts of open defiance.
+
+"Excellent, upon my soul! God damn my blood! but you are a rare fellow.
+You have a lease, have you? You will not quit, not you! a pretty pass
+things are come to, if a lease can protect such fellows as you against
+the lord of a manor! But you are for a trial of skill? Oh, very well,
+friend, very well! With all my soul! Since it is come to that, we will
+show you some pretty sport before we have done! But get out of my sight,
+you rascal! I have not another word to say to you! Never darken my doors
+again."
+
+Hawkins (to borrow the language of the world) was guilty in this affair
+of a double imprudence. He talked to his landlord in a more peremptory
+manner than the constitution and practices of this country allow a
+dependent to assume. But above all, having been thus hurried away by his
+resentment, he ought to have foreseen the consequences. It was mere
+madness in him to think of contesting with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's
+eminence and fortune. It was a fawn contending with a lion. Nothing
+could have been more easy to predict, than that it was of no avail for
+him to have right on his side, when his adversary had influence and
+wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies
+that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely
+illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to
+engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were
+perhaps at first intended [witless and miserable precaution!] for the
+safeguards of the poor.
+
+From this moment Mr. Tyrrel was bent upon Hawkins's destruction; and he
+left no means unemployed that could either harass or injure the object
+of his persecution. He deprived him of his appointment of bailiff, and
+directed Barnes and his other dependents to do him ill offices upon all
+occasions. Mr. Tyrrel, by the tenure of his manor, was impropriator of
+the great tithes, and this circumstance afforded him frequent
+opportunities of petty altercation. The land of one part of Hawkins's
+farm, though covered with corn, was lower than the rest; and
+consequently exposed to occasional inundations from a river by which it
+was bounded. Mr. Tyrrel had a dam belonging to this river privately cut,
+about a fortnight before the season of harvest, and laid the whole under
+water. He ordered his servants to pull away the fences of the higher
+ground during the night, and to turn in his cattle, to the utter
+destruction of the crop. These expedients, however, applied to only one
+part of the property of this unfortunate man. But Mr. Tyrrel did not
+stop here. A sudden mortality took place among Hawkins's live stock,
+attended with very suspicious circumstances. Hawkins's vigilance was
+strongly excited by this event, and he at length succeeded in tracing
+the matter so accurately, that he conceived he could bring it home to
+Mr. Tyrrel himself.
+
+Hawkins had hitherto carefully avoided, notwithstanding the injuries he
+had suffered, the attempting to right himself by legal process; being of
+opinion that law was better adapted for a weapon of tyranny in the hands
+of the rich, than for a shield to protect the humbler part of the
+community against their usurpations. In this last instance however he
+conceived that the offence was so atrocious, as to make it impossible
+that any rank could protect the culprit against the severity of justice.
+In the sequel, he saw reason to applaud himself for his former
+inactivity in this respect, and to repent that any motive had been
+strong enough to persuade him into a contrary system.
+
+This was the very point to which Mr. Tyrrel wanted to bring him, and he
+could scarcely credit his good fortune, when he was told that Hawkins
+had entered an action. His congratulation upon this occasion was
+immoderate, as he now conceived that the ruin of his late favourite was
+irretrievable. He consulted his attorney, and urged him by every motive
+he could devise, to employ the whole series of his subterfuges in the
+present affair. The direct repelling of the charge exhibited against him
+was the least part of his care; the business was, by affidavits,
+motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and appeals, to protract the question
+from term to term, and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel
+argued, be the disgrace of a civilized country, if a gentleman, when
+insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert
+the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts
+of his adversary till he had reduced him to beggary.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel, however, was by no means so far engrossed by his law-suit,
+as to neglect other methods of proceeding offensively against his
+tenant. Among the various expedients that suggested themselves, there
+was one, which, though it tended rather to torment than irreparably
+injure the sufferer, was not rejected. This was derived from the
+particular situation of Hawkins's house, barns, stacks, and outhouses.
+They were placed at the extremity of a slip of land connecting them with
+the rest of the farm, and were surrounded on three sides by fields, in
+the occupation of one of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants most devoted to the
+pleasures of his landlord. The road to the market-town ran at the bottom
+of the largest of these fields, and was directly in view of the front of
+the house. No inconvenience had yet arisen from that circumstance, as
+there had always been a broad path, that intersected this field, and led
+directly from Hawkins's house to the road. This path, or private road,
+was now, by concert of Mr. Tyrrel and his obliging tenant, shut up, so
+as to make Hawkins a sort of prisoner in his own domains, and oblige him
+to go near a mile about for the purposes of his traffic.
+
+Young Hawkins, the lad who had been the original subject of dispute
+between his father and the squire, had much of his father's spirit, and
+felt an uncontrollable indignation against the successive acts of
+despotism of which he was a witness. His resentment was the greater,
+because the sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them
+flowed from affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose
+removing the ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in
+the face of his father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion,
+without asking any counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went
+in the middle of the night, and removed all the obstructions that had
+been placed in the way of the old path, broke the padlocks that had been
+fixed, and threw open the gates.
+
+In these operations he did not proceed unobserved, and the next day a
+warrant was issued for apprehending him. He was accordingly carried
+before a meeting of justices, and by them committed to the county gaol,
+to take his trial for the felony at the next assizes. Mr. Tyrrel was
+determined to prosecute the offence with the greatest severity; and his
+attorney, having made the proper enquiries for that purpose, undertook
+to bring it under that clause of the act 9 Geo. I. commonly called the
+Black Act, which declares that "any person, armed with a sword, or other
+offensive weapon, and having his face blackened, or being otherwise
+disguised, appearing in any warren or place where hares or conies have
+been or shall be usually kept, and being thereof duly convicted, shall
+be adjudged guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, as in cases of
+felony, without benefit of clergy." Young Hawkins, it seemed, had
+buttoned the cape of his great coat over his face, as soon as he
+perceived himself to be observed, and he was furnished with a
+wrenching-iron for the purpose of breaking the padlocks. The attorney
+further undertook to prove, by sufficient witnesses, that the field in
+question was a warren in which hares were regularly fed. Mr. Tyrrel
+seized upon these pretences with inexpressible satisfaction. He
+prevailed upon the justices, by the picture he drew of the obstinacy and
+insolence of the Hawkinses, fully to commit the lad upon this miserable
+charge; and it was by no means so certain as paternal affection would
+have desired, that the same overpowering influence would not cause in
+the sequel the penal clause to be executed in all its strictness.
+
+This was the finishing stroke to Hawkins's miseries: as he was not
+deficient in courage, he had stood up against his other persecutions
+without flinching. He was not unaware of the advantages which our laws
+and customs give to the rich over the poor, in contentions of this kind.
+But, being once involved, there was a stubbornness in his nature that
+would not allow him to retract, and he suffered himself to hope, rather
+than expect, a favourable issue. But in this last event he was wounded
+in the point that was nearest his heart. He had feared to have his son
+contaminated and debased by a servile station, and he now saw him
+transferred to the seminary of a gaol. He was even uncertain as to the
+issue of his imprisonment, and trembled to think what the tyranny of
+wealth might effect to blast his hopes for ever.
+
+From this moment his heart died within him. He had trusted to
+persevering industry and skill, to save the wreck of his little property
+from the vulgar spite of his landlord. But he had now no longer any
+spirit to exert those efforts which his situation more than ever
+required. Mr. Tyrrel proceeded without remission in his machinations;
+Hawkins's affairs every day grew more desperate, and the squire,
+watching the occasion, took the earliest opportunity of seizing upon
+his remaining property in the mode of a distress for rent.
+
+It was precisely in this stage of the affair, that Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+Tyrrel accidentally met, in a private road near the habitation of the
+latter. They were on horseback, and Mr. Falkland was going to the house
+of the unfortunate tenant, who seemed upon the point of perishing under
+his landlord's malice. He had been just made acquainted with the tale of
+this persecution. It had indeed been an additional aggravation of
+Hawkins's calamity, that Mr. Falkland, whose interference might
+otherwise have saved him, had been absent from the neighbourhood for a
+considerable time. He had been three months in London, and from thence
+had gone to visit his estates in another part of the island. The proud
+and self-confident spirit of this poor fellow always disposed him to
+depend, as long as possible, upon his own exertions. He had avoided
+applying to Mr. Falkland, or indeed indulging himself in any manner in
+communicating and bewailing his hard hap, in the beginning of the
+contention, and, when the extremity grew more urgent, and he would have
+been willing to recede in some degree from the stubbornness of his
+measures, he found it no longer in his power. After an absence of
+considerable duration, Mr. Falkland at length returned somewhat
+unexpectedly; and having learned, among the first articles of country
+intelligence, the distresses of this unfortunate yeoman, he resolved to
+ride over to his house the next morning, and surprise him with all the
+relief it was in his power to bestow.
+
+At sight of Mr. Tyrrel in this unexpected rencounter, his face reddened
+with indignation. His first feeling, as he afterwards said, was to avoid
+him; but finding that he must pass him, he conceived that it would be
+want of spirit not to acquaint him with his feelings on the present
+occasion.
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, somewhat abruptly, "I am sorry for a piece of
+news which I have just heard."
+
+"And pray, sir, what is your sorrow to me?"
+
+"A great deal, sir: it is caused by the distresses of a poor tenant of
+yours, Hawkins. If your steward have proceeded without your authority, I
+think it right to inform you what he has done; and, if he have had your
+authority, I would gladly persuade you to think better of it."
+
+"Mr. Falkland, it would be quite as well if you would mind your own
+business, and leave me to mind mine. I want no monitor, and I will have
+none."
+
+"You mistake, Mr. Tyrrel; I am minding my own business. If I see you
+fall into a pit, it is my business to draw you out and save your life.
+If I see you pursuing a wrong mode of conduct, it is my business to set
+you right and save your honour."
+
+"Zounds, sir, do not think to put your conundrums upon me! Is not the
+man my tenant? Is not my estate my own? What signifies calling it mine,
+if I am not to have the direction of it? Sir, I pay for what I have: I
+owe no man a penny; and I will not put my estate to nurse to you, nor
+the best he that wears a head."
+
+"It is very true," said Mr. Falkland, avoiding any direct notice of the
+last words of Mr. Tyrrel, "that there is a distinction of ranks. I
+believe that distinction is a good thing, and necessary to the peace of
+mankind. But, however necessary it may be, we must acknowledge that it
+puts some hardship upon the lower orders of society. It makes one's
+heart ache to think, that one man is born to the inheritance of every
+superfluity, while the whole share of another, without any demerit of
+his, is drudgery and starving; and that all this is indispensable. We
+that are rich, Mr. Tyrrel, must do every thing in our power to lighten
+the yoke of these unfortunate people. We must not use the advantage that
+accident has given us with an unmerciful hand. Poor wretches! they are
+pressed almost beyond bearing as it is; and, if we unfeelingly give
+another turn to the machine, they will be crushed into atoms."
+
+This picture was not without its effect, even upon the obdurate mind of
+Mr. Tyrrel.--"Well, sir, I am no tyrant. I know very well that tyranny
+is a bad thing. But you do not infer from thence that these people are
+to do as they please, and never meet with their deserts?"
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, I see that you are shaken in your animosity. Suffer me to
+hail the new-born benevolence of your nature. Go with me to Hawkins. Do
+not let us talk of his deserts! Poor fellow! he has suffered almost all
+that human nature can endure. Let your forgiveness upon this occasion be
+the earnest of good neighbourhood and friendship between you and me."
+
+"No, sir, I will not go. I own there is something in what you say. I
+always knew you had the wit to make good your own story, and tell a
+plausible tale. But I will not be come over thus. It has been my
+character, when I had once conceived a scheme of vengeance, never to
+forego it; and I will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when
+every body forsook him, and made a man of him; and the ungrateful rascal
+has only insulted me for my pains. Curse me, if I ever forgive him! It
+would be a good jest indeed, if I were to forgive the insolence of my
+own creature at the desire of a man like you that has been my perpetual
+plague."
+
+"For God's sake, Mr. Tyrrel, have some reason in your resentment! Let us
+suppose that Hawkins has behaved unjustifiably, and insulted you: is
+that an offence that never can be expiated? Must the father be ruined,
+and the son hanged, to glut your resentment?"
+
+"Damn me, sir, but you may talk your heart out; you shall get nothing of
+me. I shall never forgive myself for having listened to you for a
+moment. I will suffer nobody to stop the stream of my resentment; if I
+ever were to forgive him, it should be at nobody's, entreaty but my own.
+But, sir, I never will. If he and all his family were at my feet, I
+would order them all to be hanged the next minute, if my power were as
+good as my will."
+
+"And this is your decision, is it? Mr. Tyrrel, I am ashamed of you!
+Almighty God! to hear you talk gives one a loathing for the institutions
+and regulations of society, and would induce one to fly the very face of
+man! But, no! society casts you out; man abominates you. No wealth, no
+rank, can buy out your stain. You will live deserted in the midst of
+your species; you will go into crowded societies, and no one will deign
+so much as to salute you. They will fly from your glance as they would
+from the gaze of a basilisk. Where do you expect to find the hearts of
+flint that shall sympathise with yours? You have the stamp of misery,
+incessant, undivided, unpitied misery!"
+
+Thus saying, Mr. Falkland gave spurs to his horse, rudely pushed beside
+Mr. Tyrrel, and was presently out of sight. Flaming indignation
+annihilated even his favourite sense of honour, and he regarded his
+neighbour as a wretch, with whom it was impossible even to enter into
+contention. For the latter, he remained for the present motionless and
+petrified. The glowing enthusiasm of Mr. Falkland was such as might well
+have unnerved the stoutest foe. Mr. Tyrrel, in spite of himself, was
+blasted with the compunctions of guilt, and unable to string himself
+for the contest. The picture Mr. Falkland had drawn was prophetic. It
+described what Mr. Tyrrel chiefly feared; and what in its commencements
+he thought he already felt. It was responsive to the whispering of his
+own meditations; it simply gave body and voice to the spectre that
+haunted him, and to the terrors of which he was an hourly prey.
+
+By and by, however, he recovered. The more he had been temporarily
+confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such
+hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with
+violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have
+recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a
+coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his
+vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his
+animosity would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition
+of any time or events. Vengeance was his nightly dream, and the
+uppermost of his waking thoughts.
+
+Mr. Falkland had departed from this conference with a confirmed
+disapprobation of the conduct of his neighbour, and an unalterable
+resolution to do every thing in his power to relieve the distresses of
+Hawkins. But he was too late. When he arrived, he found the house
+already evacuated by its master. The family was removed nobody knew
+whither; Hawkins had absconded, and, what was still more extraordinary,
+the boy Hawkins had escaped on the very same day from the county gaol.
+The enquiries Mr. Falkland set on foot after them were fruitless; no
+traces could be found of the catastrophe of these unhappy people. That
+catastrophe I shall shortly have occasion to relate, and it will be
+found pregnant with horror, beyond what the blackest misanthropy could
+readily have suggested.
+
+I go on with my tale. I go on to relate those incidents in which my own
+fate was so mysteriously involved. I lift the curtain, and bring forward
+the last act of the tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+It may easily be supposed, that the ill temper cherished by Mr. Tyrrel
+in his contention with Hawkins, and the increasing animosity between him
+and Mr. Falkland, added to the impatience with which he thought of the
+escape of Emily.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel heard with astonishment of the miscarriage of an expedient,
+of the success of which he had not previously entertained the slightest
+suspicion. He became frantic with vexation. Grimes had not dared to
+signify the event of his expedition in person, and the footman whom he
+desired to announce to his master that Miss Melville was lost, the
+moment after fled from his presence with the most dreadful
+apprehensions. Presently he bellowed for Grimes, and the young man at
+last appeared before him, more dead than alive. Grimes he compelled to
+repeat the particulars of the tale; which he had no sooner done, than he
+once again slunk away, shocked at the execrations with which Mr. Tyrrel
+overwhelmed him. Grimes was no coward; but he reverenced the inborn
+divinity that attends upon rank, as Indians worship the devil. Nor was
+this all. The rage of Mr. Tyrrel was so ungovernable and fierce, that
+few hearts could have been found so stout, as not to have trembled
+before it with a sort of unconquerable inferiority.
+
+He no sooner obtained a moment's pause than he began to recall to his
+tempestuous mind the various circumstances of the case. His complaints
+were bitter; and, in a tranquil observer, might have produced the united
+feeling of pity for his sufferings, and horror at his depravity. He
+recollected all the precautions he had used; he could scarcely find a
+flaw in the process; and he cursed that blind and malicious power which
+delighted to cross his most deep-laid schemes. "Of this malice he was
+beyond all other human beings the object. He was mocked with the shadow
+of power; and when he lifted his hand to smite, it was struck with
+sudden palsy. [In the bitterness of his anguish, he forgot his recent
+triumph over Hawkins, or perhaps he regarded it less as a triumph, than
+an overthrow, because it had failed of coming up to the extent of his
+malice.] To what purpose had Heaven given him a feeling of injury, and
+an instinct to resent, while he could in no case make his resentment
+felt! It was only necessary for him to be the enemy of any person, to
+insure that person's being safe against the reach of misfortune. What
+insults, the most shocking and repeated, had he received from this
+paltry girl! And by whom was she now torn from his indignation? By that
+devil that haunted him at every moment, that crossed him at every step,
+that fixed at pleasure his arrows in his heart, and made mows and
+mockery at his insufferable tortures."
+
+There was one other reflection that increased his anguish, and made him
+careless and desperate as to his future conduct. It was in vain to
+conceal from himself that his reputation would be cruelly wounded by
+this event. He had imagined that, while Emily was forced into this
+odious marriage, she would be obliged by decorum, as soon as the event
+was decided, to draw a veil over the compulsion she had suffered. But
+this security was now lost, and Mr. Falkland would take a pride in
+publishing his dishonour. Though the provocations he had received from
+Miss Melville would, in his own opinion, have justified him in any
+treatment he should have thought proper to inflict, he was sensible the
+world would see the matter in a different light. This reflection
+augmented the violence of his resolutions, and determined him to refuse
+no means by which he could transfer the anguish that now preyed upon his
+own mind to that of another.
+
+Meanwhile, the composure and magnanimity of Emily had considerably
+subsided, the moment she believed herself in a place of safety. While
+danger and injustice assailed her with their menaces, she found in
+herself a courage that disdained to yield. The succeeding appearance of
+calm was more fatal to her. There was nothing now, powerfully to foster
+her courage or excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had
+passed, and her soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while
+it was in act, she had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at
+which Mr. Tyrrel had been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had
+been in all instances a stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to
+misfortune, she had suddenly and without preparation been made the
+subject of the most infernal malignity. When a man of robust and
+vigorous constitution has a fit of sickness, it produces a more powerful
+effect, than the same indisposition upon a delicate valetudinarian. Such
+was the case with Miss Melville. She passed the succeeding night
+sleepless and uneasy, and was found in the morning with a high fever.
+Her distemper resisted for the present all attempts to assuage it,
+though there was reason to hope that the goodness of her constitution,
+assisted by tranquillity and the kindness of those about her, would
+ultimately surmount it. On the second day she was delirious. On the
+night of that day she was arrested at the suit of Mr. Tyrrel, for a debt
+contracted for board and necessaries for the last fourteen years.
+
+The idea of this arrest, as the reader will perhaps recollect, first
+occurred, in the conversation between Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville, soon
+after he had thought proper to confine her to her chamber. But at that
+time he had probably no serious conception of ever being induced to
+carry it into execution. It had merely been mentioned by way of threat,
+and as the suggestion of a mind, whose habits had long been accustomed
+to contemplate every possible instrument of tyranny and revenge. But
+now, that the unlooked-for rescue and escape of his poor kinswoman had
+wrought up his thoughts to a degree of insanity, and that he revolved in
+the gloomy recesses of his mind, how he might best shake off the load of
+disappointment which oppressed him, the idea recurred with double force.
+He was not long in forming his resolution; and, calling for Barnes his
+steward, immediately gave him directions in what manner to proceed.
+
+Barnes had been for several years the instrument of Mr. Tyrrel's
+injustice. His mind was hardened by use, and he could, without remorse,
+officiate as the spectator, or even as the author and director, of a
+scene of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the
+present occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Tyrrel's
+family had been without a blot. She had not a single enemy; and it was
+impossible to contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless
+innocence, without emotions of sympathy and compassion.
+
+"Your worship?--I do not understand you!--Arrest Miss--Miss Emily!"
+
+"Yes,--I tell you!--What is the matter with you?--Go instantly to
+Swineard, the lawyer, and bid him finish the business out of hand!"
+
+"Lord love your honour! Arrest her! Why she does not owe you a brass
+farthing: she always lived upon your charity!"
+
+"Ass! Scoundrel! I tell you she does owe me,--owes me eleven hundred
+pounds.--The law justifies it.--What do you think laws were made for? I
+do nothing but right, and right I will have."
+
+"Your honour, I never questioned your orders in my life; but I must now.
+I cannot see you ruin Miss Emily, poor girl! nay, and yourself too, for
+the matter of that, and not say which way you are going. I hope you will
+bear with me. Why, if she owed you ever so much, she cannot be arrested.
+She is not of age."
+
+"Will you have done?--Do not tell me of--It cannot, and It can. It has
+been done before,--and it shall be done again. Let him dispute it that
+dares! I will do it now and stand to it afterwards. Tell Swineard,--if
+he make the least boggling, it is as much as his life is worth;--he
+shall starve by inches."
+
+"Pray, your honour, think better of it. Upon my life, the whole country
+will cry shame of it."
+
+"Barnes!--What do you mean? I am not used to be talked to, and I cannot
+hear it! You have been a good fellow to me upon many occasions--But, if
+I find you out for making one with them that dispute my authority, damn
+my soul, if I do not make you sick of your life!"
+
+"I have done, your honour. I will not say another word except this,--I
+have heard as how that Miss Emily is sick a-bed. You are determined, you
+say, to put her in jail. You do not mean to kill her, I take it."
+
+"Let her die! I will not spare her for an hour--I will not always be
+insulted. She had no consideration for me, and I have no mercy for
+her.--I am in for it! They have provoked me past bearing,--and they
+shall feel me! Tell Swineard, in bed or up, day or night, I will not
+hear of an instant's delay."
+
+Such were the directions of Mr. Tyrrel, and in strict conformity to his
+directions were the proceedings of that respectable limb of the law he
+employed upon the present occasion. Miss Melville had been delirious,
+through a considerable part of the day on the evening of which the
+bailiff and his follower arrived. By the direction of the physician whom
+Mr. Falkland had ordered to attend her, a composing draught was
+administered; and, exhausted as she was by the wild and distracted
+images that for several hours had haunted her fancy, she was now sunk
+into a refreshing slumber. Mrs. Hammond, the sister of Mrs. Jakeman, was
+sitting by her bed-side, full of compassion for the lovely sufferer, and
+rejoicing in the calm tranquillity that had just taken possession of
+her, when a little girl, the only child of Mrs. Hammond, opened the
+street-door to the rap of the bailiff He said he wanted to speak with
+Miss Melville, and the child answered that she would go tell her mother.
+So saying, she advanced to the door of the back-room upon the
+ground-floor, in which Emily lay; but the moment it was opened, instead
+of waiting for the appearance of the mother, the bailiff entered along
+with the girl.
+
+Mrs. Hammond looked up. "Who are you?" said she. "Why do you come in
+here? Hush! be quiet!'
+
+"I must speak with Miss Melville."
+
+"Indeed, but you must not. Tell me your business. The poor child has
+been light-headed all day. She has just fallen asleep, and must not be
+disturbed."
+
+"That is no business of mine. I must obey orders."
+
+"Orders? Whose orders? What is it you mean?"
+
+At this moment Emily opened her eyes. "What noise is that? Pray let me
+be quiet."
+
+"Miss, I want to speak with you. I have got a writ against you for
+eleven hundred pounds at the suit of squire Tyrrel."
+
+At these words both Mrs. Hammond and Emily were dumb. The latter was
+scarcely able to annex any meaning to the intelligence; and, though Mrs.
+Hammond was somewhat better acquainted with the sort of language that
+was employed, yet in this strange and unexpected connection it was
+almost as mysterious to her as to poor Emily herself.
+
+"A writ? How can she be in Mr. Tyrrel's debt? A writ against a child!"
+
+"It is no signification putting your questions to us. We only do as we
+are directed. There is our authority. Look at it."
+
+"Lord Almighty!" exclaimed Mrs. Hammond, "what does this mean? It is
+impossible Mr. Tyrrel should have sent you."
+
+"Good woman, none of your jabber to us! Cannot you read?"
+
+"This is all a trick! The paper is forged! It is a vile contrivance to
+get the poor orphan out of the hands of those with whom only she can be
+safe. Proceed upon it at your peril!"
+
+"Rest you content; that is exactly what we mean to do. Take my word, we
+know very well what we are about."
+
+"Why, you would not tear her from her bed? I tell you, she is in a high
+fever; she is light-headed; it would be death to remove her! You are
+bailiffs, are not you? You are not murderers?"
+
+"The law says nothing about that. We have orders to take her sick or
+well. We will do her no harm except so far as we must perform our
+office, be it how it will."
+
+"Where would you take her? What is it you mean to do?"
+
+"To the county jail. Bullock, go, order a post-chaise from the Griffin!"
+
+"Stay, I say! Give no such orders! Wait only three hours; I will send
+off a messenger express to squire Falkland, and I am sure he will
+satisfy you as to any harm that can come to you, without its being
+necessary to take the poor child to jail."
+
+"We have particular directions against that. We are not at liberty to
+lose a minute. Why are not you gone? Order the horses to be put to
+immediately!"
+
+Emily had listened to the course of this conversation, which had
+sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first
+appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was
+thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which
+she had just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do
+not harass yourself with useless efforts. I am very sorry for all the
+trouble I have given you. But my misfortune is inevitable. Sir, if you
+will step into the next room, I will dress myself, and attend you
+immediately."
+
+Mrs. Hammond began to be equally aware that her struggles were to no
+purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved
+upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil
+incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter
+invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him
+to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function;
+but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily
+yielded with the sweetest resignation to an inevitable evil. Mrs.
+Hammond insisted that, at least, they should permit her to attend her
+young lady in the chaise; and the bailiff, though the orders he had
+received were so peremptory that he dared not exercise his discretion as
+to the execution of the writ, began to have some apprehensions of
+danger, and was willing to admit of any precaution that was not in
+direct hostility to his functions. For the rest he understood, that it
+was in all cases dangerous to allow sickness, or apparent unfitness for
+removal, as a sufficient cause to interrupt a direct process; and that,
+accordingly, in all doubtful questions and presumptive murders, the
+practice of the law inclined, with a laudable partiality, to the
+vindication of its own officers. In addition to these general rules, he
+was influenced by the positive injunctions and assurances of Swineard,
+and the terror which, through a circle of many miles, was annexed to the
+name of Tyrrel. Before they departed, Mrs. Hammond despatched a
+messenger with a letter of three lines to Mr. Falkland, informing him of
+this extraordinary event. Mr. Falkland was from home when the messenger
+arrived, and not expected to return till the second day; accident seemed
+in this instance to favour the vengeance of Mr. Tyrrel, for he had
+himself been too much under the dominion of an uncontrollable fury, to
+take a circumstance of this sort into his estimate.
+
+The forlorn state of these poor women, who were conducted, the one by
+compulsion, the other a volunteer, to a scene so little adapted to their
+accommodation as that of a common jail, may easily be imagined. Mrs.
+Hammond, however, was endowed with a masculine courage and impetuosity
+of spirit, eminently necessary in the difficulties they had to
+encounter. She was in some degree fitted by a sanguine temper, and an
+impassioned sense of injustice, for the discharge of those very offices
+which sobriety and calm reflection might have prescribed. The health of
+Miss Melville was materially affected by the surprise and removal she
+had undergone at the very time that repose was most necessary for her
+preservation. Her fever became more violent; her delirium was stronger;
+and the tortures of her imagination were proportioned to the
+unfavourableness of the state in which the removal had been effected. It
+was highly improbable that she could recover.
+
+In the moments of suspended reason she was perpetually calling on the
+name of Falkland. Mr. Falkland, she said, was her first and only love,
+and he should be her husband. A moment after she exclaimed upon him in a
+disconsolate, yet reproachful tone, for his unworthy deference to the
+prejudices of the world. It was very cruel of him to show himself so
+proud, and tell her that he would never consent to marry a beggar. But,
+if he were proud, she was determined to be proud too. He should see that
+she would not conduct herself like a slighted maiden, and that, though
+he could reject her, it was not in his power to break her heart. At
+another time she imagined she saw Mr. Tyrrel and his engine Grimes,
+their hands and garments dropping with blood: and the pathetic
+reproaches she vented against them might have affected a heart of stone.
+Then the figure of Falkland presented itself to her distracted fancy,
+deformed with wounds, and of a deadly paleness, and she shrieked with
+agony, while she exclaimed that such was the general hardheartedness,
+that no one would make the smallest exertion for his rescue. In such
+vicissitudes of pain, perpetually imagining to her self unkindness,
+insult, conspiracy, and murder, she passed a considerable part of two
+days.
+
+On the evening of the second Mr. Falkland arrived, accompanied by Doctor
+Wilson, the physician by whom she had previously been attended. The
+scene he was called upon to witness was such as to be most exquisitely
+agonising to a man of his acute sensibility. The news of the arrest had
+given him an inexpressible shock; he was transported out of himself at
+the unexampled malignity of its author. But, when he saw the figure of
+Miss Melville, haggard, and a warrant of death written in her
+countenance, a victim to the diabolical passions of her kinsman, it
+seemed too much to be endured. When he entered, she was in the midst of
+one of her fits of delirium, and immediately mistook her visitors for
+two assassins. She asked, where they had hid her Falkland, her lord, her
+life, her husband! and demanded that they should restore to her his
+mangled corpse, that she might embrace him with her dying arms, breathe
+her last upon his lips, and be buried in the same grave. She reproached
+them with the sordidness of their conduct in becoming the tools of her
+vile cousin, who had deprived her of her reason, and would never be
+contented till he had murdered her. Mr. Falkland tore himself away from
+this painful scene, and, leaving Doctor Wilson with his patient, desired
+him, when he had given the necessary directions, to follow him to his
+inn.
+
+The perpetual hurry of spirits in which Miss Melville had been kept for
+several days, by the nature of her indisposition, was extremely
+exhausting to her; and, in about an hour from the visit of Mr. Falkland,
+her delirium subsided, and left her in so low a state as to render it
+difficult to perceive any signs of life. Doctor Wilson, who had
+withdrawn, to soothe, if possible, the disturbed and impatient thoughts
+of Mr. Falkland, was summoned afresh upon this change of symptoms, and
+sat by the bed-side during the remainder of the night. The situation of
+his patient was such, as to keep him in momentary apprehension of her
+decease. While Miss Melville lay in this feeble and exhausted condition,
+Mrs. Hammond betrayed every token of the tenderest anxiety. Her
+sensibility was habitually of the acutest sort, and the qualities of
+Emily were such as powerfully to fix her affection. She loved her like a
+mother. Upon the present occasion, every sound, every motion, made her
+tremble. Doctor Wilson had introduced another nurse, in consideration of
+the incessant fatigue Mrs. Hammond had undergone; and he endeavoured, by
+representations, and even by authority, to compel her to quit the
+apartment of the patient. But she was uncontrollable; and he at length
+found that he should probably do her more injury, by the violence that
+would be necessary to separate her from the suffering innocent, than by
+allowing her to follow her inclination. Her eye was a thousand times
+turned, with the most eager curiosity, upon the countenance of Doctor
+Wilson, without her daring to breathe a question respecting his opinion,
+lest he should answer her by a communication of the most fatal tidings.
+In the mean time she listened with the deepest attention to every thing
+that dropped either from the physician or the nurse, hoping to collect
+as it were from some oblique hint, the intelligence which she had not
+courage expressly to require.
+
+Towards morning the state of the patient seemed to take a favourable
+turn. She dozed for near two hours, and, when she awoke, appeared
+perfectly calm and sensible. Understanding that Mr. Falkland had
+brought the physician to attend her, and was himself in her
+neighbourhood, she requested to see him. Mr. Falkland had gone in the
+mean time, with one of his tenants, to bail the debt, and now entered
+the prison to enquire whether the young lady might be safely removed,
+from her present miserable residence, to a more airy and commodious
+apartment. When he appeared, the sight of him revived in the mind of
+Miss Melville an imperfect recollection of the wanderings of her
+delirium. She covered her face with her fingers, and betrayed the most
+expressive confusion, while she thanked him, with her usual unaffected
+simplicity, for the trouble he had taken. She hoped she should not give
+him much more; she thought she should get better. It was a shame, she
+said, if a young and lively girl, as she was, could not contrive to
+outlive the trifling misfortunes to which she had been subjected. But,
+while she said this, she was still extremely weak. She tried to assume a
+cheerful countenance; but it was a faint effort, which the feeble state
+of her frame did not seem sufficient to support. Mr. Falkland and the
+doctor joined to request her to keep herself quiet, and avoid for the
+present all occasions of exertion.
+
+Encouraged by these appearances, Mrs. Hammond ventured to follow the two
+gentlemen out of the room, in order to learn from the physician what
+hopes he entertained. Doctor Wilson acknowledged, that he found his
+patient at first in a very unfavourable situation, that the symptoms
+were changed for the better, and that he was not without some
+expectation of her recovery. He added, however, that he could answer for
+nothing, that the next twelve hours would be exceedingly critical, but
+that if she did not grow worse before morning, he would then undertake
+for her life. Mrs. Hammond, who had hitherto seen nothing but despair,
+now became frantic with joy. She burst into tears of transport, blessed
+the physician in the most emphatic and impassioned terms, and uttered a
+thousand extravagancies. Doctor Wilson seized this opportunity to press
+her to give herself a little repose, to which she consented, a bed being
+first procured for her in the room next to Miss Melville's, she having
+charged the nurse to give her notice of any alteration in the state of
+the patient.
+
+Mrs. Hammond enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep of several hours. It was
+already night, when she was awaked by an unusual bustle in the next
+room. She listened for a few moments, and then determined to go and
+discover the occasion of it. As she opened her door for that purpose,
+she met the nurse coming to her. The countenance of the messenger told
+her what it was she had to communicate, without the use of words. She
+hurried to the bed-side, and found Miss Melville expiring. The
+appearances that had at first been so encouraging were of short
+duration. The calm of the morning proved to be only a sort of lightening
+before death. In a few hours the patient grew worse. The bloom of her
+countenance faded; she drew her breath with difficulty; and her eyes
+became fixed. Doctor Wilson came in at this period, and immediately
+perceived that all was over. She was for some time in convulsions; but,
+these subsiding, she addressed the physician with a composed, though
+feeble voice. She thanked him for his attention; and expressed the most
+lively sense of her obligations to Mr. Falkland. She sincerely forgave
+her cousin, and hoped he might never be visited by too acute a
+recollection of his barbarity to her. She would have been contented to
+live. Few persons had a sincerer relish of the pleasures of life; but
+she was well pleased to die, rather than have become the wife of Grimes.
+As Mrs. Hammond entered, she turned her countenance towards her, and
+with an affectionate expression repeated her name. This was her last
+word; in less than two hours from that time she breathed her last in the
+arms of this faithful friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Such was the fate of Miss Emily Melville. Perhaps tyranny never
+exhibited a more painful memorial of the detestation in which it
+deserves to be held. The idea irresistibly excited in every spectator of
+the scene, was that of regarding Mr. Tyrrel as the most diabolical
+wretch that had ever dishonoured the human form. The very attendants
+upon this house of oppression, for the scene was acted upon too public a
+stage not to be generally understood, expressed their astonishment and
+disgust at his unparalleled cruelty.
+
+If such were the feelings of men bred to the commission of injustice, it
+is difficult to say what must have been those of Mr. Falkland. He raved,
+he swore, he beat his head, he rent up his hair. He was unable to
+continue in one posture, and to remain in one place. He burst away from
+the spot with vehemence, as if he sought to leave behind him his
+recollection and his existence. He seemed to tear up the ground with
+fierceness and rage. He returned soon again. He approached the sad
+remains of what had been Emily, and gazed on them with such intentness,
+that his eyes appeared, ready to burst from their sockets. Acute and
+exquisite as were his notions of virtue and honour, he could not prevent
+himself from reproaching the system of nature, for having given birth to
+such a monster as Tyrrel. He was ashamed of himself for wearing the same
+form. He could not think of the human species with patience. He foamed
+with indignation against the laws of the universe, that did not permit
+him to crush such reptiles at a blow, as we would crush so many noxious
+insects. It was necessary to guard him like a madman.
+
+The whole office of judging what was proper to be done under the present
+circumstances devolved upon Doctor Wilson. The doctor was a man of cool
+and methodical habits of acting. One of the first ideas that suggested
+itself to him was, that Miss Melvile was a branch of the family of
+Tyrrel. He did not doubt of the willingness of Mr. Falkland to discharge
+every expense that might be further incident to the melancholy remains
+of this unfortunate victim; but he conceived that the laws of fashion
+and decorum required some notification of the event to be made to the
+head of the family. Perhaps, too, he had an eye to his interest in his
+profession, and was reluctant to expose himself to the resentment of a
+person of Mr. Tyrrel's consideration in the neighbourhood. But, with
+this weakness, he had nevertheless some feelings in common with the rest
+of the world, and must have suffered considerable violence, before he
+could have persuaded himself to be the messenger; beside which, he did
+not think it right in the present situation to leave Mr. Falkland.
+
+Doctor Wilson no sooner mentioned these ideas, than they seemed to make
+a sudden impression on Mrs. Hammond, and she earnestly requested that
+she might be permitted to carry the intelligence. The proposal was
+unexpected; but the doctor did not very obstinately refuse his assent.
+She was determined, she said, to see what sort of impression the
+catastrophe would make upon the author of it; and she promised to
+comport herself with moderation and civility. The journey was soon
+performed.
+
+"I am come, sir," said she to Mr. Tyrrel, "to inform you that your
+cousin, Miss Melville, died this afternoon."
+
+"Died?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I saw her die. She died in these arms."
+
+"Died? Who killed her? What do you mean?"
+
+"Who? Is it for you to ask that question? Your cruelty and malice killed
+her!"
+
+"Me?--my?--Poh! she is not dead--it cannot be--it is not a week since
+she left this house."
+
+"Do not you believe me? I say she is dead!"
+
+"Have a care, woman! this is no matter for jesting. No: though she used
+me ill, I would not believe her dead for all the world!"
+
+Mrs. Hammond shook her head in a manner expressive at once of grief and
+indignation.
+
+"No, no, no, no! I will never believe that!--No, never!"
+
+"Will you come with me, and convince your eyes? It is a sight worthy of
+you; and will be a feast to such a heart as yours!"--Saying this, Mrs.
+Hammond offered her hand, as if to conduct him to the spot.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel shrunk back.
+
+"If she be dead, what is that to me? Am I to answer for every thing that
+goes wrong in the world?--What do you come here for? Why bring your
+messages to me?"
+
+"To whom should I bring them but to her kinsman,--and her murderer."
+
+"Murderer?--Did I employ knives or pistols? Did I give her poison? I did
+nothing but what the law allows. If she be dead, nobody can say that I
+am to blame!"
+
+"To blame?--All the world will abhor and curse you. Were you such a
+fool as to think, because men pay respect to wealth and rank, this would
+extend to such a deed? They will laugh at so barefaced a cheat. The
+meanest beggar will spurn and spit at you. Ay, you may well stand
+confounded at what you have done. I will proclaim you to the whole
+world, and you will be obliged to fly the very face of a human
+creature!"
+
+"Good woman," said Mr. Tyrrel, extremely humbled, "talk no more in this
+strain!--Emmy is not dead! I am sure--I hope--she is not dead!--Tell me
+that you have only been deceiving me, and I will forgive you every
+thing--I will forgive her--I will take her into favour--I will do any
+thing you please!--I never meant her any harm!"
+
+"I tell you she is dead! You have murdered the sweetest innocent that
+lived! Can you bring her back to life, as you have driven her out of it?
+If you could, I would kneel to you twenty times a day! What is it you
+have done?--Miserable wretch! did you think you could do and undo, and
+change things this way and that, as you pleased?"
+
+The reproaches of Mrs. Hammond were the first instance in which Mr.
+Tyrrel was made to drink the full cup of retribution. This was, however,
+only a specimen of a long series of contempt, abhorrence, and insult,
+that was reserved for him. The words of Mrs. Hammond were prophetic. It
+evidently appeared, that though wealth and hereditary elevation operate
+as an apology for many delinquencies, there are some which so
+irresistibly address themselves to the indignation of mankind, that,
+like death, they level all distinctions, and reduce their perpetrator to
+an equality with the most indigent and squalid of his species. Against
+Mr. Tyrrel, as the tyrannical and unmanly murderer of Emily, those who
+dared not venture the unreserved avowal of their sentiments muttered
+curses, deep, not loud; while the rest joined in an universal cry of
+abhorrence and execration. He stood astonished at the novelty of his
+situation. Accustomed as he had been to the obedience and trembling
+homage of mankind, he had imagined they would be perpetual, and that no
+excess on his part would ever be potent enough to break the enchantment.
+Now he looked round, and saw sullen detestation in every face, which
+with difficulty restrained itself, and upon the slightest provocation
+broke forth with an impetuous tide, and swept away the mounds of
+subordination and fear. His large estate could not purchase civility
+from the gentry, the peasantry, scarcely from his own servants. In the
+indignation of all around him he found a ghost that haunted him with
+every change of place, and a remorse that stung his conscience, and
+exterminated his peace. The neighbourhood appeared more and more every
+day to be growing too hot for him to endure, and it became evident that
+he would ultimately be obliged to quit the country. Urged by the
+flagitiousness of this last example, people learned to recollect every
+other instance of his excesses, and it was, no doubt, a fearful
+catalogue that rose up in judgment against him. It seemed as if the
+sense of public resentment had long been gathering strength unperceived,
+and now burst forth into insuppressible violence.
+
+There was scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution
+could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a
+consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the
+detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet
+the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had
+of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and
+undisguised condemnation into which he was sunk with uncommon emotions
+of anger and impatience. That he, at the beam of whose eye every
+countenance fell, and to whom in the fierceness of his wrath no one was
+daring enough to reply, should now be regarded with avowed dislike, and
+treated with unceremonious censure, was a thing he could not endure to
+recollect or believe. Symptoms of the universal disgust smote him at
+every instant, and at every blow he writhed with intolerable anguish.
+His rage was unbounded and raving. He repelled every attack with the
+fiercest indignation; while the more he struggled, the more desperate
+his situation appeared to become. At length he determined to collect his
+strength for a decisive effort, and to meet the whole tide of public
+opinion in a single scene.
+
+In pursuance of these thoughts he resolved to repair, without delay, to
+the rural assembly which I have already mentioned in the course of my
+story. Miss Melville had now been dead one month. Mr. Falkland had been
+absent the last week in a distant part of the country, and was not
+expected to return for a week longer. Mr. Tyrrel willingly embraced the
+opportunity, trusting, if he could now effect his re-establishment, that
+he should easily preserve the ground he had gained, even in the face of
+his formidable rival. Mr. Tyrrel was not deficient in courage; but he
+conceived the present to be too important an epoch in his life to allow
+him to make any unnecessary risk in his chance for future ease and
+importance.
+
+There was a sort of bustle that took place at his entrance into the
+assembly, it having been agreed by the gentlemen of the assembly, that
+Mr. Tyrrel was to be refused admittance, as a person with whom they did
+not choose to associate. This vote had already been notified to him by
+letter by the master of the ceremonies, but the intelligence was rather
+calculated, with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's disposition, to excite defiance
+than to overawe. At the door of the assembly he was personally met by
+the master of the ceremonies, who had perceived the arrival of an
+equipage, and who now endeavoured to repeat his prohibition: but he was
+thrust aside by Mr. Tyrrel with an air of native authority and ineffable
+contempt. As he entered; every eye was turned upon him. Presently all
+the gentlemen in the room assembled round him. Some endeavoured to
+hustle him, and others began to expostulate. But he found the secret
+effectually to silence the one set, and to shake off the other. His
+muscular form, the well-known eminence of his intellectual powers, the
+long habits to which every man was formed of acknowledging his
+ascendancy, were all in his favour. He considered himself as playing a
+desperate stake, and had roused all the energies he possessed, to enable
+him to do justice to so interesting a transaction. Disengaged from the
+insects that at first pestered him, he paced up and down the room with a
+magisterial stride, and flashed an angry glance on every side. He then
+broke silence. "If any one had any thing to say to him, he should know
+where and how to answer him. He would advise any such person, however,
+to consider well what he was about. If any man imagined he had any thing
+personally to complain of, it was very well. But he did expect that
+nobody there would be ignorant and raw enough to meddle with what was no
+business of theirs, and intrude into the concerns of any man's private
+family."
+
+This being a sort of defiance, one and another gentleman advanced to
+answer it. He that was first began to speak; but Mr. Tyrrel, by the
+expression of his countenance and a peremptory tone, by well-timed
+interruptions and pertinent insinuations, caused him first to hesitate,
+and then to be silent. He seemed to be fast advancing to the triumph he
+had promised himself. The whole company were astonished. They felt the
+same abhorrence and condemnation of his character; but they could not
+help admiring the courage and resources he displayed upon the present
+occasion. They could without difficulty have concentred afresh their
+indignant feelings, but they seemed to want a leader.
+
+At this critical moment Mr. Falkland entered the room. Mere accident had
+enabled him to return sooner than he expected.
+
+Both he and Mr. Tyrrel reddened at sight of each other. He advanced
+towards Mr. Tyrrel without a moment's pause, and in a peremptory voice
+asked him what he did there?
+
+"Here? What do you mean by that? This place is as free to me as you, and
+you are the last person to whom I shall deign to give an account of
+myself."
+
+"Sir, the place is not free to you. Do not you know, you have been voted
+out? Whatever were your rights, your infamous conduct has forfeited
+them."
+
+"Mr. what do you call yourself, if you have anything to say to me,
+choose a proper time and place. Do not think to put on your bullying
+airs under shelter of this company! I will not endure it."
+
+"You are mistaken, sir. This public scene is the only place where I can
+have any thing to say to you. If you would not hear the universal
+indignation of mankind, you must not come into the society of men.--Miss
+Melville!--Shame upon you, inhuman, unrelenting tyrant! Can you hear her
+name, and not sink into the earth? Can you retire into solitude, and not
+see her pale and patient ghost rising to reproach you? Can you recollect
+her virtues, her innocence, her spotless manners, her unresentful
+temper, and not run distracted with remorse? Have you not killed her in
+the first bloom of her youth? Can you bear to think that she now lies
+mouldering in the grave through your cursed contrivance, that deserved a
+crown, ten thousand times more than you deserve to live? And do you
+expect that mankind will ever forget, or forgive such a deed? Go,
+miserable wretch; think yourself too happy that you are permitted to fly
+the face of man! Why, what a pitiful figure do you make at this moment!
+Do you think that any thing could bring so hardened a wretch as you are
+to shrink from reproach, if your conscience were not in confederacy with
+them that reproached you? And were you fool enough to believe that any
+obstinacy, however determined, could enable you to despise the keen
+rebuke of justice? Go, shrink into your miserable self! Begone, and let
+me never be blasted with your sight again!"
+
+And here, incredible as it may appear, Mr. Tyrrel began to obey his
+imperious censurer. His looks were full of wildness and horror; his
+limbs trembled; and his tongue refused its office. He felt no power of
+resisting the impetuous torrent of reproach that was poured upon him. He
+hesitated; he was ashamed of his own defeat; he seemed to wish to deny
+it. But his struggles were ineffectual; every attempt perished in the
+moment it was made. The general voice was eager to abash him. As his
+confusion became more visible, the outcry increased. It swelled
+gradually to hootings, tumult, and a deafening noise of indignation. At
+length he willingly retired from the public scene, unable any longer to
+endure the sensations it inflicted.
+
+In about an hour and a half he returned. No precaution had been taken
+against this incident, for nothing could be more unexpected. In the
+interval he had intoxicated himself with large draughts of brandy. In a
+moment he was in a part of the room where Mr. Falkland was standing, and
+with one blow of his muscular arm levelled him with the earth. The blow
+however was not stunning, and Mr. Falkland rose again immediately. It is
+obvious to perceive how unequal he must have been in this species of
+contest. He was scarcely risen before Mr. Tyrrel repeated his blow. Mr.
+Falkland was now upon his guard, and did not fall. But the blows of his
+adversary were redoubled with a rapidity difficult to conceive, and Mr.
+Falkland was once again brought to the earth. In this situation Mr.
+Tyrrel kicked his prostrate enemy, and stooped apparently with the
+intention of dragging him along the floor. All this passed in a moment,
+and the gentlemen present had not time to recover their surprise. They
+now interfered, and Mr. Tyrrel once more quitted the apartment.
+
+It is difficult to conceive any event more terrible to the individual
+upon whom it fell, than the treatment which Mr. Falkland in this
+instance experienced. Every passion of his life was calculated to make
+him feel it more acutely. He had repeatedly exerted an uncommon energy
+and prudence, to prevent the misunderstanding between Mr. Tyrrel and
+himself from proceeding to extremities; but in vain! It was closed with
+a catastrophe, exceeding all that he had feared, or that the most
+penetrating foresight could have suggested. To Mr. Falkland disgrace was
+worse than death. The slightest breath of dishonour would have stung him
+to the very soul. What must it have been with this complication of
+ignominy, base, humiliating, and public? Could Mr. Tyrrel have
+understood the evil he inflicted, even he, under all his circumstances
+of provocation, could scarcely have perpetrated it. Mr. Falkland's mind
+was full of uproar like the war of contending elements, and of such
+suffering as casts contempt on the refinements of inventive cruelty. He
+wished for annihilation, to lie down in eternal oblivion, in an
+insensibility, which, compared with what he experienced, was scarcely
+less enviable than beatitude itself. Horror, detestation, revenge,
+inexpressible longings to shake off the evil, and a persuasion that in
+this case all effort was powerless, filled his soul even to bursting.
+
+One other event closed the transactions of this memorable evening. Mr.
+Falkland was baffled of the vengeance that yet remained to him. Mr.
+Tyrrel was found by some of the company dead in the street, having been
+murdered at the distance of a few yards from the assembly house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+I shall endeavour to state the remainder of this narrative in the words
+of Mr. Collins. The reader has already had occasion to perceive that Mr.
+Collins was a man of no vulgar order; and his reflections on the subject
+were uncommonly judicious.
+
+"This day was the crisis of Mr. Falkland's history. From hence took its
+beginning that gloomy and unsociable melancholy, of which he has since
+been the victim. No two characters can be in certain respects more
+strongly contrasted, than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and
+subsequent to these events. Hitherto he had been attended by a fortune
+perpetually prosperous. His mind was sanguine; full of that undoubting
+confidence in its own powers which prosperity is qualified to produce.
+Though the habits of his life were those of a serious and sublime
+visionary they were nevertheless full of cheerfulness and tranquillity.
+But from this moment, his pride, and the lofty adventurousness of his
+spirit, were effectually subdued. From an object of envy he was changed
+into an object of compassion. Life, which hitherto no one had more
+exquisitely enjoyed, became a burden to him. No more self-complacency,
+no more rapture, no more self-approving and heart-transporting
+benevolence! He who had lived beyond any man upon the grand and
+animating reveries of the imagination, seemed now to have no visions but
+of anguish and despair. His case was peculiarly worthy of sympathy,
+since, no doubt, if rectitude and purity of disposition could give a
+title to happiness, few men could exhibit a more consistent and powerful
+claim than Mr. Falkland.
+
+"He was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+chivalry, ever to forget the situation, humiliating and dishonourable
+according to his ideas, in which he had been placed upon this occasion.
+There is a mysterious sort of divinity annexed to the person of a true
+knight, that makes any species of brute violence committed upon it
+indelible and immortal. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged
+along the floor! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not
+to be endured! No future lustration could ever remove the stain: and,
+what was perhaps still worse in the present case, the offender having
+ceased to exist, the lustration which the laws of knight-errantry
+prescribe was rendered impossible.
+
+"In some future period of human improvement, it is probable, that that
+calamity will be in a manner unintelligible, which in the present
+instance contributed to tarnish and wither the excellence of one of the
+most elevated and amiable of human minds. If Mr. Falkland had reflected
+with perfect accuracy upon the case, he would probably have been able
+to look down with indifference upon a wound, which, as it was, pierced
+to his very vitals. How much more dignity, than in the modern duellist,
+do we find in Themistocles, the most gallant of the Greeks; who, when
+Eurybiades, his commander in chief, in answer to some of his
+remonstrances, lifted his cane over him with a menacing air, accosted
+him in that noble apostrophe, 'Strike, but hear!'
+
+"How would a man of true discernment in such a case reply to his brutal
+assailant? 'I make it my boast that I can endure calamity and pain:
+shall I not be able to endure the trifling inconvenience that your folly
+can inflict upon me? Perhaps a human being would be more accomplished,
+if he understood the science of personal defence; but how few would be
+the occasions upon which he would be called to exert it? How few persons
+would he encounter so unjust and injurious as you, if his own conduct
+were directed by the principles of reason and benevolence? Beside, how
+narrow would be the use of this science when acquired? It will scarcely
+put the man of delicate make and petty stature upon a level with the
+athletic pugilist; and, if it did in some measure secure me against the
+malice of a single adversary, still my person and my life, so far as
+mere force is concerned, would always be at the mercy of two. Further
+than immediate defence against actual violence, it could never be of use
+to me. The man who can deliberately meet his adversary for the purpose
+of exposing the person of one or both of them to injury, tramples upon
+every principle of reason and equity. Duelling is the vilest of all
+egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and
+exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an
+unintelligible chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my
+exclusive attention. I am unable to cope with you: what then? Can that
+circumstance dishonour me? No; I can only be dishonoured by perpetrating
+an unjust action. My honour is in my own keeping, beyond the reach of
+all mankind. Strike! I am passive. No injury that you can inflict, shall
+provoke me to expose you or myself to unnecessary evil. I refuse that;
+but I am not therefore pusillanimous: when I refuse any danger or
+suffering by which the general good may be promoted, then brand me for a
+coward!
+
+"These reasonings, however simple and irresistible they must be found by
+a dispassionate enquirer, are little reflected on by the world at large,
+and were most of all uncongenial to the prejudices of Mr. Falkland.
+
+"But the public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon
+him, intolerable as they were to be recollected, were not the whole of
+the mischief that redounded to our unfortunate patron from the
+transactions of that day. It was presently whispered that he was no
+other than the murderer of his antagonist. This rumour was of too much
+importance to the very continuance of his life, to justify its being
+concealed from him. He heard it with inexpressible astonishment and
+horror; it formed a dreadful addition to the load of intellectual
+anguish that already oppressed him. No man had ever held his reputation
+more dear than Mr. Falkland; and now, in one day, he was fallen under
+the most exquisite calamities, a complicated personal insult, and the
+imputation of the foulest of crimes. He might have fled; for no one was
+forward to proceed against a man so adored as Mr. Falkland, or in
+revenge of one so universally execrated as Mr. Tyrrel. But flight he
+disdained. In the mean time the affair was of the most serious
+magnitude, and the rumour unchecked seemed daily to increase in
+strength. Mr. Falkland appeared sometimes inclined to adopt such steps
+as might have been best calculated to bring the imputation to a speedy
+trial. But he probably feared, by too direct an appeal to judicature, to
+render more precise an imputation, the memory of which he deprecated; at
+the same time that he was sufficiently willing to meet the severest
+scrutiny, and, if he could not hope to have it forgotten that he had
+ever been accused, to prove in the most satisfactory manner that the
+accusation was unjust.
+
+"The neighbouring magistrates at length conceived it necessary to take
+some steps upon the subject. Without causing Mr. Falkland to be
+apprehended, they sent to desire he would appear before them at one of
+their meetings. The proceeding being thus opened, Mr. Falkland expressed
+his hope that, if the business were likely to stop there, their
+investigation might at least be rendered as solemn as possible. The
+meeting was numerous; every person of a respectable class in society was
+admitted to be an auditor; the whole town, one of the most considerable
+in the county, was apprised of the nature of the business. Few trials,
+invested with all the forms of judgment, have excited so general an
+interest. A trial, under the present circumstances, was scarcely
+attainable; and it seemed to be the wish both of principal and umpires,
+to give to this transaction all the momentary notoriety and decisiveness
+of a trial.
+
+"The magistrates investigated the particulars of the story. Mr.
+Falkland, it appeared, had left the rooms immediately after his
+assailant; and though he had been attended by one or two of the
+gentlemen to his inn, it was proved that he had left them upon some
+slight occasion, as soon as he arrived at it, and that, when they
+enquired for him of the waiters, he had already mounted his horse and
+ridden home.
+
+"By the nature of the case, no particular facts could be stated in
+balance against these. As soon as they had been sufficiently detailed,
+Mr. Falkland therefore proceeded to his defence. Several copies of his
+defence were-made, and Mr. Falkland seemed, for a short time, to have
+had the idea of sending it to the press, though, for some reason or
+other, he afterwards suppressed it. I have one of the copies in my
+possession, and I will read it to you."
+
+Saying this, Mr. Collins rose, and took it from a private drawer in his
+escritoire. During this action he appeared to recollect himself. He did
+not, in the strict sense of the word, hesitate; but he was prompted to
+make some apology for what he was doing.
+
+"You seem never to have heard of this memorable transaction; and,
+indeed, that is little to be wondered at, since the good nature of the
+world is interested in suppressing it, and it is deemed a disgrace to a
+man to have defended himself from a criminal imputation, though with
+circumstances the most satisfactory and honourable. It may be supposed
+that this suppression is particularly acceptable to Mr. Falkland; and I
+should not have acted in contradiction to his modes of thinking in
+communicating the story to you, had there not been circumstances of
+peculiar urgency, that seemed to render the communication desirable."
+Saying this, he proceeded to read from the paper in his hand.
+
+"Gentlemen,
+
+"I stand here accused of a crime, the most black that any human creature
+is capable of perpetrating. I am innocent. I have no fear that I shall
+fail to make every person in this company acknowledge my innocence. In
+the mean time, what must be my feelings? Conscious as I am of deserving
+approbation and not censure, of having passed my life in acts of
+justice and philanthropy, can any thing be more deplorable than for me
+to answer to a charge of murder? So wretched is my situation, that I
+cannot accept your gratuitous acquittal, if you should be disposed to
+bestow it. I must answer to an imputation, the very thought of which is
+ten thousand times worse to me than death. I must exert the whole energy
+of my mind, to prevent my being ranked with the vilest of men.
+
+"Gentlemen, this is a situation in which a man may be allowed to boast.
+Accursed situation! No man need envy me the vile and polluted triumph I
+am now to gain! I have called no witnesses to my character. Great God!
+what sort of character is that which must be supported by witnesses?
+But, if I must speak, look round the company, ask of every one present,
+enquire of your own hearts! Not one word of reproach was ever whispered
+against me. I do not hesitate to call upon those who have known me most,
+to afford me the most honourable testimony.
+
+"My life has been spent in the keenest and most unintermitted
+sensibility to reputation. I am almost indifferent as to what shall be
+the event of this day. I would not open my mouth upon the occasion, if
+my life were the only thing that was at stake. It is not in the power of
+your decision to restore to me my unblemished reputation, to obliterate
+the disgrace I have suffered, or to prevent it from being remembered
+that I have been brought to examination upon a charge of murder. Your
+decision can never have the efficacy to prevent the miserable remains of
+my existence from being the most intolerable of all burthens.
+
+"I am accused of having committed murder upon the body of Barnabas
+Tyrrel. I would most joyfully have given every farthing I possess, and
+devoted myself to perpetual beggary, to have preserved his life. His
+life was precious to me, beyond that of all mankind. In my opinion, the
+greatest injustice committed by his unknown assassin was that of
+defrauding me of my just revenge. I confess that I would have called him
+out to the field, and that our encounter should not have been terminated
+but by the death of one or both of us. This would have been a pitiful
+and inadequate compensation for his unparalleled insult, but it was all
+that remained.
+
+"I ask for no pity, but I must openly declare that never was any
+misfortune so horrible as mine. I would willingly have taken refuge from
+the recollection of that night in a voluntary death. Life was now
+stripped of all those recommendations, for the sake of which it was dear
+to me. But even this consolation is denied me. I am compelled to drag
+for ever the intolerable load of existence, upon penalty, if at any
+period, however remote, I shake it off, of having that impatience
+regarded as confirming a charge of murder. Gentlemen, if by your
+decision you could take away my life, without that act being connected
+with my disgrace, I would bless the cord that stopped the breath of my
+existence for ever.
+
+"You all know how easily I might have fled from this purgation. If I had
+been guilty, should I not have embraced the opportunity? But, as it was,
+I could not. Reputation has been the idol, the jewel of my life. I could
+never have borne to think that a human creature, in the remotest part of
+the globe, should believe that I was a criminal. Alas! what a deity it
+is that I have chosen for my worship! I have entailed upon myself
+everlasting agony and despair!
+
+"I have but one word to add. Gentlemen, I charge you to do me the
+imperfect justice that is in your power! My life is a worthless thing.
+But my honour, the empty remains of honour I have now to boast, is in
+your judgment, and you will each of you, from this day, have imposed
+upon yourselves the task of its vindicators. It is little that you can
+do for me; but it is not less your duty to do that little. May that God
+who is the fountain of honour and good prosper and protect you! The man
+who now stands before you is devoted to perpetual barrenness and blast!
+He has nothing to hope for beyond the feeble consolation of this day!"
+
+"You will easily imagine that Mr. Falkland was discharged with every
+circumstance of credit. Nothing is more to be deplored in human
+institutions, than that the ideas of mankind should have annexed a
+sentiment of disgrace to a purgation thus satisfactory and decisive. No
+one entertained the shadow of a doubt upon the subject, and yet a mere
+concurrence of circumstances made it necessary that the best of men
+should be publicly put on his defence, as if really under suspicion of
+an atrocious crime. It may be granted indeed that Mr. Falkland had his
+faults, but those very faults placed him at a still further distance
+from the criminality in question. He was the fool of honour and fame: a
+man whom, in the pursuit of reputation, nothing could divert; who would
+have purchased the character of a true, gallant, and undaunted hero, at
+the expense of worlds, and who thought every calamity nominal but a
+stain upon his honour. How atrociously absurd to suppose any motive
+capable of inducing such a man to play the part of a lurking assassin?
+How unfeeling to oblige him to defend himself from such an imputation?
+Did any man, and, least of all, a man of the purest honour, ever pass in
+a moment, from a life unstained by a single act of injury, to the
+consummation of human depravity?
+
+"When the decision of the magistrates was declared, a general murmur of
+applause and involuntary transport burst forth from every one present.
+It was at first low, and gradually became louder. As it was the
+expression of rapturous delight, and an emotion disinterested and
+divine, so there was an indescribable something in the very sound, that
+carried it home to the heart, and convinced every spectator that there
+was no merely personal pleasure which ever existed, that would not be
+foolish and feeble in the comparison. Every one strove who should most
+express his esteem of the amiable accused. Mr. Falkland was no sooner
+withdrawn than the gentlemen present determined to give a still further
+sanction to the business, by their congratulations. They immediately
+named a deputation to wait upon him for that purpose. Every one
+concurred to assist the general sentiment. It was a sort of sympathetic
+feeling that took hold upon all ranks and degrees. The multitude
+received him with huzzas, they took his horses from his carriage,
+dragged him along in triumph, and attended him many miles on his return
+to his own habitation. It seemed as if a public examination upon a
+criminal charge, which had hitherto been considered in every event as a
+brand of disgrace, was converted, in the present instance, into an
+occasion of enthusiastic adoration and unexampled honour.
+
+"Nothing could reach the heart of Mr. Falkland. He was not insensible to
+the general kindness and exertions; but it was too evident that the
+melancholy that had taken hold of his mind was invincible.
+
+"It was only a few weeks after this memorable scene that the real
+murderer was discovered. Every part of this story was extraordinary. The
+real murderer was Hawkins. He was found with his son, under a feigned
+name, at a village about thirty miles distant, in want of all the
+necessaries of life. He had lived there, from the period of his flight,
+in so private a manner, that all the enquiries that had been set on
+foot, by the benevolence of Mr. Falkland, or the insatiable malice of
+Mr. Tyrrel, had been insufficient to discover him. The first thing that
+had led to the detection was a parcel of clothes covered with blood,
+that were found in a ditch, and that, when drawn out, were known by the
+people of the village to belong to this man. The murder of Mr. Tyrrel
+was not a circumstance that could be unknown, and suspicion was
+immediately roused. A diligent search being made, the rusty handle, with
+part of the blade of a knife, was found thrown in a corner of his
+lodging, which, being applied to a piece of the point of a knife that
+had been broken in the wound, appeared exactly to correspond. Upon
+further enquiry two rustics, who had been accidentally on the spot,
+remembered to have seen Hawkins and his son in the town that very
+evening and to have called after them, and received no answer, though
+they were sure of their persons. Upon this accumulated evidence both
+Hawkins and his son were tried, condemned, and afterwards executed. In
+the interval between the sentence and execution Hawkins confessed his
+guilt with many marks of compunction; though there are persons by whom
+this is denied; but I have taken some pains to enquire into the fact,
+and am persuaded that their disbelief is precipitate and groundless.
+
+"The cruel injustice that this man had suffered from his village-tyrant
+was not forgotten upon the present occasion. It was by a strange
+fatality that the barbarous proceedings of Mr. Tyrrel seemed never to
+fall short of their completion; and even his death served eventually to
+consummate the ruin of a man he hated; a circumstance which, if it could
+have come to his knowledge, would perhaps have in some measure consoled
+him for his untimely end. This poor Hawkins was surely entitled to some
+pity, since his being finally urged to desperation, and brought,
+together with his son, to an ignominious fate, was originally owing to
+the sturdiness of his virtue and independence. But the compassion of the
+public was in a great measure shut against him, as they thought it a
+piece of barbarous and unpardonable selfishness, that he had not rather
+come boldly forward to meet the consequences of his own conduct, than
+suffer a man of so much public worth as Mr. Falkland, and who had been
+so desirous of doing him good, to be exposed to the risk of being tried
+for a murder that he had committed.
+
+"From this time to the present Mr. Falkland has been nearly such as you
+at present see him. Though it be several years since these transactions,
+the impression they made is for ever fresh in the mind of our
+unfortunate patron. From thenceforward his habits became totally
+different. He had before been fond of public scenes, and acting a part
+in the midst of the people among whom he immediately resided. He now
+made himself a rigid recluse. He had no associates, no friends.
+Inconsolable himself, he yet wished to treat others with kindness. There
+was a solemn sadness in his manner, attended with the most perfect
+gentleness and humanity. Every body respects him, for his benevolence is
+unalterable; but there is a stately coldness and reserve in his
+behaviour, which makes it difficult for those about him to regard him
+with the familiarity of affection. These symptoms are uninterrupted,
+except at certain times when his sufferings become intolerable, and he
+displays the marks of a furious insanity. At those times his language is
+fearful and mysterious, and he seems to figure to himself by turns every
+sort of persecution and alarm, which may be supposed to attend upon an
+accusation of murder. But, sensible of his own weakness, he is anxious
+at such times to withdraw into solitude: and his domestics in general
+know nothing of him, but the uncommunicative and haughty, but mild,
+dejection that accompanies every thing he does."
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I have stated the narrative of Mr. Collins, interspersed with such other
+information as I was able to collect, with all the exactness that my
+memory, assisted by certain memorandums I made at the time, will afford.
+I do not pretend to warrant the authenticity of any part of these
+memoirs, except so much as fell under my own knowledge, and that part
+shall be given with the same simplicity and accuracy, that I would
+observe towards a court which was to decide in the last resort upon
+every thing dear to me. The same scrupulous fidelity restrains me from
+altering the manner of Mr. Collins's narrative to adapt it to the
+precepts of my own taste; and it will soon be perceived how essential
+that narrative is to the elucidation of my history.
+
+The intention of my friend in this communication was to give me ease;
+but he in reality added to my embarrassment. Hitherto I had had no
+intercourse with the world and its passions; and, though I was not
+totally unacquainted with them as they appear in books, this proved of
+little service to me when I came to witness them myself. The case seemed
+entirely altered, when the subject of those passions was continually
+before my eyes, and the events had happened but the other day as it
+were, in the very neighbourhood where I lived. There was a connection
+and progress in this narrative, which made it altogether unlike the
+little village incidents I had hitherto known. My feelings were
+successively interested for the different persons that were brought upon
+the scene. My veneration was excited for Mr. Clare, and my applause for
+the intrepidity of Mrs. Hammond. I was astonished that any human
+creature should be so shockingly perverted as Mr. Tyrrel. I paid the
+tribute of my tears to the memory of the artless Miss Melville. I found
+a thousand fresh reasons to admire and love Mr. Falkland.
+
+At present I was satisfied with thus considering every incident in its
+obvious sense. But the story I had heard was for ever in my thoughts,
+and I was peculiarly interested to comprehend its full import. I turned
+it a thousand ways, and examined it in every point of view. In the
+original communication it appeared sufficiently distinct and
+satisfactory; but as I brooded over it, it gradually became mysterious.
+There was something strange in the character of Hawkins. So firm, so
+sturdily honest and just, as he appeared at first; all at once to become
+a murderer! His first behaviour under the prosecution, how accurately
+was it calculated to prepossess one in his favour! To be sure, if he
+were guilty, it was unpardonable in him to permit a man of so much
+dignity and worth as Mr. Falkland to suffer under the imputation of his
+crime! And yet I could not help bitterly compassionating the honest
+fellow, brought to the gallows, as he was, strictly speaking, by the
+machinations of that devil incarnate, Mr. Tyrrel. His son, too, that son
+for whom he voluntarily sacrificed his all, to die with him at the same
+tree; surely never was a story more affecting!
+
+Was it possible, after all, that Mr. Falkland should be the murderer?
+The reader will scarcely believe, that the idea suggested itself to my
+mind that I would ask him. It was but a passing thought; but it serves
+to mark the simplicity of my character. Then I recollected the virtues
+of my master, almost too sublime for human nature; I thought of his
+sufferings so unexampled, so unmerited; and chid myself for the
+suspicion. The dying confession of Hawkins recurred to my mind; and I
+felt that there was no longer a possibility of doubting. And yet what
+was the meaning of all Mr. Falkland's agonies and terrors? In fine, the
+idea having once occurred to my mind, it was fixed there for ever. My
+thoughts fluctuated from conjecture to conjecture, but this was the
+centre about which they revolved. I determined to place myself as a
+watch upon my patron.
+
+The instant I had chosen this employment for myself, I found a strange
+sort of pleasure in it. To do what is forbidden always has its charms,
+because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and
+tyrannical in the prohibition. To be a spy upon Mr. Falkland! That there
+was danger in the employment, served to give an alluring pungency to the
+choice. I remembered the stern reprimand I had received, and his
+terrible looks; and the recollection gave a kind of tingling sensation,
+not altogether unallied to enjoyment. The further I advanced, the more
+the sensation was irresistible. I seemed to myself perpetually upon the
+brink of being countermined, and perpetually roused to guard my designs.
+The more impenetrable Mr. Falkland was determined to be, the more
+uncontrollable was my curiosity. Through the whole, my alarm and
+apprehension of personal danger had a large mixture of frankness and
+simplicity, conscious of meaning no ill, that made me continually ready
+to say every thing that was upon my mind, and would not suffer me to
+believe that, when things were brought to the test, any one could be
+seriously angry with me.
+
+These reflections led gradually to a new state of my mind. When I had
+first removed into Mr. Falkland's family, the novelty of the scene
+rendered me cautious and reserved. The distant and solemn manners of my
+master seemed to have annihilated my constitutional gaiety. But the
+novelty by degrees wore off, and my constraint in the same degree
+diminished. The story I had now heard, and the curiosity it excited,
+restored to me activity, eagerness, and courage. I had always had a
+propensity to communicate my thoughts; my age was, of course, inclined
+to talkativeness; and I ventured occasionally in a sort of hesitating
+way, as if questioning whether such a conduct might be allowed, to
+express my sentiments as they arose, in the presence of Mr. Falkland.
+
+The first time I did so, he looked at me with an air of surprise, made
+me no answer, and presently took occasion to leave me. The experiment
+was soon after repeated. My master seemed half inclined to encourage me,
+and yet doubtful whether he might venture.
+
+He had long been a stranger to pleasure of every sort, and my artless
+and untaught remarks appeared to promise him some amusement. Could an
+amusement of this sort be dangerous?
+
+In this uncertainty he could not probably find it in his heart to treat
+with severity my innocent effusions. I needed but little encouragement;
+for the perturbation of my mind stood in want of this relief. My
+simplicity, arising from my being a total stranger to the intercourse of
+the world, was accompanied with a mind in some degree cultivated with
+reading, and perhaps not altogether destitute of observation and talent.
+My remarks were therefore perpetually unexpected, at one time implying
+extreme ignorance, and at another some portion of acuteness, but at all
+times having an air of innocence, frankness, and courage. There was
+still an apparent want of design in the manner, even after I was excited
+accurately to compare my observations, and study the inferences to which
+they led; for the effect of old habit was more visible than that of a
+recently conceived purpose which was yet scarcely mature.
+
+Mr. Falkland's situation was like that of a fish that plays with the
+bait employed to entrap him. By my manner he was in a certain degree
+encouraged to lay aside his usual reserve, and relax his stateliness;
+till some abrupt observation or interrogatory stung him into
+recollection, and brought back his alarm. Still it was evident that he
+bore about him a secret wound. Whenever the cause of his sorrows was
+touched, though in a manner the most indirect and remote, his
+countenance altered, his distemper returned, and it was with difficulty
+that he could suppress his emotions, sometimes conquering himself with
+painful effort, and sometimes bursting into a sort of paroxysm of
+insanity, and hastening to bury himself in solitude.
+
+These appearances I too frequently interpreted into grounds of
+suspicion, though I might with equal probability and more liberality
+have ascribed them to the cruel mortifications he had encountered in the
+objects of his darling ambition. Mr. Collins had strongly urged me to
+secrecy; and Mr. Falkland, whenever my gesture or his consciousness
+impressed him with the idea of my knowing more than I expressed, looked
+at me with wistful earnestness, as questioning what was the degree of
+information I possessed, and how it was obtained. But again at our next
+interview the simple vivacity of my manner restored his tranquillity,
+obliterated the emotion of which I had been the cause, and placed
+things afresh in their former situation.
+
+The longer this humble familiarity on my part had continued, the more
+effort it would require to suppress it; and Mr. Falkland was neither
+willing to mortify me by a severe prohibition of speech, nor even
+perhaps to make me of so much consequence, as that prohibition might
+seem to imply. Though I was curious, it must not be supposed that I had
+the object of my enquiry for ever in my mind, or that my questions and
+innuendoes were perpetually regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed
+inquisitor. The secret wound of Mr. Falkland's mind was much more
+uniformly present to his recollection than to mine; and a thousand times
+he applied the remarks that occurred in conversation; when I had not the
+remotest idea of such an application, till some singularity in his
+manner brought it back to my thoughts. The consciousness of this morbid
+sensibility, and the imagination that its influence might perhaps
+constitute the whole of the case, served probably to spur Mr. Falkland
+again to the charge, and connect a sentiment of shame, with every
+project that suggested itself for interrupting the freedom of our
+intercourse.
+
+I will give a specimen of the conversations to which I allude; and, as
+it shall be selected from those which began upon topics the most general
+and remote, the reader will easily imagine the disturbance that was
+almost daily endured by a mind so tremblingly alive as that of my
+patron.
+
+"Pray, sir," said I, one day as I was assisting Mr. Falkland in
+arranging some papers, previously to their being transcribed into his
+collection, "how came Alexander of Macedon to be surnamed the Great?"
+
+"How came it? Did you never read his history?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, Williams, and could you find no reasons there?"
+
+"Why, I do not know, sir. I could find reasons why he should be so
+famous; but every man that is talked of is not admired. Judges differ
+about the merits of Alexander. Doctor Prideaux says in his Connection,
+that he deserves only to be called the Great Cut-throat; and the author
+of Tom Jones has written a volume, to prove that he and all other
+conquerors ought to be classed with Jonathan Wild."
+
+Mr. Falkland reddened at these citations.
+
+"Accursed blasphemy! Did these authors think that, by the coarseness of
+their ribaldry, they could destroy his well-earned fame? Are learning,
+sensibility, and taste, no securities to exempt their possessor from
+this vulgar abuse? Did you ever read, Williams, of a man more gallant,
+generous, and free? Was ever mortal so completely the reverse of every
+thing engrossing and selfish? He formed to himself a sublime image of
+excellence, and his only ambition was to realise it in his own story.
+Remember his giving away every thing when he set out upon his grand
+expedition, professedly reserving for himself nothing but hope.
+Recollect his heroic confidence in Philip the physician, and his entire
+and unalterable friendship for Ephestion. He treated the captive family
+of Darius with the most cordial urbanity, and the venerable Sysigambis
+with all the tenderness and attention of a son to his mother. Never take
+the judgment, Williams, upon such a subject, of a clerical pedant or a
+Westminster justice. Examine for yourself, and you will find in
+Alexander a model of honour, generosity, and disinterestedness,--a man
+who, for the cultivated liberality of his mind, and the unparalleled
+grandeur of his projects, must stand alone the spectacle and admiration
+of all ages of the world."
+
+"Ah, sir! it is a fine thing for us to sit here and compose his
+panegyric. But shall I forget what a vast expense was bestowed in
+erecting the monument of his fame? Was not he the common disturber of
+mankind? Did not he over-run nations that would never have heard of him
+but for his devastations? How many hundred thousands of lives did he
+sacrifice in his career? What must I think of his cruelties; a whole
+tribe massacred for a crime committed by their ancestors one hundred and
+fifty years before; fifty thousand sold into slavery; two thousand
+crucified for their gallant defence of their country? Man is surely a
+strange sort of creature, who never praises any one more heartily than
+him who has spread destruction and ruin over the face of nations!"
+
+"The way of thinking you express, Williams, is natural enough, and I
+cannot blame you for it. But let me hope that you will become more
+liberal. The death of a hundred thousand men is at first sight very
+shocking; but what in reality are a hundred thousand such men, more than
+a hundred thousand sheep? It is mind, Williams, the generation of
+knowledge and virtue, that we ought to love. This was the project of
+Alexander; he set out in a great undertaking to civilise mankind; he
+delivered the vast continent of Asia from the stupidity and degradation
+of the Persian monarchy: and, though he was cut off in the midst of his
+career, we may easily perceive the vast effects of his project. Grecian
+literature and cultivation, the Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the
+Ptolemies followed, in nations which before had been sunk to the
+condition of brutes. Alexander was the builder, as notoriously as the
+destroyer, of cities."
+
+"And yet, sir, I am afraid that the pike and the battle-axe are not the
+right instruments for making men wise. Suppose it were admitted that
+the lives of men were to be sacrificed without remorse if a paramount
+good were to result, it seems to me as if murder and massacre were but a
+very left-handed way of producing civilisation and love. But pray, do
+not you think this great hero was a sort of a madman? What now will you
+say to his firing the palace of Persepolis, his weeping for other worlds
+to conquer, and his marching his whole army over the burning sands of
+Libya, merely to visit a temple, and persuade mankind that he was the
+son of Jupiter Ammon?"
+
+"Alexander, my boy, has been much misunderstood. Mankind have revenged
+themselves upon him by misrepresentation, for having so far eclipsed the
+rest of his species. It was necessary to the realising his project, that
+he should pass for a god. It was the only way by which he could get a
+firm hold upon the veneration of the stupid and bigoted Persians. It was
+this, and not a mad vanity, that was the source of his proceeding. And
+how much had he to struggle with in this respect, in the unapprehending
+obstinacy of some of his Macedonians?"
+
+"Why then, sir, at last Alexander did but employ means that all
+politicians profess to use, as well as he. He dragooned men into wisdom,
+and cheated them into the pursuit of their own happiness. But what is
+worse, sir, this Alexander, in the paroxysm of his headlong rage, spared
+neither friend nor foe. You will not pretend to justify the excesses of
+his ungovernable passion. It is impossible, sure, that a word can be
+said for a man whom a momentary provocation can hurry into the
+commission of murders--"
+
+The instant I had uttered these words, I felt what it was that I had
+done. There was a magnetical sympathy between me and my patron, so that
+their effect was not sooner produced upon him, than my own mind
+reproached me with the inhumanity of the allusion. Our confusion was
+mutual. The blood forsook at once the transparent complexion of Mr.
+Falkland, and then rushed back again with rapidity and fierceness. I
+dared not utter a word, lest I should commit a new error, worse than
+that into which I had just fallen. After a short, but severe, struggle
+to continue the conversation, Mr. Falkland began with trepidation, but
+afterwards became calmer:--
+
+"You are not candid--Alexander--You must learn more clemency--Alexander,
+I say, does not deserve this rigour. Do you remember his tears, his
+remorse, his determined abstinence from food, which he could scarcely be
+persuaded to relinquish? Did not that prove acute feeling and a rooted
+principle of equity?--Well, well, Alexander was a true and judicious
+lover of mankind, and his real merits have been little comprehended."
+
+I know not how to make the state of my mind at that moment accurately
+understood. When one idea has got possession of the soul, it is scarcely
+possible to keep it from finding its way to the lips. Error, once
+committed, has a fascinating power, like that ascribed to the eyes of
+the rattlesnake, to draw us into a second error. It deprives us of that
+proud confidence in our own strength, to which we are indebted for so
+much of our virtue. Curiosity is a restless propensity, and often does
+but hurry us forward the more irresistibly, the greater is the danger
+that attends its indulgence.
+
+"Clitus," said I, "was a man of very coarse and provoking manners, was
+he not?"
+
+Mr. Falkland felt the full force of this appeal. He gave me a
+penetrating look, as if he would see my very soul. His eyes were then in
+an instant withdrawn. I could perceive him seized with a convulsive
+shuddering which, though strongly counteracted, and therefore scarcely
+visible, had I know not what of terrible in it. He left his employment,
+strode about the room in anger, his visage gradually assumed an
+expression as of supernatural barbarity, he quitted the apartment
+abruptly, and flung the door with a violence that seemed to shake the
+house.
+
+"Is this," said I, "the fruit of conscious guilt, or of the disgust that
+a man of honour conceives at guilt undeservedly imputed?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The reader will feel how rapidly I was advancing to the brink of the
+precipice. I had a confused apprehension of what I was doing, but I
+could not stop myself. "Is it possible," said I, "that Mr. Falkland, who
+is thus overwhelmed with a sense of the unmerited dishonour that has
+been fastened upon him in the face of the world, will long endure the
+presence of a raw and unfriended youth, who is perpetually bringing back
+that dishonour to his recollection, and who seems himself the most
+forward to entertain the accusation?"
+
+I felt indeed that Mr. Falkland would not hastily incline to dismiss me,
+for the same reason that restrained him from many other actions, which
+might seem to savour of a too tender and ambiguous sensibility. But this
+reflection was little adapted to comfort me. That he should cherish in
+his heart a growing hatred against me, and that he should think himself
+obliged to retain me a continual thorn in his side, was an idea by no
+means of favourable augury to my future peace.
+
+It was some time after this that, in clearing out a case of drawers, I
+found a paper that, by some accident, had slipped behind one of the
+drawers, and been overlooked. At another time perhaps my curiosity might
+have given way to the laws of decorum, and I should have restored it
+unopened to my master, its owner. But my eagerness for information had
+been too much stimulated by the preceding incidents, to allow me at
+present to neglect any occasion of obtaining it. The paper proved to be
+a letter written by the elder Hawkins, and from its contents seemed to
+have been penned when he had first been upon the point of absconding
+from the persecutions of Mr. Tyrrel. It was as follows:--
+
+"Honourable Sir,
+
+"I have waited some time in daily hope of your honour's return into
+these parts. Old Warnes and his dame, who are left to take care of your
+house, tell me they cannot say when that will be, nor justly in what
+part of England you are at present. For my share, misfortune comes so
+thick upon me, that I must determine upon something (that is for
+certain), and out of hand. Our squire, who I must own at first used me
+kindly enough, though I am afraid that was partly out of spite to squire
+Underwood, has since determined to be the ruin of me. Sir, I have been
+no craven; I fought it up stoutly; for after all, you know, God bless
+your honour! it is but a man to a man; but he has been too much for me.
+
+"Perhaps if I were to ride over to the market-town and enquire of
+Munsle, your lawyer, he could tell me how to direct to you. But having
+hoped and waited o' this fashion, and all in vain, has put me upon other
+thoughts. I was in no hurry, sir, to apply to you; for I do not love to
+be a trouble to any body. I kept that for my last stake. Well, sir, and
+now that has failed me like, I am ashamed, as it were, to have thought
+of it. Have not I, thinks I, arms and legs as well as other people? I am
+driven out of house and home. Well, and what then? Sure I arn't a
+cabbage, that if you pull it out of the ground it must die. I am
+pennyless. True; and how many hundreds are there that live from hand to
+mouth all the days of their life? (Begging your honour's pardon) thinks
+I, if we little folks had but the wit to do for ourselves, the great
+folks would not be such maggotty changelings as they are. They would
+begin to look about them.
+
+"But there is another thing that has swayed with me more than all the
+rest. I do not know how to tell you, sir,--My poor boy, my Leonard, the
+pride of my life, has been three weeks in the county jail. It is true
+indeed, sir. Squire Tyrrel put him there. Now, sir, every time that I
+lay my head upon my pillow under my own little roof, my heart smites me
+with the situation of my Leonard. I do not mean so much for the
+hardship; I do not so much matter that. I do not expect him to go
+through the world upon velvet! I am not such a fool. But who can tell
+what may hap in a jail! I have been three times to see him; and there is
+one man in the same quarter of the prison that looks so wicked! I do not
+much fancy the looks of the rest. To be sure, Leonard is as good a lad
+as ever lived. I think he will not give his mind to such. But come what
+will, I am determined he shall not stay among them twelve hours longer.
+I am an obstinate old fool perhaps; but I have taken it into my head,
+and I will do it. Do not ask me what. But, if I were to write to your
+honour, and wait for your answer, it might take a week or ten days more.
+I must not think of it!
+
+"Squire Tyrrel is very headstrong, and you, your honour, might be a
+little hottish, or so. No, I would not have any body quarrel for me.
+There has been mischief enough done already; and I will get myself out
+of the way. So I write this, your honour, merely to unload my mind. I
+feel myself equally as much bound to respect and love you, as if you had
+done every thing for me, that I believe you would have done if things
+had chanced differently. It is most likely you will never hear of me any
+more. If it should be so, set your worthy heart at rest. I know myself
+too well, ever to be tempted to do any thing that is really bad. I have
+now my fortune to seek in the world. I have been used ill enough, God
+knows. But I bear no malice; my heart is at peace with all mankind; and
+I forgive every body. It is like enough that poor Leonard and I may have
+hardship enough to undergo, among strangers, and being obliged to hide
+ourselves like housebreakers or highwaymen. But I defy all the malice of
+fortune to make us do an ill thing. That consolation we will always keep
+against all the crosses of a heart-breaking world.
+
+          "God bless you!
+               So prays,
+  Your honour's humble servant to command,
+                    BENJAMIN HAWKINS."
+
+I read this letter with considerable attention, and it occasioned me
+many reflections. To my way of thinking it contained a very interesting
+picture of a blunt, downright, honest mind. "It is a melancholy
+consideration," said I to myself; "but such is man! To have judged from
+appearances one would have said, this is a fellow to have taken
+fortune's buffets and rewards with an incorruptible mind. And yet see
+where it all ends! This man was capable of afterwards becoming a
+murderer, and finished his life at the gallows. O poverty! thou art
+indeed omnipotent! Thou grindest us into desperation; thou confoundest
+all our boasted and most deep-rooted principles; thou fillest us to the
+very brim with malice and revenge, and renderest us capable of acts of
+unknown horror! May I never be visited by thee in the fulness of thy
+power!"
+
+Having satisfied my curiosity with respect to this paper, I took care to
+dispose of it in such a manner as that it should be found by Mr.
+Falkland; at the same time that, in obedience to the principle which at
+present governed me with absolute dominion, I was willing that the way
+in which it offered itself to his attention should suggest to him the
+idea that it had possibly passed through my hands. The next morning I
+saw him, and I exerted myself to lead the conversation, which by this
+time I well knew how to introduce, by insensible degrees to the point I
+desired. After several previous questions, remarks, and rejoinders, I
+continued:--
+
+"Well, sir, after all, I cannot help feeling very uncomfortably as to my
+ideas of human nature, when I find that there is no dependence to be
+placed upon its perseverance, and that, at least among the illiterate,
+the most promising appearances may end in the foulest disgrace."
+
+"You think, then, that literature and a cultivated mind are the only
+assurance for the constancy of our principles!"
+
+"Humph!--why do you suppose, sir, that learning and ingenuity do not
+often serve people rather to hide their crimes than to restrain them
+from committing them? History tells us strange things in that respect."
+
+"Williams," said Mr. Falkland, a little disturbed, "you are extremely
+given to censure and severity."
+
+"I hope not. I am sure I am most fond of looking on the other side of
+the picture, and considering how many men have been aspersed, and even
+at some time or other almost torn to pieces by their fellow-creatures,
+whom, when properly understood, we find worthy of our reverence and
+love."
+
+"Indeed," replied Mr. Falkland, with a sigh, "when I consider these
+things I do not wonder at the dying exclamation of Brutus, 'O Virtue, I
+sought thee as a substance, but I find thee an empty name!' I am too
+much inclined to be of his opinion."
+
+"Why, to be sure, sir, innocence and guilt are too much confounded in
+human life. I remember an affecting story of a poor man in the reign of
+Queen Elizabeth, who would have infallibly been hanged for murder upon
+the strength of circumstantial evidence, if the person really concerned
+had not been himself upon the jury and prevented it."
+
+In saying this I touched the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He
+came up to me with a ferocious countenance, as if determined to force me
+into a confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change
+his design! he drew back with trepidation, and exclaimed, "Detested be
+the universe, and the laws that govern it! Honour, justice, virtue, are
+all the juggle of knaves! If it were in my power I would instantly crush
+the whole system into nothing!"
+
+I replied; "Oh, sir! things are not so bad as you imagine. The world was
+made for men of sense to do what they will with. Its affairs cannot be
+better than in the direction of the genuine heroes; and as in the end
+they will be found the truest friends of the whole, so the multitude
+have nothing to do but to look on, be fashioned, and admire."
+
+Mr. Falkland made a powerful effort to recover his tranquillity.
+"Williams," said he, "you instruct me well. You have a right notion of
+things, and I have great hopes of you. I will be more of a man; I will
+forget the past, and do better for the time to come. The future, the
+future is always our own."
+
+"I am sorry, sir, that I have given you pain. I am afraid to say all
+that I think. But it is my opinion that mistakes will ultimately be
+cleared up, justice done, and the true state of things come to light, in
+spite of the false colours that may for a time obscure it."
+
+The idea I suggested did not give Mr. Falkland the proper degree of
+delight. He suffered a temporary relapse. "Justice!"--he muttered. "I do
+not know what is justice. My case is not within the reach of common
+remedies; perhaps of none. I only know that I am miserable. I began life
+with the best intentions and the most fervid philanthropy; and here I
+am--miserable--miserable beyond expression or endurance."
+
+Having said this, he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and
+re-assumed his accustomed dignity and command. "How came this
+conversation?" cried he. "Who gave you a right to be my confidant? Base,
+artful wretch that you are! learn to be more respectful! Are my passions
+to be wound and unwound by an insolent domestic? Do you think I will be
+an instrument to be played on at your pleasure, till you have extorted
+all the treasures of my soul? Begone, and fear lest you be made to pay
+for the temerity you have already committed!"
+
+There was an energy and determination in the gestures with which these
+words were accompanied, that did not admit of their being disputed. My
+mouth was closed; I felt as if deprived of all share of activity, and
+was only able silently and passively to quit the apartment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Two days subsequent to this conversation, Mr. Falkland ordered me to be
+called to him. [I shall continue to speak in my narrative of the silent,
+as well as the articulate part of the intercourse between us. His
+countenance was habitually animated and expressive, much beyond that of
+any other man I have seen. The curiosity which, as I have said,
+constituted my ruling passion, stimulated me to make it my perpetual
+study. It will also most probably happen, while I am thus employed in
+collecting the scattered incidents of my history, that I shall upon some
+occasions annex to appearances an explanation which I was far from
+possessing at the time, and was only suggested to me through the medium
+of subsequent events.]
+
+When I entered the apartment, I remarked in Mr. Falkland's countenance
+an unwonted composure. This composure however did not seem to result
+from internal ease, but from an effort which, while he prepared himself
+for an interesting scene, was exerted to prevent his presence of mind,
+and power of voluntary action, from suffering any diminution.
+
+"Williams," said he, "I am determined, whatever it may cost me, to have
+an explanation with you. You are a rash and inconsiderate boy, and have
+given me much disturbance. You ought to have known that, though I allow
+you to talk with me upon indifferent subjects, it is very improper in
+you to lead the conversation to any thing that relates to my personal
+concerns. You have said many things lately in a very mysterious way, and
+appear to know something more than I am aware of. I am equally at a loss
+to guess how you came by your knowledge, as of what it consists. But I
+think I perceive too much inclination on your part to trifle with my
+peace of mind. That ought not to be, nor have I deserved any such
+treatment from you. But, be that as it will, the guesses in which you
+oblige me to employ myself are too painful. It is a sort of sporting
+with my feelings, which, as a man of resolution, I am determined to
+bring to an end. I expect you therefore to lay aside all mystery and
+equivocation, and inform me explicitly what it is upon which your
+allusions are built. What is it you know? What is it you want? I have
+been too much exposed already to unparalleled mortification and
+hardship, and my wounds will not bear this perpetual tampering."
+
+"I feel, sir," answered I, "how wrong I have been, and am ashamed that
+such a one as I should have given you all this trouble and displeasure.
+I felt it at the time; but I have been hurried along, I do not know how.
+I have always tried to stop myself, but the demon that possessed me was
+too strong for me. I know nothing, sir, but what Mr. Collins told me. He
+told me the story of Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville and Hawkins. I am
+sure, sir, he said nothing but what was to your honour, and proved you
+to be more an angel than a man."
+
+"Well, sir: I found a letter written by that Hawkins the other day; did
+not that letter fall into your hands? Did not you read it?"
+
+"For God's sake, sir, turn me out of your house. Punish me in some way
+or other, that I may forgive myself. I am a foolish, wicked, despicable
+wretch. I confess, sir, I did read the letter."
+
+"And how dared you read it? It was indeed very wrong of you. But we will
+talk of that by and by. Well, and what did you say to the letter? You
+know it seems, that Hawkins was hanged."
+
+"I say, sir? why it went to my heart to read it. I say, as I said the
+day before yesterday, that when I see a man of so much principle
+afterwards deliberately proceeding to the very worst of crimes, I can
+scarcely bear to think of it."
+
+"That is what you say? It seems too you know--accursed
+remembrance!--that I was accused of this crime?"
+
+I was silent.
+
+"Well, sir. You know too, perhaps, that from the hour the crime was
+committed--yes, sir, that was the date [and as he said this, there was
+somewhat frightful, I had almost said diabolical, in his countenance]--I
+have not had an hour's peace; I became changed from the happiest to the
+most miserable thing that lives; sleep has fled from my eyes; joy has
+been a stranger to my thoughts; and annihilation I should prefer a
+thousand times to the being that I am. As soon as I was capable of a
+choice, I chose honour and the esteem of mankind as a good I preferred
+to all others. You know, it seems, in how many ways my ambition has been
+disappointed,--I do not thank Collins for having been the historian of
+my disgrace,--would to God that night could be blotted from the memory
+of man!--But the scene of that night, instead of perishing, has been a
+source of ever new calamity to me, which must flow for ever! Am I then,
+thus miserable and ruined, a proper subject upon which for you to
+exercise your ingenuity, and improve your power of tormenting? Was it
+not enough that I was publicly dishonoured? that I was deprived, by the
+pestilential influence of some demon, of the opportunity of avenging my
+dishonour? No: in addition to this, I have been charged with having in
+this critical moment intercepted my own vengeance by the foulest of
+crimes. That trial is past. Misery itself has nothing worse in store for
+me, except what you have inflicted: the seeming to doubt of my
+innocence, which, after the fullest and most solemn examination, has
+been completely established. You have forced me to this explanation. You
+have extorted from me a confidence which I had no inclination to make.
+But it is a part of the misery of my situation, that I am at the mercy
+of every creature, however little, who feels himself inclined to sport
+with my distress. Be content. You have brought me low enough."
+
+"Oh, sir, I am not content; I cannot be content! I cannot bear to think
+what I have done. I shall never again be able to look in the face of the
+best of masters and the best of men. I beg of you, sir, to turn me out
+of your service. Let me go and hide myself where I may never see you
+more."
+
+Mr. Falkland's countenance had indicated great severity through the
+whole of this conversation; but now it became more harsh and tempestuous
+than ever. "How now, rascal!" cried he. "You want to leave me, do you?
+Who told you that I wished to part with you? But you cannot bear to live
+with such a miserable wretch as I am! You are not disposed to put up
+with the caprices of a man so dissatisfied and unjust!"
+
+"Oh, sir! do not talk to me thus! Do with me any thing you will. Kill me
+if you please."
+
+"Kill you!" [Volumes could not describe the emotions with which this
+echo of my words was given and received.]
+
+"Sir, I could die to serve you! I love you more than I can express. I
+worship you as a being of a superior nature. I am foolish, raw,
+inexperienced,--worse than any of these;--but never did a thought of
+disloyalty to your service enter into my heart."
+
+Here our conversation ended; and the impression it made upon my youthful
+mind it is impossible to describe. I thought with astonishment, even
+with rapture, of the attention and kindness towards me I discovered in
+Mr. Falkland, through all the roughness of his manner. I could never
+enough wonder at finding myself, humble as I was by my birth, obscure as
+I had hitherto been, thus suddenly become of so much importance to the
+happiness of one of the most enlightened and accomplished men in
+England. But this consciousness attached me to my patron more eagerly
+than ever, and made me swear a thousand times, as I meditated upon my
+situation, that I would never prove unworthy of so generous a protector.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Is it not unaccountable that, in the midst of all my increased
+veneration for my patron, the first tumult of my emotion was scarcely
+subsided, before the old question that had excited my conjectures
+recurred to my mind, Was he the murderer? It was a kind of fatal
+impulse, that seemed destined to hurry me to my destruction. I did not
+wonder at the disturbance that was given to Mr. Falkland by any
+allusion, however distant, to this fatal affair. That was as completely
+accounted for from the consideration of his excessive sensibility in
+matters of honour, as it would have been upon the supposition of the
+most atrocious guilt. Knowing, as he did, that such a charge had once
+been connected with his name, he would of course be perpetually uneasy,
+and suspect some latent insinuation at every possible opportunity. He
+would doubt and fear, lest every man with whom he conversed harboured
+the foulest suspicion against him. In my case he found that I was in
+possession of some information, more than he was aware of, without its
+being possible for him to decide to what it amounted, whether I had
+heard a just or unjust, a candid or calumniatory tale. He had also
+reason to suppose that I gave entertainment to thoughts derogatory to
+his honour, and that I did not form that favourable judgment, which the
+exquisite refinement of his ruling passion made indispensable to his
+peace. All these considerations would of course maintain in him a state
+of perpetual uneasiness. But, though I could find nothing that I could
+consider as justifying me in persisting in the shadow of a doubt, yet,
+as I have said, the uncertainty and restlessness of my contemplations
+would by no means depart from me.
+
+The fluctuating state of my mind produced a contention of opposite
+principles, that by turns usurped dominion over my conduct. Sometimes I
+was influenced by the most complete veneration for my master; I placed
+an unreserved confidence in his integrity and his virtue, and implicitly
+surrendered my understanding for him to set it to what point he pleased.
+At other times the confidence, which had before flowed with the most
+plenteous tide, began to ebb; I was, as I had already been, watchful,
+inquisitive, suspicious, full of a thousand conjectures as to the
+meaning of the most indifferent actions. Mr. Falkland, who was most
+painfully alive to every thing that related to his honour, saw these
+variations, and betrayed his consciousness of them now in one manner,
+and now in another, frequently before I was myself aware, sometimes
+almost before they existed. The situation of both was distressing; we
+were each of us a plague to the other; and I often wondered, that the
+forbearance and benignity of my master was not at length exhausted, and
+that he did not determine to thrust from him for ever so incessant an
+observer. There was indeed one eminent difference between his share in
+the transaction and mine. I had some consolation in the midst of my
+restlessness. Curiosity is a principle that carries its pleasures, as
+well as its pains, along with it. The mind is urged by a perpetual
+stimulus; it seems as if it were continually approaching to the end of
+its race; and as the insatiable desire of satisfaction is its principle
+of conduct, so it promises itself in that satisfaction an unknown
+gratification, which seems as if it were capable of fully compensating
+any injuries that may be suffered in the career. But to Mr. Falkland
+there was no consolation. What he endured in the intercourse between us
+appeared to be gratuitous evil. He had only to wish that there was no
+such person as myself in the world, and to curse the hour when his
+humanity led him to rescue me from my obscurity, and place me in his
+service.
+
+A consequence produced upon me by the extraordinary nature of my
+situation it is necessary to mention. The constant state of vigilance
+and suspicion in which my mind was retained, worked a very rapid change
+in my character. It seemed to have all the effect that might have been
+expected from years of observation and experience. The strictness with
+which I endeavoured to remark what passed in the mind of one man, and
+the variety of conjectures into which I was led, appeared, as it were,
+to render me a competent adept in the different modes in which the
+human intellect displays its secret workings. I no longer said to
+myself, as I had done in the beginning, "I will ask Mr. Falkland whether
+he were the murderer." On the contrary, after having carefully examined
+the different kinds of evidence of which the subject was susceptible,
+and recollecting all that had already passed upon the subject, it was
+not without considerable pain, that I felt myself unable to discover any
+way in which I could be perfectly and unalterably satisfied of my
+patron's innocence. As to his guilt, I could scarcely bring myself to
+doubt that in some way or other, sooner or later, I should arrive at the
+knowledge of that, if it really existed. But I could not endure to
+think, almost for a moment, of that side of the alternative as true; and
+with all my ungovernable suspicion arising from the mysteriousness of
+the circumstances, and all the delight which a young and unfledged mind
+receives from ideas that give scope to all that imagination can picture
+of terrible or sublime, I could not yet bring myself to consider Mr.
+Falkland's guilt as a supposition attended with the remotest
+probability.
+
+I hope the reader will forgive me for dwelling thus long on preliminary
+circumstances. I shall come soon enough to the story of my own misery. I
+have already said, that one of the motives which induced me to the
+penning of this narrative, was to console myself in my insupportable
+distress. I derive a melancholy pleasure from dwelling upon the
+circumstances which imperceptibly paved the way to my ruin. While I
+recollect or describe past scenes, which occurred in a more favourable
+period of my life, my attention is called off for a short interval, from
+the hopeless misfortune in which I am at present involved. The man must
+indeed possess an uncommon portion of hardness of heart, who can envy
+me so slight a relief.--To proceed.
+
+For some time after the explanation which had thus taken place between
+me and Mr. Falkland, his melancholy, instead of being in the slightest
+degree diminished by the lenient hand of time, went on perpetually to
+increase. His fits of insanity--for such I must denominate them for want
+of a distinct appellation, though it is possible they might not fall
+under the definition that either the faculty or the court of chancery
+appropriate to the term--became stronger and more durable than ever. It
+was no longer practicable wholly to conceal them from the family, and
+even from the neighbourhood. He would sometimes, without any previous
+notice, absent himself from his house for two or three days,
+unaccompanied by servant or attendant. This was the more extraordinary,
+as it was well known that he paid no visits, nor kept up any sort of
+intercourse with the gentlemen of the vicinity. But it was impossible
+that a man of Mr. Falkland's distinction and fortune should long
+continue in such a practice, without its being discovered what was
+become of him; though a considerable part of our county was among the
+wildest and most desolate districts that are to be found in South
+Britain. Mr. Falkland was sometimes seen climbing among the rocks,
+reclining motionless for hours together upon the edge of a precipice, or
+lulled into a kind of nameless lethargy of despair by the dashing of the
+torrents. He would remain for whole nights together under the naked cope
+of heaven, inattentive to the consideration either of place or time;
+insensible to the variations of the weather, or rather seeming to be
+delighted with that uproar of the elements, which partially called off
+his attention from the discord and dejection that occupied his own mind.
+
+At first, when we received intelligence at any time of the place to
+which Mr. Falkland had withdrawn himself, some person of his household,
+Mr. Collins or myself, but most generally myself, as I was always at
+home, and always, in the received sense of the word, at leisure, went to
+him to persuade him to return. But, after a few experiments, we thought
+it advisable to desist, and leave him to prolong his absence, or to
+terminate it, as might happen to suit his own inclination. Mr. Collins,
+whose grey hairs and long services seemed to give him a sort of right to
+be importunate, sometimes succeeded; though even in that case there was
+nothing that could sit more uneasily upon Mr. Falkland than this
+insinuation as if he wanted a guardian to take care of him, or as if he
+were in, or in danger of falling into, a state in which he would be
+incapable of deliberately controlling his own words and actions. At one
+time he would suddenly yield to his humble, venerable friend, murmuring
+grievously at the constraint that was put upon him, but without spirit
+enough even to complain of it with energy. At another time, even though
+complying, he would suddenly burst out in a paroxysm of resentment. Upon
+these occasions there was something inconceivably, savagely terrible in
+his anger, that gave to the person against whom it was directed the most
+humiliating and insupportable sensations. Me he always treated, at these
+times, with fierceness, and drove me from him with a vehemence lofty,
+emphatical, and sustained, beyond any thing of which I should have
+thought human nature to be capable. These sallies seemed always to
+constitute a sort of crisis in his indisposition; and, whenever he was
+induced to such a premature return, he would fall immediately after into
+a state of the most melancholy inactivity, in which he usually continued
+for two or three days. It was by an obstinate fatality that, whenever I
+saw Mr. Falkland in these deplorable situations, and particularly when I
+lighted upon him after having sought him among the rocks and precipices,
+pale, emaciated, solitary, and haggard, the suggestion would continually
+recur to me, in spite of inclination, in spite of persuasion, and in
+spite of evidence, Surely this man is a murderer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+It was in one of the lucid intervals, as I may term them, that occurred
+during this period, that a peasant was brought before him, in his
+character of a justice of peace, upon an accusation of having murdered
+his fellow. As Mr. Falkland had by this time acquired the repute of a
+melancholy valetudinarian, it is probable he would not have been called
+upon to act in his official character upon the present occasion, had it
+not been that two or three of the neighbouring justices were all of them
+from home at once, so that he was the only one to be found in a circuit
+of many miles. The reader however must not imagine, though I have
+employed the word insanity in describing Mr. Falkland's symptoms, that
+he was by any means reckoned for a madman by the generality of those who
+had occasion to observe him. It is true that his behaviour, at certain
+times, was singular and unaccountable; but then, at other times, there
+was in it so much dignity, regularity, and economy; he knew so well how
+to command and make himself respected; his actions and carriage were so
+condescending, considerate, and benevolent, that, far from having
+forfeited the esteem of the unfortunate or the many, they were loud and
+earnest in his praises.
+
+I was present at the examination of this peasant. The moment I heard of
+the errand which had brought this rabble of visitors, a sudden thought
+struck me. I conceived the possibility of rendering the incident
+subordinate to the great enquiry which drank up all the currents of my
+soul. I said, this man is arraigned of murder, and murder is the
+master-key that wakes distemper in the mind of Mr. Falkland. I will
+watch him without remission. I will trace all the mazes of his thought.
+Surely at such a time his secret anguish must betray itself. Surely, if
+it be not my own fault, I shall now be able to discover the state of his
+plea before the tribunal of unerring justice.
+
+I took my station in a manner most favourable to the object upon which
+my mind was intent. I could perceive in Mr. Falkland's features, as he
+entered, a strong reluctance to the business in which he was engaged;
+but there was no possibility of retreating. His countenance was
+embarrassed and anxious; he scarcely saw any body. The examination had
+not proceeded far, before he chanced to turn his eye to the part of the
+room where I was. It happened in this as in some preceding instances--we
+exchanged a silent look, by which we told volumes to each other. Mr.
+Falkland's complexion turned from red to pale, and from pale to red. I
+perfectly understood his feelings, and would willingly have withdrawn
+myself. But it was impossible; my passions were too deeply engaged; I
+was rooted to the spot; though my own life, that of my master, or almost
+of a whole nation had been at stake, I had no power to change my
+position.
+
+The first surprise however having subsided, Mr. Falkland assumed a look
+of determined constancy, and even seemed to increase in self-possession
+much beyond what could have been expected from his first entrance. This
+he could probably have maintained, had it not been that the scene,
+instead of being permanent, was in some sort perpetually changing. The
+man who was brought before him was vehemently accused by the brother of
+the deceased as having acted from the most rooted malice. He swore that
+there had been an old grudge between the parties, and related several
+instances of it. He affirmed that the murderer had sought the earliest
+opportunity of wreaking his revenge; had struck the first blow; and,
+though the contest was in appearance only a common boxing match, had
+watched the occasion of giving a fatal stroke, which was followed by the
+instant death of his antagonist.
+
+While the accuser was giving in his evidence, the accused discovered
+every token of the most poignant sensibility. At one time his features
+were convulsed with anguish; tears unbidden trickled down his manly
+cheeks; and at another he started with apparent astonishment at the
+unfavourable turn that was given to the narrative, though without
+betraying any impatience to interrupt. I never saw a man less ferocious
+in his appearance. He was tall, well made, and comely. His countenance
+was ingenuous and benevolent, without folly. By his side stood a young
+woman, his sweetheart, extremely agreeable in her person, and her looks
+testifying how deeply she interested herself in the fate of her lover.
+The accidental spectators were divided, between indignation against the
+enormity of the supposed criminal, and compassion for the poor girl that
+accompanied him. They seemed to take little notice of the favourable
+appearances visible in the person of the accused, till, in the sequel,
+those appearances were more forcibly suggested to their attention. For
+Mr. Falkland, he was at one moment engrossed by curiosity and
+earnestness to investigate the tale, while at another he betrayed a sort
+of revulsion of sentiment, which made the investigation too painful for
+him to support.
+
+When the accused was called upon for his defence, he readily owned the
+misunderstanding that had existed, and that the deceased was the worst
+enemy he had in the world. Indeed he was his only enemy, and he could
+not tell the reason that had made him so. He had employed every effort
+to overcome his animosity, but in vain. The deceased had upon all
+occasions sought to mortify him, and do him an ill turn; but he had
+resolved never to be engaged in a broil with him, and till this day he
+had succeeded. If he had met with a misfortune with any other man,
+people at least might have thought it accident; but now it would always
+be believed that he had acted from secret malice and a bad heart.
+
+The fact was, that he and his sweetheart had gone to a neighbouring
+fair, where this man had met them. The man had often tried to affront
+him; and his passiveness, interpreted into cowardice, had perhaps
+encouraged the other to additional rudeness. Finding that he had endured
+trivial insults to himself with an even temper, the deceased now thought
+proper to turn his brutality upon the young woman that accompanied him.
+He pursued them; he endeavoured in various manners to harass and vex
+them; they had sought in vain to shake him off. The young woman was
+considerably terrified. The accused expostulated with their persecutor,
+and asked him how he could be so barbarous as to persist in frightening
+a woman? He replied with an insulting tone, "Then the woman should find
+some one able to protect her; people that encouraged and trusted to such
+a thief as that, deserved no better!" The accused tried every expedient
+he could invent; at length he could endure it no longer; he became
+exasperated, and challenged the assailant. The challenge was accepted; a
+ring was formed; he confided the care of his sweetheart to a bystander;
+and unfortunately the first blow he struck proved fatal.
+
+The accused added, that he did not care what became of him. He had been
+anxious to go through the world in an inoffensive manner, and now he had
+the guilt of blood upon him. He did not know but it would be kindness in
+them to hang him out of the way; for his conscience would reproach him
+as long as he lived, and the figure of the deceased, as he had lain
+senseless and without motion at his feet, would perpetually haunt him.
+The thought of this man, at one moment full of life and vigour, and the
+next lifted a helpless corpse from the ground, and all owing to him, was
+a thought too dreadful to be endured. He had loved the poor maiden, who
+had been the innocent occasion of this, with all his heart; but from
+this time he should never support the sight of her. The sight would
+bring a tribe of fiends in its rear. One unlucky minute had poisoned all
+his hopes, and made life a burden to him. Saying this, his countenance
+fell, the muscles of his face trembled with agony, and he looked the
+statue of despair.
+
+This was the story of which Mr. Falkland was called upon to be the
+auditor. Though the incidents were, for the most part, wide of those
+which belonged to the adventures of the preceding volume, and there had
+been much less policy and skill displayed on either part in this rustic
+encounter, yet there were many points which, to a man who bore the
+former strongly in his recollection, suggested a sufficient resemblance.
+In each case it was a human brute persisting in a course of hostility to
+a man of benevolent character, and suddenly and terribly cut off in the
+midst of his career. These points perpetually smote upon the heart of
+Mr. Falkland. He at one time started with astonishment, and at another
+shifted his posture, like a man who is unable longer to endure the
+sensations that press upon him. Then he new strung his nerves to
+stubborn patience. I could see, while his muscles preserved an
+inflexible steadiness, tears of anguish roll down his cheeks. He dared
+not trust his eyes to glance towards the side of the room where I stood;
+and this gave an air of embarrassment to his whole figure. But when the
+accused came to speak of his feelings, to describe the depth of his
+compunction for an involuntary fault, he could endure it no longer. He
+suddenly rose, and with every mark of horror and despair rushed out of
+the room.
+
+This circumstance made no material difference in the affair of the
+accused. The parties were detained about half an hour. Mr. Falkland had
+already heard the material parts of the evidence in person. At the
+expiration of that interval, he sent for Mr. Collins out of the room.
+The story of the culprit was confirmed by many witnesses who had seen
+the transaction. Word was brought that my master was indisposed; and, at
+the same time, the accused was ordered to be discharged. The vengeance
+of the brother however, as I afterwards found, did not rest here, and he
+met with a magistrate, more scrupulous or more despotic, by whom the
+culprit was committed for trial.
+
+This affair was no sooner concluded, than I hastened into the garden,
+and plunged into the deepest of its thickets. My mind was full, almost
+to bursting. I no sooner conceived myself sufficiently removed from all
+observation, than my thoughts forced their way spontaneously to my
+tongue, and I exclaimed, in a fit of uncontrollable enthusiasm, "This is
+the murderer; the Hawkinses were innocent! I am sure of it! I will
+pledge my life for it! It is out! It is discovered! Guilty, upon my
+soul!"
+
+While I thus proceeded with hasty steps along the most secret paths of
+the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts
+in involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone
+a total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind
+of rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of
+rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy. In the very tempest
+and hurricane of the passions, I seemed to enjoy the most soul-ravishing
+calm. I cannot better express the then state of my mind than by saying,
+I was never so perfectly alive as at that moment.
+
+This state of mental elevation continued for several hours, but at
+length subsided, and gave place to more deliberate reflection. One of
+the first questions that then occurred was, what shall I do with the
+knowledge I have been so eager to acquire? I had no inclination to turn
+informer. I felt what I had had no previous conception of, that it was
+possible to love a murderer, and, as I then understood it, the worst of
+murderers. I conceived it to be in the highest degree absurd and
+iniquitous, to cut off a man qualified for the most essential and
+extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act which, whatever
+were its merits, could not be retrieved.
+
+This thought led me to another, which had at first passed unnoticed. If
+I had been disposed to turn informer, what had occurred amounted to no
+evidence that was admissible in a court of justice. Well then, added I,
+if it be such as would not be admitted at a criminal tribunal, am I sure
+it is such as I ought to admit? There were twenty persons besides myself
+present at the scene from which I pretend to derive such entire
+conviction. Not one of them saw it in the light that I did. It either
+appeared to them a casual and unimportant circumstance, or they thought
+it sufficiently accounted for by Mr. Falkland's infirmity and
+misfortunes. Did it really contain such an extent of arguments and
+application, that nobody but I was discerning enough to see?
+
+But all this reasoning produced no alteration in my way of thinking. For
+this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: "Mr. Falkland
+is the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!"
+Thus was I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny. The state of my
+passions in their progressive career, the inquisitiveness and impatience
+of my thoughts, appeared to make this determination unavoidable.
+
+An incident occurred while I was in the garden, that seemed to make no
+impression upon me at the time, but which I recollected when my thoughts
+were got into somewhat of a slower motion. In the midst of one of my
+paroxysms of exclamation, and when I thought myself most alone, the
+shadow of a man as avoiding me passed transiently by me at a small
+distance. Though I had scarcely caught a faint glimpse of his person,
+there was something in the occurrence that persuaded me it was Mr.
+Falkland. I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the
+words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not power
+immediately to suspend the career of my reflections. Subsequent
+circumstances however brought back the apprehension to my mind. I had
+scarcely a doubt of its reality, when dinner-time came, and Mr. Falkland
+was not to be found. Supper and bed-time passed in the same manner. The
+only conclusion made by his servants upon this circumstance was, that he
+was gone upon one of his accustomed melancholy rambles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The period at which my story is now arrived seemed as if it were the
+very crisis of the fortune of Mr. Falkland. Incident followed upon
+incident, in a kind of breathless succession. About nine o'clock the
+next morning an alarm was given, that one of the chimneys of the house
+was on fire. No accident could be apparently more trivial; but presently
+it blazed with such fury, as to make it clear that some beam of the
+house, which in the first building had been improperly placed, had been
+reached by the flames. Some danger was apprehended for the whole
+edifice. The confusion was the greater, in consequence of the absence of
+the master, as well as of Mr. Collins, the steward. While some of the
+domestics were employed in endeavouring to extinguish the flames, it was
+thought proper that others should busy themselves in removing the most
+valuable moveables to a lawn in the garden. I took some command in the
+affair, to which indeed my station in the family seemed to entitle me,
+and for which I was judged qualified by my understanding and mental
+resources.
+
+Having given some general directions, I conceived, that it was not
+enough to stand by and superintend, but that I should contribute my
+personal labour in the public concern. I set out for that purpose; and
+my steps, by some mysterious fatality, were directed to the private
+apartment at the end of the library. Here, as I looked round, my eye was
+suddenly caught by the trunk mentioned in the first pages of my
+narrative.
+
+My mind was already raised to its utmost pitch. In a window-seat of the
+room lay a number of chisels and other carpenter's tools. I know not
+what infatuation instantaneously seized me. The idea was too powerful to
+be resisted. I forgot the business upon which I came, the employment of
+the servants, and the urgency of general danger. I should have done the
+same if the flames that seemed to extend as they proceeded, and already
+surmounted the house, had reached this very apartment. I snatched a tool
+suitable for the purpose, threw myself upon the ground, and applied with
+eagerness to a magazine which inclosed all for which my heart panted.
+After two or three efforts, in which the energy of uncontrollable
+passion was added to my bodily strength, the fastenings gave way, the
+trunk opened, and all that I sought was at once within my reach.
+
+I was in the act of lifting up the lid, when Mr. Falkland entered, wild,
+breathless, distracted in his looks! He had been brought home from a
+considerable distance by the sight of the flames. At the moment of his
+appearance the lid dropped down from my hand. He no sooner saw me than
+his eyes emitted sparks of rage. He ran with eagerness to a brace of
+loaded pistols which hung in the room, and, seizing one, presented it to
+my head. I saw his design, and sprang to avoid it; but, with the same
+rapidity with which he had formed his resolution, he changed it, and
+instantly went to the window, and flung the pistol into the court below.
+He bade me begone with his usual irresistible energy; and, overcome as
+I was already by the horror of the detection, I eagerly complied.
+
+A moment after, a considerable part of the chimney tumbled with noise
+into the court below, and a voice exclaimed that the fire was more
+violent than ever. These circumstances seemed to produce a mechanical
+effect upon my patron, who, having first locked the closet, appeared on
+the outside of the house, ascended the roof, and was in a moment in
+every place where his presence was required. The flames were at length
+extinguished.
+
+The reader can with difficulty form a conception of the state to which I
+was now reduced. My act was in some sort an act of insanity; but how
+undescribable are the feelings with which I looked back upon it! It was
+an instantaneous impulse, a short-lived and passing alienation of mind;
+but what must Mr. Falkland think of that alienation? To any man a person
+who had once shown himself capable of so wild a flight of the mind, must
+appear dangerous: how must he appear to a man under Mr. Falkland's
+circumstances? I had just had a pistol held to my head, by a man
+resolved to put a period to my existence. That indeed was past; but what
+was it that fate had yet in reserve for me! The insatiable vengeance of
+a Falkland, of a man whose hands were, to my apprehension, red with
+blood, and his thoughts familiar with cruelty and murder. How great were
+the resources of his mind, resources henceforth to be confederated for
+my destruction! This was the termination of an ungoverned curiosity, an
+impulse that I had represented to myself as so innocent or so venial.
+
+In the high tide of boiling passion I had overlooked all consequences.
+It now appeared to me like a dream. Is it in man to leap from the
+high-raised precipice, or rush unconcerned into the midst of flames? Was
+it possible I could have forgotten for a moment the awe-creating manners
+of Falkland, and the inexorable fury I should awake in his soul? No
+thought of future security had reached my mind. I had acted upon no
+plan. I had conceived no means of concealing my deed, after it had once
+been effected. But it was over now. One short minute had effected a
+reverse in my situation, the suddenness of which the history of man,
+perhaps is unable to surpass.
+
+I have always been at a loss to account for my having plunged thus
+headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of
+unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity
+of nature, into another sentiment of the same general character. This
+was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All
+was confusion around me, and all changed into hurricane within. The
+general situation, to my unpractised apprehension, appeared desperate,
+and I by contagion became alike desperate. At first I had been in some
+degree calm and collected, but that too was a desperate effort; and when
+it gave way, a kind of instant insanity became its successor.
+
+I had now every thing to fear. And yet what was my fault? It proceeded
+from none of those errors which are justly held up to the aversion of
+mankind; my object had been neither wealth, nor the means of indulgence,
+nor the usurpation of power. No spark of malignity had harboured in my
+soul. I had always reverenced the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland; I
+reverenced it still. My offence had merely been a mistaken thirst of
+knowledge. Such however it was, as to admit neither of forgiveness nor
+remission. This epoch was the crisis of my fate, dividing what may be
+called the offensive part from the defensive, which has been the sole
+business of my remaining years. Alas! my offence was short, not
+aggravated by any sinister intention: but the reprisals I was to suffer
+are long, and can terminate only with my life!
+
+In the state in which I found myself, when the recollection of what I
+had done flowed back upon my mind, I was incapable of any resolution.
+All was chaos and uncertainty within me. My thoughts were too full of
+horror to be susceptible of activity. I felt deserted of my intellectual
+powers, palsied in mind, and compelled to sit in speechless expectation
+of the misery to which I was destined. To my own conception I was like a
+man, who, though blasted with lightning, and deprived for ever of the
+power of motion, should yet retain the consciousness of his situation.
+Death-dealing despair was the only idea of which I was sensible.
+
+I was still in this situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His
+message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening
+and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure
+who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the
+power of arranging my ideas and directing my steps. I understood, that
+the minute the affair of the fire was over Mr. Falkland had retired to
+his own room. It was evening before he ordered me to be called.
+
+I found in him every token of extreme distress, except that there was an
+air of solemn and sad composure that crowned the whole. For the present,
+all appearance of gloom, stateliness, and austerity was gone. As I
+entered he looked up, and, seeing who it was, ordered me to bolt the
+door. I obeyed. He went round the room, and examined its other avenues.
+He then returned to where I stood. I trembled in every joint of my
+frame. I exclaimed within myself, "What scene of death has Roscius now
+to act?"
+
+"Williams!" said he, in a tone which had more in it of sorrow than
+resentment, "I have attempted your life! I am a wretch devoted to the
+scorn and execration of mankind!" There he stopped.
+
+"If there be one being on the whole earth that feels the scorn and
+execration due to such a wretch more strongly than another, it is
+myself. I have been kept in a state of perpetual torture and madness.
+But I can put an end to it and its consequences; and, so far at least as
+relates to you, I am determined to do it. I know the price, and--I will
+make the purchase.
+
+"You must swear," said he. "You must attest every sacrament, divine and
+human, never to disclose what I am now to tell you."--He dictated the
+oath, and I repeated it with an aching heart. I had no power to offer a
+word of remark.
+
+"This confidence," said he, "is of your seeking, not of mine. It is
+odious to me, and is dangerous to you."
+
+Having thus prefaced the disclosure he had to make, he paused. He seemed
+to collect himself as for an effort of magnitude. He wiped his face with
+his handkerchief. The moisture that incommoded him appeared not to be
+tears, but sweat.
+
+"Look at me. Observe me. Is it not strange that such a one as I should
+retain lineaments of a human creature? I am the blackest of villains. I
+am the murderer of Tyrrel. I am the assassin of the Hawkinses."
+
+I started with terror, and was silent.
+
+"What a story is mine! Insulted, disgraced, polluted in the face of
+hundreds, I was capable of any act of desperation. I watched my
+opportunity, followed Mr. Tyrrel from the rooms, seized a sharp-pointed
+knife that fell in my way, came behind him, and stabbed him to the
+heart. My gigantic oppressor rolled at my feet.
+
+"All are but links of one chain. A blow! A murder! My next business was
+to defend myself, to tell so well-digested a lie as that all mankind
+should believe it true. Never was a task so harrowing and intolerable!
+
+"Well, thus far fortune favoured me; she favoured me beyond my desire.
+The guilt was removed from me, and cast upon another; but this I was to
+endure. Whence came the circumstantial evidence against him, the broken
+knife and the blood, I am unable to tell. I suppose, by some miraculous
+accident, Hawkins was passing by, and endeavoured to assist his
+oppressor in the agonies of death. You have heard his story; you have
+read one of his letters. But you do not know the thousandth part of the
+proofs of his simple and unalterable rectitude that I have known. His
+son suffered with him; that son, for the sake of whose happiness and
+virtue he ruined himself, and would have died a hundred times.--I have
+had feelings, but I cannot describe them.
+
+"This it is to be a gentleman! a man of honour! I was the fool of fame.
+My virtue, my honesty, my everlasting peace of mind, were cheap
+sacrifices to be made at the shrine of this divinity. But, what is
+worse, there is nothing that has happened that has in any degree
+contributed to my cure. I am as much the fool of fame as ever. I cling
+to it to my last breath. Though I be the blackest of villains, I will
+leave behind me a spotless and illustrious name. There is no crime so
+malignant, no scene of blood so horrible, in which that object cannot
+engage me. It is no matter that I regard these things at a distance with
+aversion;--I am sure of it; bring me to the test, and I shall yield. I
+despise myself, but thus I am; things are gone too far to be recalled.
+
+"Why is it that I am compelled to this confidence? From the love of
+fame. I should tremble at the sight of every pistol or instrument of
+death that offered itself to my hands; and perhaps my next murder may
+not be so fortunate as those I have already committed. I had no
+alternative but to make you my confidant or my victim. It was better to
+trust you with the whole truth under every seal of secrecy, than to live
+in perpetual fear of your penetration or your rashness.
+
+"Do you know what it is you have done? To gratify a foolishly
+inquisitive humour, you have sold yourself. You shall continue in my
+service, but can never share my affection. I will benefit you in respect
+of fortune, but I shall always hate you. If ever an unguarded word
+escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy or suspicion,
+expect to pay for it by your death or worse. It is a dear bargain you
+have made. But it is too late to look back. I charge and adjure you by
+every thing that is sacred, and that is tremendous, preserve your faith!
+
+"My tongue has now for the first time for several years spoken the
+language of my heart; and the intercourse from this hour shall be shut
+for ever. I want no pity. I desire no consolation. Surrounded as I am
+with horrors, I will at least preserve my fortitude to the last. If I
+had been reserved to a different destiny, I have qualities in that
+respect worthy of a better cause. I can be mad, miserable, and frantic;
+but even in frenzy I can preserve my presence of mind and discretion."
+
+Such was the story I had been so desirous to know. Though my mind had
+brooded upon the subject for months, there was not a syllable of it that
+did not come to my ear with the most perfect sense of novelty. "Mr.
+Falkland is a murderer!" said I, as I retired from the conference. This
+dreadful appellative, "a murderer," made my very blood run cold within
+me. "He killed Mr. Tyrrel, for he could not control his resentment and
+anger: he sacrificed Hawkins the elder and Hawkins the younger, because
+he could upon no terms endure the public loss of honour: how can I
+expect that a man thus passionate and unrelenting will not sooner or
+later make me his victim?"
+
+But, notwithstanding this terrible application of the story, an
+application to which perhaps in some form or other, mankind are indebted
+for nine tenths of their abhorrence against vice, I could not help
+occasionally recurring to reflections of an opposite nature. "Mr.
+Falkland is a murderer!" resumed I. "He might yet be a most excellent
+man, if he did but think so." It is the thinking ourselves vicious then,
+that principally contributes to make us vicious.
+
+Amidst the shock I received from finding, what I had never suffered
+myself constantly to believe, that my suspicions were true, I still
+discovered new cause of admiration for my master. His menaces indeed
+were terrible. But, when I recollected the offence I had given, so
+contrary to every received principle of civilised society, so insolent
+and rude, so intolerable to a man of Mr. Falkland's elevation, and in
+Mr. Falkland's peculiarity of circumstances, I was astonished at his
+forbearance. There were indeed sufficiently obvious reasons why he might
+not choose to proceed to extremities with me. But how different from the
+fearful expectations I had conceived were the calmness of his
+behaviour, and the regulated mildness of his language! In this respect,
+I for a short time imagined that I was emancipated from the mischiefs
+which had appalled me; and that, in having to do with a man of Mr.
+Falkland's liberality, I had nothing rigorous to apprehend.
+
+"It is a miserable prospect," said I, "that he holds up to me. He
+imagines that I am restrained by no principles, and deaf to the claims
+of personal excellence. But he shall find himself mistaken. I will never
+become an informer. I will never injure my patron; and therefore he will
+not be my enemy. With all his misfortunes and all his errors, I feel
+that my soul yearns for his welfare. If he have been criminal, that is
+owing to circumstances; the same qualities under other circumstances
+would have been, or rather were, sublimely beneficent."
+
+My reasonings were, no doubt, infinitely more favourable to Mr.
+Falkland, than those which human beings are accustomed to make in the
+case of such as they style great criminals. This will not be wondered
+at, when it is considered that I had myself just been trampling on the
+established boundaries of obligation, and therefore might well have a
+fellow-feeling for other offenders. Add to which, I had known Mr.
+Falkland from the first as a beneficent divinity. I had observed at
+leisure, and with a minuteness which could not deceive me, the excellent
+qualities of his heart; and I found him possessed of a mind beyond
+comparison the most fertile and accomplished I had ever known.
+
+But though the terrors which had impressed me were considerably
+alleviated, my situation was notwithstanding sufficiently miserable. The
+ease and light-heartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of
+an irresistible necessity had commanded me to "sleep no more." I was
+tormented with a secret, of which I must never disburthen myself; and
+this consciousness was, at my age, a source of perpetual melancholy. I
+had made myself a prisoner, in the most intolerable sense of that term,
+for years--perhaps for the rest of my life. Though my prudence and
+discretion should be invariable, I must remember that I should have an
+overseer, vigilant from conscious guilt, full of resentment at the
+unjustifiable means by which I had extorted from him a confession, and
+whose lightest caprice might at any time decide upon every thing that
+was dear to me. The vigilance even of a public and systematical
+despotism is poor, compared with a vigilance which is thus goaded by the
+most anxious passions of the soul. Against this species of persecution I
+knew not how to invent a refuge. I dared neither fly from the
+observation of Mr. Falkland, nor continue exposed to its operation. I
+was at first indeed lulled in a certain degree to security upon the
+verge of the precipice. But it was not long before I found a thousand
+circumstances perpetually reminding me of my true situation. Those I am
+now to relate are among the most memorable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+In no long time after the disclosure Mr. Falkland had made, Mr.
+Forester, his elder brother by the mother's side, came to reside for a
+short period in our family. This was a circumstance peculiarly adverse
+to my patron's habits and inclinations. He had broken off, as I have
+already said, all intercourse of visiting with his neighbours. He
+debarred himself every kind of amusement and relaxation. He shrunk from
+the society of his fellows, and thought he could never be sufficiently
+buried in obscurity and solitude. This principle was, in most cases, of
+no difficult execution to a man of firmness. But Mr. Falkland knew not
+how to avoid the visit of Mr. Forester. This gentleman was just returned
+from a residence of several years upon the continent; and his demand of
+an apartment in the house of his half-brother, till his own house at the
+distance of thirty miles should be prepared for his reception, was made
+with an air of confidence that scarcely admitted of a refusal. Mr.
+Falkland could only allege, that the state of his health and spirits was
+such, that he feared a residence at his house would be little agreeable
+to his kinsman; and Mr. Forester conceived that this was a
+disqualification which would always augment in proportion as it was
+tolerated, and hoped that his society, by inducing Mr. Falkland to
+suspend his habits of seclusion, would be the means of essential
+benefit. Mr. Falkland opposed him no further. He would have been sorry
+to be thought unkind to a kinsman for whom he had a particular esteem;
+and the consciousness of not daring to assign the true reason, made him
+cautious of adhering to his objection.
+
+The character of Mr. Forester was, in many respects, the reverse of that
+of my master. His very appearance indicated the singularity of his
+disposition. His figure was short and angular. His eyes were sunk far
+into his head, and were overhung with eye-brows, black, thick, and
+bushy. His complexion was swarthy, and his lineaments hard. He had seen
+much of the world; but, to judge of him from his appearance and manners,
+one would have thought that he had never moved from his fire-side.
+
+His temper was acid, petulant, and harsh. He was easily offended by
+trifles, respecting which, previously to the offence, the persons with
+whom he had intercourse could have no suspicion of such a result. When
+offended, his customary behaviour was exceedingly rugged. He thought
+only of setting the delinquent right, and humbling him for his error;
+and, in his eagerness to do this, overlooked the sensibility of the
+sufferer, and the pains he inflicted. Remonstrance in such a case he
+regarded as the offspring of cowardice, which was to be extirpated with
+a steady and unshrinking hand, and not soothed with misjudging kindness
+and indulgence. As is usual in human character, he had formed a system
+of thinking to suit the current of his feelings. He held that the
+kindness we entertain for a man should be veiled and concealed, exerted
+in substantial benefits, but not disclosed, lest an undue advantage
+should be taken of it by its object.
+
+With this rugged outside, Mr. Forester had a warm and generous heart. At
+first sight all men were deterred by his manner, and excited to give him
+an ill character. But the longer any one knew him, the more they
+approved him. His harshness was then only considered as habit; and
+strong sense and active benevolence were uppermost in the recollection
+of his familiar acquaintance. His conversation, when he condescended to
+lay aside his snappish, rude, and abrupt half-sentences, became flowing
+in diction, and uncommonly amusing with regard to its substance. He
+combined, with weightiness of expression, a dryness of characteristic
+humour, that demonstrated at once the vividness of his observation, and
+the force of his understanding. The peculiarities of this gentleman's
+character were not undisplayed in the scene to which he was now
+introduced. Having much kindness in his disposition, he soon became
+deeply interested in the unhappiness of his relation. He did every thing
+in his power to remove it; but his attempts were rude and unskilful.
+With a mind so accomplished and a spirit so susceptible as that of Mr.
+Falkland, Mr. Forester did not venture to let loose his usual violence
+of manner; but, if he carefully abstained from harshness, he was however
+wholly incapable of that sweet and liquid eloquence of the soul, which
+would perhaps have stood the fairest chance of seducing Mr. Falkland for
+a moment to forget his anguish. He exhorted his host to rouse up his
+spirit, and defy the foul fiend; but the tone of his exhortations found
+no sympathetic chord in the mind of my patron. He had not the skill to
+carry conviction to an understanding so well fortified in error. In a
+word, after a thousand efforts of kindness to his entertainer, he drew
+off his forces, growling and dissatisfied with his own impotence, rather
+than angry at the obstinacy of Mr. Falkland. He felt no diminution of
+his affection for him, and was sincerely grieved to find that he was so
+little capable of serving him. Both parties in this case did justice to
+the merits of the other; at the same time that the disparity of their
+humours was such, as to prevent the stranger from being in any degree a
+dangerous companion to the master of the house. They had scarcely one
+point of contact in their characters. Mr. Forester was incapable of
+giving Mr. Falkland that degree either of pain or pleasure, which can
+raise the soul into a tumult, and deprive it for a while of tranquillity
+and self-command.
+
+Our visitor was a man, notwithstanding appearances, of a peculiarly
+sociable disposition, and, where he was neither interrupted nor
+contradicted, considerably loquacious. He began to feel himself
+painfully out of his element upon the present occasion. Mr. Falkland
+was devoted to contemplation and solitude. He put upon himself some
+degree of restraint upon the arrival of his kinsman, though even then
+his darling habits would break out. But when they had seen each other a
+certain number of times, and it was sufficiently evident that the
+society of either would be a burthen rather than a pleasure to the
+other, they consented, by a sort of silent compact, that each should be
+at liberty to follow his own inclination. Mr. Falkland was, in a sense,
+the greatest gainer by this. He returned to the habits of his choice,
+and acted, as nearly as possible, just as he would have done if Mr.
+Forester had not been in existence. But the latter was wholly at a loss.
+He had all the disadvantages of retirement, without being able, as he
+might have done at his house, to bring his own associates or his own
+amusements about him.
+
+In this situation he cast his eyes upon me. It was his principle to do
+every thing that his thoughts suggested, without caring for the forms of
+the world. He saw no reason why a peasant, with certain advantages of
+education and opportunity, might not be as eligible a companion as a
+lord; at the same time that he was deeply impressed with the
+venerableness of old institutions. Reduced as he was to a kind of last
+resort, he found me better qualified for his purpose than any other of
+Mr. Falkland's household.
+
+The manner in which he began this sort of correspondence was
+sufficiently characteristical. It was abrupt; but it was strongly
+stamped with essential benevolence. It was blunt and humorous; but there
+was attractiveness, especially in a case of unequal intercourse, in that
+very rusticity by which he levelled himself with the mass of his
+species. He had to reconcile himself as well as to invite me; not to
+reconcile himself to the postponing an aristocratical vanity, for of
+that he had a very slender portion, but to the trouble of invitation,
+for he loved his ease. All this produced some irregularity and
+indecision in his own mind, and gave a whimsical impression to his
+behaviour.
+
+On my part, I was by no means ungrateful for the distinction that was
+paid me. My mind had been relaxed into temporary dejection, but my
+reserve had no alloy of moroseness or insensibility. It did not long
+hold out against the condescending attentions of Mr. Forester. I became
+gradually heedful, encouraged, confiding. I had a most eager thirst for
+the knowledge of mankind; and though no person perhaps ever purchased so
+dearly the instructions he received in that school, the inclination was
+in no degree diminished. Mr. Forester was the second man I had seen
+uncommonly worthy of my analysis, and who seemed to my thoughts, arrived
+as I was at the end of my first essay, almost as much deserving to be
+studied as Mr. Falkland himself. I was glad to escape from the
+uneasiness of my reflections; and, while engaged with this new friend, I
+forgot the criticalness of the evils with which I was hourly menaced.
+
+Stimulated by these feelings, I was what Mr. Forester wanted, a diligent
+and zealous hearer, I was strongly susceptible of impression; and the
+alternate impressions my mind received, visibly displayed themselves in
+my countenance and gestures. The observations Mr. Forester had made in
+his travels, the set of opinions he had formed, all amused and
+interested me. His manner of telling a story, or explaining his
+thoughts, was forcible, perspicuous, and original: his style in
+conversation had an uncommon zest. Every thing he had to relate
+delighted me; while, in return, my sympathy, my eager curiosity, and my
+unsophisticated passions, rendered me to Mr. Forester a most desirable
+hearer. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that every day rendered
+our intercourse more intimate and cordial.
+
+Mr. Falkland was destined to be for ever unhappy; and it seemed as if no
+new incident could occur, from which he was not able to extract food for
+this imperious propensity. He was wearied with a perpetual repetition of
+similar impressions; and entertained an invincible disgust against all
+that was new. The visit of Mr. Forester he regarded with antipathy. He
+was scarcely able to look at him without shuddering; an emotion which
+his guest perceived, and pitied as the result of habit and disease,
+rather than of judgment. None of his actions passed unremarked; the most
+indifferent excited uneasiness and apprehension. The first overtures of
+intimacy between me and Mr. Forester probably gave birth to sentiments
+of jealousy in the mind of my master. The irregular, variable character
+of his visitor tended to heighten them, by producing an appearance of
+inexplicableness and mystery. At this time he intimated to me that it
+was not agreeable to him, that there should be much intercourse between
+me and this gentleman.
+
+What could I do? Young as I was, could it be expected that I should play
+the philosopher, and put a perpetual curb upon my inclinations?
+Imprudent though I had been, could I voluntarily subject myself to an
+eternal penance, and estrangement from human society? Could I discourage
+a frankness so perfectly in consonance with my wishes, and receive in an
+ungracious way a kindness that stole away my heart?
+
+Besides this, I was but ill prepared for the servile submission Mr.
+Falkland demanded. In early life I had been accustomed to be much my own
+master. When I first entered into Mr. Falkland's service, my personal
+habits were checked by the novelty of my situation, and my affections
+were gained by the high accomplishments of my patron. To novelty and its
+influence, curiosity had succeeded: curiosity, so long as it lasted, was
+a principle stronger in my bosom than even the love of independence. To
+that I would have sacrificed my liberty or my life; to gratify it, I
+would have submitted to the condition of a West Indian negro, or to the
+tortures inflicted by North American savages. But the turbulence of
+curiosity had now subsided.
+
+As long as the threats of Mr. Falkland had been confined to generals, I
+endured it. I was conscious of the unbecoming action I had committed,
+and this rendered me humble. But, when he went further, and undertook to
+prescribe to every article of my conduct, my patience was at an end. My
+mind, before sufficiently sensible to the unfortunate situation to which
+my imprudence had reduced me, now took a nearer and a more alarming view
+of the circumstances of the case. Mr. Falkland was not an old man; he
+had in him the principles of vigour, however they might seem to be
+shaken; he might live as long as I should. I was his prisoner; and what
+a prisoner! All my actions observed; all my gestures marked. I could
+move neither to the right nor the left, but the eye of my keeper was
+upon me. He watched me; and his vigilance was a sickness to my heart.
+For me there was no more freedom, no more of hilarity, of
+thoughtlessness, or of youth. Was this the life upon which I had entered
+with such warm and sanguine expectation? Were my days to be wasted in
+this cheerless gloom; a galley-slave in the hands of the system of
+nature, whom death only, the death of myself or my inexorable superior,
+could free?
+
+I had been adventurous in the gratification of an infantine and
+unreasonable curiosity; and I resolved not to be less adventurous, if
+need were, in the defence of every thing that can make life a blessing.
+I was prepared for an amicable adjustment of interests: I would
+undertake that Mr. Falkland should never sustain injury through my
+means; but I expected in return that I should suffer no encroachment,
+but be left to the direction of my own understanding.
+
+I went on, then, to seek Mr. Forester's society with eagerness; and it
+is the nature of an intimacy that does not decline, progressively to
+increase. Mr. Falkland observed these symptoms with visible
+perturbation. Whenever I was conscious of their being perceived by him,
+I betrayed tokens of confusion: this did not tend to allay his
+uneasiness. One day he spoke to me alone; and, with a look of mysterious
+but terrible import, expressed himself thus:--
+
+"Young man, take warning! Perhaps this is the last time you shall have
+an opportunity to take it! I will not always be the butt of your
+simplicity and inexperience, nor suffer your weakness to triumph over my
+strength! Why do you trifle with me? You little suspect the extent of my
+power. At this moment you are enclosed with the snares of my vengeance
+unseen by you, and, at the instant that you flatter yourself you are
+already beyond their reach, they will close upon you. You might as well
+think of escaping from the power of the omnipresent God, as from mine!
+If you could touch so much as my finger, you should expiate it in hours
+and months and years of a torment, of which as yet you have not the
+remotest idea. Remember! I am not talking at random! I do not utter a
+word, that, if you provoke me, shall not be executed to the severest
+letter!"
+
+It may be supposed that these menaces were not without their effect. I
+withdrew in silence. My whole soul revolted against the treatment I
+endured, and yet I could not utter a word. Why could not I speak the
+expostulations of my heart, or propose the compromise I meditated? It
+was inexperience, and not want of strength, that awed me. Every act of
+Mr. Falkland contained something new, and I was unprepared to meet it.
+Perhaps it will be found that the greatest hero owes the propriety of
+his conduct to the habit of encountering difficulties, and calling out
+with promptness the energies of his mind.
+
+I contemplated the proceedings of my patron with the deepest
+astonishment. Humanity and general kindness were fundamental parts of
+his character; but in relation to me they were sterile and inactive. His
+own interest required that he should purchase my kindness; but he
+preferred to govern me by terror, and watch me with unceasing anxiety. I
+ruminated with the most mournful sensations upon the nature of my
+calamity. I believed that no human being was ever placed in a situation
+so pitiable as mine. Every atom of my frame seemed to have a several
+existence, and to crawl within me. I had but too much reason to believe
+that Mr. Falkland's threats were not empty words. I knew his ability; I
+felt his ascendancy. If I encountered him, what chance had I of victory?
+If I were defeated, what was the penalty I had to suffer? Well then, the
+rest of my life must be devoted to slavish subjection. Miserable
+sentence! And, if it were, what security had I against the injustice of
+a man, vigilant, capricious, and criminal? I envied the condemned wretch
+upon the scaffold; I envied the victim of the inquisition in the midst
+of his torture. They know what they have to suffer. I had only to
+imagine every thing terrible, and then say, "The fate reserved for me
+is worse than this!"
+
+It was well for me that these sensations were transient: human nature
+could not long support itself under what I then felt. By degrees my mind
+shook off its burthen. Indignation succeeded to emotions of terror. The
+hostility of Mr. Falkland excited hostility in me. I determined I would
+never calumniate him in matters of the most trivial import, much less
+betray the grand secret upon which every thing dear to him depended.
+But, totally abjuring the offensive, I resolved to stand firmly upon the
+defensive. The liberty of acting as I pleased I would preserve, whatever
+might be the risk. If I were worsted in the contest, I would at least
+have the consolation of reflecting that I had exerted myself with
+energy. In proportion as I thus determined, I drew off my forces from
+petty incursions, and felt the propriety of acting with premeditation
+and system. I ruminated incessantly upon plans of deliverance, but I was
+anxious that my choice should not be precipitately made.
+
+It was during this period of my deliberation and uncertainty that Mr.
+Forester terminated his visit. He observed a strange distance in my
+behaviour, and, in his good-natured, rough way, reproached me for it. I
+could only answer with a gloomy look of mysterious import, and a
+mournful and expressive silence. He sought me for an explanation, but I
+was now as ingenious in avoiding as I had before been ardent to seek
+him; and he quitted our house, as he afterwards told me, with an
+impression, that there was some ill destiny that hung over it, which
+seemed fated to make all its inhabitants miserable, without its being
+possible for a bystander to penetrate the reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Mr. Forester had left us about three weeks, when Mr. Falkland sent me
+upon some business to an estate he possessed in a neighbouring county,
+about fifty miles from his principal residence. The road led in a
+direction wholly wide of the habitation of our late visitor. I was upon
+my return from the place to which I had been sent, when I began in fancy
+to take a survey of the various circumstances of my condition, and by
+degrees lost, in the profoundness of my contemplation, all attention to
+the surrounding objects. The first determination of my mind was to
+escape from the lynx-eyed jealousy and despotism of Mr. Falkland; the
+second to provide, by every effort of prudence and deliberation I could
+devise, against the danger with which I well knew my attempt must be
+accompanied.
+
+Occupied with these meditations, I rode many miles before I perceived
+that I had totally deviated from the right path. At length I roused
+myself, and surveyed the horizon round me; but I could observe nothing
+with which my organ was previously acquainted. On three sides, the heath
+stretched as far as the eye could reach; on the fourth, I discovered at
+some distance a wood of no ordinary dimensions. Before me, scarcely a
+single track could be found, to mark that any human being had ever
+visited the spot. As the best expedient I could devise, I bent my course
+towards the wood I have mentioned, and then pursued, as well as I was
+able, the windings of the inclosure. This led me, after some time, to
+the end of the heath; but I was still as much at a loss as ever
+respecting the road I should pursue. The sun was hid from me by a grey
+and cloudy atmosphere; I was induced to continue along the skirts of
+the wood, and surmounted with some difficulty the hedges and other
+obstacles that from time to time presented themselves. My thoughts were
+gloomy and disconsolate; the dreariness of the day, and the solitude
+which surrounded me, seemed to communicate a sadness to my soul. I had
+proceeded a considerable way, and was overcome with hunger and fatigue,
+when I discovered a road and a little inn at no great distance. I made
+up to them, and upon enquiry found that, instead of pursuing the proper
+direction, I had taken one that led to Mr. Forester's rather than to my
+own habitation. I alighted, and was entering the house, when the
+appearance of that gentleman struck my eyes.
+
+Mr. Forester accosted me with kindness, invited me into the room where
+he had been sitting, and enquired what accident had brought me to that
+place.
+
+While he was speaking, I could not help recollecting the extraordinary
+manner in which we were thus once more brought together, and a train of
+ideas was by this means suggested to my mind. Some refreshment was, by
+Mr. Forester's order, prepared for me; I sat down, and partook of it.
+Still this thought dwelt upon my recollection:--"Mr. Falkland will never
+be made acquainted with our meeting; I have an opportunity thrown in my
+way, which if I do not improve, I shall deserve all the consequences
+that may result. I can now converse with a friend, and a powerful
+friend, without fear of being watched and overlooked." What wonder that
+I was tempted to disclose, not Mr. Falkland's secret, but my own
+situation, and receive the advice of a man of worth and experience,
+which might perhaps be adequately done without entering into any detail
+injurious to my patron?
+
+Mr. Forester, on his part, expressed a desire to learn why it was I
+thought myself unhappy, and why I had avoided him during the latter part
+of his residence under the same roof, as evidently as I had before taken
+pleasure in his communications. I replied, that I could give him but an
+imperfect satisfaction upon these points; but what I could, I would
+willingly explain. The fact, I proceeded, was, that there were reasons
+which rendered it impossible for me to have a tranquil moment under the
+roof of Mr. Falkland. I had revolved the matter again and again in my
+mind, and was finally convinced that I owed it to myself to withdraw
+from his service. I added, that I was sensible, by this half-confidence,
+I might rather seem to merit the disapprobation of Mr. Forester than his
+countenance; but I declared my persuasion that, if he could be
+acquainted with the whole affair, however strange my behaviour might at
+present appear, he would applaud my reserve.
+
+He appeared to muse for a moment upon what I had said, and then asked
+what reason I could have to complain of Mr. Falkland? I replied, that I
+entertained the deepest reverence for my patron; I admired his
+abilities, and considered him as formed for the benefit of his species.
+I should in my own opinion be the vilest of miscreants, if I uttered a
+whisper to his disadvantage. But this did not avail: I was not fit for
+him; perhaps I was not good enough for him; at all events, I must be
+perpetually miserable so long as I continued to live with him.
+
+I observed Mr. Forester gaze upon me eagerly with curiosity and
+surprise; but this circumstance I did not think proper to notice. Having
+recovered himself, he enquired, why then, that being the case, I did not
+quit his service? I answered, what he now touched upon was that which
+most of all contributed to my misfortune. Mr. Falkland was not ignorant
+of my dislike to my present situation; perhaps he thought it
+unreasonable, unjust; but I knew that he would never be brought to
+consent to my giving way to it.
+
+Here Mr. Forester interrupted me, and, smiling, said, I magnified
+obstacles, and over-rated my own importance; adding, that he would
+undertake to remove that difficulty, as well as to provide me with a
+more agreeable appointment. This suggestion produced in me a serious
+alarm. I replied, that I must entreat him upon no account to think of
+applying to Mr. Falkland upon the subject. I added, that perhaps I was
+only betraying my imbecility; but in reality, unacquainted as I was with
+experience and the world, I was afraid, though disgusted with my present
+residence, to expose myself upon a mere project of my own, to the
+resentment of so considerable a man as Mr. Falkland. If he would favour
+me with his advice upon the subject, or if he would only give me leave
+to hope for his protection in case of any unforeseen accident, this was
+all I presumed to request; and, thus encouraged. I would venture to obey
+the dictates of my inclination, and fly in pursuit of my lost
+tranquillity.
+
+Having thus opened myself to this generous friend, as far as I could do
+it with propriety and safety, he sat for some time silent, with an air
+of deep reflection. At length, with a countenance of unusual severity,
+and a characteristic fierceness of manner and voice, he thus addressed
+me: "Young man, perhaps you are ignorant of the nature of the conduct
+you at present hold. May be, you do not know that where there is
+mystery, there is always something at bottom that will not bear the
+telling. Is this the way to obtain the favour of a man of consequence
+and respectability? To pretend to make a confidence, and then tell him a
+disjointed story that has not common sense in it!"
+
+I answered, that, whatever were the amount of that prejudice, I must
+submit. I placed my hope of a candid construction, in the present
+instance, in the rectitude of his nature.
+
+He went on: "You do so; do you? I tell you, sir, the rectitude of my
+nature is an enemy to disguise. Come, boy, you must know that I
+understand these things better than you. Tell all, or expect nothing
+from me but censure and contempt."
+
+"Sir," replied I, "I have spoken from deliberation; I have told you my
+choice, and, whatever be the result, I must abide by it. If in this
+misfortune you refuse me your assistance, here I must end, having gained
+by the communication only your ill opinion and displeasure."
+
+He looked hard at me, as if he would see me through. At length he
+relaxed his features, and softened his manner. "You are a foolish,
+headstrong boy," said he, "and I shall have an eye upon you. I shall
+never place in you the confidence I have done. But--I will not desert
+you. At present, the balance between approbation and dislike is in your
+favour. How long it will last, I cannot tell; I engage for nothing. But
+it is my rule to act as I feel. I will for this time do as you
+require;--and, pray God, it may answer. I will receive you, either now
+or hereafter, under my roof, trusting that I shall have no reason to
+repent, and that appearances will terminate as favourably as I wish,
+though I scarcely know how to hope it."
+
+We were engaged in the earnest discussion of subjects thus interesting
+to my peace, when we were interrupted by an event the most earnestly to
+have been deprecated. Without the smallest notice, and as if he had
+dropped upon us from the clouds, Mr. Falkland burst into the room. I
+found afterwards that Mr. Forester had come thus far upon an
+appointment to meet Mr. Falkland, and that the place of their intended
+rendezvous was at the next stage. Mr. Forester was detained at the inn
+where we now were by our accidental rencounter, and in reality had for
+the moment forgotten his appointment; while Mr. Falkland, not finding
+him where he expected, proceeded thus far towards the house of his
+kinsman. To me the meeting was most unaccountable in the world.
+
+I instantly foresaw the dreadful complication of misfortune that was
+included in this event. To Mr. Falkland, the meeting between me and his
+relation must appear not accidental, but, on my part at least, the
+result of design. I was totally out of the road I had been travelling by
+his direction; I was in a road that led directly to the house of Mr.
+Forester. What must he think of this? How must he suppose I came to that
+place? The truth, if told, that I came there without design, and purely
+in consequence of having lost my way, must appear to be the most
+palpable lie that ever was devised.
+
+Here then I stood detected in the fact of that intercourse which had
+been so severely forbidden. But in this instance it was infinitely worse
+than in those which had already given so much disturbance to Mr.
+Falkland. It was then frank and unconcealed; and therefore the
+presumption was, that it was for purposes that required no concealment.
+But the present interview, if concerted, was in the most emphatical
+degree clandestine. Nor was it less perilous than it was clandestine: it
+had been forbidden with the most dreadful menaces; and Mr. Falkland was
+not ignorant how deep an impression those menaces had made upon my
+imagination. Such a meeting therefore could not have been concerted
+under such circumstances, for a trivial purpose, or for any purpose
+that his heart did not ache to think of. Such was the amount of my
+crime, such was the agony my appearance was calculated to inspire; and
+it was reasonable to suppose that the penalty I had to expect would be
+proportionable. The threats of Mr. Falkland still sounded in my ears,
+and I was in a transport of terror.
+
+The conduct of the same man in different circumstances, is often so
+various as to render it very difficult to be accounted for. Mr.
+Falkland, in this to him, terrible crisis, did not seem to be in any
+degree hurried away by passion. For a moment he was dumb; his eyes
+glared with astonishment; and the next moment, as it were, he had the
+most perfect calmness and self-command. Had it been otherwise, I have no
+doubt that I should instantly have entered into an explanation of the
+manner in which I came there, the ingenuousness and consistency of which
+could not but have been in some degree attended with a favourable event.
+But, as it was, I suffered myself to be overcome; I yielded, as in a
+former instance, to the discomfiting influence of surprise. I dared
+scarcely breathe; I observed the appearances with equal anxiety and
+surprise. Mr. Falkland quietly ordered me to return home, and take along
+with me the groom he had brought with him. I obeyed in silence.
+
+I afterwards understood, that he enquired minutely of Mr. Forester the
+circumstances of our meeting; and that that gentleman, perceiving that
+the meeting itself was discovered, and guided by habits of frankness,
+which, when once rooted in a character, it is difficult to counteract,
+told Mr. Falkland every thing that had passed, together with the remarks
+it had suggested to his own mind. Mr. Falkland received the
+communication with an ambiguous and studied silence, which by no means
+operated to my advantage in the already poisoned mind of Mr. Forester.
+His silence was partly the direct consequence of a mind watchful,
+inquisitive, and doubting; and partly perhaps was adopted for the sake
+of the effect it was calculated to produce, Mr. Falkland not being
+unwilling to encourage prejudices against a character which might one
+day come in competition with his own.
+
+As to me, I went home indeed, for this was not a moment to resist. Mr.
+Falkland, with a premeditation to which he had given the appearance of
+accident, had taken care to send with me a guard to attend upon his
+prisoner. I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in
+the history of despotism, from which the wretched victim is never known
+to come forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were
+entering a dungeon. I reflected that I was at the mercy of a man,
+exasperated at my disobedience, and who was already formed to cruelty by
+successive murders. My prospects were now closed; I was cut off for ever
+from pursuits that I had meditated with ineffable delight; my death
+might be the event of a few hours. I was a victim at the shrine of
+conscious guilt, that knew neither rest nor satiety; I should be blotted
+from the catalogue of the living, and my fate remain eternally a secret;
+the man who added my murder to his former crimes, would show himself the
+next morning, and be hailed with the admiration and applause of his
+species.
+
+In the midst of these terrible imaginations, one idea presented itself
+that alleviated my feelings. This was the recollection of the strange
+and unaccountable tranquillity which Mr. Falkland had manifested, when
+he discovered me in company with Mr. Forester. I was not deceived by
+this. I knew that the calm was temporary, and would be succeeded by a
+tumult and whirlwind of the most dreadful sort. But a man under the
+power of such terrors as now occupied me catches at every reed. I said
+to myself, "This tranquillity is a period it is incumbent upon me to
+improve; the shorter its duration may be found, the more speedy am I
+obliged to be in the use of it." In a word, I took the resolution,
+because I already stood in fear of the vengeance of Mr. Falkland, to
+risk the possibility of provoking it in a degree still more inexpiable,
+and terminate at once my present state of uncertainty. I had now opened
+my case to Mr. Forester, and he had given me positive assurances of his
+protection. I determined immediately to address the following letter to
+Mr. Falkland. The consideration that, if he meditated any thing
+tragical, such a letter would only tend to confirm him, did not enter
+into the present feelings of my mind.
+
+"Sir,
+
+"I have conceived the intention of quitting your service. This is a
+measure we ought both of us to desire. I shall then be, what it is my
+duty to be, master of my own actions. You will be delivered from the
+presence of a person, whom you cannot prevail upon yourself to behold
+without unpleasing emotions.
+
+"Why should you subject me to an eternal penance? Why should you consign
+my youthful hopes to suffering and despair? Consult the principles of
+humanity that have marked the general course of your proceedings, and do
+not let me, I entreat you, be made the subject of a useless severity. My
+heart is impressed with gratitude for your favours. I sincerely ask your
+forgiveness for the many errors of my conduct. I consider the treatment
+I have received under your roof, as one almost uninterrupted scene of
+kindness and generosity. I shall never forget my obligations to you,
+and will never betray them.
+
+"I remain, Sir,
+
+"Your most grateful, respectful,
+
+"and dutiful servant,
+
+"CALEB WILLIAMS."
+
+Such was my employment of the evening of a day which will be ever
+memorable in the history of my life. Mr. Falkland not being yet
+returned, though expected every hour, I was induced to make use of the
+pretence of fatigue to avoid an interview. I went to bed. It may be
+imagined that my slumbers were neither deep nor refreshing.
+
+The next morning I was informed that my patron did not come home till
+late; that he had enquired for me, and, being told that I was in bed,
+had said nothing further upon the subject. Satisfied in this respect, I
+went to the breakfasting parlour, and, though full of anxiety and
+trepidation, endeavoured to busy myself in arranging the books, and a
+few other little occupations, till Mr. Falkland should come down. After
+a short time I heard his step, which I perfectly well knew how to
+distinguish, in the passage. Presently he stopped, and, speaking to some
+one in a sort of deliberate, but smothered voice, I overheard him repeat
+my name as enquiring for me. In conformity to the plan I had persuaded
+myself to adopt, I now laid the letter I had written upon the table at
+which he usually sat, and made my exit at one door as Mr. Falkland
+entered at the other. This done, I withdrew, with flutterings and
+palpitation, to a private apartment, a sort of light closet at the end
+of the library, where I was accustomed not unfrequently to sit.
+
+I had not been here three minutes, when I heard the voice of Mr.
+Falkland calling me. I went to him in the library. His manner was that
+of a man labouring with some dreadful thought, and endeavouring to give
+an air of carelessness and insensibility to his behaviour. Perhaps no
+carriage of any other sort could have produced a sensation of such
+inexplicable horror, or have excited, in the person who was its object,
+such anxious uncertainty about the event.--"That is your letter," said
+he, throwing it.
+
+"My lad," continued he, "I believe now you have played all your tricks,
+and the farce is nearly at an end! With your apishness and absurdity
+however you have taught me one thing; and, whereas before I have winced
+at them with torture, I am now as tough as an elephant. I shall crush
+you in the end with the same indifference, that I would any other little
+insect that disturbed my serenity.
+
+"I am unable to tell what brought about your meeting with Mr. Forester
+yesterday. It might be design; it might be accident. But, I shall not
+forget it. You write me here, that you are desirous to quit my service.
+To that I have a short answer: You never shall quit it with life. If you
+attempt it, you shall never cease to rue your folly as long as you
+exist. That is my will; and I will not have it resisted. The very next
+time you disobey me in that or any other article, there is an end of
+your vagaries for ever. Perhaps your situation may be a pitiable one; it
+is for you to look to that. I only know that it is in your power to
+prevent its growing worse; no time nor chance shall ever make it better.
+
+"Do not imagine I am afraid of you! I wear an armour, against which all
+your weapons are impotent. I have dug a pit for you; and, whichever way
+you move, backward or forward, to the right or the left, it is ready to
+swallow you. Be still! If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no
+man on earth shall hear your cries; prepare a tale however plausible, or
+however true, the whole world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your
+innocence shall be of no service to you; I laugh at so feeble a defence.
+It is I that say it; you may believe what I tell you--Do you not know,
+miserable wretch!" added he, suddenly altering his tone, and stamping
+upon the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve my reputation,
+whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the whole world and
+its inhabitants taken together? And do you think that you shall wound
+it? Begone, miscreant! reptile! and cease to contend with insurmountable
+power!"
+
+The part of my history which I am now relating is that which I reflect
+upon with the least complacency. Why was it, that I was once more
+totally overcome by the imperious carriage of Mr. Falkland, and unable
+to utter a word? The reader will be presented with many occasions in the
+sequel, in which I wanted neither facility in the invention of
+expedients, nor fortitude in entering upon my justification. Persecution
+at length gave firmness to my character, and taught me the better part
+of manhood. But in the present instance I was irresolute, overawed, and
+abashed.
+
+The speech I had heard was the dictate of frenzy, and it created in me a
+similar frenzy. It determined me to do the very thing against which I
+was thus solemnly warned, and fly from my patron's house. I could not
+enter into parley with him; I could no longer endure the vile
+subjugation he imposed on me. It was in vain that my reason warned me of
+the rashness of a measure, to be taken without concert or preparation. I
+seemed to be in a state in which reason had no power. I felt as if I
+could coolly survey the several arguments of the case, perceive that
+they had prudence, truth, and common sense on their side; and then
+answer, I am under the guidance of a director more energetic than you.
+
+I was not long in executing what I had thus rapidly determined. I fixed
+on the evening of that very day as the period of my evasion. Even in
+this short interval I had perhaps sufficient time for deliberation. But
+all opportunity was useless to me; my mind was fixed, and each
+succeeding moment only increased the unspeakable eagerness with which I
+meditated my escape. The hours usually observed by our family in this
+country residence were regular; and one in the morning was the time I
+selected for my undertaking.
+
+In searching the apartment where I slept, I had formerly discovered a
+concealed door, which led to a small apartment of the most secret
+nature, not uncommon in houses so old as that of Mr. Falkland, and which
+had perhaps served as a refuge from persecution, or a security from the
+inveterate hostilities of a barbarous age. I believed no person was
+acquainted with this hiding-place but myself. I felt unaccountably
+impelled to remove into it the different articles of my personal
+property. I could not at present take them away with me. If I were never
+to recover them, I felt that it would be a gratification to my
+sentiment, that no trace of my existence should be found after my
+departure. Having completed their removal, and waited till the hour I
+had previously chosen, I stole down quietly from my chamber with a lamp
+in my hand. I went along a passage that led to a small door opening into
+the garden, and then crossed the garden, to a gate that intersected an
+elm-walk and a private horse-path on the outside.
+
+I could scarcely believe my good fortune in having thus far executed my
+design without interruption. The terrible images Mr. Falkland's menaces
+had suggested to my mind, made me expect impediment and detection at
+every step; though the impassioned state of my mind impelled me to
+advance with desperate resolution. He probably however counted too
+securely upon the ascendancy of his sentiments, when imperiously
+pronounced, to think it necessary to take precautions against a sinister
+event. For myself, I drew a favourable omen as to the final result of my
+project, from the smoothness of success that attended it in the outset.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The first plan that had suggested itself to me was, to go to the nearest
+public road, and take the earliest stage for London. There I believed I
+should be most safe from discovery, if the vengeance of Mr. Falkland
+should prompt him to pursue me; and I did not doubt, among the
+multiplied resources of the metropolis, to find something which should
+suggest to me an eligible mode of disposing of my person and industry. I
+reserved Mr. Forester in my arrangement, as a last resource, not to be
+called forth unless for immediate protection from the hand of
+persecution and power. I was destitute of that experience of the world,
+which can alone render us fertile in resources, or enable us to
+institute a just comparison between the resources that offer themselves.
+I was like the fascinated animal, that is seized with the most terrible
+apprehensions, at the same time that he is incapable of adequately
+considering for his own safety.
+
+The mode of my proceeding being digested, I traced, with a cheerful
+heart, the unfrequented path it was now necessary for me to pursue. The
+night was gloomy, and it drizzled with rain. But these were
+circumstances I had scarcely the power to perceive; all was sunshine and
+joy within me. I hardly felt the ground; I repeated to myself a thousand
+times, "I am free. What concern have I with danger and alarm? I feel
+that I am free; I feel that I will continue so. What power is able to
+hold in chains a mind ardent and determined? What power can cause that
+man to die, whose whole soul commands him to continue to live?" I looked
+back with abhorrence to the subjection in which I had been held. I did
+not hate the author of my misfortunes--truth and justice acquit me of
+that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But
+I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of
+which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I
+was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as
+one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so
+insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved--and this
+resolution has never been entirely forgotten by me--to hold myself
+disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the
+oppressor or the sufferer. My mind continued in this enthusiastical
+state, full of confidence, and accessible only to such a portion of fear
+as served rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion than to
+generate anguish and distress, during the whole of this nocturnal
+expedition. After a walk of three hours, I arrived, without accident, at
+the village from which I hoped to have taken my passage for the
+metropolis. At this early hour every thing was quiet; no sound of any
+thing human saluted my ear. It was with difficulty that I gained
+admittance into the yard of the inn, where I found a single ostler
+taking care of some horses. From him I received the unwelcome tidings,
+that the coach was not expected till six o'clock in the morning of the
+day after to-morrow, its route through that town recurring only three
+times a week.
+
+This intelligence gave the first check to the rapturous inebriation by
+which my mind had been possessed from the moment I quitted the
+habitation of Mr. Falkland. The whole of my fortune in ready cash
+consisted of about eleven guineas. I had about fifty more, that had
+fallen to me from the disposal of my property at the death of my father;
+but that was so vested as to preclude it from immediate use, and I even
+doubted whether it would not be found better ultimately to resign it,
+than, by claiming it, to risk the furnishing a clew to what I most of
+all dreaded, the persecution of Mr. Falkland. There was nothing I so
+ardently desired as the annihilation of all future intercourse between
+us, that he should not know there was such a person on the earth as
+myself, and that I should never more hear the repetition of a name which
+had been so fatal to my peace.
+
+Thus circumstanced, I conceived frugality to be an object by no means
+unworthy of my attention, unable as I was to prognosticate what
+discouragements and delays might present themselves to the
+accomplishment of my wishes, after my arrival in London. For this and
+other reasons, I determined to adhere to my design of travelling by the
+stage; it only remaining for me to consider in what manner I should
+prevent the eventful delay of twenty-four hours from becoming, by any
+untoward event, a source of new calamity. It was by no means advisable
+to remain in the village where I now was during this interval; nor did I
+even think proper to employ it, in proceeding on foot along the great
+road. I therefore decided upon making a circuit, the direction of which
+should seem at first extremely wide of my intended route, and then,
+suddenly taking a different inclination, should enable me to arrive by
+the close of day at a market-town twelve miles nearer to the metropolis.
+
+Having fixed the economy of the day, and persuaded myself that it was
+the best which, under the circumstances, could be adopted, I dismissed,
+for the most part, all further anxieties from my mind, and eagerly
+yielded myself up to the different amusements that arose. I rested and
+went forward at the impulse of the moment. At one time I reclined upon a
+bank immersed in contemplation, and at another exerted myself to analyse
+the prospects which succeeded each other. The haziness of the morning
+was followed by a spirit-stirring and beautiful day. With the ductility
+so characteristic of a youthful mind, I forgot the anguish which had
+lately been my continual guest, and occupied myself entirely in dreams
+of future novelty and felicity. I scarcely ever, in the whole course of
+my existence, spent a day of more various or exquisite gratification. It
+furnished a strong, and perhaps not an unsalutary contrast, to the
+terrors which had preceded, and the dreadful scenes that awaited me.
+
+In the evening I arrived at the place of my destination, and enquired
+for the inn at which the coach was accustomed to call. A circumstance
+however had previously excited my attention, and reproduced in me a
+state of alarm.
+
+Though it was already dark before I reached the town, my observation
+had been attracted by a man, who passed me on horseback in the opposite
+direction, about half a mile on the other side of the town. There was an
+inquisitiveness in his gesture that I did not like; and, as far as I
+could discern his figure, I pronounced him an ill-looking man. He had
+not passed me more than two minutes before I heard the sound of a horse
+advancing slowly behind me. These circumstances impressed some degree of
+uneasy sensation upon my mind. I first mended my pace; and, this not
+appearing to answer the purpose, I afterwards loitered, that the
+horseman might pass me. He did so; and, as I glanced at him, I thought I
+saw that it was the same man. He now put his horse into a trot, and
+entered the town. I followed; and it was not long before I perceived him
+at the door of an alehouse, drinking a mug of beer. This however the
+darkness prevented me from discovering, till I was in a manner upon him.
+I pushed forward, and saw him no more, till, as I entered the yard of
+the inn where I intended to sleep, the same man suddenly rode up to me,
+and asked if my name were Williams.
+
+This adventure, _while it had been passing_, expelled the gaiety of my
+mind, and filled me with anxiety. The apprehension however that I felt,
+appeared to me groundless: if I were pursued, I took it for granted it
+would be by some of Mr. Falkland's people, and not by a stranger. The
+darkness took from me some of the simplest expedients of precaution. I
+determined at least to proceed to the inn, and make the necessary
+enquiries.
+
+I no sooner heard the sound of the horse as I entered the yard, and the
+question proposed to me by the rider, than the dreadful certainty of
+what I feared instantly took possession of my mind. Every incident
+connected with my late abhorred situation was calculated to impress me
+with the deepest alarm. My first thought was, to betake myself to the
+fields, and trust to the swiftness of my flight for safety. But this was
+scarcely practicable: I remarked that my enemy was alone; and I believed
+that, man to man, I might reasonably hope to get the better of him,
+either by the firmness of my determination, or the subtlety of my
+invention.
+
+Thus resolved, I replied in an impetuous and peremptory tone, that I was
+the man he took me for; adding, "I guess your errand; but it is to no
+purpose. You come to conduct me back to Falkland House; but no force
+shall ever drag me to that place alive. I have not taken my resolution
+without strong reasons; and all the world shall not persuade me to alter
+it. I am an Englishman, and it is the privilege of an Englishman to be
+sole judge and master of his own actions."
+
+"You are in the devil of a hurry," replied the man, "to guess my
+intentions, and tell your own. But your guess is right; and mayhap you
+may have reason to be thankful that my errand is not something worse.
+Sure enough the squire expects you;--but I have a letter, and when you
+have read that, I suppose you will come off a little of your stoutness.
+If that does not answer, it will then be time to think what is to be
+done next."
+
+Thus saying, he gave me his letter, which was from Mr. Forester, whom,
+as he told me, he had left at Mr. Falkland's house. I went into a room
+of the inn for the purpose of reading it, and was followed by the
+bearer. The letter was as follows:--
+
+WILLIAMS,
+
+"My brother Falkland has sent the bearer in pursuit of you. He expects
+that, if found, you will return with him: I expect it too. It is of the
+utmost consequence to your future honour and character. After reading
+these lines, if you are a villain and a rascal, you will perhaps
+endeavour to fly; if your conscience tells you, you are innocent, you
+will, out of all doubt, come back. Show me then whether I have been your
+dupe: and, while I was won over by your seeming ingenuousness, have
+suffered myself to be made the tool of a designing knave. If you come, I
+pledge myself that, if you clear your reputation, you shall not only be
+free to go wherever you please, but shall receive every assistance in my
+power to give. Remember, I engage for nothing further than that.
+
+"VALENTINE FORESTER."
+
+What a letter was this! To a mind like mine, glowing with the love of
+virtue, such an address was strong enough to draw the person to whom it
+was addressed from one end of the earth to the other. My mind was full
+of confidence and energy. I felt my own innocence, and was determined to
+assert it. I was willing to be driven out a fugitive; I even rejoiced in
+my escape, and cheerfully went out into the world destitute of every
+provision, and depending for my future prospects upon my own ingenuity.
+
+Thus much, said I, Falkland! you may do. Dispose of me as you please
+with respect to the goods of fortune; but you shall neither make prize
+of my liberty, nor sully the whiteness of my name. I repassed in my
+thoughts every memorable incident that had happened to me under his
+roof. I could recollect nothing, except the affair of the mysterious
+trunk, out of which the shadow of a criminal accusation could be
+extorted. In that instance my conduct had been highly reprehensible, and
+I had never looked back upon it without remorse and self-condemnation.
+But I did not believe that it was of the nature of those actions which
+can be brought under legal censure. I could still less persuade myself
+that Mr. Falkland, who shuddered at the very possibility of detection,
+and who considered himself as completely in my power, would dare to
+bring forward a subject so closely connected with the internal agony of
+his soul. In a word, the more I reflected on the phrases of Mr.
+Forester's billet, the less could I imagine the nature of those scenes
+to which they were to serve as a prelude.
+
+The inscrutableness however of the mystery they contained, did not
+suffice to overwhelm my courage. My mind seemed to undergo an entire
+revolution. Timid and embarrassed as I had felt myself, when I regarded
+Mr. Falkland as my clandestine and domestic foe, I now conceived that
+the case was entirely altered. "Meet me," said I, "as an open accuser:
+if we must contend, let us contend in the face of day; and then,
+unparalleled as your resources may be, I will not fear you." Innocence
+and guilt were, in my apprehension, the things in the whole world the
+most opposite to each other. I would not suffer myself to believe, that
+the former could be confounded with the latter, unless the innocent man
+first allowed himself to be subdued in mind, before he was defrauded of
+the good opinion of mankind. Virtue rising superior to every calamity,
+defeating by a plain unvarnished tale all the stratagems of Vice, and
+throwing back upon her adversary the confusion with which he had hoped
+to overwhelm her, was one of the favourite subjects of my youthful
+reveries. I determined never to prove an instrument of destruction to
+Mr. Falkland; but I was not less resolute to obtain justice to myself.
+
+The issue of all these confident hopes I shall immediately have
+occasion to relate. It was thus, with the most generous and undoubting
+spirit, that I rushed upon irretrievable ruin.
+
+"Friend," said I to the bearer, after a considerable interval of
+silence, "you are right. This is, indeed, an extraordinary letter you
+have brought me; but it answers its purpose. I will certainly go with
+you now, whatever be the consequence. No person shall ever impute blame
+to me, so long as I have it in my power to clear myself."
+
+I felt, in the circumstances in which I was placed by Mr. Forester's
+letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to
+return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in
+silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr.
+Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr.
+Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I
+also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle was congenial to
+his character.
+
+When we arrived, midnight was already past, and we were obliged to waken
+one of the servants to give us admittance. I found that Mr. Forester had
+left a message for me, in consideration of the possibility of my arrival
+during the night, directing me immediately to go to bed, and to take
+care that I did not come weary and exhausted to the business of the
+following day. I endeavoured to take his advice; but my slumbers were
+unrefreshing and disturbed. I suffered however no reduction of courage:
+the singularity of my situation, my conjectures with respect to the
+present, my eagerness for the future, did not allow me to sink into a
+languid and inactive state.
+
+Next morning the first person I saw was Mr. Forester. He told me that
+he did not yet know what Mr. Falkland had to allege against me, for that
+he had refused to know. He had arrived at the house of his brother by
+appointment on the preceding day to settle some indispensable business,
+his intention having been to depart the moment the business was
+finished, as he knew that conduct on his part would be most agreeable to
+Mr. Falkland. But he was no sooner come, than he found the whole house
+in confusion, the alarm of my elopement having been given a few hours
+before. Mr. Falkland had despatched servants in all directions in
+pursuit of me; and the servant from the market-town arrived at the same
+moment with Mr. Forester, with intelligence that a person answering the
+description he gave, had been there very early in the morning enquiring
+respecting the stage to London.
+
+Mr. Falkland seemed extremely disturbed at this information, and
+exclaimed on me with acrimony, as an unthankful and unnatural villain.
+
+Mr. Forester replied, "Have more command of yourself, sir! Villain is a
+serious appellation, and must not be trifled with. Englishmen are free;
+and no man is to be charged with villainy, because he changes one source
+of subsistence for another."
+
+Mr. Falkland shook his head, and with a smile, expressive of acute
+sensibility, said, "Brother, brother, you are the dupe of his art. I
+always considered him with an eye of suspicion, and was aware of his
+depravity. But I have just discovered--"
+
+"Stop, sir!" interrupted Mr. Forester. "I own I thought that, in a
+moment of acrimony, you might be employing harsh epithets in a sort of
+random style. But if you have a serious accusation to state, we must not
+be told of that, till it is known whether the lad is within reach of a
+hearing. I am indifferent myself about the good opinion of others. It is
+what the world bestows and retracts with so little thought, that I can
+make no account of its decision. But that does not authorise me lightly
+to entertain an ill opinion of another. The slenderest allowance I think
+I can make to such as I consign to be the example and terror of their
+species, is that of being heard in their own defence. It is a wise
+principle that requires the judge to come into court uninformed of the
+merits of the cause he is to try; and to that principle I am determined
+to conform as an individual. I shall always think it right to be severe
+and inflexible in my treatment of offenders; but the severity I exercise
+in the sequel, must be accompanied with impartiality and caution in what
+is preliminary."
+
+While Mr. Forester related to me these particulars, he observed me ready
+to break out into some of the expressions which the narrative suggested;
+but he would not suffer me to speak. "No," said he; "I would not hear
+Mr. Falkland against you; and I cannot hear you in your defence. I come
+to you at present to speak, and not to hear. I thought it right to warn
+you of your danger, but I have nothing more to do now. Reserve what you
+have to say to the proper time. Make the best story you can for
+yourself--true, if truth, as I hope, will serve your purpose; but, if
+not, the most plausible and ingenious you can invent. That is what
+self-defence requires from every man, where, as it always happens to a
+man upon his trial, he has the whole world against him, and has his own
+battle to fight against the world. Farewell; and God send you a good
+deliverance! If Mr. Falkland's accusation, whatever it be, shall appear
+premature, depend upon having me more zealously your friend than ever.
+If not, this is the last act of friendship you will ever receive from
+me!"
+
+It may be believed that this address, so singular, so solemn, so big
+with conditional menace, did not greatly tend to encourage me. I was
+totally ignorant of the charge to be advanced against me; and not a
+little astonished, when it was in my power to be in the most formidable
+degree the accuser of Mr. Falkland, to find the principles of equity so
+completely reversed, as for the innocent but instructed individual to be
+the party accused and suffering, instead of having, as was natural, the
+real criminal at his mercy. I was still more astonished at the
+superhuman power Mr. Falkland seemed to possess, of bringing the object
+of his persecution within the sphere of his authority; a reflection
+attended with some check to that eagerness and boldness of spirit, which
+now constituted the ruling passion of my mind.
+
+But this was no time for meditation. To the sufferer the course of
+events is taken out of his direction, and he is hurried along with an
+irresistible force, without finding it within the compass of his efforts
+to check their rapidity. I was allowed only a short time to recollect
+myself, when my trial commenced. I was conducted to the library, where I
+had passed so many happy and so many contemplative hours, and found
+there Mr. Forester and three or four of the servants already assembled,
+in expectation of me and my accuser. Every thing was calculated to
+suggest to me that I must trust only in the justice of the parties
+concerned, and had nothing to hope from their indulgence. Mr. Falkland
+entered at one door, almost as soon as I entered at the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+He began: "It has been the principle of my life, never to inflict a
+wilful injury upon any thing that lives; I need not express my regret,
+when I find myself obliged to be the promulgator of a criminal charge.
+How gladly would I pass unnoticed the evil I have sustained; but I owe
+it to society to detect an offender, and prevent other men from being
+imposed upon, as I have been, by an appearance of integrity."
+
+"It would be better," interrupted Mr. Forester "to speak directly to the
+point. We ought not, though unwarily, by apologising for ourselves, to
+create at such a time a prejudice against an individual, against whom a
+criminal accusation will always be prejudice enough."
+
+"I strongly suspect," continued Mr. Falkland, "this young man, who has
+been peculiarly the object of my kindness, of having robbed me to a
+considerable amount."
+
+"What," replied Mr. Forester, "are the grounds of your suspicion?"
+
+"The first of them is the actual loss I have sustained, in notes,
+jewels, and plate. I have missed bank-notes to the amount of nine
+hundred pounds, three gold repeaters of considerable value, a complete
+set of diamonds, the property of my late mother, and several other
+articles."
+
+"And why," continued my arbitrator, astonishment grief, and a desire to
+retain his self-possession, strong contending in his countenance and
+voice, "do you fix on this young man as the instrument of the
+depredation?"
+
+"I found him, on my coming home, upon the day when every thing was in
+disorder from the alarm of fire, in the very act of quitting the private
+apartment where these articles were deposited. He was confounded at
+seeing me, and hastened to withdraw as soon as he possibly could."
+
+"Did you say nothing to him--take no notice of the confusion your sudden
+appearance produced?"
+
+"I asked what was his errand in that place. He was at first so terrified
+and overcome, that he could not answer me. Afterwards, with a good deal
+of faltering, he said that, when all the servants were engaged in
+endeavouring to save the most valuable part of my property, he had come
+hither with the same view; but that he had as yet removed nothing."
+
+"Did you immediately examine to see that every thing was safe?"
+
+"No. I was accustomed to confide in his honesty, and I was suddenly
+called away, in the present instance, to attend to the increasing
+progress of the flames. I therefore only took out the key from the door
+of the apartment, having first locked it, and, putting it in my pocket,
+hastened to go where my presence seemed indispensably necessary."
+
+"How long was it before you missed your property?"
+
+"The same evening. The hurry of the scene had driven the circumstance
+entirely out of my mind, till, going by accident near the apartment, the
+whole affair, together with the singular and equivocal behaviour of
+Williams, rushed at once upon my recollection. I immediately entered,
+examined the trunk in which these things were contained, and, to my
+astonishment, found the locks broken, and the property gone."
+
+"What steps did you take upon this discovery?"
+
+"I sent for Williams, and talked to him very seriously upon the
+subject. But he had now perfectly recovered his self-command, and calmly
+and stoutly denied all knowledge of the matter. I urged him with the
+enormousness of the offence, but I made no impression. He did not
+discover either the surprise and indignation one would have expected
+from a person entirely innocent, or the uneasiness that generally
+attends upon guilt. He was rather silent and reserved. I then informed
+him, that I should proceed in a manner different from what he might
+perhaps expect. I would not, as is too frequent in such cases, make a
+general search; for I had rather lose my property for ever without
+redress, than expose a multitude of innocent persons to anxiety and
+injustice. My suspicion, for the present, unavoidably fixed upon him.
+But, in a matter of so great consequence, I was determined not to act
+upon suspicion. I would neither incur the possibility of ruining him,
+being innocent, nor be the instrument of exposing others to his
+depredations, if guilty. I should therefore merely insist upon his
+continuing in my service. He might depend upon it he should be well
+watched, and I trusted the whole truth would eventually appear. Since he
+avoided confession now, I advised him to consider how far it was likely
+he would come off with impunity at last. This I determined on, that the
+moment he attempted an escape, I would consider that as an indication of
+guilt, and proceed accordingly."
+
+"What circumstances have occurred from that time to the present?"
+
+"None upon which I can infer a certainty of guilt; several that agree to
+favour a suspicion. From that time Williams was perpetually uneasy in
+his situation, always desirous, as it now appears, to escape, but
+afraid to adopt such a measure without certain precautions. It was not
+long after, that you, Mr. Forester, became my visitor. I observed, with
+dissatisfaction, the growing intercourse between you, reflecting on the
+equivocalness of his character, and the attempt he would probably make
+to render you the dupe of his hypocrisy. I accordingly threatened him
+severely; and I believe you observed the change that presently after
+occurred in his behaviour with relation to you."
+
+"I did, and it appeared at that time mysterious and extraordinary."
+
+"Some time after, as you well know, a rencounter took place between you,
+whether accidental or intentional on his part I am not able to say, when
+he confessed to you the uneasiness of his mind, without discovering the
+cause, and openly proposed to you to assist him in his flight, and
+stand, in case of necessity, between him and my resentment. You offered,
+it seems, to take him into your service; but nothing, as he
+acknowledged, would answer his purpose, that did not place his retreat
+wholly out of my power to discover."
+
+"Did it not appear extraordinary to you, that he should hope for any
+effectual protection from me, while it remained perpetually in your
+power to satisfy me of his unworthiness?"
+
+"Perhaps he had hopes that I should not proceed to that step, at least
+so long as the place of his retreat should be unknown to me, and of
+consequence the event of my proceeding dubious. Perhaps he confided in
+his own powers, which are far from contemptible, to construct a
+plausible tale, especially as he had taken care to have the first
+impression in his favour. After all, this protection, on your part, was
+merely reserved in case all other expedients failed. He does not appear
+to have had any other sentiment upon the subject, than that, if he were
+defeated in his projects for placing himself beyond the reach of
+justice, it was better to have bespoken a place in your patronage than
+to be destitute of every resource."
+
+Mr. Falkland having thus finished his evidence, called upon Robert, the
+valet, to confirm the part of it which related to the day of the fire.
+
+Robert stated, that he happened to be coming through the library that
+day, a few minutes after Mr. Falkland's being brought home by the sight
+of the fire; that he had found me standing there with every mark of
+perturbation and fright; that he could not help stopping to notice it;
+that he had spoken to me two or three times before he could obtain an
+answer; and that all he could get from me at last was, that I was the
+most miserable creature alive.
+
+He further said, that in the evening of the same day Mr. Falkland called
+him into the private apartment adjoining to the library, and bid him
+bring a hammer and some nails. He then showed him a trunk standing in
+the apartment with its locks and fastening broken, and ordered him to
+observe and remember what he saw, but not to mention it to any one.
+Robert did not at that time know what Mr. Falkland intended by these
+directions, which were given in a manner uncommonly solemn and
+significant; but he entertained no doubt, that the fastenings were
+broken and wrenched by the application of a chisel or such-like
+instrument, with the intention of forcibly opening the trunk.
+
+Mr. Forester observed upon this evidence, that as much of it as related
+to the day of the fire seemed indeed to afford powerful reasons for
+suspicion; and that the circumstances that had occurred since strangely
+concurred to fortify that suspicion. Meantime, that nothing proper to
+be done might be omitted, he asked whether in my flight I had removed my
+boxes, to see whether by that means any trace could be discovered to
+confirm the imputation. Mr. Falkland treated this suggestion slightly,
+saying, that if I were the thief, I had no doubt taken the precaution to
+obviate so palpable a means of detection. To this Mr. Forester only
+replied, that conjecture, however skilfully formed, was not always
+realised in the actions and behaviour of mankind; and ordered that my
+boxes and trunks, if found, should be brought into the library. I
+listened to this suggestion with pleasure; and, uneasy and confounded as
+I was at the appearances combined against me, I trusted in this appeal
+to give a new face to my cause. I was eager to declare the place where
+my property was deposited; and the servants, guided by my direction,
+presently produced what was enquired for.
+
+The two boxes that were first opened, contained nothing to confirm the
+accusation against me; in the third were found a watch and several
+jewels, that were immediately known to be the property of Mr. Falkland.
+The production of this seemingly decisive evidence excited emotions of
+astonishment and concern; but no person's astonishment appeared to be
+greater than that of Mr. Falkland. That I should have left the stolen
+goods behind me, would of itself have appeared incredible; but when it
+was considered what a secure place of concealment I had found for them,
+the wonder diminished; and Mr. Forester observed, that it was by no
+means impossible I might conceive it easier to obtain possession of them
+afterwards, than to remove them at the period of my precipitate flight.
+
+Here however I thought it necessary to interfere. I fervently urged my
+right to a fair and impartial construction. I asked Mr. Forester,
+whether it were probable, if I had stolen these things, that I should
+not have contrived, at least to remove them along with me? And again,
+whether, if I had been conscious they would he found among my property,
+I should myself have indicated the place where I had concealed it?
+
+The insinuation I conveyed against Mr. Forester's impartiality
+overspread his whole countenance, for an instant, with the flush of
+anger.
+
+"Impartiality, young man! Yes, be sure, from me you shall experience an
+impartial treatment! God send that may answer your purpose! Presently
+you shall be heard at full in your own defence.
+
+"You expect us to believe you innocent, because you did not remove these
+things along with you. The money is removed. Where, sir, is that? We
+cannot answer for the inconsistences and oversights of any human mind,
+and, least of all, if that mind should appear to be disturbed with the
+consciousness of guilt.
+
+"You observe that it was by your own direction these boxes and trunks
+have been found: that is indeed extraordinary. It appears little less
+than infatuation. But to what purpose appeal to probabilities and
+conjecture, in the face of incontestable facts? There, sir, are the
+boxes: you alone knew where they were to be found; you alone had the
+keys: tell us then how this watch and these jewels came to be contained
+in them?"
+
+I was silent.
+
+To the rest of the persons present I seemed to be merely the subject of
+detection; but in reality I was, of all the spectators, that individual
+who was most at a loss to conceive, through every stage of the scene,
+what, would come next, and who listened to every word that was uttered
+with the most uncontrollable amazement. Amazement however alternately
+yielded to indignation and horror. At first I could not refrain from
+repeatedly attempting to interrupt; but I was checked in these attempts
+by Mr. Forester; and I presently felt how necessary it was to my future
+peace, that I should collect the whole energy of my mind to repel the
+charge, and assert my innocence.
+
+Every thing being now produced that could be produced against me, Mr.
+Forester turned to me with a look of concern and pity, and told me that
+now was the time, if I chose to allege any thing in my defence. In reply
+to this invitation, I spoke nearly as follows:--
+
+"I am innocent. It is in vain that circumstances are accumulated against
+me; there is not a person upon earth less capable than I of the things
+of which I am accused. I appeal to my heart--I appeal to my looks--I
+appeal to every sentiment my tongue ever uttered."
+
+I could perceive that the fervour with which I spoke made some
+impression upon every one that heard me. But in a moment their eyes were
+turned upon the property that lay before them, and their countenances
+changed. I proceeded:--
+
+"One thing more I must aver;--Mr. Falkland is not deceived; he perfectly
+knows that I am innocent."
+
+I had no sooner uttered these words, than an involuntary cry of
+indignation burst from every person in the room. Mr. Forester turned to
+me with a look of extreme severity, and said--
+
+"Young man, consider well what you are doing! It is the privilege of the
+party accused to say whatever he thinks proper; and I will take care
+that you shall enjoy that privilege in its utmost extent. But do you
+think it will conduce in any respect to your benefit, to throw out such
+insolent and intolerable insinuations?"
+
+"I thank you most sincerely," replied I, "for your caution; but I well
+know what it is I am doing. I make this declaration, not merely because
+it is solemnly true, but because it is inseparably connected with my
+vindication. I am the party accused, and I shall be told that I am not
+to be believed in my own defence. I can produce no other witnesses of my
+innocence; I therefore call upon Mr. Falkland to be my evidence. I ask
+him--
+
+"Did you never boast to me in private of your power to ruin me? Did you
+never say that, if once I brought on myself the weight of your
+displeasure, my fall should be irreparable? Did you not tell me that,
+though I should prepare in that case a tale however plausible or however
+true, you would take care that the whole world should execrate me as an
+impostor? Were not those your very words? Did you not add, that my
+innocence should be of no service to me, and that you laughed at so
+feeble a defence? I ask you further,--Did you not receive a letter from
+me the morning of the day on which I departed, requesting your consent
+to my departure? Should I have done that if my flight had been that of a
+thief? I challenge any man to reconcile the expressions of that letter
+with this accusation. Should I have begun with stating that I had
+conceived a desire to quit your service, if my desire and the reasons
+for it, had been of the nature that is now alleged? Should I have dared
+to ask for what reason I was thus subjected to an eternal penance?"
+
+Saying this, I took out a copy of my letter, and laid it open upon the
+table.
+
+Mr. Falkland returned no immediate answer to my interrogations. Mr.
+Forester turned to him, and said.
+
+"Well, sir, what is your reply to this challenge of your servant?"
+
+Mr. Falkland answered, "Such a mode of defence scarcely calls for a
+reply. But I answer, I held no such conversation; I never used such
+words; I received no such letter. Surely it is no sufficient refutation
+of a criminal charge, that the criminal repels what is alleged against
+him with volubility of speech, and intrepidity of manner."
+
+Mr. Forester then turned to me: "If," said he, "you trust your
+vindication to the plausibility of your tale, you must take care to
+render it consistent and complete. You have not told us what was the
+cause of the confusion and anxiety in which Robert professes to have
+found you, why you were so impatient to quit the service of Mr.
+Falkland, or how you account for certain articles of his property being
+found in your possession."
+
+"All that, sir," answered I, "is true. There are certain parts of my
+story that I have not told. If they were told, they would not conduce to
+my disadvantage, and they would make the present accusation appear still
+more astonishing. But I cannot, as yet at least, prevail upon myself to
+tell them. Is it necessary to give any particular and precise reasons
+why I should wish to change the place of my residence? You all of you
+know the unfortunate state of Mr. Falkland's mind. You know the
+sternness, reservedness, and distance of his manners. If I had no other
+reasons, surely it would afford small presumption of criminality that I
+should wish to change his service for another.
+
+"The question of how these articles of Mr. Falkland's property came to
+be found in my possession, is more material. It is a question I am
+wholly unable to answer. Their being found there, was at least as
+unexpected to me as to any one of the persons now present. I only know
+that, as I have the most perfect assurance of Mr. Falkland's being
+conscious of my innocence--for, observe! I do not shrink from that
+assertion; I reiterate it with new confidence--I therefore firmly and
+from my soul believe, that their being there is of Mr. Falkland's
+contrivance."
+
+I no sooner said this, than I was again interrupted by an involuntary
+exclamation from every one present. They looked at me with furious
+glances, as if they could have torn me to pieces. I proceeded:--
+
+"I have now answered every thing that is alleged against me.
+
+"Mr. Forester, you are a lover of justice; I conjure you not to violate
+it in my person. You are a man of penetration; look at me! do you see
+any of the marks of guilt? Recollect all that has ever passed under your
+observation; is it compatible with a mind capable of what is now alleged
+against me? Could a real criminal have shown himself so unabashed,
+composed, and firm as I have now done?
+
+"Fellow-servants! Mr. Falkland is a man of rank and fortune; he is your
+master. I am a poor country lad, without a friend in the world. That is
+a ground of real difference to a certain extent; but it is not a
+sufficient ground for the subversion of justice. Remember, that I am in
+a situation that is not to be trifled with; that a decision given
+against me now, in a case in which I solemnly assure you I am innocent,
+will for ever deprive me of reputation and peace of mind, combine the
+whole world in a league against me, and determine perhaps upon my
+liberty and my life. If you believe--if you see--if you know, that I am
+innocent, speak for me. Do not suffer a pusillanimous timidity to
+prevent you from saving a fellow-creature from destruction, who does not
+deserve to have a human being for his enemy. Why have we the power of
+speech, but to communicate our thoughts? I will never believe that a
+man, conscious of innocence, cannot make other men perceive that he has
+that thought. Do not you feel that my whole heart tells me. I am not
+guilty of what is imputed to me?
+
+"To you, Mr. Falkland, I have nothing to say: I know you, and know that
+you are impenetrable. At the very moment that you are urging such odious
+charges against me, you admire my resolution and forbearance. But I have
+nothing to hope from you. You can look upon my ruin without pity or
+remorse. I am most unfortunate indeed in having to do with such an
+adversary. You oblige me to say ill things of you; but I appeal to your
+own heart, whether my language is that of exaggeration or revenge."
+
+Every thing that could be alleged on either side being now concluded,
+Mr. Forester undertook to make some remarks upon the whole.
+
+"Williams," said he, "the charge against you is heavy; the direct
+evidence strong; the corroborating circumstances numerous and striking.
+I grant that you have shown considerable dexterity in your answers; but
+you will learn, young man, to your cost, that dexterity, however
+powerful it may be in certain cases, will avail little against the
+stubbornness of truth. It is fortunate for mankind that the empire of
+talents has its limitations, and that it is not in the power of
+ingenuity to subvert the distinctions of right and wrong. Take my word
+for it, that the true merits of the case against you will be too strong
+for sophistry to overturn; that justice will prevail, and impotent
+malice be defeated.
+
+"To you, Mr. Falkland, society is obliged for having placed this black
+affair in its true light. Do not suffer the malignant aspersions of the
+criminal to give you uneasiness. Depend upon it that they will be found
+of no weight I have no doubt that your character, in the judgment of
+every person that has heard them, stands higher than ever. We feel for
+your misfortune, in being obliged to hear such calumnies from a person
+who has injured you so grossly. But you must be considered in that
+respect as a martyr in the public cause. The purity of your motives and
+dispositions is beyond the reach of malice; and truth and equity will
+not fail to award, to your calumniator infamy, and to you the love and
+approbation of mankind.
+
+"I have now told you, Williams, what I think of your case. But I have no
+right to assume to be your ultimate judge. Desperate as it appears to
+me, I will give you one piece of advice, as if I were retained as a
+counsel to assist you. Leave out of it whatever tends to the
+disadvantage of Mr. Falkland. Defend yourself as well as you can, but do
+not attack your master. It is your business to create in those who hear
+you a prepossession in your favour. But the recrimination you have been
+now practising, will always create indignation. Dishonesty will admit of
+some palliation. The deliberate malice you have now been showing is a
+thousand times more atrocious. It proves you to have the mind of a
+demon, rather than of a felon. Wherever you shall repeat it, those who
+hear you will pronounce you guilty upon that, even if the proper
+evidence against you were glaringly defective. If therefore you would
+consult your interest, which seems to be your only consideration, it is
+incumbent upon you by all means immediately to retract that. If you
+desire to be believed honest, you must in the first place show that you
+have a due sense of merit in others. You cannot better serve your cause
+than by begging pardon of your master, and doing homage to rectitude and
+worth, even when they are employed in vengeance against you."
+
+It is easy to conceive that my mind sustained an extreme shock from the
+decision of Mr. Forester; but his call upon me to retract and humble
+myself before my accuser penetrated my whole soul with indignation. I
+answered:--
+
+"I have already told you I am innocent. I believe that I could not
+endure the effort of inventing a plausible defence, if it were
+otherwise. You have just affirmed that it is not in the power of
+ingenuity to subvert the distinctions of right and wrong, and in that
+very instant I find them subverted. This is indeed to me a very awful
+moment. New to the world, I know nothing of its affairs but what has
+reached me by rumour, or is recorded in books. I have come into it with
+all the ardour and confidence inseparable from my years. In every
+fellow-being I expected to find a friend. I am unpractised in its wiles,
+and have even no acquaintance with its injustice. I have done nothing to
+deserve the animosity of mankind; but, if I may judge from the present
+scene, I am henceforth to be deprived of the benefits of integrity and
+honour. I am to forfeit the friendship of every one I have hitherto
+known, and to be precluded from the power of acquiring that of others. I
+must therefore be reduced to derive my satisfaction from myself. Depend
+upon it, I will not begin that career by dishonourable concessions. If I
+am to despair of the good-will of other men, I will at least maintain
+the independence of my own mind. Mr. Falkland is my implacable enemy.
+Whatever may be his merits in other respects, he is acting towards me
+without humanity, without remorse, and without principle. Do you think I
+will ever make submissions to a man by whom I am thus treated, that I
+will fall down at the feet of one who is to me a devil, or kiss the hand
+that is red with my blood?"
+
+"In that respect," answered Mr. Forester, "do as you shall think
+proper. I must confess that your firmness and consistency astonish me.
+They add something to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you
+have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your
+purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating.
+The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may
+have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail
+against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I
+see in you a new instance of that abuse which is so generally made of
+talents, the admiration of an undiscerning public. I regard you with
+horror. All that remains is, that I should discharge my duty, in
+consigning you, as a monster of depravity, to the justice of your
+country."
+
+"No," rejoined Mr. Falkland, "to that I can never consent. I have put a
+restraint upon myself thus far, because it was right that evidence and
+enquiry should take their course. I have suppressed all my habits and
+sentiments, because it seemed due to the public that hypocrisy should be
+unmasked. But I can suffer this violence no longer. I have through my
+whole life interfered to protect, not overbear, the sufferer; and I must
+do so now. I feel not the smallest resentment of his impotent attacks
+upon my character; I smile at their malice; and they make no diminution
+in my benevolence to their author. Let him say what he pleases; he
+cannot hurt me. It was proper that he should be brought to public shame,
+that other people might not be deceived by him as we have been. But
+there is no necessity for proceeding further; and I must insist upon it
+that he be permitted to depart wherever he pleases. I am sorry that
+public interest affords so gloomy a prospect for his future happiness."
+
+"Mr. Falkland," answered Mr. Forester, "these sentiments do honour to
+your humanity; but I must not give way to them. They only serve to set
+in a stronger light the venom of this serpent, this monster of
+ingratitude, who first robs his benefactor, and then reviles him. Wretch
+that you are, will nothing move you? Are you inaccessible to remorse?
+Are you not struck to the heart with the unmerited goodness of your
+master? Vile calumniator! you are the abhorrence of nature, the
+opprobrium of the human species, and the earth can only be freed from an
+insupportable burthen by your being exterminated! Recollect, sir, that
+this monster, at the very moment that you are exercising such unexampled
+forbearance in his behalf, has the presumption to charge you with
+prosecuting a crime of which you know him to be innocent, nay, with
+having conveyed the pretended stolen goods among his property, for the
+express purpose of ruining him. By this unexampled villainy, he makes it
+your duty to free the world from such a pest, and your interest to admit
+no relaxing in your pursuit of him, lest the world should be persuaded
+by your clemency to credit his vile insinuations."
+
+"I care not for the consequences," replied Mr. Falkland; "I will obey
+the dictates of my own mind. I will never lend my assistance to the
+reforming mankind by axes and gibbets. I am sure things will never be as
+they ought, till honour, and not law, be the dictator of mankind, till
+vice be taught to shrink before the resistless might of inborn dignity,
+and not before the cold formality of statutes. If my calumniator were
+worthy of my resentment, I would chastise him with my own sword, and not
+that of the magistrate; but in the present case I smile at his malice,
+and resolve to spare him, as the generous lord of the forest spares the
+insect that would disturb his repose."
+
+"The language you now hold," said Mr. Forester, "is that of romance, and
+not of reason. Yet I cannot but be struck with the contrast exhibited
+before me, of the magnanimity of virtue, and the obstinate impenetrable
+injustice of guilt. While your mind overflows with goodness, nothing can
+touch the heart of this thrice-refined villain. I shall never forgive
+myself for having once been entrapped by his detestable arts. This is no
+time for us to settle the question between chivalry and law. I shall
+therefore simply insist as a magistrate, having taken the evidence in
+this felony, upon my right and duty of following the course of justice,
+and committing the accused to the county jail."
+
+After some further contest Mr. Falkland, finding Mr. Forester obstinate
+and impracticable, withdrew his opposition. Accordingly a proper officer
+was summoned from the neighbouring village, a mittimus made out, and one
+of Mr. Falkland's carriages prepared to conduct me to the place of
+custody. It will easily be imagined that this sudden reverse was very
+painfully felt by me. I looked round on the servants who had been the
+spectators of my examination, but not one of them, either by word or
+gesture, expressed compassion for my calamity. The robbery of which I
+was accused appeared to them atrocious from its magnitude; and whatever
+sparks of compassion might otherwise have sprung up in their ingenuous
+and undisciplined minds, were totally obliterated by indignation at my
+supposed profligacy in recriminating upon their worthy and excellent
+master. My fate being already determined, and one of the servants
+despatched for the officer, Mr. Forester and Mr. Falkland withdrew, and
+left me in the custody of two others.
+
+One of these was the son of a farmer at no great distance, who had been
+in habits of long-established intimacy with my late father. I was
+willing accurately to discover the state of mind of those who had been
+witnesses of this scene, and who had had some previous opportunity of
+observing my character and manners. I, therefore, endeavoured to open a
+conversation with him. "Well, my good Thomas," said I, in a querulous
+tone, and with a hesitating manner, "am I not a most miserable
+creature?"
+
+"Do not speak to me, Master Williams! You have given me a shock that I
+shall not get the better of for one while. You were hatched by a hen, as
+the saying is, but you came of the spawn of a cockatrice. I am glad to
+my heart that honest farmer Williams is dead; your villainy would else
+have made him curse the day that ever he was born."
+
+"Thomas, I am innocent! I swear by the great God that shall judge me
+another day, I am innocent!"
+
+"Pray, do not swear! for goodness' sake, do not swear! your poor soul is
+damned enough without that. For your sake, lad, I will never take any
+body's word, nor trust to appearances, tho' it should be an angel. Lord
+bless us! how smoothly you palavered it over, for all the world, as if
+you had been as fair as a new-born babe! But it will not do; you will
+never be able to persuade people that black is white. For my own part, I
+have done with you. I loved you yesterday, all one as if you had been my
+own brother. To-day I love you so well, that I would go ten miles with
+all the pleasure in life to see you hanged."
+
+"Good God, Thomas! have you the heart? What a change! I call God to
+witness, I have done nothing to deserve it! What a world do we live in!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, boy! It makes my very heart sick to hear you! I
+would not lie a night under the same roof with you for all the world! I
+should expect the house to fall and crush such wickedness! I admire that
+the earth does not open and swallow you alive! It is poison so much as
+to look at you! If you go on at this hardened rate, I believe from my
+soul that the people you talk to will tear you to pieces, and you will
+never live to come to the gallows. Oh, yes, you do well to pity
+yourself; poor tender thing! that spit venom all round you like a toad,
+and leave the very ground upon which you crawl infected with your
+slime."
+
+Finding the person with whom I talked thus impenetrable to all I could
+say, and considering that the advantage to be gained was small, even if
+I could overcome his prepossession, I took his advice, and was silent.
+It was not much longer before every thing was prepared for my departure,
+and I was conducted to the same prison which had so lately enclosed the
+wretched and innocent Hawkinses. They too had been the victims of Mr.
+Falkland. He exhibited, upon a contracted scale indeed, but in which the
+truth of delineation was faithfully sustained, a copy of what monarchs
+are, who reckon among the instruments of their power prisons of state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+For my own part, I had never seen a prison, and, like the majority of my
+brethren, had given myself little concern to enquire what was the
+condition of those who committed offence against, or became obnoxious to
+suspicion from, the community. Oh, how enviable is the most tottering
+shed under which the labourer retires to rest, compared with the
+residence of these walls!
+
+To me every thing was new,--the massy doors, the resounding locks, the
+gloomy passages, the grated windows, and the characteristic looks of the
+keepers, accustomed to reject every petition, and to steel their hearts
+against feeling and pity. Curiosity, and a sense of my situation,
+induced me to fix my eyes on the faces of these men; but in a few
+minutes I drew them away with unconquerable loathing. It is impossible
+to describe the sort of squalidness and filth with which these mansions
+are distinguished. I have seen dirty faces in dirty apartments, which
+have nevertheless borne the impression of health, and spoke carelessness
+and levity rather than distress. But the dirt of a prison speaks sadness
+to the heart, and appears to be already in a state of putridity and
+infection.
+
+I was detained for more than an hour in the apartment of the keeper, one
+turnkey after another coming in, that they might make themselves
+familiar with my person. As I was already considered as guilty of felony
+to a considerable amount, I underwent a rigorous search, and they took
+from me a penknife, a pair of scissars, and that part of my money which
+was in gold. It was debated whether or not these should be sealed up, to
+be returned to me, as they said, as soon as I should be acquitted; and
+had I not displayed an unexpected firmness of manner and vigour of
+expostulation, such was probably the conduct that would have been
+pursued. Having undergone these ceremonies, I was thrust into a
+day-room, in which all the persons then under confinement for felony
+were assembled, to the number of eleven. Each of them was too much
+engaged in his own reflections, to take notice of me. Of these, two were
+imprisoned for horse-stealing, and three for having stolen a sheep, one
+for shop-lifting, one for coining, two for highway-robbery, and two for
+burglary.
+
+The horse-stealers were engaged in a game at cards, which was presently
+interrupted by a difference of opinion, attended with great
+vociferation,--they calling upon one and another to decide it, to no
+purpose; one paying no attention to their summons, and another leaving
+them in the midst of their story, being no longer able to endure his own
+internal anguish, in the midst of their mummery.
+
+It is a custom among thieves to constitute a sort of mock tribunal of
+their own body, from whose decision every one is informed whether he
+shall be acquitted, respited, or pardoned, as well as respecting the
+supposed most skilful way of conducting his defence. One of the
+housebreakers, who had already passed this ordeal, and was stalking up
+and down the room with a forced bravery, exclaimed to his companion,
+that he was as rich as the Duke of Bedford himself. He had five guineas
+and a half, which was as much as he could possibly spend in the course
+of the ensuing month; and what happened after that, it was Jack Ketch's
+business to see to, not his. As he uttered these words, he threw himself
+abruptly upon a bench that was near him, and seemed to be asleep in a
+moment. But his sleep was uneasy and disturbed, his breathing was hard,
+and, at intervals, had rather the nature of a groan. A young fellow from
+the other side of the room came softly to the place where he lay, with a
+large knife in his hand: and pressed the back of it with such violence
+upon his neck, the head hanging over the side of the bench, that it was
+not till after several efforts that he was able to rise. "Oh, Jack!"
+cried this manual jester, "I had almost done your business for you!" The
+other expressed no marks of resentment, but sullenly answered, "Damn
+you, why did not you take the edge? It would have been the best thing
+you have done this many a day!"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: An incident exactly similar to this was witnessed by a
+friend of the author, a few years since, in a visit to the prison of
+Newgate.]
+
+The case of one of the persons committed for highway-robbery was not a
+little extraordinary. He was a common soldier of a most engaging
+physiognomy, and two-and-twenty years of age. The prosecutor, who had
+been robbed one evening, as he returned late from the alehouse, of the
+sum of three shillings, swore positively to his person. The character of
+the prisoner was such as has seldom been equalled. He had been ardent in
+the pursuit of intellectual cultivation, and was accustomed to draw his
+favourite amusement from the works of Virgil and Horace. The humbleness
+of his situation, combined with his ardour for literature, only served
+to give an inexpressible heightening to the interestingness of his
+character. He was plain and unaffected; he assumed nothing; he was
+capable, when occasion demanded, of firmness, but, in his ordinary
+deportment, he seemed unarmed and unresisting, unsuspicious of guile in
+others, as he was totally free from guile in himself. His integrity was
+proverbially great. In one instance he had been intrusted by a lady to
+convey a sum of a thousand pounds to a person at some miles distance: in
+another, he was employed by a gentleman, during his absence, in the care
+of his house and furniture, to the value of at least five times that
+sum. His habits of thinking were strictly his own, full of justice,
+simplicity, and wisdom. He from time to time earned money of his
+officers, by his peculiar excellence in furbishing arms; but he declined
+offers that had been made him to become a Serjeant or a corporal,
+saying that he did not want money, and that in a new situation he should
+have less leisure for study. He was equally constant in refusing
+presents that were offered him by persons who had been struck with his
+merit; not that he was under the influence of false delicacy and pride,
+but that he had no inclination to accept that, the want of which he did
+not feel to be an evil. This man died while I was in prison. I received
+his last breath.[C]
+
+[Footnote C: A story extremely similar to this is to be found in the
+Newgate Calendar, vol. i. p. 382.]
+
+The whole day I was obliged to spend in the company of these men, some
+of them having really committed the actions laid to their charge, others
+whom their ill fortune had rendered the victims of suspicion. The whole
+was a scene of misery, such as nothing short of actual observation can
+suggest to the mind. Some were noisy and obstreperous, endeavouring by a
+false bravery to keep at bay the remembrance of their condition; while
+others, incapable even of this effort, had the torment of their thoughts
+aggravated by the perpetual noise and confusion that prevailed around
+them. In the faces of those who assumed the most courage, you might
+trace the furrows of anxious care and in the midst of their laboured
+hilarity dreadful ideas would ever and anon intrude, convulsing their
+features, and working every line into an expression of the keenest
+agony. To these men the sun brought no return of joy. Day after day
+rolled on, but their state was immutable. Existence was to them a scene
+of invariable melancholy; every moment was a moment of anguish; yet did
+they wish to prolong that moment, fearful that the coming period would
+bring a severer fate. They thought of the past with insupportable
+repentance, each man contented to give his right hand to have again the
+choice of that peace and liberty, which he had unthinkingly bartered
+away. We talk of instruments of torture; Englishmen take credit to
+themselves for having banished the use of them from their happy shore!
+Alas! he that has observed the secrets of a prison, well knows that
+there is more torture in the lingering existence of a criminal, in the
+silent intolerable minutes that he spends, than in the tangible misery
+of whips and racks!
+
+Such were our days. At sunset our jailors appeared, and ordered each man
+to come away, and be locked into his dungeon. It was a bitter
+aggravation of our fate, to be under the arbitrary control of these
+fellows. They felt no man's sorrow; they were of all men least capable
+of any sort of feeling. They had a barbarous and sullen pleasure in
+issuing their detested mandates, and observing the mournful reluctance
+with which they were obeyed. Whatever they directed, it was in vain to
+expostulate; fetters, and bread and water, were the sure consequences of
+resistance. Their tyranny had no other limit than their own caprice. To
+whom shall the unfortunate felon appeal? To what purpose complain, when
+his complaints are sure to be received with incredulity? A tale of
+mutiny and necessary precaution is the unfailing refuge of the keeper,
+and this tale is an everlasting bar against redress.
+
+Our dungeons were cells, 7-1/2 feet by 6-1/2, below the surface of the
+ground, damp, without window, light, or air, except from a few holes
+worked for that purpose in the door. In some of these miserable
+receptacles three persons were put to sleep together.[D] I was fortunate
+enough to have one to myself. It was now the approach of winter. We
+were not allowed to have candles, and, as I have already said, were
+thrust in here at sunset, and not liberated till the returning day. This
+was our situation for fourteen or fifteen hours out of the
+four-and-twenty. I had never been accustomed to sleep more than six or
+seven hours, and my inclination to sleep was now less than ever. Thus
+was I reduced to spend half my day in this dreary abode, and in complete
+darkness. This was no trifling aggravation of my lot.
+
+[Footnote D: See Howard on Prisons.]
+
+Among my melancholy reflections I tasked my memory, and counted over the
+doors, the locks, the bolts, the chains, the massy walls, and grated
+windows, that were between me and liberty. "These," said I, "are the
+engines that tyranny sits down in cold and serious meditation to invent.
+This is the empire that man exercises over man. Thus is a being, formed
+to expatiate, to act, to smile, and enjoy, restricted and benumbed. How
+great must be his depravity or heedlessness, who vindicates this scheme
+for changing health and gaiety and serenity, into the wanness of a
+dungeon, and the deep furrows of agony and despair!"
+
+"Thank God," exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God,
+with us no man can be punished without a crime!" Unthinking wretch! Is
+that a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and
+fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons!
+witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their
+governors, the misery of their inmates! After that, show me the man
+shameless enough to triumph, and say, England has no Bastile! Is there
+any charge so frivolous, upon which men are not consigned to those
+detested abodes? Is there any villainy that is not practised by justices
+and prosecutors? But against all this perhaps you have been told there
+is redress. Yes; a redress, that it is the consummation of insult so
+much as to name! Where shall the poor wretch reduced to the last
+despair, to whom acquittal perhaps comes just time enough to save him
+from perishing,--where shall this man find leisure, and much less money,
+to fee counsel and officers, and purchase the tedious dear-bought remedy
+of the law? No; he is too happy to leave his dungeon, and the memory of
+his dungeon, behind him; and the same tyranny and wanton oppression
+become the inheritance of his successor.
+
+For myself, I looked round upon my walls, and forward upon the premature
+death I had too much reason to expect: I consulted my own heart, that
+whispered nothing but innocence; and I said, "This is society. This is
+the object, the distribution of justice, which is the end of human
+reason. For this sages have toiled, and midnight oil has been wasted.
+This!"
+
+The reader will forgive this digression from the immediate subject of my
+story. If it should be said these are general remarks, let it be
+remembered that they are the dear-bought, result of experience. It is
+from the fulness of a bursting heart that reproach thus flows to my pen.
+These are not the declamations of a man desirous to be eloquent. I have
+felt the iron of slavery grating upon my soul.
+
+I believed that misery, more pure than that which I now endured, had
+never fallen to the lot of a human being. I recollected with
+astonishment my puerile eagerness to be brought to the test, and have my
+innocence examined. I execrated it, as the vilest and most insufferable
+pedantry. I exclaimed, in the bitterness of my heart, "Of what value is
+a fair fame? It is the jewel of men formed to be amused with baubles.
+Without it, I might have had serenity of heart and cheerfulness of
+occupation, peace, and liberty; why should I consign my happiness to
+other men's arbitration? But, if a fair fame were of the most
+inexpressible value, is this the method which common sense would
+prescribe to retrieve it? The language which these institutions hold out
+to the unfortunate is, 'Come, and be shut out from the light of day; be
+the associate of those whom society has marked out for her abhorrence,
+be the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you be
+cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and
+honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or
+folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the
+smallest foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own
+innocence; and I soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those
+who are regularly subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom,
+even with all the superciliousness and precipitation of our courts of
+justice, no evidence can be found sufficient to convict. How slender
+then must be that man's portion of information and discernment, who is
+willing to commit his character and welfare to such guardianship!
+
+But my case was even worse than this. I intimately felt that a trial,
+such as our institutions have hitherto been able to make it, is only the
+worthy sequel of such a beginning. What chance was there after the
+purgation I was now suffering, that I should come out acquitted at last?
+What probability was there that the trial I had endured in the house of
+Mr. Falkland was not just as fair as any that might be expected to
+follow? No; I anticipated my own condemnation.
+
+Thus was I cut off, for ever, from all that existence has to
+bestow--from all the high hopes I had so often conceived--from all the
+future excellence my soul so much delighted to imagine,--to spend a few
+weeks in a miserable prison, and then to perish by the hand of the
+public executioner. No language can do justice to the indignant and
+soul-sickening loathing that these ideas excited. My resentment was not
+restricted to my prosecutor, but extended itself to the whole machine of
+society. I could never believe that all this was the fair result of
+institutions inseparable from the general good. I regarded the whole
+human species as so many hangmen and torturers; I considered them as
+confederated to tear me to pieces; and this wide scene of inexorable
+persecution inflicted upon me inexpressible agony. I looked on this side
+and on that: I was innocent; I had a right to expect assistance; but
+every heart was steeled against me; every hand was ready to lend its
+force to make my ruin secure. No man that has not felt, in his own most
+momentous concerns, justice, eternal truth, unalterable equity engaged
+in his behalf, and on the other side brute force, impenetrable
+obstinacy, and unfeeling insolence, can imagine the sensations that then
+passed through my mind. I saw treachery triumphant and enthroned; I saw
+the sinews of innocence crumbled into dust by the gripe of almighty
+guilt.
+
+What relief had I from these sensations? Was it relief, that I spent the
+day in the midst of profligacy and execrations--that I saw reflected
+from every countenance agonies only inferior to my own? He that would
+form a lively idea of the regions of the damned, need only to witness,
+for six hours, a scene to which I was confined for many months. Not for
+one hour could I withdraw myself from this complexity of horrors, or
+take refuge in the calmness of meditation. Air, exercise, series,
+contrast, those grand enliveners of the human frame, I was for ever
+debarred from, by the inexorable tyranny under which I was fallen. Nor
+did I find the solitude of my nightly dungeon less insupportable. Its
+only furniture was the straw that served me for my repose. It was
+narrow, damp, and unwholesome. The slumbers of a mind, wearied, like
+mine, with the most detestable uniformity, to whom neither amusement nor
+occupation ever offered themselves to beguile the painful hours, were
+short, disturbed, and unrefreshing. My sleeping, still more than my
+waking thoughts, were full of perplexity, deformity, and disorder. To
+these slumbers succeeded the hours which, by the regulations of our
+prison, I was obliged, though awake, to spend in solitary and cheerless
+darkness. Here I had neither books nor pens, nor any thing upon which to
+engage my attention; all was a sightless blank. How was a mind, active
+and indefatigable like mine, to endure this misery? I could not sink it
+in lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with
+unintermitted and demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human
+affairs, that condemns a man to torture like this; that sanctions it,
+and knows not what is done under its sanction; that is too supine and
+unfeeling to enquire into these petty details; that calls this the
+ordeal of innocence, and the protector of freedom! A thousand times I
+could have dashed my brains against the walls of my dungeon; a thousand
+times I longed for death, and wished, with inexpressible ardour, for an
+end to what I suffered; a thousand times I meditated suicide, and
+ruminated, in the bitterness of my soul, upon the different means of
+escaping from the load of existence. What had I to do with life? I had
+seen enough to make me regard it with detestation. Why should I wait the
+lingering process of legal despotism, and not dare so much as to die,
+but when and how its instruments decreed? Still some inexplicable
+suggestion withheld my hand. I clung with desperate fondness to this
+shadow of existence, its mysterious attractions, and its hopeless
+prospects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Such were the reflections that haunted the first days of my
+imprisonment, in consequence of which they were spent in perpetual
+anguish. But, after a time, nature, wearied with distress, would no
+longer stoop to the burthen; thought, which is incessantly varying,
+introduced a series of reflections totally different.
+
+My fortitude revived. I had always been accustomed to cheerfulness, good
+humour, and serenity; and this habit now returned to visit me at the
+bottom of my dungeon. No sooner did my contemplations take this turn,
+than I saw the reasonableness and possibility of tranquillity and peace;
+and my mind whispered to me the propriety of showing, in this forlorn
+condition, that I was superior to all my persecutors. Blessed state of
+innocence and self-approbation! The sunshine of conscious integrity
+pierced through all the barriers of my cell, and spoke ten thousand
+times more joy to my heart, than the accumulated splendours of nature
+and art can communicate to the slaves of vice.
+
+I found out the secret of employing my mind. I said, "I am shut up for
+half the day in total darkness, without any external source of
+amusement; the other half I spend in the midst of noise, turbulence,
+and, confusion. What then? Can I not draw amusement from the stores of
+my own mind? Is it not freighted with various knowledge? Have I not been
+employed from my infancy in gratifying an insatiable curiosity? When
+should I derive benefit from these superior advantages, if not at
+present?" Accordingly I tasked the stores of my memory, and my powers of
+invention. I amused myself with recollecting the history of my life. By
+degrees I called to mind a number of minute circumstances, which, but
+for this exercise, would have been for ever forgotten. I repassed in my
+thoughts whole conversations, I recollected their subjects, their
+arrangement, their incidents, frequently their very words. I mused upon
+these ideas, till I was totally absorbed in thought. I repeated them,
+till my mind glowed with enthusiasm. I had my different employments,
+fitted for the solitude of the night, in which I could give full scope
+to the impulses of my mind; and for the uproar of the day, in which my
+chief object was, to be insensible to the disorder with which I was
+surrounded.
+
+By degrees I quitted my own story, and employed myself in imaginary
+adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be
+placed, and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of
+insult and danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me.
+In fancy I often passed the awful hour of dissolving nature. In some of
+my reveries I boiled with impetuous indignation, and in others patiently
+collected the whole force of my mind for some fearful encounter. I
+cultivated the powers of oratory suited to these different states, and
+improved more in eloquence in the solitude of my dungeon, than perhaps I
+should have done in the busiest and most crowded scenes.
+
+At length I proceeded to as regular a disposition of my time, as the man
+in his study, who passes from mathematics to poetry, and from poetry to
+the law of nations, in the different parts of each single day; and I as
+seldom infringed upon my plan. Nor were my subjects of disquisition less
+numerous than his. I went over, by the assistance of memory only, a
+considerable part of Euclid during my confinement, and revived, day
+after day, the series of facts and incidents in some of the most
+celebrated historians. I became myself a poet; and, while I described
+the sentiments cherished by the view of natural objects, recorded the
+characters and passions of men, and partook with a burning zeal in the
+generosity of their determinations, I eluded the squalid solitude of my
+dungeon, and wandered in idea through all the varieties of human
+society. I easily found expedients, such as the mind seems always to
+require, and which books and pens supply to the man at large, to record
+from time to time the progress that had been made.
+
+While I was thus employed, I reflected with exultation upon the degree
+in which man is independent of the smiles and frowns of fortune. I was
+beyond her reach, for I could fall no lower. To an ordinary eye I might
+seem destitute and miserable, but in reality I wanted for nothing. My
+fare was coarse; but I was in health. My dungeon was noisome; but I felt
+no inconvenience. I was shut up from the usual means of exercise and
+air; but I found the method of exercising myself even to perspiration in
+my dungeon. I had no power of withdrawing my person from a disgustful
+society, in the most cheerful and valuable part of the day; but I soon
+brought to perfection the art of withdrawing my thoughts, and saw and
+heard the people about me, for just as short a time, and as seldom, as I
+pleased.
+
+Such is man in himself considered; so simple his nature; so few his
+wants. How different from the man of artificial society! Palaces are
+built for his reception, a thousand vehicles provided for his exercise,
+provinces are ransacked for the gratification of his appetite, and the
+whole world traversed to supply him with apparel and furniture. Thus
+vast is his expenditure, and the purchase slavery. He is dependent on a
+thousand accidents for tranquillity and health, and his body and soul
+are at the devotion of whoever will satisfy his imperious cravings.
+
+In addition to the disadvantages of my present situation, I was reserved
+for an ignominious death. What then? Every man must die. No man knows
+how soon. It surely is not worse to encounter the king of terrors, in
+health, and with every advantage for the collection of fortitude, than
+to encounter him, already half subdued by sickness and suffering. I was
+resolved at least fully to possess the days I had to live; and this is
+peculiarly in the power of the man who preserves his health to the last
+moment of his existence. Why should I suffer my mind to be invaded by
+unavailing regrets? Every sentiment of vanity, or rather of independence
+and justice within me, instigated me to say to my persecutor, "You may
+cut off my existence, but you cannot disturb my serenity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the midst of these reflections, another thought, which had not before
+struck me, occurred to my mind. "I exult," said I, "and reasonably, over
+the impotence of my persecutor. Is not that impotence greater than I
+have yet imagined? I say, he may cut off my existence, but cannot
+disturb my serenity. It is true: my mind, the clearness of my spirit,
+the firmness of my temper, are beyond his reach; is not my life equally
+so, if I please? What are the material obstacles, that man never
+subdued? What is the undertaking so arduous, that by some has not been
+accomplished? And if by others, why not by me? Had they stronger motives
+than I? Was existence more variously endeared to them? or had they more
+numerous methods by which to animate and adorn it? Many of those who
+have exerted most perseverance and intrepidity, were obviously my
+inferiors in that respect. Why should not I be as daring as they?
+Adamant and steel have a ductility like water, to a mind sufficiently
+bold and contemplative. The mind is master of itself; and is endowed
+with powers that might enable it to laugh at the tyrant's vigilance." I
+passed and repassed these ideas in my mind; and, heated with the
+contemplation, I said, "No, I will not die!"
+
+My reading, in early youth, had been extremely miscellaneous. I had read
+of housebreakers, to whom locks and bolts were a jest, and who, vain of
+their art, exhibited the experiment of entering a house the most
+strongly barricaded, with as little noise, and almost as little trouble,
+as other men would lift up a latch. There is nothing so interesting to
+the juvenile mind, as the wonderful; there is no power that it so
+eagerly covets, as that of astonishing spectators by its miraculous
+exertions. Mind appeared, to my untutored reflections, vague, airy, and
+unfettered, the susceptible perceiver of reasons, but never intended by
+nature to be the slave of force. Why should it be in the power of man to
+overtake and hold me by violence? Why, when I choose to withdraw myself,
+should I not be capable of eluding the most vigilant search? These
+limbs, and this trunk, are a cumbrous and unfortunate load for the power
+of thinking to drag along with it; but why should not the power of
+thinking be able to lighten the load, till it shall be no longer
+felt?--These early modes of reflection were by no means indifferent to
+my present enquiries.
+
+Our next-door neighbour at my father's house had been a carpenter. Fresh
+from the sort of reading I have mentioned, I was eager to examine his
+tools, their powers and their uses. This carpenter was a man of strong
+and vigorous mind; and, his faculties having been chiefly confined to
+the range of his profession, he was fertile in experiments, and
+ingenious in reasoning upon these particular topics. I therefore
+obtained from him considerable satisfaction; and, my mind being set in
+action, I sometimes even improved upon the hints he furnished. His
+conversation was particularly agreeable to me; I at first worked with
+him sometimes for my amusement, and afterwards occasionally for a short
+time as his journeyman. I was constitutionally vigorous; and, by the
+experience thus attained, I added to the abstract possession of power,
+the skill of applying it, when I pleased, in such a manner as that no
+part should be inefficient.
+
+It is a strange, but no uncommon feature in the human mind, that the
+very resource of which we stand in greatest need in a critical
+situation, though already accumulated, it may be, by preceding industry,
+fails to present itself at the time when it should be called into
+action. Thus my mind had passed through two very different stages since
+my imprisonment, before this means of liberation suggested itself. My
+faculties were overwhelmed in the first instance, and raised to a pitch
+of enthusiasm in the second; while in both I took it for granted in a
+manner, that I must passively submit to the good pleasure of my
+persecutors.
+
+During the period in which my mind had been thus undecided, and when I
+had been little more than a month in durance, the assizes, which were
+held twice a year in the town in which I was a prisoner, came on. Upon
+this occasion my case was not brought forward, but was suffered to stand
+over six months longer. It would have been just the same, if I had had
+as strong reason to expect acquittal as I had conviction. If I had been
+apprehended upon the most frivolous reasons upon which any justice of
+the peace ever thought proper to commit a naked beggar for trial, I must
+still have waited about two hundred and seventeen days before my
+innocence could be cleared. So imperfect are the effects of the boasted
+laws of a country, whose legislators hold their assembly from four to
+six months in every year! I could never discover with certainty, whether
+this delay were owing to any interference on the part of my prosecutor,
+or whether it fell out in the regular administration of justice, which
+is too solemn and dignified to accommodate itself to the rights or
+benefit of an insignificant individual.
+
+But this was not the only incident that occurred to me during my
+confinement, for which I could find no satisfactory solution. It was
+nearly at the same time, that the keeper began to alter his behaviour to
+me. He sent for me one morning into the part of the building which was
+appropriated for his own use, and, after some hesitation, told me he was
+sorry my accommodations had been so indifferent, and asked whether I
+should like to have a chamber in his family? I was struck with the
+unexpectedness of this question, and desired to know whether any body
+had employed him to ask it. No, he replied; but, now the assizes were
+over, he had fewer felons on his hands, and more time to look about him.
+He believed I was a good kind of a young man, and he had taken a sort of
+a liking to me. I fixed my eye upon his countenance as he said this. I
+could discover none of the usual symptoms of kindness; he appeared to me
+to be acting a part, unnatural, and that sat with awkwardness upon him.
+He went on however to offer me the liberty of eating at his table;
+which, if I chose it, he said, would make no difference to him, and he
+should not think of charging me any thing for it. He had always indeed
+as much upon his hands as one person could see to; but his wife and his
+daughter Peggy would be woundily pleased to hear a person of learning
+talk, as he understood I was; and perhaps I might not feel myself
+unpleasantly circumstanced in their company.
+
+I reflected on this proposal, and had little doubt, notwithstanding what
+the keeper had affirmed to the contrary, that it did not proceed from
+any spontaneous humanity in him, but that he had, to speak the language
+of persons of his cast, good reasons for what he did. I busied myself in
+conjectures as to who could be the author of this sort of indulgence and
+attention. The two most likely persons were Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+Forester. The latter I knew to be a man austere and inexorable towards
+those whom he deemed vicious. He piqued himself upon being insensible to
+those softer emotions, which, he believed, answered no other purpose
+than to seduce us from our duty. Mr. Falkland, on the contrary, was a
+man of the acutest sensibility; hence arose his pleasures and his pains,
+his virtues and his vices. Though he were the bitterest enemy to whom I
+could possibly be exposed, and though no sentiments of humanity could
+divert or control the bent of his mind, I yet persuaded myself, that he
+was more likely than his kinsman, to visit in idea the scene of my
+dungeon, and to feel impelled to alleviate my sufferings.
+
+This conjecture was by no means calculated to serve as balm to my mind.
+My thoughts were full of irritation against my persecutor. How could I
+think kindly of a man, in competition with the gratification of whose
+ruling passion my good name or my life was deemed of no consideration? I
+saw him crushing the one, and bringing the other into jeopardy, with a
+quietness and composure on his part that I could not recollect without
+horror. I knew not what were his plans respecting me. I knew not whether
+he troubled himself so much as to form a barren wish for the
+preservation of one whose future prospects he had so iniquitously
+tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to my principal topic of
+recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I should consent to
+go out of the world in silence, the victim of this man's obduracy and
+art. In every view I felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of his
+injustice; and my very soul spurned these pitiful indulgences, at a time
+that he was grinding me into dust with the inexorableness of his
+vengeance.
+
+I was influenced by these sentiments in my reply to the jailor; and I
+found a secret pleasure in pronouncing them in all their bitterness. I
+viewed him with a sarcastic smile, and said, I was glad to find him of a
+sudden become so humane: I was not however without some penetration as
+to the humanity of a jailor, and could guess at the circumstances by
+which it was produced. But he might tell his employer, that his cares
+were fruitless: I would accept no favours from a man that held a halter
+about my neck; and had courage enough to endure the worst both in time
+to come and now.--The jailor looked at me with astonishment, and turning
+upon his heel, exclaimed, "Well done, my cock! You have not had your
+learning for nothing, I see. You are set upon not dying dunghill. But
+that is to come, lad; you had better by half keep your courage till you
+shall find it wanted."
+
+The assizes, which passed over without influence to me, produced a great
+revolution among my fellow-prisoners. I lived long enough in the jail to
+witness a general mutation of its inhabitants. One of the housebreakers
+(the rival of the Duke of Bedford), and the coiner, were hanged. Two
+more were cast for transportation, and the rest acquitted. The
+transports remained with us; and, though the prison was thus lightened
+of nine of its inhabitants, there were, at the next half-yearly period
+of assizes, as many persons on the felons' side, within three, as I had
+found on my first arrival.
+
+The soldier, whose story I have already recorded, died on the evening of
+the very day on which the judges arrived, of a disease the consequence
+of his confinement. Such was the justice, that resulted from the laws of
+his country to an individual who would have been the ornament of any
+age; one who, of all the men I ever knew, was perhaps the kindest, of
+the most feeling heart, of the most engaging and unaffected manners, and
+the most unblemished life. The name of this man was Brightwel. Were it
+possible for my pen to consecrate him to never-dying fame, I could
+undertake no task more grateful to my heart. His judgment was
+penetrating and manly, totally unmixed with imbecility and confusion,
+while at the same time there was such an uncontending frankness in his
+countenance, that a superficial observer would have supposed he must
+have been the prey of the first plausible knavery that was practised
+against him. Great reason have I to remember him with affection! He was
+the most ardent, I had almost said the last, of my friends. Nor did I
+remain in this respect in his debt. There was indeed a great
+congeniality, if I may presume to say so, in our characters, except that
+I cannot pretend to rival the originality and self-created vigour of his
+mind, or to compare with, what the world has scarcely surpassed, the
+correctness and untainted purity of his conduct. He heard my story, as
+far as I thought proper to disclose it, with interest; he examined it
+with sincere impartiality; and if, at first, any doubt remained upon his
+mind, a frequent observation of me in my most unguarded moments taught
+him in no long time to place an unreserved confidence in my innocence.
+
+He talked of the injustice of which we were mutual victims, without
+bitterness; and delighted to believe that the time would come, when the
+possibility of such intolerable oppression would be extirpated. But
+this, he said, was a happiness reserved for posterity; it was too late
+for us to reap the benefit of it. It was some consolation to him, that
+he could not tell the period in his past life, which the best judgment
+of which he was capable would teach him to spend better. He could say,
+with as much reason as most men, he had discharged his duty. But he
+foresaw that he should not survive his present calamity. This was his
+prediction, while yet in health. He might be said, in a certain sense,
+to have a broken heart. But, if that phrase were in any way applicable
+to him, sure never was despair more calm, more full of resignation and
+serenity.
+
+At no time in the whole course of my adventures was I exposed to a shock
+more severe, than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of
+his fate presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of
+iniquity. From him, and the execrations with which I loaded the
+government that could be the instrument of his tragedy, I turned to
+myself. I beheld the catastrophe of Brightwel with envy. A thousand
+times I longed that my corse had lain in death, instead of his. I was
+only reserved, as I persuaded myself, for unutterable woe. In a few days
+he would have been acquitted; his liberty, his reputation restored;
+mankind perhaps, struck with the injustice he had suffered, would have
+shown themselves eager to balance his misfortunes, and obliterate his
+disgrace. But this man died; and I remained alive! I, who, though not
+less wrongfully treated than he, had no hope of reparation, must be
+marked as long as I lived for a villain, and in my death probably held
+up to the scorn and detestation of my species!
+
+Such were some of the immediate reflections which the fate of this
+unfortunate martyr produced in my mind. Yet my intercourse with
+Brightwel was not, in the review, without its portion of comfort. I
+said, "This man has seen through the veil of calumny that overshades me:
+he has understood, and has loved me. Why should I despair? May I not
+meet hereafter with men ingenuous like him, who shall do me justice, and
+sympathise with my calamity? With that consolation I will be satisfied.
+I will rest in the arms of friendship, and forget the malignity of the
+world. Henceforth I will be contented with tranquil obscurity, with the
+cultivation of sentiment and wisdom, and the exercise of benevolence
+within a narrow circle." It was thus that my mind became excited to the
+project I was about to undertake.
+
+I had no sooner meditated the idea of an escape, than I determined upon
+the following method of facilitating the preparations for it. I
+undertook to ingratiate myself with my keeper. In the world I have
+generally found such persons as had been acquainted with the outline of
+my story, regarding me with a sort of loathing and abhorrence, which
+made them avoid me with as much care as if I had been spotted with the
+plague. The idea of my having first robbed my patron, and then
+endeavouring to clear myself by charging him with subornation against
+me, placed me in a class distinct from, and infinitely more guilty than
+that of common felons. But this man was too good a master of his
+profession, to entertain aversion against a fellow-creature upon that
+score. He considered the persons committed to his custody, merely as so
+many human bodies, for whom he was responsible that they should be
+forthcoming in time and place; and the difference of innocence and guilt
+he looked down upon as an affair beneath his attention. I had not
+therefore the prejudices to encounter in recommending myself to him,
+that I have found so peculiarly obstinate in other cases. Add to which,
+the same motive, whatever it was, that had made him so profuse in his
+offers a little before, had probably its influence on the present
+occasion.
+
+I informed him of my skill in the profession of a joiner, and offered to
+make him half a dozen handsome chairs, if he would facilitate my
+obtaining the tools necessary for carrying on my profession in my
+present confinement; for, without his consent previously obtained, it
+would have been in vain for me to expect that I could quietly exert an
+industry of this kind, even if my existence had depended upon it. He
+looked at me first, as asking himself what he was to understand by this
+novel proposal; and then, his countenance most graciously relaxing,
+said, he was glad I was come off a little of my high notions and my
+buckram, and he would see what he could do. Two days after, he signified
+his compliance. He said that, as to the matter of the present I had
+offered him, he thought nothing of that; I might do as I pleased in it;
+but I might depend upon every civility from him that he could show with
+safety to himself, if so be as, when he was civil, I did not offer a
+second time for to snap and take him up short.
+
+Having thus gained my preliminary, I gradually accumulated tools of
+various sorts--gimlets, piercers, chisels, _et cetera_. I immediately
+set myself to work. The nights were long, and the sordid eagerness of my
+keeper, notwithstanding his ostentatious generosity, was great; I
+therefore petitioned for, and was indulged with, a bit of candle, that I
+might amuse myself for an hour or two with my work after I was locked up
+in my dungeon. I did not however by any means apply constantly to the
+work I had undertaken, and my jailor betrayed various tokens of
+impatience. Perhaps he was afraid I should not have finished it, before
+I was hanged. I however insisted upon working at my leisure as I
+pleased; and this he did not venture expressly to dispute. In addition
+to the advantages thus obtained, I procured secretly from Miss Peggy,
+who now and then came into the jail to make her observations of the
+prisoners, and who seemed to have conceived some partiality for my
+person, the implement of an iron crow.
+
+In these proceedings it is easy to trace the vice and duplicity that
+must be expected to grow out of injustice. I know not whether my readers
+will pardon the sinister advantage I extracted from the mysterious
+concessions of my keeper. But I must acknowledge my weakness in that
+respect; I am writing my adventures, and not my apology; and I was not
+prepared to maintain the unvaried sincerity of my manners, at the
+expense of a speedy close of my existence.
+
+My plan was now digested. I believed that, by means of the crow, I could
+easily, and without much noise, force the door of my dungeon from its
+hinges, or if not, that I could, in case of necessity, cut away the
+lock. This door led into a narrow passage, bounded on one side by the
+range of dungeons, and on the other by the jailor's and turnkeys'
+apartments, through which was the usual entrance from the street. This
+outlet I dared not attempt, for fear of disturbing the persons close to
+whose very door I should in that case have found it necessary to pass. I
+determined therefore upon another door at the further end of the
+passage, which was well barricaded, and which led to a sort of garden in
+the occupation of the keeper. This garden I had never entered, but I had
+had an opportunity of observing it from the window of the felons'
+day-room, which looked that way, the room itself being immediately over
+the range of dungeons. I perceived that it was bounded by a wall of
+considerable height, which I was told by my fellow-prisoners was the
+extremity of the jail on that side, and beyond which was a back-lane of
+some length, that terminated in the skirts of the town. Upon an accurate
+observation, and much reflection upon the subject, I found I should be
+able, if once I got into the garden, with my gimlets and piercers
+inserted at proper distances to make a sort of ladder, by means of which
+I could clear the wall, and once more take possession of the sweets of
+liberty. I preferred this wall to that which immediately skirted my
+dungeon, on the other side of which was a populous street.
+
+I suffered about two days to elapse from the period at which I had
+thoroughly digested my project, and then in the very middle of the night
+began to set about its execution. The first door was attended with
+considerable difficulty; but at length this obstacle was happily
+removed. The second door was fastened on the inside. I was therefore
+able with perfect ease to push back the bolts. But the lock, which of
+course was depended upon for the principal security, and was therefore
+strong, was double-shot, and the key taken away. I endeavoured with my
+chisel to force back the bolt of the lock, but to no purpose. I then
+unscrewed the box of the lock; and, that being taken away, the door was
+no longer opposed to my wishes.
+
+Thus far I had proceeded with the happiest success; but close on the
+other side of the door there was a kennel with a large mastiff dog, of
+which I had not the smallest previous knowledge. Though I stepped along
+in the most careful manner, this animal was disturbed, and began to
+bark. I was extremely disconcerted, but immediately applied myself to
+soothe the animal, in which I presently succeeded. I then returned along
+the passage to listen whether any body had been disturbed by the noise
+of the dog; resolved, if that had been the case, that I would return to
+my dungeon, and endeavour to replace every thing in its former state.
+But the whole appeared perfectly quiet, and I was encouraged to proceed
+in my operation.
+
+I now got to the wall, and had nearly gained half the ascent, when I
+heard a voice at the garden-door, crying, "Holloa! who is there? who
+opened the door?" The man received no answer, and the night was too dark
+for him to distinguish objects at any distance. He therefore returned,
+as I judged, into the house for a light. Meantime the dog, understanding
+the key in which these interrogations were uttered, began barking again
+more violently than ever. I had now no possibility of retreat, and I was
+not without hopes that I might yet accomplish my object, and clear the
+wall. Meanwhile a second man came out, while the other was getting his
+lantern, and by the time I had got to the top of the wall was able to
+perceive me. He immediately set up a shout, and threw a large stone,
+which grazed me in its flight. Alarmed at my situation, I was obliged
+to descend on the other side without taking the necessary precautions,
+and in my fall nearly dislocated my ankle.
+
+There was a door in the wall, of which I was not previously apprised;
+and, this being opened, the two men with the lantern were on the other
+side in an instant. They had then nothing to do but to run along the
+lane to the place from which I had descended. I endeavoured to rise
+after my fall; but the pain was so intense, that I was scarcely able to
+stand, and, after having limped a few paces, I twisted my foot under me,
+and fell down again. I had now no remedy, and quietly suffered myself to
+be retaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+I was conducted to the keeper's room for that night, and the two men sat
+up with me. I was accosted with many interrogatories, to which I gave
+little answer, but complained of the hurt in my leg. To this I could
+obtain no reply, except "Curse you, my lad! if that be all, we will give
+you some ointment for that; we will anoint it with a little cold iron."
+They were indeed excessively sulky with me, for having broken their
+night's rest, and given them all this trouble. In the morning they were
+as good as their word, fixing a pair of fetters upon both my legs,
+regardless of the ankle which was now swelled to a considerable size,
+and then fastening me, with a padlock, to a staple in the floor of my
+dungeon. I expostulated with warmth upon this treatment, and told them,
+that I was a man upon whom the law as yet had passed no censure, and who
+therefore, in the eye of the law, was innocent. But they bid me keep
+such fudge for people who knew no better; they knew what they did, and
+would answer it to any court in England.
+
+The pain of the fetter was intolerable. I endeavoured in various ways to
+relieve it, and even privily to free my leg; but the more it was
+swelled, the more was this rendered impossible. I then resolved to bear
+it with patience: still, the longer it continued, the worse it grew.
+After two days and two nights, I entreated the turnkey to go and ask the
+surgeon, who usually attended the prison, to look at it, for, if it
+continued longer as it was, I was convinced it would mortify. But he
+glared surlily at me, and said, "Damn my blood! I should like to see
+that day. To die of a mortification is too good an end for such a
+rascal!" At the time that he thus addressed me, the whole mass of my
+blood was already fevered by the anguish I had undergone, my patience
+was wholly exhausted, and I was silly enough to be irritated beyond
+bearing, by his impertinence and vulgarity: "Look, you, Mr. Turnkey,"
+said I, "there is one thing that such fellows as you are set over us
+for, and another thing that you are not. You are to take care we do not
+escape; but it is no part of your office to call us names and abuse us.
+If I were not chained to the floor, you dare as well eat your fingers as
+use such language; and, take my word for it, you shall yet live to
+repent of your insolence."
+
+While I thus spoke, the man stared at me with astonishment. He was so
+little accustomed to such retorts, that, at first, he could scarcely
+believe his ears; and such was the firmness of my manner, that he seemed
+to forget for a moment that I was not at large. But, as soon as he had
+time to recollect himself, he did not deign to be angry. His face
+relaxed into a smile of contempt; he snapped his fingers at me; and,
+turning upon his heel, exclaimed, "Well said, my cock! crow away! Have a
+care you do not burst!" and, as he shut the door upon me, mimicked the
+voice of the animal he mentioned.
+
+This rejoinder brought me to myself in a moment, and showed me the
+impotence of the resentment I was expressing. But, though he thus put an
+end to the violence of my speech, the torture of my body continued as
+great as ever. I was determined to change my mode of attack. The same
+turnkey returned in a few minutes; and, as he approached me, to put down
+some food he had brought, I slipped a shilling into his hand, saying at
+the same time, "My good fellow, for God's sake, go to the surgeon; I am
+sure you do not wish me to perish for want of assistance." The fellow
+put the shilling into his pocket, looked hard at me, and then with one
+nod of his head, and without uttering a single word, went away. The
+surgeon presently after made his appearance; and, finding the part in a
+high state of inflammation, ordered certain applications, and gave
+peremptory directions that the fetter should not be replaced upon that
+leg, till a cure had been effected. It was a full month before the leg
+was perfectly healed, and made equally strong and flexible with the
+other.
+
+The condition in which I was now placed, was totally different from that
+which had preceded this attempt. I was chained all day in my dungeon,
+with no other mitigation, except that the door was regularly opened for
+a few hours in an afternoon, at which time some of the prisoners
+occasionally came and spoke to me, particularly one, who, though he
+could ill replace my benevolent Brightwel, was not deficient in
+excellent qualities. This was no other than the individual whom Mr.
+Falkland had, some months before, dismissed upon an accusation of
+murder. His courage was gone, his garb was squalid, and the comeliness
+and clearness of his countenance was utterly obliterated. He also was
+innocent, worthy, brave, and benevolent. He was, I believe, afterwards
+acquitted, and turned loose, to wander a desolate and perturbed spectre
+through the world. My manual labours were now at an end; my dungeon was
+searched every night, and every kind of tool carefully kept from me. The
+straw, which had been hitherto allowed me, was removed, under pretence
+that it was adapted for concealment; and the only conveniences with
+which I was indulged, were a chair and a blanket.
+
+A prospect of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this
+my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his
+appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity.
+He pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He
+reprehended in strong terms my attempt to escape, and observed, that
+there must be an end of civility from people in his situation, if
+gentlemen, after all, would not know when they were well. It was
+necessary, in cases the like of this, to let the law take its course;
+and it would be ridiculous in me to complain, if, after a regular trial,
+things should go hard with me. He was desirous of being in every respect
+my friend, if I would let him. In the midst of this circumlocution and
+preamble, he was called away from me, for something relating to the
+business of his office. In the mean time I ruminated upon his overtures;
+and, detesting as I did the source from which I conceived them to flow,
+I could not help reflecting how far it would be possible to extract from
+them the means of escape. But my meditations in this case were vain.
+The keeper returned no more during the remainder of that day, and, on
+the next, an incident occurred which put an end to all expectations from
+his kindness.
+
+An active mind, which has once been forced into any particular train,
+can scarcely be persuaded to desert it as hopeless. I had studied my
+chains, during the extreme anguish that I endured from the pressure of
+the fetter upon the ankle which had been sprained; and though, from the
+swelling and acute sensibility of the part, I had found all attempts at
+relief, in that instance, impracticable, I obtained, from the coolness
+of my investigation, another and apparently superior advantage. During
+the night, my dungeon was in a complete state of darkness; but, when the
+door was open, the case was somewhat different. The passage indeed into
+which it opened, was so narrow, and the opposite dead wall so near, that
+it was but a glimmering and melancholy light that entered my apartment,
+even at full noon, and when the door was at its widest extent. But my
+eyes, after a practice of two or three weeks, accommodated themselves to
+this circumstance, and I learned to distinguish the minutest object. One
+day, as I was alternately meditating and examining the objects around
+me, I chanced to observe a nail trodden into the mud-floor at no great
+distance from me. I immediately conceived the desire of possessing
+myself of this implement; but, for fear of surprise, people passing
+perpetually to and fro, I contented myself, for the present, with
+remarking its situation so accurately, that I might easily find it again
+in the dark. Accordingly, as soon as my door was shut, I seized upon
+this new treasure, and, having contrived to fashion it to my purpose,
+found that I could unlock with it the padlock that fastened me to the
+staple in the floor. This I regarded as no inconsiderable advantage,
+separately from the use I might derive from it in relation to my
+principal object. My chain permitted me to move only about eighteen
+inches to the right or left; and, having borne this confinement for
+several weeks, my very heart leaped at the pitiful consolation of being
+able to range, without constraint, the miserable coop in which I was
+immured. This incident had occurred several days previously to the last
+visit of my keeper.
+
+From this time it had been my constant practice to liberate myself every
+night, and not to replace things in their former situation till I awoke
+in the morning, and expected shortly to perceive the entrance of the
+turnkey. Security breeds negligence. On the morning succeeding my
+conference with the jailor, it so happened, whether I overslept myself,
+or the turnkey went his round earlier than usual, that I was roused from
+my sleep by the noise he made in opening the cell next to my own; and
+though I exerted the utmost diligence, yet having to grope for my
+materials in the dark, I was unable to fasten the chain to the staple,
+before he entered, as usual, with his lantern. He was extremely
+surprised to find me disengaged, and immediately summoned the principal
+keeper. I was questioned respecting my method of proceeding; and, as I
+believed concealment could lead to nothing but a severer search, and a
+more accurate watch, I readily acquainted them with the exact truth. The
+illustrious personage, whose functions it was to control the inhabitants
+of these walls, was, by this last instance, completely exasperated
+against me. Artifice and fair speaking were at an end. His eyes sparkled
+with fury; he exclaimed, that he was now convinced of the folly of
+showing kindness to rascals, the scum of the earth, such as I was; and,
+damn him, if any body should catch him at that again towards any one. I
+had cured him effectually! He was astonished that the laws had not
+provided some terrible retaliation for thieves that attempted to deceive
+their jailors. Hanging was a thousand times too good for me!
+
+Having vented his indignation, he proceeded to give such orders as the
+united instigations of anger and alarm suggested to his mind. My
+apartment was changed. I was conducted to a room called the strong room,
+the door of which opened into the middle cell of the range of dungeons.
+It was under-ground, as they were, and had also the day-room for felons,
+already described, immediately over it. It was spacious and dreary. The
+door had not been opened for years; the air was putrid; and the walls
+hung round with damps and mildew. The fetters, the padlock, and the
+staple, were employed, as in the former case, in addition to which they
+put on me a pair of handcuffs. For my first provision, the keeper sent
+me nothing but a bit of bread, mouldy and black, and some dirty and
+stinking water. I know not indeed whether this is to be regarded as
+gratuitous tyranny on the part of the jailor; the law having providently
+directed, in certain cases, that the water to be administered to the
+prisoners shall be taken from "the next sink or puddle nearest to the
+jail."[E] It was further ordered, that one of the turnkeys should sleep
+in the cell that formed a sort of anti-chamber to my apartment. Though
+every convenience was provided, to render this chamber fit for the
+reception of a personage of a dignity so superior to the felon he was
+appointed to guard, he expressed much dissatisfaction at the mandate:
+but there was no alternative.
+
+[Footnote E: In the case of the _peine forte et dure_. See State Trials,
+Vol. I. _anno_ 1615.]
+
+The situation to which I was thus removed was, apparently, the most
+undesirable that could be imagined but I was not discouraged; I had for
+some time learned not to judge by appearances. The apartment was dark
+and unwholesome; but I had acquired the secret of counteracting these
+influences. My door was kept continually shut, and the other prisoners
+were debarred access to me; but if the intercourse of our fellow-men has
+its pleasure, solitude, on the other hand, is not without its
+advantages. In solitude we can pursue our own thoughts undisturbed; and
+I was able to call up at will the most pleasing avocations. Besides
+which, to one who meditated such designs as now filled my mind, solitude
+had peculiar recommendations. I was scarcely left to myself, before I
+tried an experiment, the idea of which I conceived, while they were
+fixing my handcuffs; and, with my teeth only, disengaged myself from
+this restraint. The hours at which I was visited by the keepers were
+regular, and I took care to be provided for them. Add to which, I had a
+narrow grated window near the ceiling, about nine inches in
+perpendicular, and a foot and a half horizontally, which, though small,
+admitted a much stronger light than that to which I had been accustomed
+for several weeks. Thus circumstanced, I scarcely ever found myself in
+total darkness, and was better provided against surprises than I had
+been in my preceding situation. Such were the sentiments which this
+change of abode immediately suggested.
+
+I had been a very little time removed, when I received an unexpected
+visit from Thomas, Mr. Falkland's footman, whom I have already mentioned
+in the course of my narrative. A servant of Mr. Forester happened to
+come to the town where I was imprisoned, a few weeks before, while I was
+confined with the hurt in my ankle, and had called in to see me. The
+account he gave of what he observed had been the source of many an
+uneasy sensation to Thomas. The former visit was a matter of mere
+curiosity; but Thomas was of the better order of servants. He was
+considerably struck at the sight of me. Though my mind was now serene,
+and my health sufficiently good, yet the floridness of my complexion was
+gone, and there was a rudeness in my physiognomy, the consequence of
+hardship and fortitude, extremely unlike the sleekness of my better
+days. Thomas looked alternately in my face, at my hands, and my feet;
+and then fetched a deep sigh. After a pause,
+
+"Lord bless us!" said he, in a voice in which commiseration was
+sufficiently perceptible, "is this you?"
+
+"Why not, Thomas? You knew I was sent to prison, did not you?"
+
+"Prison! and must people in prison be shackled and bound of that
+fashion?--and where do you lay of nights?"
+
+"Here."
+
+"Here? Why there is no bed!"
+
+"No, Thomas, I am not allowed a bed. I had straw formerly, but that is
+taken away."
+
+"And do they take off them there things of nights?"
+
+"No; I am expected to sleep just as you see."
+
+"Sleep! Why I thought this was a Christian country; but this usage is
+too bad for a dog."
+
+"You must not say so, Thomas; it is what the wisdom of government has
+thought fit to provide."
+
+"Zounds, how I have been deceived! They told me what a fine thing it was
+to be an Englishman, and about liberty and property, and all that there;
+and I find it is all a flam. Lord, what fools we be! Things are done
+under our very noses, and we know nothing of the matter; and a parcel of
+fellows with grave faces swear to us, that such things never happen but
+in France, and other countries the like of that. Why, you ha'n't been
+tried, ha' you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And what signifies being tried, when they do worse than hang a man, and
+all beforehand? Well, master Williams, you have been very wicked to be
+sure, and I thought it would have done me good to see you hanged. But, I
+do not know how it is, one's heart melts, and pity comes over one, if we
+take time to cool. I know that ought not to be; but, damn it, when I
+talked of your being hanged, I did not think of your suffering all this
+into the bargain."
+
+Soon after this conversation Thomas left me. The idea of the long
+connection of our families rushed upon his memory, and he felt more for
+my sufferings, at the moment, than I did for myself. In the afternoon I
+was surprised to see him again. He said that he could not get the
+thought of me out of his mind, and therefore he hoped I would not be
+displeased at his coming once more to take leave of me. I could perceive
+that he had something upon his mind, which he did not know how to
+discharge. One of the turnkeys had each time come into the room with
+him, and continued as long as he staid. Upon some avocation however--a
+noise, I believe, in the passage--the turnkey went as far as the door to
+satisfy his curiosity; and Thomas, watching the opportunity, slipped
+into my hand a chisel, a file, and a saw, exclaiming at the same time
+with a sorrowful tone, "I know I am doing wrong; but, if they hang me
+too, I cannot help it; I cannot do no other. For Christ's sake, get out
+of this place; I cannot bear the thoughts of it!" I received the
+implements with great joy, and thrust them into my bosom; and, as soon
+as he was gone, concealed them in the rushes of my chair. For himself
+he had accomplished the object for which he came, and presently after
+bade me farewell.
+
+The next day, the keepers, I know not for what reason, were more than
+usually industrious in their search, saying, though without assigning
+any ground for their suspicion, that they were sure I had some tool in
+my possession that I ought not; but the depository I had chosen escaped
+them.
+
+I waited from this time the greater part of a week, that I might have
+the benefit of a bright moonlight. It was necessary that I should work
+in the night; it was necessary that my operations should be performed
+between the last visit of the keepers at night and their first in the
+morning, that is, between nine in the evening and seven. In my dungeon,
+as I have already said, I passed fourteen or sixteen hours of the
+four-and-twenty undisturbed; but since I had acquired a character for
+mechanical ingenuity, a particular exception with respect to me was made
+from the general rules of the prison.
+
+It was ten o'clock when I entered on my undertaking. The room in which I
+was confined was secured with a double door. This was totally
+superfluous for the purpose of my detention, since there was a sentinel
+planted on the outside. But it was very fortunate for my plan; because
+these doors prevented the easy communication of sound, and afforded me
+tolerable satisfaction that, with a little care in my mode of
+proceeding, I might be secure against the danger of being overheard. I
+first took off my handcuffs. I then filed through my fetters; and next
+performed the same service to three of the iron bars that secured my
+window, to which I climbed, partly by the assistance of my chair, and
+partly by means of certain irregularities in the wall. All this was the
+work of more than two hours. When the bars were filed through, I easily
+forced them a little from the perpendicular, and then drew them, one by
+one, out of the wall, into which they were sunk about three inches
+perfectly straight, and without any precaution to prevent their being
+removed. But the space thus obtained was by no means wide enough to
+admit the passing of my body. I therefore applied myself, partly with my
+chisel, and partly with one of the iron bars, to the loosening the
+brick-work; and when I had thus disengaged four or five bricks, I got
+down and piled them upon the floor. This operation I repeated three or
+four times The space was now sufficient for my purpose: and, having
+crept through the opening, I stepped upon a shed on the outside.
+
+I was now in a kind of rude area between two dead walls, that south of
+the felons' day-room (the windows of which were at the east end) and the
+wall of the prison. But I had not, as formerly, any instruments to
+assist me in scaling the wall, which was of considerable height. There
+was, of consequence, no resource for me but that of effecting a
+practicable breach in the lower part of the wall, which was of no
+contemptible strength, being of stone on the outside, with a facing of
+brick within. The rooms for the debtors were at right angles with the
+building from which I had just escaped; and, as the night was extremely
+bright, I was in momentary danger, particularly in case of the least
+noise, of being discovered by them, several of their windows commanding
+this area. Thus circumstanced, I determined to make the shed answer the
+purpose of concealment. It was locked; but, with the broken link of my
+fetters, which I had had the precaution to bring with me, I found no
+great difficulty in opening the lock. I had now got a sufficient means
+of hiding my person while I proceeded in my work, attended with no
+other disadvantage than that of being obliged to leave the door, through
+which I had thus broken, a little open for the sake of light. After some
+time, I had removed a considerable part of the brick-work of the outer
+wall; but, when I came to the stone, I found the undertaking infinitely
+more difficult. The mortar which bound together the building was, by
+length of time, nearly petrified, and appeared to my first efforts one
+solid rock of the hardest adamant. I had now been six hours incessantly
+engaged in incredible labour: my chisel broke in the first attempt upon
+this new obstacle; and between fatigue already endured, and the
+seemingly invincible difficulty before me, I concluded that I must
+remain where I was, and gave up the idea of further effort as useless.
+At the same time the moon, whose light had till now been of the greatest
+use to me, set, and I was left in total darkness.
+
+After a respite of ten minutes however, I returned to the attack with
+new vigour. It could not be less than two hours before the first stone
+was loosened from the edifice. In one hour more, the space was
+sufficient to admit of my escape. The pile of bricks I had left in the
+strong room was considerable. But it was a mole-hill compared with the
+ruins I had forced from the outer wall. I am fully assured that the work
+I had thus performed would have been to a common labourer, with every
+advantage of tools, the business of two or three days. But my
+difficulties, instead of being ended, seemed to be only begun. The day
+broke, before I had completed the opening, and in ten minutes more the
+keepers would probably enter my apartment, and perceive the devastation
+I had left. The lane, which connected the side of the prison through
+which I had escaped with the adjacent country, was formed chiefly by
+two dead walls, with here and there a stable, a few warehouses, and some
+mean habitations, tenanted by the lower order of people. My best
+security lay in clearing the town as soon as possible, and depending
+upon the open country for protection. My arms were intolerably swelled
+and bruised with my labour, and my strength seemed wholly exhausted with
+fatigue. Speed I was nearly unable to exert for any continuance; and, if
+I could, with the enemy so close at my heels, speed would too probably
+have been useless. It appeared as if I were now in almost the same
+situation as that in which I had been placed five or six weeks before,
+in which, after having completed my escape, I was obliged to yield
+myself up, without resistance, to my pursuers. I was not however
+disabled as then; I was capable of exertion, to what precise extent I
+could not ascertain; and I was well aware, that every instance in which
+I should fail of my purpose would contribute to enhance the difficulty
+of any future attempt. Such were the considerations that presented
+themselves in relation to my escape; and, even if that were effected, I
+had to reckon among my difficulties, that, at the time I quitted my
+prison, I was destitute of every resource, and had not a shilling
+remaining in the world.
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I passed along the lane I have described, without perceiving or being
+observed by a human being. The doors were shut, the window-shutters
+closed, and all was still as night. I reached the extremity of the lane
+unmolested. My pursuers, if they immediately followed, would know that
+the likelihood was small, of my having in the interval found shelter in
+this place; and would proceed without hesitation, as I on my part was
+obliged to do, from the end nearest to the prison to its furthest
+termination.
+
+The face of the country, in the spot to which I had thus opened myself a
+passage, was rude and uncultivated. It was overgrown with brushwood and
+furze; the soil was for the most part of a loose sand; and the surface
+extremely irregular. I climbed a small eminence, and could perceive, not
+very remote in the distance, a few cottages thinly scattered. This
+prospect did not altogether please me; I conceived that my safety would,
+for the present, be extremely assisted, by keeping myself from the view
+of any human being.
+
+I therefore came down again into the valley, and upon a careful
+examination perceived that it was interspersed with cavities, some
+deeper than others, but all of them so shallow, as neither to be capable
+of hiding a man, nor of exciting suspicion as places of possible
+concealment. Meanwhile the day had but just begun to dawn; the morning
+was lowering and drizzly; and, though the depth of these caverns was of
+course well known to the neighbouring inhabitants, the shadows they cast
+were so black and impenetrable, as might well have produced wider
+expectations in the mind of a stranger. Poor therefore as was the
+protection they were able to afford, I thought it right to have recourse
+to it for the moment, as the best the emergency would supply. It was for
+my life; and, the greater was the jeopardy to which it was exposed, the
+more dear did that life seem to become to my affections. The recess I
+chose, as most secure, was within little more than a hundred yards of
+the end of the lane, and the extreme buildings of the town.
+
+I had not stood up in this manner two minutes, before I heard the sound
+of feet, and presently saw the ordinary turnkey and another pass the
+place of my retreat. They were so close to me that, if I had stretched
+out my hand, I believe I could have caught hold of their clothes,
+without so much as changing my posture. As no part of the overhanging
+earth intervened between me and them, I could see them entire, though
+the deepness of the shade rendered me almost completely invisible. I
+heard them say to each other, in tones of vehement asperity, "Curse the
+rascal! which way can he be gone?" The reply was, "Damn him! I wish we
+had him but safe once again!"--"Never fear!" rejoined the first; "he
+cannot have above half a mile the start of us." They were presently out
+of hearing; for, as to sight, I dared not advance my body, so much as an
+inch, to look after them, lest I should be discovered by my pursuers in
+some other direction. From the very short time that elapsed, between my
+escape and the appearance of these men, I concluded that they had made
+their way through the same outlet as I had done, it being impossible
+that they could have had time to come, from the gate of the prison, and
+so round a considerable part of the town, as they must otherwise have
+done.
+
+I was so alarmed at this instance of diligence on the part of the enemy,
+that, for some time, I scarcely ventured to proceed an inch from my
+place of concealment, or almost to change my posture. The morning, which
+had been bleak and drizzly, was succeeded by a day of heavy and
+incessant rain; and the gloomy state of the air and surrounding objects,
+together with the extreme nearness of my prison, and a total want of
+food, caused me to pass the hours in no very agreeable sensations. This
+inclemency of the weather however, which generated a feeling of
+stillness and solitude, encouraged me by degrees to change my retreat,
+for another of the same nature, out of somewhat greater security. I
+hovered with little variation about a single spot, as long as the sun
+continued above the horizon.
+
+Towards evening, the clouds began to disperse, and the moon shone, as on
+the preceding night, in full brightness. I had perceived no human
+creature during the whole day, except in the instance already mentioned.
+This had perhaps been owing to the nature of the day; at all events I
+considered it as too hazardous an experiment, to venture from my
+hiding-place in so clear and fine a night. I was therefore obliged to
+wait for the setting of this luminary, which was not till near five
+o'clock in the morning. My only relief during this interval was to allow
+myself to sink to the bottom of my cavern, it being scarcely possible
+for me to continue any longer on my feet. Here I fell into an
+interrupted and unrefreshing doze, the consequence of a laborious night,
+and a tedious, melancholy day; though I rather sought to avoid sleep,
+which, cooperating with the coldness of the season, would tend more to
+injury than advantage.
+
+The period of darkness, which I had determined to use for the purpose of
+removing to a greater distance from my prison, was, in its whole
+duration, something less than three hours. When I rose from my seat, I
+was weak with hunger and fatigue, and, which was worse, I seemed,
+between the dampness of the preceding day and the sharp, clear frost of
+the night, to have lost the command of my limbs. I stood up and shook
+myself; I leaned against the side of the hill, impelling in different
+directions the muscles of the extremities; and at length recovered in
+some degree the sense of feeling. This operation was attended with an
+incredible aching pain, and required no common share of resolution to
+encounter and prosecute it. Having quitted my retreat, I at first
+advanced with weak and tottering steps; but, as I proceeded, increased
+my pace. The barren heath, which reached to the edge of the town, was,
+at least on this side, without a path; but the stars shone, and, guiding
+myself by them, I determined to steer as far as possible from the
+hateful scene where I had been so long confined. The line I pursued was
+of irregular surface, sometimes obliging me to climb a steep ascent, and
+at others to go down into a dark and impenetrable dell. I was often
+compelled, by the dangerousness of the way, to deviate considerably from
+the direction I wished to pursue. In the mean time I advanced with as
+much rapidity as these and similar obstacles would permit me to do. The
+swiftness of the motion, and the thinness of the air, restored to me my
+alacrity. I forgot the inconveniences under which I laboured, and my
+mind became lively, spirited, and enthusiastic.
+
+I had now reached the border of the heath, and entered upon what is
+usually termed the forest. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless
+true, that, in this conjuncture, exhausted with hunger, destitute of all
+provision for the future, and surrounded with the most alarming dangers,
+my mind suddenly became glowing, animated, and cheerful. I thought that,
+by this time, the most formidable difficulties of my undertaking were
+surmounted; and I could not believe that, after having effected so much,
+I should find any thing invincible in what remained to be done. I
+recollected the confinement I had undergone, and the fate that had
+impended over me, with horror. Never did man feel more vividly, than I
+felt at that moment, the sweets of liberty. Never did man more
+strenuously prefer poverty with independence, to the artificial
+allurements of a life of slavery. I stretched forth my arms with
+rapture; I clapped my hands one upon the other, and exclaimed, "Ah, this
+is indeed to be a man! These wrists were lately galled with fetters; all
+my motions, whether I rose up or sat down, were echoed to with the
+clanking of chains; I was tied down like a wild beast, and could not
+move but in a circle of a few feet in circumference. Now I can run fleet
+as a greyhound, and leap like a young roe upon the mountains. Oh, God!
+(if God there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of an
+anxious heart) thou only canst tell with what delight a prisoner, just
+broke forth from his dungeon, hugs the blessings of new-found liberty!
+Sacred and indescribable moment, when man regains his rights! But lately
+I held my life in jeopardy, because one man was unprincipled enough to
+assert what he knew to be false; I was destined to suffer an early and
+inexorable death from the hands of others, because none of them had
+penetration enough to distinguish from falsehood, what I uttered with
+the entire conviction of a full-fraught heart! Strange, that men, from
+age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another,
+merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant
+according to law! Oh, God! give me poverty! shower upon me all the
+imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them all with
+thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be
+never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of
+authority! Suffer me at least to call life, and the pursuits of life, my
+own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of
+beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded
+prudence of monopolists and kings!"--How enviable was the enthusiasm
+which could thus furnish me with energy, in the midst of hunger,
+poverty, and universal desertion!
+
+I had now walked at least six miles. At first I carefully avoided the
+habitations that lay in my way, and feared to be seen by any of the
+persons to whom they belonged, lest it should in any degree furnish a
+clue to the researches of my pursuers. As I went forward, I conceived it
+might be proper to relax a part of my precaution. At this time I
+perceived several persons coming out of a thicket close to me. I
+immediately considered this circumstance as rather favourable than the
+contrary. It was necessary for me to avoid entering any of the towns and
+villages in the vicinity. It was however full time that I should procure
+for myself some species of refreshment, and by no means improbable that
+these men might be in some way assisting to me in that respect. In my
+situation it appeared to me indifferent what might be their employment
+or profession. I had little to apprehend from thieves, and I believed
+that they, as well as honest men, could not fail to have some compassion
+for a person under my circumstances. I therefore rather threw myself in
+their way than avoided them.
+
+They were thieves. One of the company cried out, "Who goes there?
+stand!" I accosted them; "Gentlemen," said I, "I am a poor traveller,
+almost"--While I spoke, they came round me; and he that had first
+hailed me, said, "Damn me, tip us none of your palaver; we have heard
+that story of a poor traveller any time these five years. Come, down
+with your dust! let us see what you have got!"--"Sir," I replied, "I
+have not a shilling in the world, and am more than half starved
+beside."--"Not a shilling!" answered my assailant, "what, I suppose you
+are as poor as a thief? But, if you have not money, you have clothes,
+and those you must resign."
+
+"My clothes!" rejoined I with indignation, "you cannot desire such a
+thing. Is it not enough that I am pennyless? I have been all night upon
+the open heath. It is now the second day that I have not eaten a morsel
+of bread. Would you strip me naked to the weather in the midst of this
+depopulated forest? No, no, you are men! The same hatred of oppression,
+that arms you against the insolence of wealth, will teach you to relieve
+those who are perishing like me. For God's sake, give me food! do not
+strip me of the comforts I still possess!"
+
+While I uttered this apostrophe, the unpremeditated eloquence of
+sentiment, I could perceive by their gestures, though the day had not
+yet begun to dawn, that the feelings of one or two of the company
+appeared to take my part. The man, who had already undertaken to be
+their spokesman, perceived the same thing; and, excited either by the
+brutality of his temper or the love of command, hastened to anticipate
+the disgrace of a defeat. He brushed suddenly up to me, and by main
+force pushed me several feet from the place where I stood. The shock I
+received drove me upon a second of the gang, not one of those who had
+listened to my expostulation; and he repeated the brutality. My
+indignation was strongly excited by this treatment; and, after being
+thrust backward and forward two or three times in this manner, I broke
+through my assailants, and turned round to defend myself. The first that
+advanced within my reach, was my original enemy. In the present moment I
+listened to nothing but the dictates of passion, and I laid him at his
+length on the earth. I was immediately assailed with sticks and
+bludgeons on all sides, and presently received a blow that almost
+deprived me of my senses. The man I had knocked down was now upon his
+feet again, and aimed a stroke at me with a cutlass as I fell, which
+took place in a deep wound upon my neck and shoulder. He was going to
+repeat his blow. The two who had seemed to waver at first in their
+animosity, afterwards appeared to me to join in the attack, urged either
+by animal sympathy or the spirit of imitation. One of them however, as I
+afterwards, understood seized the arm of the man who was going to strike
+me a second time with his cutlass, and who would otherwise probably have
+put an end to my existence. I could hear the words, "Damn it, enough,
+enough! that is too bad, Gines!"--"How so?" replied a second voice; "he
+will but pine here upon the forest, and die by inches: it will be an act
+of charity to put him out of his pain."--It will be imagined that I was
+not uninterested in this sort of debate. I made an effort to speak; my
+voice failed me. I stretched out one hand with a gesture of entreaty.
+"You shall not strike, by God!" said one of the voices; "why should we
+be murderers?"--The side of forbearance at length prevailed. They
+therefore contented themselves with stripping me of my coat and
+waistcoat, and rolling me into a dry ditch. They then left me totally
+regardless of my distressed condition, and the plentiful effusion of
+blood, which streamed from my wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In this woeful situation, though extremely weak, I was not deprived of
+sense. I tore my shirt from my naked body, and endeavoured, with some
+success, to make of it a bandage to staunch the flowing of the blood. I
+then exerted myself to crawl up the side of the ditch. I had scarcely
+effected the latter, when, with equal surprise and joy, I perceived a
+man advancing at no great distance. I called for help as well as I
+could. The man came towards me with evident signs of compassion, and the
+appearance I exhibited was indeed sufficiently calculated to excite it.
+I had no hat. My hair was dishevelled, and the ends of the locks clotted
+with blood. My shirt was wrapped about my neck and shoulders, and was
+plentifully stained with red. My body, which was naked to my middle, was
+variegated with streams of blood; nor had my lower garments, which were
+white, by any means escaped.
+
+"For God's sake, my good fellow!" said he, with a tone of the greatest
+imaginable kindness, "how came you thus?" and, saying this, he lifted me
+up, and set me on my feet. "Can you stand?" added he, doubtfully. "Oh,
+yes, very well," I replied. Having received this answer, he quitted me,
+and began to take off his own coat, that he might cover me from the
+cold. I had however over-rated my strength, and was no sooner left to
+myself than I reeled, and fell almost at my length upon the ground. But
+I broke my fall by stretching out my sound arm, and again raised myself
+upon my knees. My benefactor now covered me, raised me, and, bidding me
+lean upon him, told me he would presently conduct me to a place where I
+should be taken care of. Courage is a capricious property; and, though
+while I had no one to depend upon but myself, I possessed a mine of
+seemingly inexhaustible fortitude, yet no sooner did I find this
+unexpected sympathy on the part of another, than my resolution appeared
+to give way, and I felt ready to faint. My charitable conductor
+perceived this, and every now and then encouraged me, in a manner so
+cheerful, so good humoured and benevolent, equally free from the torture
+of droning expostulation, and the weakness of indulgence, that I thought
+myself under the conduct of an angel rather than a man. I could perceive
+that his behaviour had in it nothing of boorishness, and that he was
+thoroughly imbued with the principles of affectionate civility.
+
+We walked about three quarters of a mile, and that not towards the open,
+but the most uncouth and unfrequented part of the forest. We crossed a
+place which had once been a moat, but which was now in some parts dry,
+and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the
+enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and
+several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their
+foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however
+with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding
+passage that was perfectly dark, we came to a stand.
+
+At the upper end of this passage was a door, which I was unable to
+perceive. My conductor knocked at the door, and was answered by a voice
+from within, which, for body and force, might have been the voice of a
+man, but with a sort of female sharpness and acidity, enquiring, "Who is
+there?" Satisfaction was no sooner given on this point, than I heard two
+bolts pushed back, and the door unlocked. The apartment opened, and we
+entered. The interior of this habitation by no means corresponded with
+the appearance of my protector, but, on the contrary, wore the face of
+discomfort, carelessness, and dirt. The only person I saw within was a
+woman, rather advanced in life, and whose person had I know not what of
+extraordinary and loathsome. Her eyes were red and blood-shot; her hair
+was pendent in matted and shaggy tresses about her shoulders; her
+complexion swarthy, and of the consistency of parchment; her form spare,
+and her whole body, her arms in particular, uncommonly vigorous and
+muscular. Not the milk of human kindness, but the feverous blood of
+savage ferocity, seemed to flow from her heart; and her whole figure
+suggested an idea of unmitigable energy, and an appetite gorged in
+malevolence. This infernal Thalestris had no sooner cast her eyes upon
+us as we entered, than she exclaimed in a discordant and discontented
+voice, "What have we got here? this is not one of our people!" My
+conductor, without answering this apostrophe, bade her push an easy
+chair which stood in one corner, and set it directly before the fire.
+This she did with apparent reluctance, murmuring, "Ah! you are at your
+old tricks; I wonder what such folks as we have to do with charity! It
+will be the ruin of us at last, I can see that!"--"Hold your tongue,
+beldam!" said he, with a stern significance of manner, "and fetch one of
+my best shirts, a waistcoat, and some dressings." Saying this, he at the
+same time put into her hand a small bunch of keys. In a word, he treated
+me with as much kindness as if he had been my father. He examined my
+wound, washed and dressed it; at the same time that the old woman, by
+his express order, prepared for me such nourishment as he thought most
+suitable to my weak and languid condition.
+
+These operations were no sooner completed than my benefactor recommended
+to me to retire to rest, and preparations were making for that purpose,
+when suddenly a trampling of feet was heard, succeeded by a knock at the
+door. The old woman opened the door with the same precautions as had
+been employed upon our arrival, and immediately six or seven persons
+tumultuously entered the apartment. Their appearance was different, some
+having the air of mere rustics, and others that of a tarnished sort of
+gentry. All had a feature of boldness, inquietude, and disorder,
+extremely unlike any thing I had before observed in such a group. But my
+astonishment was still increased, when upon a second glance I perceived
+something in the general air of several of them, and of one in
+particular, that persuaded me they were the gang from which I had just
+escaped, and this one the antagonist by whose animosity I was so near
+having been finally destroyed. I imagined they had entered the hovel
+with a hostile intention, that my benefactor was upon the point of being
+robbed, and I probably murdered.
+
+This suspicion however was soon removed. They addressed my conductor
+with respect, under the appellation of captain. They were boisterous and
+noisy in their remarks and exclamations, but their turbulence was
+tempered by a certain deference to his opinion and authority. I could
+observe in the person who had been my active opponent some awkwardness
+and irresolution as he first perceived me, which he dismissed with a
+sort of effort, exclaiming, "Who the devil is here?" There was something
+in the tone of this apostrophe that roused the attention of my
+protector. He looked at the speaker with a fixed and penetrating glance,
+and then said, "Nay, Gines, do you know? Did you ever see the person
+before?"--"Curse it, Gines!" interrupted a third, "you are damnably out
+of luck. They say dead men walk, and you see there is some truth in
+it."--"Truce with your impertinence, Jeckols!" replied my protector:
+"this is no proper occasion for a joke. Answer me, Gines, were you the
+cause of this young man being left naked and wounded this bitter morning
+upon the forest?"
+
+"Mayhap I was. What then?"
+
+"What provocation could induce you to so cruel a treatment?"
+
+"Provocation enough. He had no money."
+
+"What, did you use him thus, without so much as being irritated by any
+resistance on his part?"
+
+"Yes, he did resist. I only hustled him, and he had the impudence to
+strike me."
+
+"Gines! you are an incorrigible fellow."
+
+"Pooh, what signifies what I am? You, with your compassion, and your
+fine feelings, will bring us all to the gallows."
+
+"I have nothing to say to you; I have no hopes of you! Comrades, it is
+for you to decide upon the conduct of this man as you think proper. You
+know how repeated his offences have been; you know what pains I have
+taken to mend him. Our profession is the profession of justice." [It is
+thus that the prejudices of men universally teach them to colour the
+most desperate cause to which they have determined to adhere.] "We, who
+are thieves without a licence, are at open war with another set of men
+who are thieves according to law. With such a cause then to bear us out,
+shall we stain it with cruelty, malice, and revenge? A thief is, of
+course, a man living among his equals; I do not pretend therefore to
+assume any authority among you; act as you think proper; but, so far as
+relates to myself, I vote that Gines be expelled from among us as a
+disgrace to our society."
+
+This proposition seemed to meet the general sense. It was easy to
+perceive that the opinion of the rest coincided with that of their
+leader; notwithstanding which a few of them hesitated as to the conduct
+to be pursued. In the mean time Gines muttered something in a surly and
+irresolute way, about taking care how they provoked him. This
+insinuation instantly roused the courage of my protector, and his eyes
+flashed with contempt.
+
+"Rascal!" said he, "do you menace us? Do you think we will be your
+slaves? No, no, do your worst! Go to the next justice of the peace, and
+impeach us; I can easily believe you are capable of it. Sir, when we
+entered into this gang, we were not such fools as not to know that we
+entered upon a service of danger. One of its dangers consists in the
+treachery of fellows like you. But we did not enter at first to flinch
+now. Did you believe that we would live in hourly fear of you, tremble
+at your threats, and compromise, whenever you should so please, with
+your insolence? That would be a blessed life indeed! I would rather see
+my flesh torn piecemeal from my bones! Go, sir! I defy you! You dare not
+do it! You dare not sacrifice these gallant fellows to your rage, and
+publish yourself to all the world a traitor and a scoundrel! If you do,
+you will punish yourself, not us! Begone!"
+
+The intrepidity of the leader communicated itself to the rest of the
+company. Gines easily saw that there was no hope of bringing them over
+to a contrary sentiment. After a short pause, he answered, "I did not
+mean--No, damn it! I will not snivel neither. I was always true to my
+principles, and a friend to you all. But since you are resolved to turn
+me out, why--good bye to you!"
+
+The expulsion of this man produced a remarkable improvement in the whole
+gang. Those who were before inclined to humanity, assumed new energy in
+proportion as they saw such sentiments likely to prevail. They had
+before suffered themselves to be overborne by the boisterous insolence
+of their antagonist; but now they adopted, and with success, a different
+conduct. Those who envied the ascendancy of their comrade, and therefore
+imitated his conduct, began to hesitate in their career. Stories were
+brought forward of the cruelty and brutality of Gines both to men and
+animals, which had never before reached the ear of the leader. The
+stories I shall not repeat. They could excite only emotions of
+abhorrence and disgust; and some of them argued a mind of such a stretch
+of depravity, as to many readers would appear utterly incredible; and
+yet this man had his virtues. He was enterprising, persevering, and
+faithful.
+
+His removal was a considerable benefit to me. It would have been no
+small hardship to have been turned adrift immediately under my
+unfavourable circumstances, with the additional disadvantage of the
+wound I had received; and yet I could scarcely have ventured to remain
+under the same roof with a man, to whom my appearance was as a guilty
+conscience, perpetually reminding him of his own offence, and the
+displeasure of his leader. His profession accustomed him to a certain
+degree of indifference to consequences, and indulgence to the sallies of
+passion; and he might easily have found his opportunity to insult or
+injure me, when I should have had nothing but my own debilitated
+exertions to protect me.
+
+Freed from this danger, I found my situation sufficiently fortunate for
+a man under my circumstances. It was attended with all the advantages
+for concealment my fondest imagination could have hoped; and it was by
+no means destitute of the benefits which arise from kindness and
+humanity. Nothing could be more unlike than the thieves I had seen
+in ---- jail, and the thieves of my new residence. The latter were
+generally full of cheerfulness and merriment. They could expatiate
+freely wherever they thought proper. They could form plans and execute
+them. They consulted their inclinations. They did not impose upon
+themselves the task, as is too often the case in human society, of
+seeming tacitly to approve that from which they suffered most; or, which
+is worst, of persuading themselves that all the wrongs they suffered
+were right; but were at open war with their oppressors. On the contrary,
+the imprisoned felons I had lately seen were shut up like wild beasts in
+a cage, deprived of activity, and palsied with indolence. The occasional
+demonstrations that still remained of their former enterprising life
+were the starts and convulsions of disease, not the meditated and
+consistent exertions of a mind in health. They had no more of hope, of
+project, of golden and animated dreams, but were reserved to the most
+dismal prospects, and forbidden to think upon any other topic. It is
+true, that these two scenes were parts of one whole, the one the
+consummation, the hourly to be expected successor of the other. But the
+men I now saw were wholly inattentive to this, and in that respect
+appeared to hold no commerce with reflection or reason.
+
+I might in one view, as I have said, congratulate myself upon my present
+residence; it answered completely the purposes of concealment. It was
+the seat of merriment and hilarity; but the hilarity that characterised
+it produced no correspondent feelings in my bosom. The persons who
+composed this society had each of them cast off all control from
+established principle; their trade was terror, and their constant object
+to elude the vigilance of the community. The influence of these
+circumstances was visible in their character. I found among them
+benevolence and kindness: they were strongly susceptible of emotions of
+generosity. But, as their situation was precarious, their dispositions
+were proportionably fluctuating. Inured to the animosity of their
+species, they were irritable and passionate. Accustomed to exercise
+harshness towards the subject of their depredations, they did not always
+confine their brutality within that scope. They were habituated to
+consider wounds and bludgeons and stabbing as the obvious mode of
+surmounting every difficulty. Uninvolved in the debilitating routine of
+human affairs, they frequently displayed an energy which, from every
+impartial observer, would have extorted veneration. Energy is perhaps of
+all qualities the most valuable; and a just political system would
+possess the means of extracting from it, thus circumstanced, its
+beneficial qualities, instead of consigning it, as now, to
+indiscriminate destruction. We act like the chemist, who should reject
+the finest ore, and employ none but what was sufficiently debased to fit
+it immediately for the vilest uses. But the energy of these men, such as
+I beheld it, was in the highest degree misapplied, unassisted by liberal
+and enlightened views, and directed only to the most narrow and
+contemptible purposes.
+
+The residence I have been describing might to many persons have appeared
+attended with intolerable inconveniences. But, exclusively of its
+advantages as a field for speculation, it was Elysium, compared with
+that from which I had just escaped. Displeasing company, incommodious
+apartments, filthiness, and riot, lost the circumstance by which they
+could most effectually disgust, when I was not compelled to remain with
+them. All hardships I could patiently endure, in comparison with the
+menace of a violent and untimely death. There was no suffering that I
+could not persuade myself to consider as trivial, except that which
+flowed from the tyranny, the frigid precaution, or the inhuman revenge
+of my own species.
+
+My recovery advanced in the most favourable manner. The attention and
+kindness of my protector were incessant, and the rest caught the spirit
+from his example. The old woman who superintended the household still
+retained her animosity. She considered me as the cause of the expulsion
+of Gines from the fraternity. Gines had been the object of her
+particular partiality; and, zealous as she was for the public concern,
+she thought an old and experienced sinner for a raw probationer but an
+ill exchange. Add to which, that her habits inclined her to moroseness
+and discontent, and that persons of her complexion seem unable to exist
+without some object upon which to pour out the superfluity of their
+gall. She lost no opportunity, upon the most trifling occasion, of
+displaying her animosity; and ever and anon eyed me with a furious
+glance of canine hunger for my destruction. Nothing was more evidently
+mortifying to her, than the procrastination of her malice; nor could she
+bear to think that a fierceness so gigantic and uncontrollable should
+show itself in nothing more terrific than the pigmy spite of a
+chambermaid. For myself, I had been accustomed to the warfare of
+formidable adversaries, and the encounter of alarming dangers; and what
+I saw of her spleen had not power sufficient to disturb my tranquillity.
+
+As I recovered, I told my story, except so far as related to the
+detection of Mr. Falkland's eventful secret, to my protector. That
+particular I could not, as yet, prevail upon myself to disclose, even in
+a situation like this, which seemed to preclude the possibility of its
+being made use of to the disadvantage of my persecutor. My present
+auditor however, whose habits of thinking were extremely opposite to
+those of Mr. Forester, did not, from the obscurity which flowed from
+this reserve, deduce any unfavourable conclusion. His penetration was
+such, as to afford little room for an impostor to hope to mislead him by
+a fictitious statement, and he confided in that penetration. So
+confiding, the simplicity and integrity of my manner carried conviction
+to his mind, and insured his good opinion and friendship.
+
+He listened to my story with eagerness, and commented on the several
+parts as I related them. He said, that this was only one fresh instance
+of the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of
+the community, against those who were less privileged than themselves.
+Nothing could be more clear, than their readiness to sacrifice the human
+species at large to their meanest interest, or wildest caprice. Who that
+saw the situation in its true light would wait till their oppressors
+thought fit to decree their destruction, and not take arms in their
+defence while it was yet in their power? Which was most meritorious,
+the unresisting and dastardly submission of a slave, or the enterprise
+and gallantry of the man who dared to assert his claims? Since, by the
+partial administration of our laws, innocence, when power was armed
+against it, had nothing better to hope for than guilt, what man of true
+courage would fail to set these laws at defiance, and, if he must suffer
+by their injustice, at least take care that he had first shown his
+contempt of their yoke? For himself, he should certainly never have
+embraced his present calling, had he not been stimulated to it by these
+cogent and irresistible reasons; and he hoped, as experience had so
+forcibly brought a conviction of this sort to my mind, that he should
+for the future have the happiness to associate me to his pursuits.--It
+will presently be seen with what event these hopes were attended.
+
+Numerous were the precautions exercised by the gang of thieves with whom
+I now resided, to elude the vigilance of the satellites of justice. It
+was one of their rules to commit no depredations but at a considerable
+distance from the place of their residence; and Gines had transgressed
+this regulation in the attack to which I was indebted for my present
+asylum. After having possessed themselves of any booty, they took care,
+in the sight of the persons whom they had robbed, to pursue a route as
+nearly as possible opposite to that which led to their true haunts. The
+appearance of their place of residence, together with its environs, was
+peculiarly desolate and forlorn, and it had the reputation of being
+haunted. The old woman I have described had long been its inhabitant,
+and was commonly supposed to be its only inhabitant; and her person well
+accorded with the rural ideas of a witch. Her lodgers never went out or
+came in but with the utmost circumspection, and generally by night. The
+lights which were occasionally seen from various parts of her
+habitation, were, by the country people, regarded with horror as
+supernatural; and if the noise of revelry at any time saluted their
+ears, it was imagined to proceed from a carnival of devils. With all
+these advantages, the thieves did not venture to reside here but by
+intervals: they frequently absented themselves for months, and removed
+to a different part of the country. The old woman sometimes attended
+them in these transportations, and sometimes remained; but in all cases
+her decampment took place either sooner or later than theirs, so that
+the nicest observer could scarcely have traced any connection between
+her reappearance, and the alarms of depredation that were frequently
+given; and the festival of demons seemed, to the terrified rustics,
+indifferently to take place whether she were present or absent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+One day, while I continued in this situation, a circumstance occurred
+which involuntarily attracted my attention. Two of our people had been
+sent to a town at some distance, for the purpose of procuring us the
+things of which we were in want. After having delivered these to our
+landlady, they retired to one corner of the room; and, one of them
+pulling a printed paper from his pocket, they mutually occupied
+themselves in examining its contents. I was sitting in an easy chair by
+the fire, being considerably better than I had been, though still in a
+weak and languid state. Having read for a considerable time, they looked
+at me, and then at the paper, and then at me again. They then went out
+of the room together, as if to consult without interruption upon
+something which that paper suggested to them. Some time after they
+returned; and my protector, who had been absent upon the former
+occasion, entered the room at the same instant.
+
+"Captain!" said one of them with an air of pleasure, "look here! we have
+found a prize! I believe it is as good as a bank-note of a hundred
+guineas."
+
+Mr. Raymond (that was his name) took the paper, and read. He paused for
+a moment. He then crushed the paper in his hand; and, turning to the
+person from whom he had received it, said, with the tone of a man
+confident in the success of his reasons,--
+
+"What use have you for these hundred guineas? Are you in want? Are you
+in distress? Can you be contented to purchase them at the price of
+treachery--of violating the laws of hospitality?"
+
+"Faith, captain, I do not very well know. After having violated other
+laws, I do not see why we should be frightened at an old saw. We pretend
+to judge for ourselves, and ought to be above shrinking from a bugbear
+of a proverb. Beside, this is a good deed, and I should think no more
+harm of being the ruin of such a thief than of getting my dinner."
+
+"A thief! You talk of thieves!"
+
+"Not so fast, captain. God defend that I should say a word against
+thieving as a general occupation! But one man steals in one way, and
+another in another. For my part, I go upon the highway, and take from
+any stranger I meet what, it is a hundred to one, he can very well
+spare. I see nothing to be found fault with in that. But I have as much
+conscience as another man. Because I laugh at assizes, and great wigs,
+and the gallows, and because I will not be frightened from an innocent
+action when the lawyers say me nay, does it follow that I am to have a
+fellow-feeling for pilferers, and rascally servants, and people that
+have neither justice nor principle? No; I have too much respect for the
+trade not to be a foe to interlopers, and people that so much the more
+deserve my hatred, because the world calls them by my name."
+
+"You are wrong, Larkins! You certainly ought not to employ against
+people that you hate, supposing your hatred to be reasonable, the
+instrumentality of that law which in your practice you defy. Be
+consistent. Either be the friend of the law, or its adversary. Depend
+upon it that, wherever there are laws at all, there will be laws against
+such people as you and me. Either therefore we all of us deserve the
+vengeance of the law, or law is not the proper instrument for correcting
+the misdeeds of mankind. I tell you this, because I would fain have you
+aware, that an informer or a king's evidence, a man who takes advantage
+of the confidence of another in order to betray him, who sells the life
+of his neighbour for money, or, coward-like, upon any pretence calls in
+the law to do that for him which he cannot or dares not do for himself,
+is the vilest of rascals. But in the present case, if your reasons were
+the best in the world, they do not apply."
+
+While Mr. Raymond was speaking, the rest of the gang came into the room.
+He immediately turned to them, and said,--
+
+"My friends, here is a piece of intelligence that Larkins has just
+brought in which, with his leave, I will lay before you."
+
+Then unfolding the paper he had received, he continued: "This is the
+description of a felon, with the offer of a hundred guineas for his
+apprehension. Larking picked it up at ----. By the time and other
+circumstances, but particularly by the minute description of his
+person, there can be no doubt but the object of it is our young friend,
+whose life I was a while ago the instrument of saving. He is charged
+here with having taken advantage of the confidence of his patron and
+benefactor to rob him of property to a large amount. Upon this charge he
+was committed to the county jail, from whence he made his escape about a
+fortnight ago, without venturing to stand his trial; a circumstance
+which is stated by the advertiser as tantamount to a confession of his
+guilt.
+
+"My friends, I was acquainted with the particulars of this story some
+time before. This lad let me into his history, at a time that he could
+not possibly foresee that he should stand in need of that precaution as
+an antidote against danger. He is not guilty of what is laid to his
+charge. Which of you is so ignorant as to suppose, that his escape is
+any confirmation of his guilt? Who ever thinks, when he is apprehended
+for trial, of his innocence or guilt as being at all material to the
+issue? Who ever was fool enough to volunteer a trial, where those who
+are to decide think more of the horror of the thing of which he is
+accused, than whether he were the person that did it; and where the
+nature of our motives is to be collected from a set of ignorant
+witnesses, that no wise man would trust for a fair representation of the
+most indifferent action of his life?
+
+"The poor lad's story is a long one, and I will not trouble you with it
+now. But from that story it is as clear as the day, that, because he
+wished to leave the service of his master, because he had been perhaps a
+little too inquisitive in his master's concerns, and because, as I
+suspect, he had been trusted with some important secrets, his master
+conceived an antipathy against him. The antipathy gradually proceeded
+to such a length, as to induce the master to forge this vile accusation.
+He seemed willing to hang the lad out of the way, rather than suffer him
+to go where he pleased, or get beyond the reach of his power. Williams
+has told me the story with such ingenuousness, that I am as sure that he
+is guiltless of what they lay to his charge, as that I am so myself.
+Nevertheless the man's servants who were called in to hear the
+accusation, and his relation, who as justice of the peace made out the
+mittimus, and who had the folly to think he could be impartial, gave it
+on his side with one voice, and thus afforded Williams a sample of what
+he had to expect in the sequel.
+
+"Larkins, who when he received this paper had no previous knowledge of
+particulars, was for taking advantage of it for the purpose of earning
+the hundred guineas. Are you of that mind now you have heard them? Will
+you for so paltry a consideration deliver up the lamb into the jaws of
+the wolf? Will you abet the purposes of this sanguinary rascal, who, not
+contented with driving his late dependent from house and home, depriving
+him of character and all the ordinary means of subsistence, and leaving
+him almost without a refuge, still thirsts for his blood? If no other
+person have the courage to set limits to the tyranny of courts of
+justice, shall not we? Shall we, who earn our livelihood by generous
+daring, be indebted for a penny to the vile artifices of the informer?
+Shall we, against whom the whole species is in arms, refuse our
+protection to an individual, more exposed to, but still less deserving
+of, their persecution than ourselves?"
+
+The representation of the captain produced an instant effect upon the
+whole company. They all exclaimed, "Betray him! No, not for worlds! He
+is safe. We will protect him at the hazard of our lives. If fidelity
+and honour be banished from thieves, where shall they find refuge upon
+the face of the earth?"[F] Larkins in particular thanked the captain for
+his interference, and swore that he would rather part with his right
+hand than injure so worthy a lad or assist such an unheard-of villainy.
+Saying this, he took me by the hand and bade me fear nothing. Under
+their roof no harm should ever befal me; and, even if the understrappers
+of the law should discover my retreat, they would to a man die in my
+defence, sooner than a hair of my head should be hurt. I thanked him
+most sincerely for his good-will; but I was principally struck with the
+fervent benevolence of my benefactor. I told them, I found that my
+enemies were inexorable, and would never be appeased but with my blood;
+and I assured them with the most solemn and earnest veracity, that I had
+done nothing to deserve the persecution which was exercised against me.
+
+[Footnote F: This seems to be the parody of a celebrated saying of John
+King of France, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the battle
+of Poitiers.]
+
+The spirit and energy of Mr. Raymond had been such as to leave no part
+for me to perform in repelling this unlooked-for danger. Nevertheless,
+it left a very serious impression upon my mind. I had always placed some
+confidence in the returning equity of Mr. Falkland. Though he persecuted
+me with bitterness, I could not help believing that he did it
+unwillingly, and I was persuaded it would not be for ever. A man, whose
+original principles had been so full of rectitude and honour, could not
+fail at some time to recollect the injustice of his conduct, and to
+remit his asperity. This idea had been always present to me, and had in
+no small degree conspired to instigate my exertions. I said, "I will
+convince my persecutor that I am of more value than that I should be
+sacrificed purely by way of precaution." These expectations on my part
+had been encouraged by Mr. Falkland's behaviour upon the question of my
+imprisonment, and by various particulars which had occurred since.
+
+But this new incident gave the subject a totally different appearance. I
+saw him, not contented with blasting my reputation, confining me for a
+period in jail, and reducing me to the situation of a houseless
+vagabond, still continuing his pursuit under these forlorn circumstances
+with unmitigable cruelty. Indignation and resentment seemed now for the
+first time to penetrate my mind. I knew his misery so well, I was so
+fully acquainted with its cause, and strongly impressed with the idea of
+its being unmerited, that, while I suffered deeply, I still continued to
+pity, rather than hate my persecutor. But this incident introduced some
+change into my feelings. I said, "Surely he might now believe that he
+had sufficiently disarmed me, and might at length suffer me to be at
+peace. At least, ought he not to be contented to leave me to my fate,
+the perilous and uncertain condition of an escaped felon, instead of
+thus whetting the animosity and vigilance of my countrymen against me?
+Were his interference on my behalf in opposition to the stern severity
+of Mr. Forester, and his various acts of kindness since, a mere part
+that he played in order to lull me into patience? Was he perpetually
+haunted with the fear of an ample retaliation, and for that purpose did
+he personate remorse, at the very moment that he was secretly keeping
+every engine at play that could secure my destruction?" The very
+suspicion of such a fact filled me with inexpressible horror, and
+struck a sudden chill through every fibre of my frame.
+
+My wound was by this time completely healed, and it became absolutely
+necessary that I should form some determination respecting the future.
+My habits of thinking were such as gave me an uncontrollable repugnance
+to the vocation of my hosts. I did not indeed feel that aversion and
+abhorrence to the men which are commonly entertained. I saw and
+respected their good qualities and their virtues. I was by no means
+inclined to believe them worse men, or more hostile in their
+dispositions to the welfare of their species, than the generality of
+those that look down upon them with most censure. But, though I did not
+cease to love them as individuals, my eyes were perfectly open to their
+mistakes. If I should otherwise have been in danger of being misled, it
+was my fortune to have studied felons in a jail before I studied them in
+their state of comparative prosperity; and this was an infallible
+antidote to the poison. I saw that in this profession were exerted
+uncommon energy, ingenuity, and fortitude, and I could not help
+recollecting how admirably beneficial such qualities might be made in
+the great theatre of human affairs; while, in their present direction,
+they were thrown away upon purposes diametrically at war with the first
+interests of human society. Nor were their proceedings less injurious to
+their own interest than incompatible with the general welfare. The man
+who risks or sacrifices his life for the public cause, is rewarded with
+the testimony of an approving conscience; but persons who wantonly defy
+the necessary, though atrociously exaggerated, precautions of government
+in the matter of property, at the same time that they commit an
+alarming hostility against the whole, are, as to their own concerns,
+scarcely less absurd and self-neglectful than the man who should set
+himself up as a mark for a file of musqueteers to shoot at.
+
+Viewing the subject in this light, I not only determined that I would
+have no share in their occupation myself, but thought I could not do
+less, in return for the benefits I had received from them, than
+endeavour to dissuade them from an employment in which they must
+themselves be the greatest sufferers. My expostulation met with a
+various reception. All the persons to whom it was addressed had been
+tolerably successful in persuading themselves of the innocence of their
+calling; and what remained of doubt in their mind was smothered, and, so
+to speak, laboriously forgotten. Some of them laughed at my arguments,
+as a ridiculous piece of missionary quixotism. Others, and particularly
+our captain, repelled them with the boldness of a man that knows he has
+got the strongest side. But this sentiment of ease and self-satisfaction
+did not long remain. They had been used to arguments derived from
+religion and the sacredness of law. They had long ago shaken these from
+them as so many prejudices. But my view of the subject appealed to
+principles which they could not contest, and had by no means the air of
+that customary reproof which is for ever dinned in our ears without
+finding one responsive chord in our hearts. Urged, as they now were,
+with objections unexpected and cogent, some of those to whom I addressed
+them began to grow peevish and impatient of the intrusive remonstrance.
+But this was by no means the case with Mr. Raymond. He was possessed of
+a candour that I have seldom seen equalled. He was surprised to hear
+objections so powerful to that which, as a matter of speculation, he
+believed he had examined on all sides. He revolved them with
+impartiality and care. He admitted them slowly, but he at length fully
+admitted them. He had now but one rejoinder in reserve.
+
+"Alas! Williams," said he, "it would have been fortunate for me if these
+views had been presented to me, previously to my embracing my present
+profession. It is now too late. Those very laws which, by a perception
+of their iniquity, drove me to what I am, preclude my return. God, we
+are told, judges of men by what they are at the period of arraignment,
+and whatever be their crimes, if they have seen and abjured the folly of
+those crimes, receives them to favour. But the institutions of countries
+that profess to worship this God admit no such distinctions. They leave
+no room for amendment, and seem to have a brutal delight in confounding
+the demerits of offenders. It signifies not what is the character of the
+individual at the hour of trial. How changed, how spotless, and how
+useful, avails him nothing. If they discover at the distance of
+fourteen[G] or of forty years[H] an action for which the law ordains
+that his life shall be the forfeit, though the interval should have been
+spent with the purity of a saint and the devotedness of a patriot, they
+disdain to enquire into it. What then can I do? Am I not compelled to go
+on in folly, having once begun?"
+
+[Footnote G: Eugene Aram. See Annual Register for 1759.]
+
+[Footnote H: William Andrew Home. Ibid.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I Was extremely affected by this plea. I could only answer, that Mr.
+Raymond must himself be the best judge of the course it became him to
+hold; I trusted the case was not so desperate as he imagined.
+
+This subject was pursued no further, and was in some degree driven from
+my thoughts by an incident of a very extraordinary nature.
+
+I have already mentioned the animosity that was entertained against me
+by the infernal portress of this solitary mansion. Gines, the expelled
+member of the gang, had been her particular favourite. She submitted to
+his exile indeed, because her genius felt subdued by the energy and
+inherent superiority of Mr. Raymond; but she submitted with murmuring
+and discontent. Not daring to resent the conduct of the principal in
+this affair, she collected all the bitterness of her spirit against me.
+
+To the unpardonable offence I had thus committed in the first instance,
+were added the reasonings I had lately offered against the profession of
+robbery. Robbery was a fundamental article in the creed of this hoary
+veteran, and she listened to my objections with the same unaffected
+astonishment and horror that an old woman of other habits would listen
+to one who objected to the agonies and dissolution of the Creator of the
+world, or to the garment of imputed righteousness prepared to envelope
+the souls of the elect. Like the religious bigot, she was sufficiently
+disposed to avenge a hostility against her opinions with the weapons of
+sublunary warfare.
+
+Meanwhile I had smiled at the impotence of her malice, as an object of
+contempt rather than alarm. She perceived, as I imagine, the slight
+estimation in which I held her, and this did not a little increase the
+perturbation of her thoughts.
+
+One day I was left alone, with no other person in the house than this
+swarthy sybil. The thieves had set out upon an expedition about two
+hours after sunset on the preceding evening, and had not returned, as
+they were accustomed to do, before day-break the next morning. This was
+a circumstance that sometimes occurred, and therefore did not produce
+any extraordinary alarm. At one time the scent of prey would lead them
+beyond the bounds they had prescribed themselves, and at another the
+fear of pursuit: the life of a thief is always uncertain. The old woman
+had been preparing during the night for the meal to which they would
+expect to sit down as soon as might be after their return.
+
+For myself, I had learned from their habits to be indifferent to the
+regular return of the different parts of the day, and in some degree to
+turn day into night, and night into day. I had been now several weeks in
+this residence, and the season was considerably advanced. I had passed
+some hours during the night in ruminating on my situation. The character
+and manners of the men among whom I lived were disgusting to me. Their
+brutal ignorance, their ferocious habits, and their coarse behaviour,
+instead of becoming more tolerable by custom, hourly added force to my
+original aversion. The uncommon vigour of their minds, and acuteness of
+their invention in the business they pursued, compared with the
+odiousness of that business and their habitual depravity, awakened in me
+sensations too painful to be endured. Moral disapprobation, at least in
+a mind unsubdued by philosophy, I found to be one of the most fertile
+sources of disquiet and uneasiness. From this pain the society of Mr.
+Raymond by no means relieved me. He was indeed eminently superior to the
+vices of the rest; but I did not less exquisitely feel how much he was
+out of his place, how disproportionably associated, or how contemptibly
+employed. I had attempted to counteract the errors under which he and
+his companions laboured; but I had found the obstacles that presented
+themselves greater than I had imagined.
+
+What was I to do? Was I to wait the issue of this my missionary
+undertaking, or was I to withdraw myself immediately? When I withdrew,
+ought that to be done privately, or with an open avowal of my design,
+and an endeavour to supply by the force of example what was deficient in
+my arguments? It was certainly improper, as I declined all participation
+in the pursuits of these men, did not pay my contribution of hazard to
+the means by which they subsisted, and had no congeniality with their
+habits, that I should continue to reside with them longer than was
+absolutely necessary. There was one circumstance that rendered this
+deliberation particularly pressing. They intended in a few days removing
+from their present habitation, to a haunt to which they were accustomed,
+in a distant county. If I did not propose to continue with them, it
+would perhaps be wrong to accompany them in this removal. The state of
+calamity to which my inexorable prosecutor had reduced me, had made the
+encounter even of a den of robbers a fortunate adventure. But the time
+that had since elapsed, had probably been sufficient to relax the
+keenness of the quest that was made after me. I sighed for that solitude
+and obscurity, that retreat from the vexations of the world and the
+voice even of common fame, which I had proposed to myself when I broke
+my prison.
+
+Such were the meditations which now occupied my mind. At length I grew
+fatigued with continual contemplation, and to relieve myself pulled out
+a pocket Horace, the legacy of my beloved Brightwel! I read with avidity
+the epistle in which he so beautifully describes to Fuscus, the
+grammarian, the pleasures of rural tranquillity and independence. By
+this time the sun rose from behind the eastern hills, and I opened my
+casement to contemplate it. The day commenced with peculiar brilliancy,
+and was accompanied with all those charms which the poets of nature, as
+they have been styled, have so much delighted to describe. There was
+something in this scene, particularly as succeeding to the active
+exertions of intellect, that soothed the mind to composure. Insensibly a
+confused reverie invaded my faculties; I withdrew from the window, threw
+myself upon the bed, and fell asleep.
+
+I do not recollect the precise images which in this situation passed
+through my thoughts, but I know that they concluded with the idea of
+some person, the agent of Mr. Falkland, approaching to assassinate me.
+This thought had probably been suggested by the project I meditated of
+entering once again into the world, and throwing myself within the
+sphere of his possible vengeance. I imagined that the design of the
+murderer was to come upon me by surprise, that I was aware of his
+design, and yet, by some fascination, had no thought of evading it. I
+heard the steps of the murderer as he cautiously approached. I seemed to
+listen to his constrained yet audible breathings. He came up to the
+corner where I was placed, and then stopped.
+
+The idea became too terrible; I started, opened my eyes, and beheld the
+execrable hag before mentioned standing over me with a butcher's
+cleaver. I shifted my situation with a speed that seemed too swift for
+volition, and the blow already aimed at my skull sunk impotent upon the
+bed. Before she could wholly recover her posture, I sprung upon her,
+seized hold of the weapon, and had nearly wrested it from her. But in a
+moment she resumed her strength and her desperate purpose, and we had a
+furious struggle--she impelled by inveterate malice, and I resisting for
+my life. Her vigour was truly Amazonian, and at no time had I ever
+occasion to contend with a more formidable opponent. Her glance was
+rapid and exact, and the shock with which from time to time she impelled
+her whole frame inconceivably vehement. At length I was victorious, took
+from her the instrument of death, and threw her upon the ground. Till
+now the earnestness of her exertions had curbed her rage; but now she
+gnashed with her teeth, her eyes seemed as if starting from their
+sockets, and her body heaved with uncontrollable insanity.
+
+"Rascal! devil!" she exclaimed, "what do you mean to do to me?"
+
+Till now the scene had passed uninterrupted by a single word.
+
+"Nothing," I replied: "begone, infernal witch! and leave me to myself."
+
+"Leave you! No: I will thrust my fingers through your ribs, and drink
+your blood!--You conquer me?--Ha, ha!--Yes, yes; you shall!--I will sit
+upon you, and press you to hell! I will roast you with brimstone, and
+dash your entrails into your eyes! Ha, ha!--ha!"
+
+Saying this, she sprung up, and prepared to attack me with redoubled
+fury. I seized her hands, and compelled her to sit upon the bed. Thus
+restrained, she continued to express the tumult of her thoughts by
+grinning, by certain furious motions of her head, and by occasional
+vehement efforts to disengage herself from my grasp. These contortions
+and starts were of the nature of those fits in which the patients are
+commonly supposed to need three or four persons to hold them. But I
+found by experience that, under the circumstances in which I was
+placed, my single strength was sufficient. The spectacle of her emotions
+was inconceivably frightful. Her violence at length however began to
+abate, and she became convinced of the hopelessness of the contest.
+
+"Let me go!" said she. "Why do you hold me? I will not be held."
+
+"I wanted you gone from the first," replied I.
+
+"Are you contented to go now?"
+
+"Yes, I tell you, misbegotten villain! Yes, rascal!"
+
+I immediately loosed my hold. She flew to the door, and, holding it in
+her hand, said, "I will be the death of you yet: you shall not be your
+own man twenty-four hours longer!" With these words she shut the door,
+and locked it upon me. An action so totally unexpected startled me.
+Whither was she gone? What was it she intended? To perish by the
+machinations of such a hag as this was a thought not to be endured.
+Death in any form brought upon us by surprise, and for which the mind
+has had no time to prepare, is inexpressibly terrible. My thoughts
+wandered in breathless horror and confusion, and all within was uproar.
+I endeavoured to break the door, but in vain. I went round the room in
+search of some tool to assist me. At length I rushed against it with a
+desperate effort, to which it yielded, and had nearly thrown me from the
+top of the stairs to the bottom.
+
+I descended with all possible caution and vigilance, I entered the room
+which served us for a kitchen, but it was deserted. I searched every
+other apartment in vain. I went out among the ruins; still I discovered
+nothing of my late assailant. It was extraordinary: what could be become
+of her? what was I to conclude from her disappearance! I reflected on
+her parting menace,--"I should not be my own man twenty-four hours
+longer." It was mysterious! it did not seem to be the menace of
+assassination. Suddenly the recollection of the hand-bill brought to us
+by Larkins rushed upon my memory. Was it possible that she alluded to
+that in her parting words? Would she set out upon such an expedition by
+herself? Was it not dangerous to the whole fraternity if, without the
+smallest precaution, she should bring the officers of justice in the
+midst of them? It was perhaps improbable she would engage in an
+undertaking thus desperate. It was not however easy to answer for the
+conduct of a person in her state of mind. Should I wait, and risk the
+preservation of my liberty upon the issue?
+
+To this question I returned an immediate negative. I had resolved in a
+short time to quit my present situation, and the difference of a little
+sooner or a little later could not be very material. It promised to be
+neither agreeable nor prudent for me to remain under the same roof with
+a person who had manifested such a fierce and inexpiable hostility. But
+the consideration which had inexpressibly the most weight with me,
+belonged to the ideas of imprisonment, trial, and death. The longer they
+had formed the subject of my contemplation, the more forcibly was I
+impelled to avoid them. I had entered upon a system of action for that
+purpose; I had already made many sacrifices; and I believed that I would
+never miscarry in this project through any neglect of mine. The thought
+of what was reserved for me by my persecutors sickened my very soul; and
+the more intimately I was acquainted with oppression and injustice, the
+more deeply was I penetrated with the abhorrence to which they are
+entitled.
+
+Such were the reasons that determined me instantly, abruptly, without
+leave-taking, or acknowledgment for the peculiar and repeated favours I
+had received, to quit a habitation to which, for six weeks, I had
+apparently been indebted for protection from trial, conviction, and an
+ignominious death. I had come hither pennyless; I quitted my abode with
+the sum of a few guineas in my possession, Mr. Raymond having insisted
+upon my taking a share at the time that each man received his dividend
+from the common stock. Though I had reason to suppose that the heat of
+the pursuit against me would be somewhat remitted by the time that had
+elapsed, the magnitude of the mischief that, in an unfavourable event,
+might fall on me, determined me to neglect no imaginable precaution. I
+recollected the hand-bill which was the source of my present alarm, and
+conceived that one of the principal dangers which threatened me was the
+recognition of my person, either by such as had previously known me, or
+even by strangers. It seemed prudent therefore to disguise it as
+effectually as I could. For this purpose I had recourse to a parcel of
+tattered garments, that lay in a neglected corner of our habitation. The
+disguise I chose was that of a beggar. Upon this plan, I threw off my
+shirt; I tied a handkerchief about my head, with which I took care to
+cover one of my eyes; over this I drew a piece of an old woollen
+nightcap. I selected the worst apparel I could find; and this I reduced
+to a still more deplorable condition, by rents that I purposely made in
+various places. Thus equipped, I surveyed myself in a looking-glass. I
+had rendered my appearance complete; nor would any one have suspected
+that I was not one of the fraternity to which I assumed to belong. I
+said, "This is the form in which tyranny and injustice oblige me to seek
+for refuge: but better, a thousand times better is it, thus to incur
+contempt with the dregs of mankind, than trust to the tender mercies of
+our superiors!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The only rule that I laid down to myself in traversing the forest, was
+to take a direction as opposite as possible to that which led to the
+scene of my late imprisonment. After about two hours walking I arrived
+at the termination of this ruder scene, and reached that part of the
+country which is inclosed and cultivated. Here I sat down by the side of
+a brook, and, pulling out a crust of bread which I had brought away with
+me, rested and refreshed myself. While I continued in this place, I
+began to ruminate upon the plan I should lay down for my future
+proceedings; and my propensity now led me, as it had done in a former
+instance, to fix upon the capital, which I believed, besides its other
+recommendations, would prove the safest place for concealment. During
+these thoughts I saw a couple of peasants passing at a small distance,
+and enquired of them respecting the London road. By their description I
+understood that the most immediate way would be to repass a part of the
+forest, and that it would be necessary to approach considerably nearer
+to the county-town than I was at the spot which I had at present
+reached. I did not imagine that this could be a circumstance of
+considerable importance. My disguise appeared to be a sufficient
+security against momentary danger; and I therefore took a path, though
+not the most direct one, which led towards the point they suggested.
+
+Some of the occurrences of the day are deserving to be mentioned. As I
+passed along a road which lay in my way for a few miles, I saw a
+carriage advancing in the opposite direction. I debated with myself for
+a moment, whether I should pass it without notice, or should take this
+occasion, by voice or gesture, of making an essay of my trade. This idle
+disquisition was however speedily driven from my mind when I perceived
+that the carriage was Mr. Falkland's. The suddenness of the encounter
+struck me with terror, though perhaps it would have been difficult for
+calm reflection to have discovered any considerable danger. I withdrew
+from the road, and skulked behind a hedge till it should have completely
+gone by. I was too much occupied with my own feelings, to venture to
+examine whether or no the terrible adversary of my peace were in the
+carriage. I persuaded myself that he was. I looked after the equipage,
+and exclaimed, "There you may see the luxurious accommodations and
+appendages of guilt, and here the forlornness that awaits upon
+innocence!"--I was to blame to imagine that my case was singular in that
+respect. I only mention it to show how the most trivial circumstance
+contributes to embitter the cup to the man of adversity. The thought
+however was a transient one. I had learned this lesson from my
+sufferings, not to indulge in the luxury of discontent. As my mind
+recovered its tranquillity, I began to enquire whether the phenomenon I
+had just seen could have any relation to myself. But though my mind was
+extremely inquisitive and versatile in this respect, I could discover no
+sufficient ground upon which to build a judgment.
+
+At night I entered a little public-house at the extremity of a village,
+and, seating myself in a corner of the kitchen, asked for some bread and
+cheese. While I was sitting at my repast, three or four labourers came
+in for a little refreshment after their work. Ideas respecting the
+inequality of rank pervade every order in society; and, as my appearance
+was meaner and more contemptible than theirs, I found it expedient to
+give way to these gentry of a village alehouse, and remove to an
+obscurer station. I was surprised, and not a little startled, to find
+them fall almost immediately into conversation about my history, whom,
+with a slight variation of circumstances, they styled the notorious
+housebreaker, Kit Williams.
+
+"Damn the fellow," said one of them, "one never hears of any thing else.
+O' my life, I think he makes talk for the whole country."
+
+"That is very true," replied another. "I was at the market-town to-day
+to sell some oats for my master, and there was a hue and cry, some of
+them thought they had got him, but it was a false alarm."
+
+"That hundred guineas is a fine thing," rejoined the first. "I should be
+glad if so be as how it fell in my way."
+
+"For the matter of that," said his companion, "I should like a hundred
+guineas as well as another. But I cannot be of your mind for all that. I
+should never think money would do me any good that had been the means of
+bringing a Christian creature to the gallows."
+
+"Poh, that is all my granny! Some folks must be hanged, to keep the
+wheels of our state-folks a-going. Besides, I could forgive the fellow
+all his other robberies, but that he should have been so hardened as to
+break the house of his own master at last, that is too bad."
+
+"Lord! lord!" replied the other, "I see you know nothing of the matter!
+I will tell you how it was, as I learned it at the town. I question
+whether he ever robbed his master at all. But, hark you! you must know
+as how that squire Falkland was once tried for murder"--
+
+"Yes, yes, we know that."
+
+"Well, he was as innocent as the child unborn. But I supposes as how he
+is a little soft or so. And so Kit Williams--Kit is a devilish cunning
+fellow, you may judge that from his breaking prison no less than five
+times,--so, I say, he threatened to bring his master to trial at
+'size all over again, and so frightened him, and got money from him at
+divers times. Till at last one squire Forester, a relation of t'other,
+found it all out. And he made the hell of a rumpus, and sent away Kit to
+prison in a twinky; and I believe he would have been hanged: for when
+two squires lay their heads together, they do not much matter law, you
+know; or else they twist the law to their own ends, I cannot exactly say
+which; but it is much at one when the poor fellow's breath is out of his
+body."
+
+Though this story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient
+detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned. Each man maintained
+the justness of his own statement, and the dispute was long and
+obstinately pursued. Historians and commentators at length withdrew
+together. The terrors with which I was seized when this conversation
+began, were extreme. I stole a sidelong glance to one quarter and
+another, to observe if any man's attention was turned upon me. I
+trembled as if in an ague-fit; and, at first, felt continual impulses to
+quit the house, and take to my heels. I drew closer to my corner, held
+aside my head, and seemed from time to time to undergo a total
+revolution of the animal economy.
+
+At length the tide of ideas turned. Perceiving they paid no attention to
+me, the recollection of the full security my disguise afforded recurred
+strongly to my thoughts; and I began inwardly to exult, though I did not
+venture to obtrude myself to examination. By degrees I began to be
+amused at the absurdity of their tales, and the variety of the
+falsehoods I heard asserted around me. My soul seemed to expand; I felt
+a pride in the self-possession and lightness of heart with which I could
+listen to the scene; and I determined to prolong and heighten the
+enjoyment. Accordingly, when they were withdrawn, I addressed myself to
+our hostess, a buxom, bluff, good-humoured widow, and asked what sort of
+a man this Kit Williams might be? She replied that, as she was informed,
+he was as handsome, likely a lad, as any in four counties round; and
+that she loved him for his cleverness, by which he outwitted all the
+keepers they could set over him, and made his way through stone walls as
+if they were so many cobwebs. I observed, that the country was so
+thoroughly alarmed, that I did not think it possible he should escape
+the pursuit that was set up after him. This idea excited her immediate
+indignation: she said, she hoped he was far enough away by this time;
+but if not, she wished the curse of God might light on them that
+betrayed so noble a fellow to an ignominious end!--Though she little
+thought that the person of whom she spoke was so near her, yet the
+sincere and generous warmth with which She interested herself in my
+behalf gave me considerable pleasure. With this sensation to sweeten the
+fatigues of the day and the calamities of my situation, I retired from
+the kitchen to a neighbouring barn, laid myself down upon some straw,
+and fell into a profound sleep.
+
+The next day about noon, as I was pursuing my journey, I was overtaken
+by two men on horseback, who stopped me, to enquire respecting a person
+that they supposed might have passed along that road. As they proceeded
+in their description, I perceived, with astonishment and terror, that I
+was myself the person to whom their questions related. They entered into
+a tolerably accurate detail of the various characteristics by which my
+person might best be distinguished. They said, they had good reason to
+believe that I had been seen at a place in that county the very day
+before. While they were speaking a third person, who had fallen behind,
+came up; and my alarm was greatly increased upon seeing that this person
+was the servant of Mr. Forester, who had visited me in prison about a
+fortnight before my escape. My best resource in this crisis was
+composure and apparent indifference. It was fortunate for me that my
+disguise was so complete, that the eye of Mr. Falkland itself could
+scarcely have penetrated it. I had been aware for some time before that
+this was a refuge which events might make necessary, and had endeavoured
+to arrange and methodise my ideas upon the subject. From my youth I had
+possessed a considerable facility in the art of imitation; and when I
+quitted my retreat in the habitation of Mr. Raymond, I adopted, along
+with my beggar's attire, a peculiar slouching and clownish gait, to be
+used whenever there should appear the least chance of my being observed,
+together with an Irish brogue which I had had an opportunity of studying
+in my prison. Such are the miserable expedients, and so great the
+studied artifice, which man, who never deserves the name of manhood but
+in proportion as he is erect and independent, may find it necessary to
+employ, for the purpose of eluding the inexorable animosity and
+unfeeling tyranny of his fellow man! I had made use of this brogue,
+though I have not thought it necessary to write it down in my narrative,
+in the conversation of the village alehouse. Mr. Forester's servant, as
+he came up, observed that his companions were engaged in conversation
+with me; and, guessing at the subject, asked whether they had gained any
+intelligence. He added to the information at which they had already
+hinted, that a resolution was taken to spare neither diligence nor
+expense for my discovery and apprehension, and that they were satisfied,
+if I were above ground and in the kingdom, it would be impossible for me
+to escape them.
+
+Every new incident that had occurred to me tended to impress upon my
+mind the extreme danger to which I was exposed. I could almost have
+imagined that I was the sole subject of general attention, and that the
+whole world was in arms to exterminate me. The very idea tingled through
+every fibre of my frame. But, terrible as it appeared to my imagination,
+it did but give new energy to my purpose; and I determined that I would
+not voluntarily resign the field, that is, literally speaking, my neck
+to the cord of the executioner, notwithstanding the greatest superiority
+in my assailants. But the incidents which had befallen me, though they
+did not change my purpose, induced me to examine over again the means by
+which it might be effected. The consequence of this revisal was, to
+determine me to bend my course to the nearest sea-port on the west side
+of the island, and transport myself to Ireland. I cannot now tell what
+it was that inclined me to prefer this scheme to that which I had
+originally formed. Perhaps the latter, which had been for some time
+present to my imagination, for that reason appeared the more obvious of
+the two; and I found an appearance of complexity, which the mind did not
+stay to explain, in substituting the other in its stead.
+
+I arrived without further impediment at the place from which I intended
+to sail, enquired for a vessel, which I found ready to put to sea in a
+few hours, and agreed with the captain for my passage. Ireland had to
+me the disadvantage of being a dependency of the British government, and
+therefore a place of less security than most other countries which are
+divided from it by the ocean. To judge from the diligence with which I
+seemed to be pursued in England, it was not improbable that the zeal of
+my persecutors might follow me to the other side of the channel. It was
+however sufficiently agreeable to my mind, that I was upon the point of
+being removed one step further from the danger which was so grievous to
+my imagination.
+
+Could there be any peril in the short interval that was to elapse,
+before the vessel was to weigh anchor and quit the English shore?
+Probably not. A very short time had intervened between my determination
+for the sea and my arrival at this place; and if any new alarm had been
+given to my prosecutors, it proceeded from the old woman a very few days
+before. I hoped I had anticipated their diligence. Meanwhile, that I
+might neglect no reasonable precaution, I went instantly on board,
+resolved that I would not unnecessarily, by walking the streets of the
+town, expose myself to any untoward accident. This was the first time I
+had, upon any occasion, taken leave of my native country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The time was now nearly elapsed that was prescribed for our stay, and
+orders for weighing anchor were every moment expected, when we were
+hailed by a boat from the shore, with two other men in it besides those
+that rowed. They entered our vessel in an instant. They were officers
+of justice. The passengers, five persons besides myself, were ordered
+upon deck for examination. I was inexpressibly disturbed at the
+occurrence of such a circumstance in so unseasonable a moment. I took it
+for granted that it was of me they were in search. Was it possible that,
+by any unaccountable accident, they should have got an intimation of my
+disguise? It was infinitely more distressing to encounter them upon this
+narrow stage, and under these pointed circumstances, than, as I had
+before encountered my pursuers, under the appearance of an indifferent
+person. My recollection however did not forsake me. I confided in my
+conscious disguise and my Irish brogue, as a rock of dependence against
+all accidents.
+
+No sooner did we appear upon deck than, to my great consternation, I
+could observe the attention of our guests principally turned upon me.
+They asked a few frivolous questions of such of my fellow passengers as
+happened to be nearest to them; and then, turning to me, enquired my
+name, who I was, whence I came, and what had brought me there? I had
+scarcely opened my mouth to reply, when, with one consent, they laid
+hold of me, said I was their prisoner, and declared that my accent,
+together with the correspondence of my person, would be sufficient to
+convict me before any court in England. I was hurried out of the vessel
+into the boat in which they came, and seated between them, as if by way
+of precaution, lest I should spring overboard, and by any means escape
+them.
+
+I now took it for granted that I was once more in the power of Mr.
+Falkland; and the idea was insupportably mortifying and oppressive to my
+imagination. Escape from his pursuit, freedom from his tyranny, were
+objects upon which my whole soul was bent. Could no human ingenuity and
+exertion effect them? Did his power reach through all space, and his
+eye penetrate every concealment? Was he like that mysterious being, to
+protect us from whose fierce revenge mountains and hills, we are told,
+might fall on us in vain? No idea is more heart-sickening and tremendous
+than this. But, in my case, it was not a subject of reasoning or of
+faith; I could derive no comfort, either directly from the unbelief
+which, upon religious subjects, some men avow to their own minds; or
+secretly from the remoteness and incomprehensibility of the conception:
+it was an affair of sense; I felt the fangs of the tiger striking deep
+into my heart.
+
+But though this impression was at first exceedingly strong, and
+accompanied with its usual attendants of dejection and pusillanimity, my
+mind soon began, as it were mechanically, to turn upon the consideration
+of the distance between this sea-port and my county prison, and the
+various opportunities of escape that might offer themselves in the
+interval. My first duty was to avoid betraying myself, more than it
+might afterwards appear I was betrayed already. It was possible that,
+though apprehended, my apprehension might have been determined on upon
+some slight score, and that, by my dexterity, I might render my
+dismission as sudden as my arrest had been. It was even possible that I
+had been seized through a mistake, and that the present measure might
+have no connection with Mr. Falkland's affair. Upon every supposition,
+it was my business to gain information. In my passage from the ship to
+the town I did not utter a word. My conductors commented on my
+sulkiness; but remarked that it would avail me nothing--I should
+infallibly swing, as it was never known that any body got off who was
+tried for robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to conceive the
+lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words: I
+persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their
+conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail
+from Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two
+Irishmen, that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up
+upon suspicion of being the other. They had a description of his person,
+which, though, as I afterwards found, it disagreed from mine in several
+material articles, appeared to them to tally to the minutest tittle. The
+intelligence that the whole proceeding against me was founded in a
+mistake, took an oppressive load from my mind. I believed that I should
+immediately be able to establish my innocence, to the satisfaction of
+any magistrate in the kingdom; and though crossed in my plans, and
+thwarted in my design of quitting the island, even after I was already
+at sea, this was but a trifling inconvenience compared with what I had
+had but too much reason to fear.
+
+As soon as we came ashore, I was conducted to the house of a justice of
+peace, a man who had formerly been the captain of a collier, but who,
+having been successful in the world, had quitted this wandering life,
+and for some years had had the honour to represent his majesty's person.
+We were detained for some time in a sort of anti-room, waiting his
+reverence's leisure. The persons by whom I had been taken up were
+experienced in their trade, and insisted upon employing this interval in
+searching me, in presence of two of his worship's servants. They found
+upon me fifteen guineas and some silver. They required me to strip
+myself perfectly naked, that they might examine whether I had bank-notes
+concealed any where about my person. They took up the detached parcels
+of my miserable attire as I threw it from me, and felt them one by one,
+to discover whether the articles of which they were in search might by
+any device be sewn up in them. To all this I submitted without
+murmuring. It might probably come to the same thing at last; and summary
+justice was sufficiently coincident with my views, my principal object
+being to get as soon as possible out of the clutches of the respectable
+persons who now had me in custody.
+
+This operation was scarcely completed, before we were directed to be
+ushered into his worship's apartment. My accusers opened the charge, and
+told him they had been ordered to this town, upon an intimation that one
+of the persons who robbed the Edinburgh mail was to be found here; and
+that they had taken me on board a vessel which was by this time under
+sail for Ireland. "Well," says his worship, "that is your story; now let
+us hear what account the gentleman gives of himself. What is your
+name--ha, sirrah? and from what part of Tipperary are you pleased to
+come?" I had already taken my determination upon this article; and the
+moment I learned the particulars of the charge against me, resolved, for
+the present at least, to lay aside my Irish accent, and speak my native
+tongue. This I had done in the very few words I had spoken to my
+conductors in the anti-room: they started at the metamorphosis; but they
+had gone too far for it to be possible they should retract, in
+consistence with their honour. I now told the justice that I was no
+Irishman, nor had ever been in that country: I was a native of England.
+This occasioned a consulting of the deposition in which my person was
+supposed to be described, and which my conductors had brought with them
+for their direction. To be sure, that required that the offender should
+be an Irishman.
+
+Observing his worship hesitate, I thought this was the time to push the
+matter a little further. I referred to the paper, and showed that the
+description neither tallied as to height nor complexion. But then it did
+as to years and the colour of the hair; and it was not this gentleman's
+habit, as he informed me, to squabble about trifles, or to let a man's
+neck out of the halter for a pretended flaw of a few inches in his
+stature. "If a man were too short," he said, "there was no remedy like a
+little stretching." The miscalculation in my case happened to be the
+opposite way, but his reverence did not think proper to lose his jest.
+Upon the whole, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed.
+
+My conductors observed this, and began to tremble for the reward, which,
+two hours ago, they thought as good as in their own pocket. To retain me
+in custody they judged to be a safe speculation; if it turned out a
+mistake at last, they felt little apprehension of a suit for false
+imprisonment from a poor man, accoutred as I was, in rags. They
+therefore urged his worship to comply with their views. They told him
+that to be sure the evidence against me did not prove so strong as for
+their part they heartily wished it had, but that there were a number of
+suspicious circumstances respecting me. When I was brought up to them
+upon the deck of the vessel, I spoke as fine an Irish brogue as one
+shall hear in a summer's day; and now, all at once, there was not the
+least particle of it left. In searching me they had found upon me
+fifteen guineas, how should a poor beggar lad, such as I appeared, come
+honestly by fifteen guineas? Besides, when they had stripped me naked,
+though my dress was so shabby my skin had all the sleekness of a
+gentleman. In fine, for what purpose could a poor beggar, who had never
+been in Ireland in his life, want to transport himself to that country?
+It was as clear as the sun that I was no better than I should be. This
+reasoning, together with some significant winks and gestures between the
+justice and the plaintiffs, brought him over to their way of thinking.
+He said, I must go to Warwick, where it seems the other robber was at
+present in custody, and be confronted with him; and if then every thing
+appeared fair and satisfactory, I should be discharged.
+
+No intelligence could be more terrible than that which was contained in
+these words. That I, who had found the whole country in arms against me,
+who was exposed to a pursuit so peculiarly vigilant and penetrating,
+should now be dragged to the very centre of the kingdom, without power
+of accommodating myself to circumstances, and under the immediate
+custody of the officers of justice, seemed to my ears almost the same
+thing as if he had pronounced upon me a sentence of death! I strenuously
+urged the injustice of this proceeding. I observed to the magistrate,
+that it was impossible I should be the person at whom the description
+pointed. It required an Irishman; I was no Irishman. It described a
+person shorter than I; a circumstance of all others the least capable of
+being counterfeited. There was not the slightest reason for detaining me
+in custody. I had been already disappointed of my voyage, and lost the
+money I had paid, down, through the officiousness of these gentlemen in
+apprehending me. I assured his worship, that every delay, under my
+circumstances, was of the utmost importance to me. It was impossible to
+devise a greater injury to be inflicted on me, than the proposal that,
+instead of being permitted to proceed upon my voyage, I should be sent,
+under arrest, into the heart of the kingdom.
+
+My remonstrances were vain. The justice was by no means inclined to
+digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the
+habiliments of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have
+silenced me for my impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness
+with which he was wholly unable to contend. When I had finished, he told
+me it was all to no purpose, and that it might have been better for me,
+if I had shown myself less insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond
+and a suspicious person. The more earnest I showed myself to get off,
+the more reason there was he should keep me fast. Perhaps, after all, I
+should turn out to be the felon in question. But, if I was not that, he
+had no doubt I was worse; a poacher, or, for what he knew, a murderer.
+He had a kind of a notion that he had seen my face before about some
+such affair; out of all doubt I was an old offender. He had it in his
+choice to send me to hard labour as a vagrant, upon the strength of my
+appearance and the contradictions in my story, or to order me to
+Warwick; and, out of the spontaneous goodness of his disposition, he
+chose the milder side of the alternative. He could assure me I should
+not slip through his fingers. It was of more benefit to his majesty's
+government to hang one such fellow as he suspected me to be, than, out
+of mistaken tenderness, to concern one's self for the good of all the
+beggars in the nation.
+
+Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man so
+fully impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter
+insignificance, I claimed that, at least, the money taken from my person
+should be restored to me. This was granted. His worship perhaps
+suspected that he had stretched a point in what he had already done,
+and was therefore the less unwilling to relax in this incidental
+circumstance. My conductors did not oppose themselves to this
+indulgence, for a reason that will appear in the sequel. The justice
+however enlarged upon his clemency in this proceeding. He did not know
+whether he was not exceeding the spirit of his commission in complying
+with my demand. So much money in my possession could not be honestly
+come by. But it was his temper to soften, as far as could be done with
+propriety, the strict letter of the law.
+
+There were cogent reasons why the gentlemen who had originally taken me
+into custody, chose that I should continue in their custody when my
+examination was over. Every man is, in his different mode, susceptible
+to a sense of honour; and they did not choose to encounter the disgrace
+that would accrue to them, if justice had been done. Every man is in
+some degree influenced by the love of power; and they were willing I
+should owe any benefit I received, to their sovereign grace and
+benignity, and not to the mere reason of the case. It was not however an
+unsubstantial honour and barren power that formed the objects of their
+pursuit: no, their views were deeper than that. In a word, though they
+chose that I should retire from the seat of justice, as I had come
+before it, a prisoner, yet the tenor of my examination had obliged them,
+in spite of themselves, to suspect that I was innocent of the charge
+alleged against me. Apprehensive therefore that the hundred guineas
+which had been offered as a reward for taking the robber was completely
+out of the question in the present business, they were contented to
+strike at smaller game. Having conducted me to an inn, and given
+directions respecting a vehicle for the journey, they took me aside,
+while one of them addressed me in the following manner:--
+
+"You see, my lad, how the case stands: hey for Warwick is the word I and
+when we are got there, what may happen then I will not pretend for to
+say. Whether you are innocent or no is no business of mine; but you are
+not such a chicken as to suppose, if so be as you are innocent, that
+that will make your game altogether sure. You say your business calls
+you another way, and as how you are in haste: I scorns to cross any man
+in his concerns, if I can help it. If therefore you will give us them
+there fifteen shiners, why snug is the word. They are of no use to you;
+a beggar, you know, is always at home. For the matter of that, we could
+have had them in the way of business, as you saw, at the justice's. But
+I am a man of principle; I loves to do things above board, and scorns to
+extort a shilling from any man."
+
+He who is tinctured with principles of moral discrimination is apt upon
+occasion to be run away with by his feelings in that respect, and to
+forget the immediate interest of the moment. I confess, that the first
+sentiment excited in my mind by this overture was that of indignation. I
+was irresistibly impelled to give utterance to this feeling, and
+postpone for a moment the consideration of the future. I replied with
+the severity which so base a proceeding appeared to deserve. My
+bear-leaders were considerably surprised with my firmness, but seemed to
+think it beneath them to contest with me the principles I delivered. He
+who had made the overture contented himself with replying, "Well, well,
+my lad, do as you will; you are not the first man that has been hanged
+rather than part with a few guineas." His words did not pass unheeded by
+me. They were strikingly applicable to my situation, and I was
+determined not to suffer the occasion to escape me unimproved.
+
+The pride of these gentlemen however was too great to admit of further
+parley for the present. They left me abruptly; having first ordered an
+old man, the father of the landlady, to stay in the room with me while
+they were absent. The old man they ordered, for security, to lock the
+door, and put the key in his pocket; at the same time mentioning below
+stairs the station in which they had left me, that the people of the
+house might have an eye upon what went forward, and not suffer me to
+escape. What was the intention of this manoeuvre I am unable certainly
+to pronounce. Probably it was a sort of compromise between their pride
+and their avarice; being desirous, for some reason or other, to drop me
+as soon as convenient, and therefore determining to wait the result of
+my private meditations on the proposal they had made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+They were no sooner withdrawn than I cast my eye upon the old man, and
+found something extremely venerable and interesting in his appearance.
+His form was above the middle size. It indicated that his strength had
+been once considerable; nor was it at this time by any means
+annihilated. His hair was in considerable quantity, and was as white as
+the drifted snow. His complexion was healthful and ruddy, at the same
+time that his face was furrowed with wrinkles. In his eye there was
+remarkable vivacity, and his whole countenance was strongly expressive
+of good-nature. The boorishness of his rank in society was lost in the
+cultivation his mind had derived from habits of sensibility and
+benevolence.
+
+The view of his figure immediately introduced a train of ideas into my
+mind, respecting the advantage to be drawn from the presence of such a
+person. The attempt to take any step without his consent was hopeless;
+for, though I should succeed with regard to him, he could easily give
+the alarm to other persons, who would, no doubt, be within call. Add to
+which, I could scarcely have prevailed on myself to offer any offence to
+a person whose first appearance so strongly engaged my affection and
+esteem. In reality my thoughts were turned into a different channel. I
+was impressed with an ardent wish to be able to call this man my
+benefactor. Pursued by a train of ill fortune, I could no longer
+consider myself as a member of society. I was a solitary being, cut off
+from the expectation of sympathy, kindness, and the good-will of
+mankind. I was strongly impelled, by the situation in which the present
+moment placed me, to indulge in a luxury which my destiny seemed to have
+denied. I could not conceive the smallest comparison between the idea of
+deriving my liberty from the spontaneous kindness of a worthy and
+excellent mind, and that of being indebted for it to the selfishness and
+baseness of the worst members of society. It was thus that I allowed
+myself in the wantonness of refinement, even in the midst of
+destruction.
+
+Guided by these sentiments, I requested his attention to the
+circumstances by which I had been brought into my present situation. He
+immediately signified his assent, and said he would cheerfully listen to
+any thing I thought proper to communicate. I told him, the persons who
+had just left me in charge with him had come to this town for the
+purpose of apprehending some person who had been guilty of robbing the
+mail; that they had chosen to take me up under this warrant, and had
+conducted me before a justice of the peace; that they had soon detected
+their mistake, the person in question being an Irishman, and differing
+from me both in country and stature; but that, by collusion between them
+and the justice, they were permitted to retain me in custody, and
+pretended to undertake to conduct me to Warwick to confront me with my
+accomplice; that, in searching me at the justice's, they had found a sum
+of money in my possession which excited their cupidity, and that they
+had just been proposing to me to give me my liberty upon condition of my
+surrendering this sum into their hands. Under these circumstances, I
+requested him to consider, whether he would wish to render himself the
+instrument of their extortion. I put myself into his hands, and solemnly
+averred the truth of the facts I had just stated. If he would assist me
+in my escape, it could have no other effect than to disappoint the base
+passions of my conductors. I would upon no account expose him to any
+real inconvenience; but I was well assured that the same generosity that
+should prompt him to a good deed, would enable him effectually to
+vindicate it when done; and that those who detained me, when they had
+lost sight of their prey, would feel covered with confusion, and not
+dare to take another step in the affair.
+
+The old man listened to what I related with curiosity and interest. He
+said that he had always felt an abhorrence to the sort of people who had
+me in their hands; that he had an aversion to the task they had just
+imposed upon him, but that he could not refuse some little disagreeable
+offices to oblige his daughter and son-in-law. He had no doubt, from my
+countenance and manner, of the truth of what I had asserted to him. It
+was an extraordinary request I had made, and he did not know what had
+induced me to think him the sort of person to whom, with any prospect of
+success, it might be made. In reality however his habits of thinking
+were uncommon, and he felt more than half inclined to act as I desired.
+One thing at least he would ask of me in return, which was to be
+faithfully informed in some degree respecting the person he was desired
+to oblige. What was my name?
+
+The question came upon me unprepared. But, whatever might be the
+consequence, I could not bear to deceive the person by whom it was put,
+and in the circumstances under which it was put. The practice of
+perpetual falsehood is too painful a task. I replied, that my name was
+Williams.
+
+He paused. His eye was fixed upon me. I saw his complexion alter at the
+repetition of that word. He proceeded with visible anxiety.
+
+My Christian name?
+
+Caleb.
+
+Good God! it could not be ----? He conjured me by every thing that was
+sacred to answer him faithfully to one question more. I was not--no, it
+was impossible--the person who had formerly lived servant with Mr.
+Falkland, of ----?
+
+I told him that, whatever might be the meaning of his question, I would
+answer him truly. I was the individual he mentioned.
+
+As I uttered these words the old man rose from his seat. He was sorry
+that fortune had been so unpropitious to him, as for him ever to have
+set eyes upon me! I was a monster with whom the very earth groaned!
+
+I entreated that he would suffer me to explain this new
+misapprehension, as he had done in the former instance. I had no doubt
+that I should do it equally to his satisfaction.
+
+No! no! no! he would upon no consideration admit, that his ears should
+suffer such contamination. This case and the other were very different.
+There was no criminal upon the face of the earth, no murderer, half so
+detestable as the person who could prevail upon himself to utter the
+charges I had done, by way of recrimination, against so generous a
+master.--The old man was in a perfect agony with the recollection.
+
+At length he calmed himself enough to say, he should never cease to
+grieve that he had held a moment's parley with me. He did not know what
+was the conduct severe justice required of him; but, since he had come
+into the knowledge of who I was only by my own confession, it was
+irreconcilably repugnant to his feelings to make use of that knowledge
+to my injury. Here therefore all relation between us ceased; as indeed
+it would be an abuse of words to consider me in the light of a human
+creature. He would do me no mischief; but, on the other hand, he would
+not, for the world, be in any way assisting and abetting me.
+
+I was inexpressibly affected at the abhorrence this good and benevolent
+creature expressed against me. I could not be silent; I endeavoured once
+and again to prevail upon him to hear me. But his determination was
+unalterable. Our contest lasted for some time, and he at length
+terminated it by ringing the bell, and calling up the waiter. A very
+little while after, my conductors entered, and the other persons
+withdrew.
+
+It was a part of the singularity of my fate that it hurried me from one
+species of anxiety and distress to another, too rapidly to suffer any
+one of them to sink deeply into my mind. I am apt to believe, in the
+retrospect, that half the calamities I was destined to endure would
+infallibly have overwhelmed and destroyed me. But, as it was, I had no
+leisure to chew the cud upon misfortunes as they befel me, but was under
+the necessity of forgetting them, to guard against peril that the next
+moment seemed ready to crush me.
+
+The behaviour of this incomparable and amiable old man cut me to the
+heart. It was a dreadful prognostic for all my future life. But, as I
+have just observed, my conductors entered, and another subject called
+imperiously upon my attention. I could have been content, mortified as I
+was at this instant, to have been shut up in some impenetrable solitude,
+and to have wrapped myself in inconsolable misery. But the grief I
+endured had not such power over me as that I could be content to risk
+the being led to the gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred
+against oppression, steeled my heart against that species of inertness.
+In the scene that had just passed I had indulged, as I have said, in a
+wantonness and luxury of refinement. It was time that indulgence should
+be brought to a period. It was dangerous to trifle any more upon the
+brink of fate; and, penetrated as I was with sadness by the result of my
+last attempt, I was little disposed to unnecessary circumambulation.
+
+I was exactly in the temper in which the gentlemen who had me in their
+power would have desired to find me. Accordingly we entered immediately
+upon business; and, after some chaffering, they agreed to accept eleven
+guineas as the price of my freedom. To preserve however the chariness of
+their reputation, they insisted upon conducting me with them for a few
+miles on the outside of a stage-coach. They then pretended that the road
+they had to travel lay in a cross country direction; and, having
+quitted the vehicle, they suffered me, almost as soon as it was out of
+sight, to shake off this troublesome association, and follow my own
+inclinations. It may be worth remarking by the way, that these fellows
+outwitted themselves at their own trade. They had laid hold of me at
+first under the idea of a prize of a hundred guineas; they had since
+been glad to accept a composition of eleven: but if they had retained me
+a little longer in their possession, they would have found the
+possibility of acquiring the sum that had originally excited their
+pursuit, upon a different score.
+
+The mischances that had befallen me, in my late attempt to escape from
+my pursuers by sea, deterred me from the thought of repeating that
+experiment. I therefore once more returned to the suggestion of hiding
+myself, at least for the present, amongst the crowds of the metropolis.
+Meanwhile, I by no means thought proper to venture by the direct route,
+and the less so, as that was the course which would be steered by my
+late conductors; but took my road along the borders of Wales. The only
+incident worth relating in this place occurred in an attempt to cross
+the Severn in a particular point. The mode was by a ferry; but, by some
+strange inadvertence, I lost my way so completely as to be wholly unable
+that night to reach the ferry, and arrive at the town which I had
+destined for my repose.
+
+This may seem a petty disappointment, in the midst of the overwhelming
+considerations that might have been expected to engross every thought of
+my mind. Yet it was borne by me with singular impatience. I was that day
+uncommonly fatigued. Previously to the time that I mistook, or at least
+was aware of the mistake of the road, the sky had become black and
+lowring, and soon after the clouds burst down in sheets of rain. I was
+in the midst of a heath, without a tree or covering of any sort to
+shelter me. I was thoroughly drenched in a moment. I pushed on with a
+sort of sullen determination. By and by the rain gave place to a storm
+of hail. The hail-stones were large and frequent. I was ill defended by
+the miserable covering I wore, and they seemed to cut me in a thousand
+directions. The hail-storm subsided, and was again succeeded by a heavy
+rain. By this time it was that I had perceived I was wholly out of my
+road. I could discover neither man nor beast, nor habitation of any
+kind. I walked on, measuring at every turn the path it would be proper
+to pursue, but in no instance finding a sufficient reason to reject one
+or prefer another. My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I
+muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of
+loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
+After wandering without any certain direction for two hours, I was
+overtaken by the night. The scene was nearly pathless, and it was vain
+to think of proceeding any farther.
+
+Here I was, without comfort, without shelter, and without food. There
+was not a particle of my covering that was not as wet as if it had been
+fished from the bottom of the ocean. My teeth chattered. I trembled in
+every limb. My heart burned with universal fury. At one moment I
+stumbled and fell over some unseen obstacle; at another I was turned
+back by an impediment I could not overcome.
+
+There was no strict connection between these casual inconveniences and
+the persecution under which I laboured. But my distempered thoughts
+confounded them together. I cursed the whole system of human existence.
+I said, "Here I am, an outcast, destined to perish with hunger and cold.
+All men desert me. All men hate me. I am driven with mortal threats
+from the sources of comfort and existence. Accursed world! that hates
+without a cause, that overwhelms innocence with calamities which ought
+to be spared even to guilt! Accursed world! dead to every manly
+sympathy; with eyes of horn, and hearts of steel! Why do I consent to
+live any longer? Why do I seek to drag on an existence, which, if
+protracted, must be protracted amidst the lairs of these human tigers?"
+
+This paroxysm at length exhausted itself. Presently after, I discovered
+a solitary shed, which I was contented to resort to for shelter. In a
+corner of the shed I found some clean straw. I threw off my rags, placed
+them in a situation where they would best be dried, and buried myself
+amidst this friendly warmth. Here I forgot by degrees the anguish that
+had racked me. A wholesome shed and fresh straw may seem but scanty
+benefits; but they offered themselves when least expected, and my whole
+heart was lightened by the encounter. Through fatigue of mind and body,
+it happened in this instance, though in general my repose was remarkably
+short, that I slept till almost noon of the next day. When I rose, I
+found that I was at no great distance from the ferry, which I crossed,
+and entered the town where I intended to have rested the preceding
+night.
+
+It was market-day. As I passed near the cross, I observed two people
+look at me with great earnestness: after which one of them exclaimed, "I
+will be damned if I do not think that this is the very fellow those men
+were enquiring for who set off an hour ago by the coach for ----." I was
+extremely alarmed at this information; and, quickening my pace, turned
+sharp down a narrow lane. The moment I was out of sight I ran with all
+the speed I could exert, and did not think myself safe till I was
+several miles distant from the place where this information had reached
+my ears. I have always believed that the men to whom it related were the
+very persons who had apprehended me on board the ship in which I had
+embarked for Ireland; that, by some accident, they had met with the
+description of my person as published on the part of Mr. Falkland; and
+that, from putting together the circumstances, they had been led to
+believe that this was the very individual who had lately been in their
+custody. Indeed it was a piece of infatuation in me, for which I am now
+unable to account, that, after the various indications which had
+occurred in that affair, proving to them that I was a man in critical
+and peculiar circumstances, I should have persisted in wearing the same
+disguise without the smallest alteration. My escape in the present case
+was eminently fortunate. If I had not lost my way in consequence of the
+hail-storm on the preceding night, or if I had not so greatly overslept
+myself this very morning, I must almost infallibly have fallen into the
+hands of these infernal blood-hunters.
+
+The town they had chosen for their next stage, the name of which I had
+thus caught in the market-place, was the town to which, but for this
+intimation, I should have immediately proceeded. As it was, I determined
+to take a road as wide of it as possible. In the first place to which I
+came, in which it was practicable to do so, I bought a great coat, which
+I drew over my beggar's weeds, and a better hat. The hat I slouched over
+my face, and covered one of my eyes with a green-silk shade. The
+handkerchief, which I had hitherto worn about my head, I now tied about
+the lower part of my visage, so as to cover my mouth. By degrees I
+discarded every part of my former dress, and wore for my upper garment
+a kind of carman's frock, which, being of the better sort, made me look
+like the son of a reputable farmer of the lower class. Thus equipped, I
+proceeded on my journey, and, after a thousand alarms, precautions, and
+circuitous deviations from the direct path, arrived safely in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Here then was the termination of an immense series of labours, upon
+which no man could have looked back without astonishment, or forward
+without a sentiment bordering on despair. It was at a price which defies
+estimation that I had purchased this resting-place; whether we consider
+the efforts it had cost me to escape from the walls of my prison, or the
+dangers and anxieties to which I had been a prey, from that hour to the
+present.
+
+But why do I call the point at which I was now arrived at a
+resting-place? Alas, it was diametrically the reverse! It was my first
+and immediate business to review all the projects of disguise I had
+hitherto conceived, to derive every improvement I could invent from the
+practice to which I had been subjected, and to manufacture a veil of
+concealment more impenetrable than ever. This was an effort to which I
+could see no end. In ordinary cases the hue and cry after a supposed
+offender is a matter of temporary operation; but ordinary cases formed
+no standard for the colossal intelligence of Mr. Falkland. For the same
+reason, London, which appears an inexhaustible reservoir of concealment
+to the majority of mankind, brought no such consolatory sentiment to my
+mind. Whether life were worth accepting on such terms I cannot
+pronounce. I only know that I persisted in this exertion of my
+faculties, through a sort of parental love that men are accustomed to
+entertain for their intellectual offspring; the more thought I had
+expended in rearing it to its present perfection, the less did I find
+myself disposed to abandon it. Another motive, not less strenuously
+exciting me to perseverance, was the ever-growing repugnance I felt to
+injustice and arbitrary power.
+
+The first evening of my arrival in town I slept at an obscure inn in the
+borough of Southwark, choosing that side of the metropolis, on account
+of its lying entirely wide of the part of England from which I came. I
+entered the inn in the evening in my countryman's frock; and, having
+paid for my lodging before I went to bed, equipped myself next morning
+as differently as my wardrobe would allow, and left the house before
+day. The frock I made up into a small packet, and, having carried it to
+a distance as great as I thought necessary, I dropped it in the corner
+of an alley through which I passed. My next care was to furnish myself
+with another suit of apparel, totally different from any to which I had
+hitherto had recourse. The exterior which I was now induced to assume
+was that of a Jew. One of the gang of thieves upon ---- forest, had been
+of that race; and by the talent of mimicry, which I have already stated
+myself to possess, I could copy their pronunciation of the English
+language, sufficiently to answer such occasions as were likely to
+present themselves. One of the preliminaries I adopted, was to repair to
+a quarter of the town in which great numbers of this people reside, and
+study their complexion and countenance. Having made such provision as my
+prudence suggested to me, I retired for that night to an inn in the
+midway between Mile-end and Wapping. Here I accoutred myself in my new
+habiliments; and, having employed the same precautions as before,
+retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is
+unnecessary to describe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it
+to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it
+the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the
+tribe to which I assumed to belong; and that when my metamorphosis was
+finished, I could not, upon the strictest examination, conceive that any
+one could have traced out the person of Caleb Williams in this new
+disguise.
+
+Thus far advanced in the execution of my project. I deemed it advisable
+to procure a lodging, and change my late wandering life for a stationary
+one. In this lodging I constantly secluded myself from the rising to the
+setting of the sun; the periods I allowed for exercise and air were few,
+and those few by night. I was even cautious of so much as approaching
+the window of my apartment, though upon the attic story; a principle I
+laid down to myself was, not wantonly and unnecessarily to expose myself
+to risk, however slight that risk might appear.
+
+Here let me pause for a moment, to bring before the reader, in the way
+in which it was impressed upon my mind, the nature of my situation. I
+was born free: I was born healthy, vigorous, and active, complete in all
+the lineaments and members of a human body. I was not born indeed to the
+possession of hereditary wealth; but I had a better inheritance, an
+enterprising mind, an inquisitive spirit, a liberal ambition. In a word,
+I accepted my lot with willingness and content; I did not fear but I
+should make my cause good in the lists of existence. I was satisfied to
+aim at small things; I was pleased to play at first for a slender stake;
+I was more willing to grow than to descend in my individual
+significance.
+
+The free spirit and the firm heart with which I commenced, one
+circumstance was sufficient to blast. I was ignorant of the power which
+the institutions of society give to one man over others; I had fallen
+unwarily into the hands of a person who held it as his fondest wish to
+oppress and destroy me.
+
+I found myself subjected, undeservedly on my part, to all the
+disadvantages which mankind, if they reflected upon them, would hesitate
+to impose on acknowledged guilt. In every human countenance I feared to
+find the countenance of an enemy. I shrunk from the vigilance of every
+human eye. I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our
+nature. I was shut up, a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst of my
+species. I dared not look for the consolations of friendship; but,
+instead of seeking to identify myself with the joys and sorrows of
+others, and exchanging the delicious gifts of confidence and sympathy,
+was compelled to centre my thoughts and my vigilance in myself. My life
+was all a lie. I had a counterfeit character to support. I had
+counterfeit manners to assume. My gait, my gestures, my accents, were
+all of them to be studied. I was not free to indulge, no not one, honest
+sally of the soul. Attended with these disadvantages, I was to procure
+myself a subsistence, a subsistence to be acquired with infinite
+precautions, and to be consumed without the hope of enjoyment.
+
+This, even this, I was determined to endure; to put my shoulder to the
+burthen, and support it with unshrinking firmness. Let it not however be
+supposed that I endured it without repining and abhorrence. My time was
+divided between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers,
+the obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that
+from time to time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If
+at some moments I fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others,
+and those of frequent recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence. I
+looked forward without hope through the series of my existence, tears of
+anguish rushed from my eyes, my courage became extinct, and I cursed the
+conscious life that was reproduced with every returning day.
+
+"Why," upon such occasions I was accustomed to exclaim, "why am I
+overwhelmed with the load of existence? Why are all these engines at
+work to torment me? I am no murderer; yet, if I were, what worse could I
+be fated to suffer? How vile, squalid, and disgraceful is the state to
+which I am condemned! This is not my place in the roll of existence, the
+place for which either my temper or my understanding has prepared me! To
+what purpose serve the restless aspirations of my soul, but to make me,
+like a frighted bird, beat myself in vain against the enclosure of my
+cage? Nature, barbarous nature! to me thou hast proved indeed the worst
+of step-mothers; endowed me with wishes insatiate, and sunk me in
+never-ending degradation!"
+
+I might have thought myself more secure if I had been in possession of
+money upon which to subsist. The necessity of earning for myself the
+means of existence, evidently tended to thwart the plan of secrecy to
+which I was condemned. Whatever labour I adopted, or deemed myself
+qualified to discharge, it was first to be considered how I was to be
+provided with employment, and where I was to find an employer or
+purchaser for my commodities. In the mean time I had no alternative.
+The little money with which I had escaped from the blood-hunters was
+almost expended.
+
+After the minutest consideration I was able to bestow upon this
+question. I determined that literature should be the field of my first
+experiment. I had read of money being acquired in this way, and of
+prices given by the speculators in this sort of ware to its proper
+manufacturers. My qualifications I esteemed at a slender valuation. I
+was not without a conviction that experience and practice must pave the
+way to excellent production. But, though of these I was utterly
+destitute, my propensities had always led me in this direction; and my
+early thirst of knowledge had conducted me to a more intimate
+acquaintance with books, than could perhaps have been expected under my
+circumstances. If my literary pretensions were slight, the demand I
+intended to make upon them was not great. All I asked was a subsistence;
+and I was persuaded few persons could subsist upon slenderer means than
+myself. I also considered this as a temporary expedient, and hoped that
+accident or time might hereafter place me in a less precarious
+situation. The reasons that principally determined my choice were, that
+this employment called upon me for the least preparation, and could, as
+I thought, be exercised with least observation.
+
+There was a solitary woman, of middle age, who tenanted a chamber in
+this house, upon the same floor with my own. I had no sooner determined
+upon the destination of my industry than I cast my eye upon her as the
+possible instrument for disposing of my productions. Excluded as I was
+from all intercourse with my species in general, I found pleasure in the
+occasional exchange of a few words with this inoffensive and
+good-humoured creature, who was already of an age to preclude scandal.
+She lived upon a very small annuity, allowed her by a distant relation,
+a woman of quality, who, possessed of thousands herself, had no other
+anxiety with respect to this person than that she should not contaminate
+her alliance by the exertion of honest industry. This humble creature
+was of a uniformly cheerful and active disposition, unacquainted alike
+with the cares of wealth and the pressure of misfortune. Though her
+pretensions were small, and her information slender, she was by no means
+deficient in penetration. She remarked the faults and follies of mankind
+with no contemptible discernment; but her temper was of so mild and
+forgiving a cast, as would have induced most persons to believe that she
+perceived nothing of the matter. Her heart overflowed with the milk of
+kindness. She was sincere and ardent in her attachments, and never did
+she omit a service which she perceived herself able to render to a human
+being.
+
+Had it not been for these qualifications of temper, I should probably
+have found that my appearance, that of a deserted, solitary lad, of
+Jewish extraction, effectually precluded my demands upon her kindness.
+But I speedily perceived, from her manner of receiving and returning
+civilities of an indifferent sort, that her heart was too noble to have
+its effusions checked by any base and unworthy considerations.
+Encouraged by these preliminaries, I determined to select her as my
+agent. I found her willing and alert in the business I proposed to her.
+That I might anticipate occasions of suspicion, I frankly told her that,
+for reasons which I wished to be excused from relating, but which, if
+related, I was sure would not deprive me of her good opinion, I found it
+necessary, for the present, to keep myself private. With this statement
+she readily acquiesced, and told me that she had no desire for any
+further information than I found it expedient to give.
+
+My first productions were of the poetical kind. After having finished
+two or three, I directed this generous creature to take them to the
+office of a newspaper; but they were rejected with contempt by the
+Aristarchus of that place, who, having bestowed on them a superficial
+glance, told her that such matters were not in his way. I cannot help
+mentioning in this place, that the countenance of Mrs. Marney (this was
+the name of my ambassadress) was in all cases a perfect indication of
+her success, and rendered explanation by words wholly unnecessary. She
+interested herself so unreservedly in what she undertook, that she felt
+either miscarriage or good fortune much more exquisitely than I did. I
+had an unhesitating confidence in my own resources, and, occupied as I
+was in meditations more interesting and more painful, I regarded these
+matters as altogether trivial.
+
+I quietly took the pieces back, and laid them upon my table. Upon
+revisal, I altered and transcribed one of them, and, joining it with two
+others, despatched them together to the editor of a magazine. He desired
+they might be left with him till the day after to-morrow. When that day
+came he told my friend they should be inserted; but, Mrs. Marney asking
+respecting the price, he replied, it was their constant rule to give
+nothing for poetical compositions, the letter-box being always full of
+writings of that sort; but if the gentleman would try his hand in prose,
+a short essay or a tale, he would see what he could do for him.
+
+With the requisition of my literary dictator I immediately complied. I
+attempted a paper in the style of Addison's Spectators, which was
+accepted. In a short time I was upon an established footing in this
+quarter. I however distrusted my resources in the way of moral
+disquisition, and soon turned my thoughts to his other suggestion, a
+tale. His demands upon me were now frequent, and, to facilitate my
+labours, I bethought myself of the resource of translation. I had
+scarcely any convenience with respect to the procuring of books; but, as
+my memory was retentive, I frequently translated or modelled my
+narrative upon a reading of some years before. By a fatality, for which
+I did not exactly know how to account, my thoughts frequently led me to
+the histories of celebrated robbers; and I related, from time to time,
+incidents and anecdotes of Cartouche, Gusman d'Alfarache, and other
+memorable worthies, whose career was terminated upon the gallows or the
+scaffold.
+
+In the mean time a retrospect to my own situation rendered a
+perseverance even in this industry difficult to be maintained. I often
+threw down my pen in an ecstasy of despair. Sometimes for whole days
+together I was incapable of action, and sunk into a sort of partial
+stupor, too wretched to be described. Youth and health however enabled
+me, from time to time, to get the better of my dejection, and to rouse
+myself to something like a gaiety, which, if it had been permanent,
+might have made this interval of my story tolerable to my reflections.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+While I was thus endeavouring to occupy and provide for the intermediate
+period, till the violence of the pursuit after me might be abated, a
+new source of danger opened upon me of which I had no previous
+suspicion.
+
+Gines, the thief who had been expelled from Captain Raymond's gang, had
+fluctuated, during the last years of his life, between the two
+professions of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their
+administration. He had originally devoted himself to the first; and
+probably his initiation in the mysteries of thieving qualified him to be
+peculiarly expert in the profession of a thief-taker--a profession he
+had adopted, not from choice, but necessity. In this employment his
+reputation was great, though perhaps not equal to his merits; for it
+happens here as in other departments of human society, that, however the
+subalterns may furnish wisdom and skill, the principals exclusively
+possess the _éclat_. He was exercising this art in a very prosperous
+manner, when it happened, by some accident, that one or two of his
+achievements previous to his having shaken off the dregs of unlicensed
+depredation were in danger of becoming subjects of public attention.
+Having had repeated intimations of this, he thought it prudent to
+decamp; and it was during this period of his retreat that he entered
+into the ---- gang.
+
+Such was the history of this man antecedently to his being placed in the
+situation in which I had first encountered him. At the time of that
+encounter he was a veteran of Captain Raymond's gang; for thieves being
+a short-lived race, the character of veteran costs the less time in
+acquiring. Upon his expulsion from this community he returned once more
+to his lawful profession, and by his old comrades was received with
+congratulation as a lost sheep. In the vulgar classes of society no
+length of time is sufficient to expiate a crime; but among the
+honourable fraternity of thief-takers it is a rule never to bring one of
+their own brethren to a reckoning when it can with any decency be
+avoided. They are probably reluctant to fix an unnecessary stain upon
+the ermine of their profession. Another rule observed by those who have
+passed through the same gradation as Gines had done, and which was
+adopted by Gines himself, is always to reserve such as have been the
+accomplices of their depredations to the last, and on no account to
+assail them without great necessity or powerful temptation. For this
+reason, according to Gines's system of tactics, Captain Raymond and his
+confederates were, as he would have termed it, safe from his
+retaliation.
+
+But, though Gines was, in this sense of the term, a man of strict
+honour, my case unfortunately did not fall within the laws of honour he
+acknowledged. Misfortune had overtaken me, and I was on all sides
+without protection or shelter. The persecution to which I was exposed
+was founded upon the supposition of my having committed felony to an
+immense amount. But in this Gines had had no participation; he was
+careless whether the supposition were true or false, and hated me as
+much as if my innocence had been established beyond the reach of
+suspicion.
+
+The blood-hunters who had taken me into custody at ----, related, as
+usual among their fraternity, a part of their adventure, and told of the
+reason which inclined them to suppose, that the individual who had
+passed through their custody, was the very Caleb Williams for whose
+apprehension a reward had been offered of a hundred guineas. Gines,
+whose acuteness was eminent in the way of his profession, by comparing
+facts and dates, was induced to suspect in his own mind, that Caleb
+Williams was the person he had hustled and wounded upon ---- forest.
+Against that person he entertained the bitterest aversion. I had been
+the innocent occasion of his being expelled with disgrace from Captain
+Raymond's gang; and Gines, as I afterwards understood, was intimately
+persuaded that there was no comparison between the liberal and manly
+profession of a robber from which I had driven him, and the sordid and
+mechanical occupation of a blood-hunter, to which he was obliged to
+return. He no sooner received the information I have mentioned than he
+vowed revenge. He determined to leave all other objects, and consecrate
+every faculty of his mind to the unkennelling me from my hiding-place.
+The offered reward, which his vanity made him consider as assuredly his
+own, appeared as the complete indemnification of his labour and expense.
+Thus I had to encounter the sagacity he possessed in the way of his
+profession, whetted and stimulated by a sentiment of vengeance, in a
+mind that knew no restraint from conscience or humanity.
+
+When I drew to myself a picture of my situation soon after having fixed
+on my present abode, I foolishly thought, as the unhappy are accustomed
+to do, that my calamity would admit of no aggravation. The aggravation
+which, unknown to me, at this time occurred was the most fearful that
+any imagination could have devised. Nothing could have happened more
+critically hostile to my future peace, than my fatal encounter with
+Gines upon ---- forest. By this means, as it now appears, I had fastened
+upon myself a second enemy, of that singular and dreadful sort that is
+determined never to dismiss its animosity as long as life shall endure.
+While Falkland was the hungry lion whose roarings astonished and
+appalled me, Gines was a noxious insect, scarcely less formidable and
+tremendous, that hovered about my goings, and perpetually menaced me
+with the poison of his sting.
+
+The first step pursued by him in execution of his project, was to set
+out for the sea-port town where I had formerly been apprehended. From
+thence he traced me to the banks of the Severn, and from the banks of
+the Severn to London. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this is
+always practicable, provided the pursuer have motives strong enough to
+excite him to perseverance, unless the precautions of the fugitive be,
+in the highest degree, both judicious in the conception, and fortunate
+in the execution. Gines indeed, in the course of his pursuit, was often
+obliged to double his steps; and, like the harrier, whenever he was at a
+fault, return to the place where he had last perceived the scent of the
+animal whose death he had decreed. He spared neither pains nor time in
+the gratification of the passion, which choice had made his ruling one.
+
+Upon my arrival in town he for a moment lost all trace of me, London
+being a place in which, on account of the magnitude of its dimensions,
+it might well be supposed that an individual could remain hidden and
+unknown. But no difficulty could discourage this new adversary. He went
+from inn to inn (reasonably supposing that there was no private house to
+which I could immediately repair), till he found, by the description he
+gave, and the recollections he excited, that I had slept for one night
+in the borough of Southwark. But he could get no further information.
+The people of the inn had no knowledge what had become of me the next
+morning.
+
+This however did but render him more eager in the pursuit. The
+describing me was now more difficult, on account of the partial change
+of dress I had made the second day of my being in town. But Gines at
+length overcame the obstacle from that quarter.
+
+Having traced me to my second inn, he was here furnished with a more
+copious information. I had been a subject of speculation for the leisure
+hours of some of the persons belonging to this inn. An old woman, of a
+most curious and loquacious disposition, who lived opposite to it, and
+who that morning rose early to her washing, had espied me from her
+window, by the light of a large lamp which hung over the inn, as I
+issued from the gate. She had but a very imperfect view of me, but she
+thought there was something Jewish in my appearance. She was accustomed
+to hold a conference every morning with the landlady of the inn, some of
+the waiters and chambermaids occasionally assisting at it. In the course
+of the dialogue of this morning, she asked some questions about the Jew
+who had slept there the night before. No Jew had slept there. The
+curiosity of the landlady was excited in her turn. By the time of the
+morning it could be no other but me. It was very strange! They compared
+notes respecting my appearance and dress. No two things could be more
+dissimilar. The Jew Christian, upon any dearth of subjects of
+intelligence, repeatedly furnished matter for their discourse.
+
+The information thus afforded to Gines appeared exceedingly material.
+But the performance did not for some time keep pace with the promise. He
+could not enter every private house into which lodgers were ever
+admitted, in the same manner that he had treated the inns. He walked the
+streets, and examined with a curious and inquisitive eye the countenance
+of every Jew about my stature; but in vain. He repaired to Duke's Place
+and the synagogues. It was not here that in reality he could calculate
+upon finding me; but he resorted to those means in despair, and as a
+last hope. He was more than once upon the point of giving up the
+pursuit; but he was recalled to it by an insatiable and restless
+appetite for revenge.
+
+It was during this perturbed and fluctuating state of his mind, that he
+chanced to pay a visit to a brother of his, who was the head-workman of
+a printing-office. There was little intercourse between these two
+persons, their dispositions and habits of life being extremely
+dissimilar. The printer was industrious, sober, inclined to methodism,
+and of a propensity to accumulation. He was extremely dissatisfied with
+the character and pursuits of his brother, and had made some ineffectual
+attempts to reclaim him. But, though they by no means agreed in their
+habits of thinking, they sometimes saw each other. Gines loved to boast
+of as many of his achievements as he dared venture to mention; and his
+brother was one more hearer, in addition to the set of his usual
+associates. The printer was amused with the blunt sagacity of remark and
+novelty of incident that characterised Gines's conversation. He was
+secretly pleased, in spite of all his sober and church-going prejudices,
+that he was brother to a man of so much ingenuity and fortitude.
+
+After having listened for some time upon this occasion to the wonderful
+stories which Gines, in his rugged way, condescended to tell, the
+printer felt an ambition to entertain his brother in his turn. He began
+to retail some of my stories of Cartouche and Gusman d'Alfarache. The
+attention of Gines was excited. His first emotion was wonder; his second
+was envy and aversion. Where did the printer get these stories? This
+question was answered. "I will tell you what," said the printer, "we
+none of us know what to make of the writer of these articles. He writes
+poetry, and morality, and history: I am a printer, and corrector of the
+press, and may pretend without vanity to be a tolerably good judge of
+these matters: he writes them all to my mind extremely fine; and yet he
+is no more than a Jew." [To my honest printer this seemed as strange, as
+if they had been written by a Cherokee chieftain at the falls of the
+Mississippi.]
+
+"A Jew! How do you know? Did you ever see him?"
+
+"No; the matter is always brought to us by a woman. But my master hates
+mysteries; he likes to see his authors himself. So he plagues and
+plagues the old woman; but he can never get any thing out of her, except
+that one day she happened to drop that the young gentleman was a Jew."
+
+A Jew! a young gentleman! a person who did every thing by proxy, and
+made a secret of all his motions! Here was abundant matter for the
+speculations and suspicions of Gines. He was confirmed in them, without
+adverting to the process of his own mind, by the subject of my
+lucubrations,--men who died by the hand of the executioner. He said
+little more to his brother, except asking, as if casually, what sort of
+an old woman this was? of what age she might be? and whether she often
+brought him materials of this kind? and soon after took occasion to
+leave him. It was with vast pleasure that Gines had listened to this
+unhoped-for information. Having collected from his brother sufficient
+hints relative to the person and appearance of Mrs. Marney, and
+understanding that he expected to receive something from me the next
+day, Gines took his stand in the street early, that he might not risk
+miscarriage by negligence. He waited several hours, but not without
+success. Mrs. Marney came; he watched her into the house; and after
+about twenty minutes delay, saw her return. He dogged her from street
+to street; observed her finally enter the door of a private house; and
+congratulated himself upon having at length arrived at the consummation
+of his labours.
+
+The house she entered was not her own habitation. By a sort of
+miraculous accident she had observed Gines following her in the street.
+As she went home she saw a woman who had fallen down in a fainting fit.
+Moved by the compassion that was ever alive in her, she approached her,
+in order to render her assistance. Presently a crowd collected round
+them. Mrs. Marney, having done what she was able, once more proceeded
+homewards. Observing the crowd round her, the idea of pickpockets
+occurred to her mind; she put her hands to her sides, and at the same
+time looked round upon the populace. She had left the circle somewhat
+abruptly; and Gines, who had been obliged to come nearer, lest he should
+lose her in the confusion, was at that moment standing exactly opposite
+to her. His visage was of the most extraordinary kind; habit had written
+the characters of malignant cunning and dauntless effrontery in every
+line of his face; and Mrs. Marney, who was neither philosopher nor
+physiognomist, was nevertheless struck. This good woman, like most
+persons of her notable character, had a peculiar way of going home, not
+through the open streets, but by narrow lanes and alleys, with intricate
+insertions and sudden turnings. In one of these, by some accident, she
+once again caught a glance of her pursuer. This circumstance, together
+with the singularity of his appearance, awakened her conjectures. Could
+he be following her? It was the middle of the day, and she could have no
+fears for herself. But could this circumstance have any reference to me?
+She recollected the precautions and secrecy I practised, and had no
+doubt that I had reasons for what I did. She recollected that she had
+always been upon her guard respecting me; but had she been sufficiently
+so? She thought that, if she should be the means of any mischief to me,
+she should be miserable for ever. She determined therefore, by way of
+precaution in case of the worst, to call at a friend's house, and send
+me word of what had occurred. Having instructed her friend, she went out
+immediately upon a visit to a person in the exactly opposite direction,
+and desired her friend to proceed upon the errand to me, five minutes
+after she left the house. By this prudence she completely extricated me
+from the present danger.
+
+Meantime the intelligence that was brought me by no means ascertained
+the greatness of the peril. For any thing I could discover in it the
+circumstance might be perfectly innocent, and the fear solely proceed
+from the over-caution and kindness of this benevolent and excellent
+woman. Yet, such was the misery of my situation, I had no choice. For
+this menace or no menace, I was obliged to desert my habitation at a
+minute's warning, taking with me nothing but what I could carry in my
+hand; to see my generous benefactress no more; to quit my little
+arrangements and provision; and to seek once again, in some forlorn
+retreat, new projects, and, if of that I could have any rational hope, a
+new friend. I descended into the street with a heavy, not an irresolute
+heart. It was broad day. I said, persons are at this moment supposed to
+be roaming the street in search of me: I must not trust to the chance of
+their pursuing one direction, and I another. I traversed half a dozen
+streets, and then dropped into an obscure house of entertainment for
+persons of small expense. In this house I took some refreshment, passed
+several hours of active but melancholy thinking, and at last procured a
+bed. As soon however as it was dark I went out (for this was
+indispensable) to purchase the materials of a new disguise. Having
+adjusted it as well as I could during the night, I left this asylum,
+with the same precautions that I had employed in former instances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+I procured a new lodging. By some bias of the mind, it may be,
+gratifying itself with images of peril, I inclined to believe that Mrs.
+Marney's alarm had not been without foundation. I was however unable to
+conjecture through what means danger had approached me; and had
+therefore only the unsatisfactory remedy of redoubling my watch upon all
+my actions. Still I had the joint considerations pressing upon me of
+security and subsistence. I had some small remains of the produce of my
+former industry; but this was but small, for my employer was in arrear
+with me, and I did not choose in any method to apply to him for payment.
+The anxieties of my mind, in spite of all my struggles, preyed upon my
+health. I did not consider myself as in safety for an instant. My
+appearance was wasted to a shadow; and I started at every sound that was
+unexpected. Sometimes I was half tempted to resign myself into the hands
+of the law, and brave its worst; but resentment and indignation at those
+times speedily flowed back upon my mind, and re-animated my
+perseverance.
+
+I knew no better resource with respect to subsistence than that I had
+employed in the former instance, of seeking some third person to stand
+between me and the disposal of my industry. I might find an individual
+ready to undertake this office in my behalf; but where should I find the
+benevolent soul of Mrs. Marney? The person I fixed upon was a Mr.
+Spurrel, a man who took in work from the watchmakers, and had an
+apartment upon our second floor. I examined him two or three times with
+irresolute glances, as we passed upon the stairs, before I would venture
+to accost him. He observed this, and at length kindly invited me into
+his apartment.
+
+Being seated, he condoled with me upon my seeming bad health, and the
+solitary mode of my living, and wished to know whether he could be of
+any service to me. "From the first moment he saw me, he had conceived an
+affection for me." In my present disguise I appeared twisted and
+deformed, and in other respects by no means an object of attraction. But
+it seemed Mr. Spurrel had lost an only son about six months before, and
+I was "the very picture of him." If I had put off my counterfeited
+ugliness, I should probably have lost all hold upon his affections. "He
+was now an old man," as he observed, "just dropping into the grave, and
+his son had been his only consolation. The poor lad was always ailing,
+but he had been a nurse to him; and the more tending he required while
+he was alive, the more he missed him now he was dead. Now he had not a
+friend, nor any body that cared for him, in the whole world. If I
+pleased, I should be instead of that son to him, and he would treat me
+in all respects with the same attention and kindness."
+
+I expressed my sense of these benevolent offers, but told him that I
+should be sorry to be in any way burthensome to him. "My ideas at
+present led me to a private and solitary life, and my chief difficulty
+was to reconcile this with some mode of earning necessary subsistence.
+If he would condescend to lend me his assistance in smoothing this
+difficulty, it would be the greatest benefit he could confer on me." I
+added, that "my mind had always had a mechanical and industrious turn,
+and that I did not doubt of soon mastering any craft to which I
+seriously applied myself. I had not been brought up to any trade; but,
+if he would favour me with his instructions, I would work with him as
+long as he pleased for a bare subsistence. I knew that I was asking of
+him an extraordinary kindness; but I was urged on the one hand by the
+most extreme necessity, and encouraged on the other by the
+persuasiveness of his friendly professions."
+
+The old man dropped some tears over my apparent distress, and readily
+consented to every thing I proposed. Our agreement was soon made, and I
+entered upon my functions accordingly. My new friend was a man of a
+singular turn of mind. Love of money, and a charitable officiousness of
+demeanour, were his leading characteristics. He lived in the most
+penurious manner, and denied himself every indulgence. I entitled myself
+almost immediately, as he frankly acknowledged, to some remuneration for
+my labours, and accordingly he insisted upon my being paid. He did not
+however, as some persons would have done under the circumstance, pay me
+the whole amount of my earnings, but professed to subtract from them
+twenty per cent, as an equitable consideration for instruction, and
+commission-money in procuring me a channel for my industry. Yet he
+frequently shed tears over me, was uneasy in every moment of our
+indispensable separation, and exhibited perpetual tokens of attachment
+and fondness. I found him a man of excellent mechanical contrivance,
+and received considerable pleasure from his communications. My own
+sources of information were various; and he frequently expressed his
+wonder and delight in the contemplation of my powers, as well of
+amusement as exertion.
+
+Thus I appeared to have attained a situation not less eligible than in
+my connection with Mrs. Marney. I was however still more unhappy. My
+fits of despondence were deeper, and of more frequent recurrence. My
+health every day grew worse; and Mr. Spurrel was not without
+apprehensions that he should lose me, as he before lost his only son.
+
+I had not been long however in this new situation, before an incident
+occurred which filled me with greater alarm and apprehension than ever.
+I was walking out one evening, after a long visitation of languor, for
+an hour's exercise and air, when my ears were struck with two or three
+casual sounds from the mouth of a hawker who was bawling his wares. I
+stood still to inform myself more exactly, when, to my utter
+astonishment and confusion, I heard him deliver himself nearly in these
+words: "_Here you have the_ MOST WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY AND
+MIRACULOUS ADVENTURES OF CALEB WILLIAMS: _you are informed how he first
+robbed, and then brought false accusations against his master; as also
+of his attempting divers times to break out of prison, till at last he
+effected his escape in the most wonderful and uncredible manner; as also
+of his travelling the kingdom in various disguises, and the robberies he
+committed with a most desperate and daring gang of thieves; and of his
+coming up to London, where it is supposed he now lies concealed; with a
+true and faithful copy of the hue and cry printed and published by one
+of his Majesty's most principal secretaries of state, offering a reward
+of one hundred guineas for apprehending him. All for the price of one
+halfpenny_."
+
+Petrified as I was at these amazing and dreadful sounds, I had the
+temerity to go up to the man and purchase one of his papers. I was
+desperately resolved to know the exact state of the fact, and what I had
+to depend upon. I carried it with me a little way, till, no longer able
+to endure the tumult of my impatience, I contrived to make out the chief
+part of its contents, by the help of a lamp, at the upper end of a
+narrow passage. I found it contain a greater number of circumstances
+than could have been expected in this species of publication, I was
+equalled to the most notorious housebreaker in the art of penetrating
+through walls and doors, and to the most accomplished swindler in
+plausibleness, duplicity, and disguise. The hand-bill which Larkins had
+first brought to us upon the forest was printed at length. All my
+disguises, previously to the last alarm that had been given me by the
+providence of Mrs. Marney, were faithfully enumerated; and the public
+were warned to be upon their watch against a person of an uncouth and
+extraordinary appearance, and who lived in a recluse and solitary
+manner. I also learned from this paper that my former lodgings had been
+searched on the very evening of my escape, and that Mrs. Marney had been
+sent to Newgate, upon a charge of misprision of felony.--This last
+circumstance affected me deeply. In the midst of my own sufferings my
+sympathies flowed undiminished. It was a most cruel and intolerable
+idea, if I were not only myself to be an object of unrelenting
+persecution, but my very touch were to be infectious, and every one that
+succoured me was to be involved in the common ruin. My instant feeling
+was that of a willingness to undergo the utmost malice of my enemies,
+could I by that means have saved this excellent woman from alarm and
+peril.--I afterwards learned that Mrs. Marney was delivered from
+confinement, by the interposition of her noble relation.
+
+My sympathy for Mrs. Marney however was at this moment a transient one.
+A more imperious and irresistible consideration demanded to be heard.
+
+With what sensations did I ruminate upon this paper? Every word of it
+carried despair to my heart. The actual apprehension that I dreaded
+would perhaps have been less horrible. It would have put an end to that
+lingering terror to which I was a prey. Disguise was no longer of use. A
+numerous class of individuals, through every department, almost every
+house of the metropolis, would be induced to look with a suspicious eye
+upon every stranger, especially every solitary stranger, that fell under
+their observation. The prize of one hundred guineas was held out to
+excite their avarice and sharpen their penetration. It was no longer
+Bow-street, it was a million of men in arms against me. Neither had I the
+refuge, which few men have been so miserable as to want, of one single
+individual with whom to repose my alarms, and who might shelter me from
+the gaze of indiscriminate curiosity.
+
+What could exceed the horrors of this situation? My heart knocked
+against my ribs, my bosom heaved, I gasped and panted for breath. "There
+is no end then," said I, "to my persecutors! My unwearied and
+long-continued labours lead to no termination! Termination! No; the
+lapse of time, that cures all other things, makes my case more
+desperate! Why then," exclaimed I, a new train of thought suddenly
+rushing into my mind, "why should I sustain the contest any longer? I
+can at least elude my persecutors in death. I can bury myself and the
+traces of my existence together in friendly oblivion; and thus bequeath
+eternal doubt, and ever new alarm, to those who have no peace but in
+pursuing me!"
+
+In the midst of the horrors with which I was now impressed, this idea
+gave me pleasure; and I hastened to the Thames to put it in instant
+execution. Such was the paroxysm of my mind that my powers of vision
+became partially suspended. I was no longer conscious to the feebleness
+of disease, but rushed along with fervent impetuosity. I passed from
+street to street without observing what direction I pursued. After
+wandering I know not how long, I arrived at London Bridge. I hastened to
+the stairs, and saw the river covered with vessels.
+
+"No human being must see me," said I, "at the instant that I vanish for
+ever." This thought required some consideration. A portion of time had
+elapsed since my first desperate purpose. My understanding began to
+return. The sight of the vessels suggested to me the idea of once more
+attempting to leave my native country.
+
+I enquired, and speedily found that the cheapest passage I could procure
+was in a vessel moored near the Tower, and which was to sail in a few
+days for Middleburgh in Holland. I would have gone instantly on board,
+and have endeavoured to prevail with the captain to let me remain there
+till he sailed; but unfortunately I had not money enough in my pocket to
+defray my passage.
+
+It was worse than this. I had not money enough in the world. I however
+paid the captain half his demand, and promised to return with the rest.
+I knew not in what manner it was to be procured, but I believed that I
+should not fail in it. I had some idea of applying to Mr. Spurrel.
+Surely he would not refuse me? He appeared to love me with parental
+affection, and I thought I might trust myself for a moment in his hands.
+
+I approached my place of residence with a heavy and foreboding heart.
+Mr. Spurrel was not at home; and I was obliged to wait for his return.
+Worn out with fatigue, disappointment, and the ill state of my health, I
+sunk upon a chair. Speedily however I recollected myself. I had work of
+Mr. Spurrel's in my trunk, which had been delivered out to me that very
+morning, to five times the amount I wanted. I canvassed for a moment
+whether I should make use of this property as if it were my own; but I
+rejected the idea with disdain. I had never in the smallest degree
+merited the reproaches that were east upon me; and I determined I never
+would merit them. I sat gasping, anxious, full of the blackest
+forebodings. My terrors appeared, even to my own mind, greater and more
+importunate than the circumstances authorised.
+
+It was extraordinary that Mr. Spurrel should be abroad at this hour; I
+had never known it happen before. His bed-time was between nine and ten.
+Ten o'clock came, eleven o'clock, but not Mr. Spurrel. At midnight I
+heard his knock at the door. Every soul in the house was in bed. Mr.
+Spurrel, on account of his regular hours, was unprovided with a key to
+open for himself. A gleam, a sickly gleam, of the social spirit came
+over my heart. I flew nimbly down stairs, and opened the door.
+
+I could perceive, by the little taper in my hand, something
+extraordinary in his countenance. I had not time to speak, before I saw
+two other men follow him. At the first glance I was sufficiently
+assured what sort of persons they were. At the second, I perceived that
+one of them was no other than Gines himself. I had understood formerly
+that he had been of this profession, and I was not surprised to find him
+in it again. Though I had for three hours endeavoured, as it were, to
+prepare myself for the unavoidable necessity of falling once again into
+the hands of the officers of law, the sensation I felt at their entrance
+was indescribably agonising. I was besides not a little astonished at
+the time and manner of their entrance; and I felt anxious to know
+whether Mr. Spurrel could be base enough to have been their introducer.
+
+I was not long held in perplexity. He no sooner saw his followers within
+the door, than he exclaimed, with convulsive eagerness, "There, there,
+that is your man! thank God! thank God!" Gines looked eagerly in my
+face, with a countenance expressive alternately of hope and doubt, and
+answered, "By God, and I do not know whether it be or no! I am afraid we
+are in the wrong box!" Then recollecting himself, "We will go into the
+house, and examine further however." We all went up stairs into Mr.
+Spurrel's room; I set down the candle upon the table. I had hitherto
+been silent; but I determined not to desert myself, and was a little
+encouraged to exertion by the scepticism of Gines. With a calm and
+deliberate manner therefore, in my feigned voice, one of the
+characteristics of which was lisping, I asked, "Pray, gentlemen, what
+may be your pleasure with me?"--"Why," said Gines, "our errand is with
+one Caleb Williams, and a precious rascal he is! I ought to know the
+chap well enough; but they say he has as many faces as there are days in
+the year. So you please to pull off your face; or, if you cannot do
+that, at least you can pull off your clothes, and let us see what your
+hump is made of."
+
+I remonstrated, but in vain. I stood detected in part of my artifice;
+and Gines, though still uncertain, was every moment more and more
+confirmed in his suspicions. Mr. Spurrel perfectly gloated, with eyes
+that seemed ready to devour every thing that passed. As my imposture
+gradually appeared more palpable, he repeated his exclamation, "Thank
+God! thank God!" At last, tired with this scene of mummery, and
+disgusted beyond measure with the base and hypocritical figure I seemed
+to exhibit, I exclaimed, "Well, I am Caleb Williams; conduct me wherever
+you please! And now, Mr. Spurrel!"--He gave a violent start. The
+instant I declared myself his transport had been at the highest, and
+was, to any power he was able to exert, absolutely uncontrollable. But
+the unexpectedness of my address, and the tone in which I spoke,
+electrified him.--"Is it possible," continued I, "that you should
+have been the wretch to betray me? What have I done to deserve this
+treatment? Is this the kindness you professed? the affection that was
+perpetually in your mouth? to be the death of me!"
+
+"My poor boy! my dear creature!" cried Spurrel, whimpering, and in a
+tone of the humblest expostulation, "indeed I could not help it! I would
+have helped it, if I could! I hope they will not hurt my darling! I am
+sure I shall die if they do!"
+
+"Miserable driveller!" interrupted I, with a stern voice, "do you betray
+me into the remorseless fangs of the law, and then talk of my not being
+hurt? I know my sentence, and am prepared to meet it! You have fixed the
+halter upon my neck, and at the same price would have done so to your
+only son! Go, count your accursed guineas! My life would have been
+safer in the hands of one I had never seen than in yours, whose mouth
+and whose eyes for ever ran over with crocodile affection!"
+
+I have always believed that my sickness, and, as he apprehended,
+approaching death, contributed its part to the treachery of Mr. Spurrel.
+He predicted to his own mind the time when I should no longer be able to
+work. He recollected with agony the expense that attended his son's
+illness and death. He determined to afford me no assistance of a similar
+kind. He feared however the reproach of deserting me. He feared the
+tenderness of his nature. He felt, that I was growing upon his
+affections, and that in a short time he could not have deserted me. He
+was driven by a sort of implicit impulse, for the sake of avoiding one
+ungenerous action, to take refuge in another, the basest and most
+diabolical. This motive, conjoining with the prospect of the proffered
+reward, was an incitement too powerful for him to resist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Having given vent to my resentment, I left Mr. Spurrel motionless, and
+unable to utter a word. Gines and his companion attended me. It is
+unnecessary to repeat all the insolence of this man. He alternately
+triumphed in the completion of his revenge, and regretted the loss of
+the reward to the shrivelled old curmudgeon we had just quitted, whom
+however he swore he would cheat of it by one means or another. He
+claimed to himself the ingenuity of having devised the halfpenny legend,
+the thought of which was all his own, and was an expedient that was
+impossible to fail. There was neither law nor justice, he said, to be
+had, if Hunks who had done nothing were permitted to pocket the cash,
+and his merit were left undistinguished and pennyless.
+
+I paid but little attention to his story. It struck upon my sense, and I
+was able to recollect it at my nearest leisure, though I thought not of
+it at the time. For the present I was busily employed, reflecting on my
+new situation, and the conduct to be observed in it. The thought of
+suicide had twice, in moments of uncommon despair, suggested itself to
+my mind; but it was far from my habitual meditations. At present, and in
+all cases where death was immediately threatened me from the injustice
+of others, I felt myself disposed to contend to the last.
+
+My prospects were indeed sufficiently gloomy and discouraging. How much
+labour had I exerted, first to extricate myself from prison, and next to
+evade the diligence of my pursuers; and the result of all, to be brought
+back to the point from which I began! I had gained fame indeed, the
+miserable fame to have my story bawled forth by hawkers and
+ballad-mongers, to have my praises as an active and enterprising villain
+celebrated among footmen and chambermaids; but I was neither an
+Erostratus nor an Alexander, to die contented with that species of
+eulogium. With respect to all that was solid, what chance could I find
+in new exertions of a similar nature? Never was a human creature pursued
+by enemies more inventive or envenomed. I could have small hope that
+they would ever cease their persecution, or that my future attempts
+would be crowned with a more desirable issue.
+
+They were considerations like these that dictated my resolution. My mind
+had been gradually weaning from Mr. Falkland, till its feeling rose to
+something like abhorrence. I had long cherished a reverence for him,
+which not even animosity and subornation on his part could utterly
+destroy. But I now ascribed a character so inhumanly sanguinary to his
+mind; I saw something so fiend-like in the thus hunting me round the
+world, and determining to be satisfied with nothing less than my blood,
+while at the same time he knew my innocence, my indisposition to
+mischief, nay, I might add, my virtues; that henceforth I trampled
+reverence and the recollection of former esteem under my feet. I lost
+all regard to his intellectual greatness, and all pity for the agonies
+of his soul. I also would abjure forbearance. I would show myself bitter
+and inflexible as he had done. Was it wise in him to drive me into
+extremity and madness? Had he no fears for his own secret and atrocious
+offences?
+
+I had been obliged to spend the remainder of the night upon which I had
+been apprehended, in prison. During the interval I had thrown off every
+vestige of disguise, and appeared the next morning in my own person. I
+was of course easily identified; and, this being the whole with which
+the magistrates before whom I now stood thought themselves concerned,
+they were proceeding to make out an order for my being conducted back to
+my own county. I suspended the despatch of this measure by observing
+that I had something to disclose. This is an overture to which men
+appointed for the administration of criminal justice never fail to
+attend.
+
+I went before the magistrates, to whose office Gines and his comrade
+conducted me, fully determined to publish those astonishing secrets of
+which I had hitherto been the faithful depository; and, once for all, to
+turn the tables upon my accuser. It was time that the real criminal
+should be the sufferer, and not that innocence should for ever labour
+under the oppression of guilt.
+
+I said that "I had always protested my innocence, and must now repeat
+the protest."
+
+"In that case," retorted the senior magistrate abruptly, "what can you
+have to disclose? If you are innocent, that is no business of ours! We
+act officially."
+
+"I always declared," continued I, "that I was the perpetrator of no
+guilt, but that the guilt wholly belonged to my accuser. He privately
+conveyed these effects among my property, and then charged me with the
+robbery. I now declare more than that, that this man is a murderer, that
+I detected his criminality, and that, for that reason, he is determined
+to deprive me of life. I presume, gentlemen, that you do consider it as
+your business to take this declaration. I am persuaded you will be by no
+means disposed, actively or passively, to contribute to the atrocious
+injustice under which I suffer, to the imprisonment and condemnation of
+an innocent man, in order that a murderer may go free. I suppressed this
+story as long as I could. I was extremely averse to be the author of the
+unhappiness or the death of a human being. But all patience and
+submission have their limits."
+
+"Give me leave, sir," rejoined the magistrate, with an air of affected
+moderation, "to ask you two questions. Were you any way aiding,
+abetting, or contributing to this murder?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And pray, sir, who is this Mr. Falkland? and what may have been the
+nature of your connection with him?"
+
+"Mr. Falkland is a gentleman of six thousand per annum. I lived with him
+as his secretary."
+
+"In other words, you were his servant?"
+
+"As you please."
+
+"Very well, sir; that is quite enough for me. First, I have to tell you,
+as a magistrate, that I can have nothing to do with your declaration. If
+you had been concerned in the murder you talk of, that would alter the
+case. But it is out of all reasonable rule for a magistrate to take an
+information from a felon, except against his accomplices. Next, I think
+it right to observe to you, in my own proper person, that you appear to
+me to be the most impudent rascal I ever saw. Why, are you such an ass
+as to suppose, that the sort of story you have been telling, can be of
+any service to you, either here or at the assizes, or any where else? A
+fine time of it indeed it would be, if, when gentlemen of six thousand a
+year take up their servants for robbing them, those servants could trump
+up such accusations as these, and could get any magistrate or court of
+justice to listen to them! Whether or no the felony with which you stand
+charged would have brought you to the gallows, I will not pretend to
+say: but I am sure this story will. There would be a speedy end to all
+order and good government, if fellows that trample upon ranks and
+distinctions in this atrocious sort were upon any consideration suffered
+to get off."
+
+"And do you refuse, sir, to attend to the particulars of the charge I
+allege?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do.--But, if I did not, pray what witnesses have you of the
+murder?"
+
+This question staggered me.
+
+"None. But I believe I can make out a circumstantial proof, of a nature
+to force attention from the most indifferent hearer."
+
+"So I thought.--Officers, take him from the bar!"
+
+Such was the success of this ultimate resort on my part, upon which I
+had built with such undoubting confidence. Till now, I had conceived
+that the unfavourable situation in which I was placed was prolonged by
+my own forbearance; and I had determined to endure all that human nature
+could support, rather than have recourse to this extreme recrimination.
+That idea secretly consoled me under all my calamities: it was a
+voluntary sacrifice, and was cheerfully made. I thought myself allied to
+the army of martyrs and confessors; I applauded my fortitude and
+self-denial; and I pleased myself with the idea, that I had the power,
+though I hoped never to employ it, by an unrelenting display of my
+resources, to put an end at once to my sufferings and persecutions.
+
+And this at last was the justice of mankind! A man, under certain
+circumstances, shall not be heard in the detection of a crime, because
+he has not been a participator of it! The story of a flagitious murder
+shall be listened to with indifference, while an innocent man is hunted,
+like a wild beast, to the furthest corners of the earth! Six thousand a
+year shall protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an
+impeachment shall be superseded, because the author of it is a servant!
+
+I was conducted back to the very prison from which a few months before I
+had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls,
+compelled to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my
+own torture, and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had
+acquired some knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter
+experience, by how many links society had a hold upon me, and how
+closely the snares of despotism beset me. I no longer beheld the world,
+as my youthful fancy had once induced me to do, as a scene in which to
+hide or to appear, and to exhibit the freaks of a wanton vivacity. I saw
+my whole species as ready, in one mode or other, to be made the
+instruments of the tyrant. Hope died away in the bottom of my heart.
+Shut up for the first night in my dungeon, I was seized at intervals
+with temporary frenzy. From time to time, I rent the universal silence
+with the roarings of unsupportable despair. But this was a transient
+distraction. I soon returned to the sober recollection of myself and my
+miseries.
+
+My prospects were more gloomy, and my situation apparently more
+irremediable, than ever. I was exposed again, if that were of any
+account, to the insolence and tyranny that are uniformly exercised
+within those walls. Why should I repeat the loathsome tale of all that
+was endured by me, and is endured by every man who is unhappy enough to
+fall under the government of these consecrated ministers of national
+jurisprudence? The sufferings I had already experienced, my anxieties,
+my flight, the perpetual expectation of being discovered, worse than the
+discovery itself, would perhaps have been enough to satisfy the most
+insensible individual, in the court of his own conscience, if I had even
+been the felon I was pretended to be. But the law has neither eyes, nor
+ears, nor bowels of humanity; and it turns into marble the hearts of all
+those that are nursed in its principles.
+
+I however once more recovered my spirit of determination. I resolved
+that, while I had life, I would never be deserted by this spirit.
+Oppressed, annihilated I might be; but, if I died, I would die
+resisting. What use, what advantage, what pleasurable sentiment, could
+arise from a tame surrender? There is no man that is ignorant, that to
+humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts
+there is no room for amendment and reformation.
+
+My fortitude may to some persons appear above the standard of human
+nature. But if I draw back the veil from my heart they will readily
+confess their mistake. My heart bled at every pore. My resolution was
+not the calm sentiment of philosophy and reason. It was a gloomy and
+desperate purpose: the creature, not of hope, but of a mind austerely
+held to its design, that felt, as it were, satisfied with the naked
+effort, and prepared to give success or miscarriage to the winds. It was
+to this miserable condition, which might awaken sympathy in the most
+hardened bosom, that Mr. Falkland had reduced me.
+
+In the mean time, strange as it may seem, here, in prison, subject to
+innumerable hardships, and in the assured expectation of a sentence of
+death, I recovered my health. I ascribe this to the state of my mind,
+which was now changed, from perpetual anxiety, terror, and alarm, the
+too frequent inmates of a prison, but which I upon this occasion did not
+seem to bring along with me, to a desperate firmness.
+
+I anticipated the event of my trial. I determined once more to escape
+from my prison; nor did I doubt of my ability to effect at least this
+first step towards my future preservation. The assizes however were
+near, and there were certain considerations, unnecessary to be detailed,
+that persuaded me there might be benefit in waiting till my trial should
+actually be terminated, before I made my attempt.
+
+It stood upon the list as one of the latest to be brought forward. I was
+therefore extremely surprised to find it called out of its order, early
+on the morning of the second day. But, if this were unexpected, how
+much greater was my astonishment, when my prosecutor was called, to
+find neither Mr. Falkland, nor Mr. Forester, nor a single individual of
+any description, appear against me! The recognizances into which my
+prosecutors had entered were declared to be forfeited; and I was
+dismissed without further impediment from the bar.
+
+The effect which this incredible reverse produced upon my mind it is
+impossible to express. I, who had come to that bar with the sentence of
+death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to
+transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had
+broken through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my
+prison; that I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless,
+spectre-haunted nights; that I had racked my invention for expedients of
+evasion and concealment; that my mind had been roused to an energy of
+which I could scarcely have believed it capable; that my existence had
+been enthralled to an ever-living torment, such as I could scarcely have
+supposed it in man to endure? Great God! what is man? Is he thus blind
+to the future, thus totally unsuspecting of what is to occur in the next
+moment of his existence? I have somewhere read, that heaven in mercy
+hides from us the future incidents of our life. My own experience does
+not well accord with this assertion. In this instance at least I should
+have been saved from insupportable labour and undescribable anguish,
+could I have foreseen the catastrophe of this most interesting
+transaction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+It was not long before I took my everlasting leave of this detested and
+miserable scene. My heart was for the present too full of astonishment
+and exultation in my unexpected deliverance, to admit of anxiety about
+the future. I withdrew from the town; I rambled with a slow and
+thoughtful pace, now bursting with exclamation, and now buried in
+profound and undefinable reverie. Accident led me towards the very heath
+which had first sheltered me, when, upon a former occasion, I broke out
+of my prison. I wandered among its cavities and its valleys. It was a
+forlorn and desolate solitude. I continued here I know not how long.
+Night at length overtook me unperceived, and I prepared to return for
+the present to the town I had quitted.
+
+It was now perfectly dark, when two men, whom I had not previously
+observed, sprung upon me from behind. They seized me by the arms, and
+threw me upon the ground. I had no time for resistance or recollection.
+I could however perceive that one of them was the diabolical Gines. They
+blindfolded, gagged me, and hurried me I knew not whither. As we passed
+along in silence, I endeavoured to conjecture what could be the meaning
+of this extraordinary violence. I was strongly impressed with the idea,
+that, after the event of this morning, the most severe and painful part
+of my history was past; and, strange as it may seem, I could not
+persuade myself to regard with alarm this unexpected attack. It might
+however be some new project, suggested by the brutal temper and
+unrelenting animosity of Gines.
+
+I presently found that we were returned into the town I had just
+quitted. They led me into a house, and, as soon as they had taken
+possession of a room freed me from the restraints they had before
+imposed Here Gines informed me with a malicious grin that no harm was
+intended me, and therefore I should show most sense in keeping myself
+quiet. I perceived that we were in an inn; I overheard company in a room
+at no great distance from us, and therefore was now as thoroughly aware
+as he could be, that there was at present little reason to stand in fear
+of any species of violence, and that it would be time enough to resist,
+when they attempted to conduct me from the inn in the same manner that
+they had brought me into it. I was not without some curiosity to see the
+conclusion that was to follow upon so extraordinary a commencement.
+
+The preliminaries I have described were scarcely completed, before Mr.
+Falkland entered the room. I remember Collins, when he first
+communicated to me the particulars of our patron's history, observed
+that he was totally unlike the man he had once been. I had no means of
+ascertaining the truth of that observation. But it was strikingly
+applicable to the spectacle which now presented itself to my eyes,
+though, when I last beheld this unhappy man, he had been a victim to the
+same passions, a prey to the same undying remorse, as now. Misery was at
+that time inscribed in legible characters upon his countenance. But now
+he appeared like nothing that had ever been visible in human shape. His
+visage was haggard, emaciated, and fleshless. His complexion was a dun
+and tarnished red, the colour uniform through every region of the face,
+and suggested the idea of its being burnt and parched by the eternal
+fire that burned within him. His eyes were red, quick, wandering, full
+of suspicion and rage. His hair was neglected, ragged, and floating.
+His whole figure was thin, to a degree that suggested the idea rather of
+a skeleton than a person actually alive. Life seemed hardly to be the
+capable inhabitant of so woe-begone and ghost-like a figure. The taper
+of wholesome life was expired; but passion, and fierceness, and frenzy,
+were able for the present to supply its place.
+
+I was to the utmost degree astonished and shocked at the sight of
+him.--He sternly commanded my conductors to leave the room.
+
+"Well, sir, I have this day successfully exerted myself to save your
+life from the gallows. A fortnight ago you did what you were able to
+bring my life to that ignominious close.
+
+"Were you so stupid and undistinguishing as not to know that the
+preservation of your life was the uniform object of my exertions? Did
+not I maintain you in prison? Did not I endeavour to prevent your being
+sent thither? Could you mistake the bigoted and obstinate conduct of
+Forester, in offering a hundred guineas for your apprehension, for mine?
+
+"I had my eye upon you in all your wanderings. You have taken no
+material step through their whole course with which I have not been
+acquainted. I meditated to do you good. I have spilt no blood but that
+of Tyrrel: that was in the moment of passion; and it has been the
+subject of my uninterrupted and hourly remorse. I have connived at no
+man's fate but that of the Hawkinses: they could no otherwise have been
+saved, than by my acknowledging myself a murderer. The rest of my life
+has been spent in acts of benevolence.
+
+"I meditated to do you good. For that reason I was willing to prove you.
+You pretended to act towards me with consideration and forbearance. If
+you had persisted in that to the end, I would yet have found a way to
+reward you. I left you to your own discretion. You might show the
+impotent malignity of your own heart; but, in the circumstances in which
+you were then placed, I knew you could not hurt me. Your forbearance has
+proved, as I all along suspected, empty and treacherous. You have
+attempted to blast my reputation. You have sought to disclose the select
+and eternal secret of my soul. Because you have done that, I will never
+forgive you. I will remember it to my latest breath. The memory shall
+survive me, when my existence is no more. Do you think you are out of
+the reach of my power, because a court of justice has acquitted you?"
+
+While Mr. Falkland was speaking a sudden distemper came over his
+countenance, his whole frame was shaken by an instantaneous convulsion,
+and he staggered to a chair. In about three minutes he recovered.
+
+"Yes," said he, "I am still alive. I shall live for days, and months,
+and years; the power that made me, of whatever kind it be, can only
+determine how long. I live the guardian of my reputation. That, and to
+endure a misery such as man never endured, are the only ends to which I
+live. But, when I am no more, my fame shall still survive. My character
+shall be revered as spotless and unimpeachable by all posterity, as long
+as the name of Falkland shall be repeated in the most distant regions of
+the many-peopled globe."
+
+Having said this, he returned to the discourse which more immediately
+related to my future condition and happiness.
+
+"There is one condition," said he, "upon which you may obtain some
+mitigation of your future calamity. It is for that purpose that I have
+sent for you. Listen to my proposal with deliberation and sobriety.
+Remember, that the insanity is not less to trifle with the resolved
+determination of my soul, than it would be to pull a mountain upon your
+head that hung trembling upon the edge of the mighty Apennine!
+
+"I insist then upon your signing a paper, declaring, in the most solemn
+manner, that I am innocent of murder, and that the charge you alleged at
+the office in Bow-street is false, malicious, and groundless. Perhaps
+you may scruple out of a regard to truth. Is truth then entitled to
+adoration for its own sake, and not for the sake of the happiness it is
+calculated to produce? Will a reasonable man sacrifice to barren truth,
+when benevolence, humanity, and every consideration that is dear to the
+human heart, require that it should be superseded? It is probable that I
+may never make use of this paper, but I require it, as the only
+practicable reparation to the honour you have assailed. This is what I
+had to propose. I expect your answer."
+
+"Sir," answered I, "I have heard you to an end, and I stand in need of
+no deliberation to enable me to answer you in the negative. You took me
+up a raw and inexperienced boy, capable of being moulded to any form you
+pleased. But you have communicated to me volumes of experience in a very
+short period. I am no longer irresolute and pliable. What is the power
+you retain over my fate I am unable to discover. You may destroy me; but
+you cannot make me tremble. I am not concerned to enquire, whether what
+I have suffered flowed from you by design or otherwise; whether you were
+the author of my miseries, or only connived at them. This I know, that I
+have suffered too exquisitely on your account, for me to feel the least
+remaining claim on your part to my making any voluntary sacrifice.
+
+"You say that benevolence and humanity require this sacrifice of me. No;
+it would only be a sacrifice to your mad and misguided love of fame,--to
+that passion which has been the source of all your miseries, of the most
+tragical calamities to others, and of every misfortune that has happened
+to me. I have no forbearance to exercise towards that passion. If you be
+not yet cured of this tremendous and sanguinary folly, at least I will
+do nothing to cherish it. I know not whether from my youth I was
+destined for a hero; but I may thank you for having taught me a lesson
+of insurmountable fortitude.
+
+"What is it that you require of me? that I should sign away my own
+reputation for the better maintaining of yours. Where is the equality of
+that? What is it that casts me at such an immense distance below you, as
+to make every thing that relates to me wholly unworthy of consideration?
+You have been educated in the prejudice of birth. I abhor that
+prejudice. You have made me desperate, and I utter what that desperation
+suggests.
+
+"You will tell me perhaps that I have no reputation to lose; that, while
+you are esteemed faultless and unblemished, I am universally reputed a
+thief, a suborner, and a calumniator. Be it so. I will never do any
+thing to countenance those imputations. The more I am destitute of the
+esteem of mankind, the more careful I will be to preserve my own. I will
+never from fear, or any other mistaken motive, do any thing of which I
+ought to be ashamed.
+
+"You are determined to be for ever my enemy. I have in no degree
+deserved this eternal abhorrence. I have always esteemed and pitied you.
+For a considerable time I rather chose to expose myself to every kind
+of misfortune, than disclose the secret that was so dear to you. I was
+not deterred by your menaces--(what could you make me suffer more than
+I actually suffered?)--but by the humanity of my own heart; in which,
+and not in means of violence, you ought to have reposed your confidence.
+What is the mysterious vengeance that you can yet execute against me?
+You menaced me before; you can menace no worse now. You are wearing out
+the springs of terror. Do with me as you please; you teach me to hear
+you with an unshrinking and desperate firmness. Recollect yourself! I
+did not proceed to the step with which you reproach me, till I was
+apparently urged to the very last extremity. I had suffered as much as
+human nature can suffer; I had lived in the midst of eternal alarm and
+unintermitted watchfulness; I had twice been driven to purposes of
+suicide. I am now sorry however, that the step of which you complain was
+ever adopted. But, urged to exasperation by an unintermitted rigour, I
+had no time to cool or to deliberate. Even at present I cherish no
+vengeance against you. All that is reasonable, all that can really
+contribute to your security, I will readily concede; but I will not be
+driven to an act repugnant to all reason, integrity, and justice."
+
+Mr. Falkland listened to me with astonishment and impatience. He had
+entertained no previous conception of the firmness I displayed. Several
+times he was convulsed with the fury that laboured in his breast. Once
+and again he betrayed an intention to interrupt; but he was restrained
+by the collectedness of my manner, and perhaps by a desire to be
+acquainted with the entire state of my mind. Finding that I had
+concluded, he paused for a moment; his passion seemed gradually to
+enlarge, till it was no longer capable of control.
+
+"It is well!" said he, gnashing his teeth, and stamping upon the ground.
+"You refuse the composition I offer! I have no power to persuade you to
+compliance! You defy me! At least I have a power respecting you, and
+that power I will exercise; a power that shall grind you into atoms. I
+condescend to no more expostulation. I know what I am, and what I can
+be. I know what you are, and what fate is reserved for you!"
+
+Saying this he quitted the room.
+
+Such were the particulars of this memorable scene. The impression it has
+left upon my understanding is indelible. The figure and appearance of
+Mr. Falkland, his death-like weakness and decay, his more than mortal
+energy and rage, the words that he spoke, the motives that animated him,
+produced one compounded effect upon my mind that nothing of the same
+nature could ever parallel. The idea of his misery thrilled through my
+frame. How weak in comparison of it is the imaginary hell, which the
+great enemy of mankind is represented as carrying every where about with
+him!
+
+From this consideration, my mind presently turned to the menaces he had
+vented against myself. They were all mysterious and undefined. He had
+talked of power, but had given no hint from which I could collect in
+what he imagined it to consist. He had talked of misery, but had not
+dropped a syllable respecting the nature of the misery to be inflicted.
+
+I sat still for some time, ruminating on these thoughts. Neither Mr.
+Falkland nor any other person appeared to disturb my meditations. I
+rose, went out of the room, and from the inn into the street. No one
+offered to molest me. It was strange! What was the nature of this
+power, from which I was to apprehend so much, yet which seemed to leave
+me at perfect liberty? I began to imagine that all I had heard from this
+dreadful adversary was mere madness and extravagance, and that he was at
+length deprived of the use of reason, which had long served him only as
+a medium of torment. Yet was it likely in that case that he should be
+able to employ Gines and his associate, who had just been his
+instruments of violence upon my person?
+
+I proceeded along the streets with considerable caution. I looked before
+me and behind me, as well as the darkness would allow me to do, that I
+might not again be hunted in sight by some men of stratagem and violence
+without my perceiving it. I went not, as before, beyond the limits of
+the town, but considered the streets, the houses, and the inhabitants,
+as affording some degree of security. I was still walking with my mind
+thus full of suspicion and forecast, when I discovered Thomas, that
+servant of Mr. Falkland whom I have already more than once had occasion
+to mention. He advanced towards me with an air so blunt and direct, as
+instantly to remove from me the idea of any thing insidious in his
+purpose; besides that I had always felt the character of Thomas, rustic
+and uncultivated as it was, to be entitled to a more than common portion
+of esteem.
+
+"Thomas," said I, as he advanced, "I hope you are willing to give me
+joy, that I am at length delivered from the dreadful danger which for
+many months haunted me so unmercifully."
+
+"No," rejoined Thomas, roughly; "I be not at all willing. I do not know
+what to make of myself in this affair. While you were in prison in that
+miserable fashion, I felt all at one almost as if I loved you: and now
+that that is over, and you are turned out loose in the world to do your
+worst, my blood rises at the very sight of you. To look at you, you are
+almost that very lad Williams for whom I could with pleasure, as it
+were, have laid down my life; and yet, behind that smiling face there
+lie robbery, and lying, and every thing that is ungrateful and
+murderous. Your last action was worse than all the rest. How could you
+find in your heart to revive that cruel story about Mr. Tyrrel, which
+every body had agreed, out of regard to the squire, never to mention
+again, and of which I know, and you know, he is as innocent as the child
+unborn? There are causes and reasons, or else I could have wished from
+the bottom of my soul never to have set eyes on you again."
+
+"And you still persist in your hard thoughts of me?"
+
+"Worse! I think worse of you than ever! Before, I thought you as bad as
+man could be. I wonder from my soul what you are to do next. But you
+make good the old saying, 'Needs must go, that the devil drives.'"
+
+"And so there is never to be an end of my misfortunes! What can Mr.
+Falkland contrive for me worse than the ill opinion and enmity of all
+mankind?"
+
+"Mr. Falkland contrive! He is the best friend you have in the world,
+though you are the basest traitor to him. Poor man! it makes one's heart
+ache to look at him; he is the very image of grief. And it is not clear
+to me that it is not all owing to you. At least you have given the
+finishing lift to the misfortune that was already destroying him. There
+have been the devil and all to pay between him and squire Forester. The
+squire is right raving mad with my master, for having outwitted him in
+the matter of the trial, and saved your life. He swears that you shall
+be taken up and tried all over again at the next assizes; but my master
+is resolute, and I believe will carry it his own way. He says indeed
+that the law will not allow squire Forester to have his will in this. To
+see him ordering every thing for your benefit, and taking all your
+maliciousness as mild and innocent as a lamb, and to think of your vile
+proceedings against him, is a sight one shall not see again, go all the
+world over. For God's sake, repent of your reprobate doings, and make
+what little reparation is in your power! Think of your poor soul, before
+you awake, as to be sure one of these days you will, in fire and
+brimstone everlasting!"
+
+Saying this, he held out his hand and took hold of mine. The action
+seemed strange; but I at first thought it the unpremeditated result of
+his solemn and well-intended adjuration. I felt however that he put
+something into my hand. The next moment he quitted his hold, and
+hastened from me with the swiftness of an arrow. What he had thus given
+me was a bank-note of twenty pounds. I had no doubt that he had been
+charged to deliver it to me from Mr. Falkland.
+
+What was I to infer? what light did it throw upon the intentions of my
+inexorable persecutor? his animosity against me was as great as ever;
+that I had just had confirmed to me from his own mouth. Yet his
+animosity appeared to be still tempered with the remains of humanity. He
+prescribed to it a line, wide enough to embrace the gratification of his
+views, and within the boundaries of that line it stopped. But this
+discovery carried no consolation to my mind. I knew not what portion of
+calamity I was fated to endure, before his jealousy of dishonour, and
+inordinate thirst of fame would deem themselves satisfied.
+
+Another question offered itself. Was I to receive the money which had
+just been put into my hands? the money of a man who had inflicted upon
+me injuries, less than those which he had entailed upon himself, but the
+greatest that one man can inflict upon another? who had blasted my
+youth, who had destroyed my peace, who had held me up to the abhorrence
+of mankind, and rendered me an outcast upon the face of the earth? who
+had forced the basest and most atrocious falsehoods, and urged them with
+a seriousness and perseverance which produced universal belief? who, an
+hour before, had vowed against me inexorable enmity, and sworn to entail
+upon me misery without end? Would not this conduct on my part betray a
+base and abject spirit, that crouched under tyranny, and kissed the
+hands that were imbrued in my blood?
+
+If these reasons appeared strong, neither was the other side without
+reasons in reply. I wanted the money: not for any purpose of vice or
+superfluity, but for those purposes without which life cannot subsist.
+Man ought to be able, wherever placed, to find for himself the means of
+existence; but I was to open a new scene of life, to remove to some
+distant spot, to be prepared against all the ill-will of mankind, and
+the unexplored projects of hostility of a most accomplished foe. The
+actual means of existence are the property of all. What should hinder me
+from taking that of which I was really in want, when, in taking it, I
+risked no vengeance, and perpetrated no violence? The property in
+question will be beneficial to me, and the voluntary surrender of it is
+accompanied with no injury to its late proprietor; what other condition
+can be necessary to render the use of it on my part a duty? He that
+lately possessed it has injured me; does that alter its value as a
+medium of exchange? He will boast, perhaps of the imaginary obligation
+he has conferred on me: surely to shrink from a thing in itself right
+from any such apprehension, can be the result only of pusillanimity and
+cowardice!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Influenced by these reasonings, I determined to retain what had thus
+been put into my hands. My next care was in regard to the scene I should
+choose, as the retreat of that life which I had just saved from the
+grasp of the executioner. The danger to which I was exposed of forcible
+interruption in my pursuits, was probably, in some respects, less now
+than it had been previously to this crisis. Besides, that I was
+considerably influenced in this deliberation by the strong loathing I
+conceived for the situations in which I had lately been engaged. I knew
+not in what mode Mr. Falkland intended to exercise his vengeance against
+me; but I was seized with so unconquerable an aversion to disguise, and
+the idea of spending my life in personating a fictitious character, that
+I could not, for the present at least, reconcile my mind to any thing of
+that nature. The same kind of disgust I had conceived for the
+metropolis, where I had spent so many hours of artifice, sadness, and
+terror. I therefore decided in favour of the project which had formerly
+proved amusing to my imagination, of withdrawing to some distant, rural
+scene, a scene of calmness and obscurity, where for a few years at
+least, perhaps during the life of Mr. Falkland, I might be hidden from
+the world, recover the wounds my mind had received in this fatal
+connection, methodise and improve the experience which had been
+accumulated, cultivate the faculties I in any degree possessed, and
+employ the intervals of these occupations in simple industry, and the
+intercourse of guileless, uneducated, kind-intentioned minds. The
+menaces of my persecutor seemed to forebode the inevitable interruption
+of this system. But I deemed it wise to put these menaces out of my
+consideration I compared them to death, which must infallibly overtake
+us we know not when; but the possibility of whose arrival next year,
+next week, to-morrow, must be left out of the calculation of him who
+would enter upon any important or well-concerted undertaking.
+
+Such were the ideas that determined my choice. Thus did my youthful mind
+delineate the system of distant years, even when the threats of instant
+calamity still sounded in my ears. I was inured to the apprehension of
+mischief, till at last the hoarse roarings of the beginning tempest had
+lost their power of annihilating my peace. I however thought it
+necessary, while I was most palpably within the sphere of the enemy, to
+exert every practicable degree of vigilance. I was careful not to incur
+the hazards of darkness and solitude. When I left the town it was with
+the stage-coach, an obvious source of protection against glaring and
+enormous violence. Meanwhile I found myself no more exposed to
+molestation in my progress, than the man in the world who should have
+had the least reason for apprehensions of this nature. As the distance
+increased, I relaxed something in my precaution, though still awake to a
+sense of danger, and constantly pursued with the image of my foe. I
+fixed upon an obscure market-town in Wales as the chosen seat of my
+operations. This place recommended itself to my observation as I was
+wandering in quest of an abode. It was clean, cheerful, and of great
+simplicity of appearance. It was at a distance from any public and
+frequented road, and had nothing which could deserve the name of trade.
+The face of nature around it was agreeably diversified, being partly
+wild and romantic, and partly rich and abundant in production.
+
+Here I solicited employment in two professions; the first, that of a
+watchmaker, in which though the instructions I had received were few,
+they were eked out and assisted by a mind fruitful in mechanical
+invention; the other, that of an instructor in mathematics and its
+practical application, geography, astronomy, land-surveying, and
+navigation. Neither of these was a very copious source of emolument in
+the obscure retreat I had chosen for myself; but, if my receipts were
+slender, my disbursements were still fewer. In this little town I became
+acquainted with the vicar, the apothecary, the lawyer, and the rest of
+the persons who, time out of mind, had been regarded as the top gentry
+of the place. Each of these centred in himself a variety of occupations.
+There was little in the appearance of the vicar that reminded you of his
+profession, except on the recurring Sunday. At other times he
+condescended, with his evangelical hand to guide the plough, or to drive
+the cows from the field to the farm-yard for the milking. The apothecary
+occasionally officiated as a barber, and the lawyer was the village
+schoolmaster.
+
+By all these persons I was received with kindness and hospitality. Among
+people thus remote from the bustle of human life there is an open spirit
+of confidence, by means of which a stranger easily finds access to their
+benevolence and good-will. My manners had never been greatly debauched
+from the simplicity of rural life by the scenes through which I had
+passed; and the hardships I had endured had given additional mildness to
+my character. In the theatre upon which I was now placed I had no rival.
+My mechanical occupation had hitherto been a non-resident; and the
+schoolmaster, who did not aspire to the sublime heights of science I
+professed to communicate, was willing to admit me as a partner in the
+task of civilising the unpolished manners of the inhabitants. For the
+parson, civilisation was no part of his trade; his business was with the
+things of a better life, not with the carnal concerns of this material
+scene; in truth, his thoughts were principally occupied with his oatmeal
+and his cows.
+
+These however were not the only companions which this remote retirement
+afforded me. There was a family of a very different description, of
+which I gradually became the chosen intimate. The father was a shrewd,
+sensible, rational man, but who had turned his principal attention to
+subjects of agriculture. His wife was a truly admirable and
+extraordinary woman. She was the daughter of a Neapolitan nobleman, who,
+after having visited, and made a considerable figure, in every country
+in Europe, had at length received the blow of fate in this village. He
+had been banished his country upon suspicion of religious and political
+heresy, and his estates confiscated. With this only child, like Prospero
+in the Tempest, he had withdrawn himself to one of the most obscure and
+uncultivated regions of the world. Very soon however after his arrival
+in Wales he had been seized with a malignant fever, which carried him
+off in three days. He died possessed of no other property than a few
+jewels, and a bill of credit, to no considerable amount, upon an English
+banker.
+
+Here then was the infant Laura, left in a foreign country, and without
+a single friend. The father of her present husband was led by motives of
+pure humanity to seek to mitigate the misfortunes of the dying Italian.
+Though a plain uninstructed man, with no extraordinary refinement of
+intellect, there was something in his countenance that determined the
+stranger in his present forlorn and melancholy situation, to make him
+his executor, and the guardian of his daughter. The Neapolitan
+understood enough of English to explain his wishes to this friendly
+attendant of his death-bed. As his circumstances were narrow, the
+servants of the stranger, two Italians, a male and a female, were sent
+back to their own country soon after the death of their master.
+
+Laura was at this time eight years of age. At these tender years she had
+been susceptible of little direct instruction; and, as she grew up, even
+the memory of her father became, from year to year, more vague and
+indistinct in her mind. But there was something she derived from her
+father, whether along with the life he bestowed, or as the consequence
+of his instruction and manners, which no time could efface. Every added
+year of her life contributed to develop the fund of her accomplishments.
+She read, she observed, she reflected. Without instructors, she taught
+herself to draw, to sing, and to understand the more polite European
+languages. As she had no society in this remote situation but that of
+peasants, she had no idea of honour or superiority to be derived from
+her acquisitions; but pursued them from a secret taste, and as the
+sources of personal enjoyment.
+
+A mutual attachment gradually arose between her and the only son of her
+guardian. His father led him, from early youth, to the labours and the
+sports of the field, and there was little congeniality between his
+pursuits and those of Laura. But this was a defect that she was slow to
+discover. She had never been accustomed to society in her chosen
+amusements, and habit at that time even made her conceive, that they
+were indebted to solitude for an additional relish. The youthful rustic
+had great integrity, great kindness of heart, and was a lad of excellent
+sense. He was florid, well-proportioned, and the goodness of his
+disposition made his manners amiable. Accomplishments greater than these
+she had never seen in human form, since the death of her father. In
+fact, she is scarcely to be considered as a sufferer in this instance;
+since, in her forlorn and destitute condition, it is little probable,
+when we consider the habits and notions that now prevail, that her
+accomplishments, unassisted by fortune, would have procured her an equal
+alliance in marriage.
+
+When she became a mother her heart opened to a new affection. The idea
+now presented itself, which had never occurred before, that in her
+children at least she might find the partners and companions of her
+favourite employments. She was, at the time of my arrival, mother of
+four, the eldest of which was a son. To all of them she had been a most
+assiduous instructor. It was well for her perhaps that she obtained this
+sphere for the exercise of her mind. It came just at the period when the
+charm which human life derives from novelty is beginning to wear off. It
+gave her new activity and animation. It is perhaps impossible that the
+refinements of which human nature is capable should not, after a time,
+subside into sluggishness, if they be not aided by the influence of
+society and affection.
+
+The son of the Welch farmer by this admirable woman was about seventeen
+years of age at the time of my settlement in their neighbourhood. His
+eldest sister was one year younger than himself. The whole family
+composed a group, with which a lover of tranquillity and virtue would
+have delighted to associate in any situation. It is easy therefore to
+conceive how much I rejoiced in their friendship, in this distant
+retirement, and suffering, as I felt myself, from the maltreatment and
+desertion of my species. The amiable Laura had a wonderful quickness of
+eye, and rapidity of apprehension; but this feature in her countenance
+was subdued by a sweetness of disposition, such as I never in any other
+instance saw expressed in the looks of a human being. She soon
+distinguished me by her kindness and friendship; for, living as she had
+done, though familiar with the written productions of a cultivated
+intellect, she had never seen the thing itself realised in a living
+being, except in the person of her father. She delighted to converse
+with me upon subjects of literature and taste, and she eagerly invited
+my assistance in the education of her children. The son, though young,
+had been so happily improved and instructed by his mother, that I found
+in him nearly all the most essential qualities we require in a friend.
+Engagement and inclination equally led me to pass a considerable part of
+every day in this agreeable society. Laura treated me as if I had been
+one of the family; and I sometimes flattered myself that I might one day
+become such in reality. What an enviable resting-place for me, who had
+known nothing but calamity, and had scarcely dared to look for sympathy
+and kindness in the countenance of a human being!
+
+The sentiments of friendship which early disclosed themselves between me
+and the member of this amiable family daily became stronger. At every
+interview, the confidence reposed in me by the mother increased. While
+our familiarity gained in duration, it equally gained in that subtlety
+of communication by which it seemed to shoot forth its roots in every
+direction. There are a thousand little evanescent touches in the
+development of a growing friendship, that are neither thought of, nor
+would be understood, between common acquaintances. I honoured and
+esteemed the respectable Laura like a mother; for, though the difference
+of our ages was by no means sufficient to authorise the sentiment, it
+was irresistibly suggested to me by the fact of her always being
+presented to my observation under the maternal character. Her son was a
+lad of great understanding, generosity, and feeling, and of no
+contemptible acquirements; while his tender years, and the uncommon
+excellence of his mother, subtracted something from the independence of
+his judgment, and impressed him with a sort of religious deference for
+her will. In the eldest daughter I beheld the image of Laura; for that I
+felt attached to her for the present; and I sometimes conceived it
+probable that hereafter I might learn to love her for her own
+sake.--Alas, it was thus that I amused myself with the visions of distant
+years, while I stood in reality on the brink of the precipice!
+
+It will perhaps be thought strange that I never once communicated the
+particulars of my story to this amiable matron, or to my young friend,
+for such I may also venture to call him, her son. But in truth I
+abhorred the memory of this story; I placed all my hopes of happiness in
+the prospect of its being consigned to oblivion. I fondly flattered
+myself that such would be the event: in the midst of my unlooked-for
+happiness, I scarcely recollected, or, recollecting, was disposed to
+yield but a small degree of credit to, the menaces of Mr. Falkland.
+
+One day, that I was sitting alone with the accomplished Laura, she
+repeated his all-dreadful name. I started with astonishment, amazed
+that a woman like this, who knew nobody, who lived as it were alone in a
+corner of the universe, who had never in a single instance entered into
+any fashionable circle, this admirable and fascinating hermit, should,
+by some unaccountable accident, have become acquainted with this fatal
+and tremendous name. Astonishment however was not my only sensation. I
+became pale with terror; I rose from my seat; I attempted to sit down
+again; I reeled out of the room, and hastened to bury myself in
+solitude. The unexpectedness of the incident took from me all
+precaution, and overwhelmed my faculties. The penetrating Laura observed
+my behaviour; but nothing further occurred to excite her attention to it
+at that time; and, concluding from my manner that enquiry would be
+painful to me, she humanely suppressed her curiosity.
+
+I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of
+Laura; that he had been acquainted with the story of Count Malvesi, and
+with a number of other transactions redounding in the highest degree to
+the credit of the gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in
+which these transactions were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland
+in the highest terms of panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every
+little relic of her father with a sort of religious veneration; and, by
+this accident, the name of Mr. Falkland was connected in her mind with
+the sentiments of unbounded esteem.
+
+The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me,
+than it would have been to most other persons with my degree of
+intellectual cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and
+bleeding at almost every vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as
+rest and tranquillity. It seemed as if my faculties were, at least for
+the time, exhausted by the late preternatural intensity of their
+exertions, and that they stood indispensably in need of a period of
+comparative suspension.
+
+This was however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been
+active, and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and
+the exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new
+energies. I soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous
+pursuit. In this state of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner
+of the house of one of my neighbours, with a general dictionary of four
+of the northern languages. This incident gave a direction to my
+thoughts. In my youth I had not been inattentive to languages. I
+determined to attempt, at least for my own use, an etymological analysis
+of the English language. I easily perceived, that this pursuit had one
+advantage to a person in my situation, and that a small number of books,
+consulted with this view, would afford employment for a considerable
+time. I procured other dictionaries. In my incidental reading, I noted
+the manner in which words were used, and applied these remarks to the
+illustration of my general enquiry. I was unintermitted in my assiduity,
+and my collections promised to accumulate. Thus I was provided with
+sources both of industry and recreation, the more completely to divert
+my thoughts from the recollection of my past misfortunes.
+
+In this state, so grateful to my feelings, week after week glided away
+without interruption and alarm. The situation in which I was now placed
+had some resemblance to that in which I had spent my earlier years, with
+the advantage of a more attractive society, and a riper judgment. I
+began to look back upon the intervening period as upon a distempered and
+tormenting dream; or rather perhaps my feelings were like those of a
+man recovered from an interval of raging delirium, from ideas of horror,
+confusion, flight, persecution, agony, and despair! When I recollected
+what I had undergone, it was not without satisfaction, as the
+recollection of a thing that was past; every day augmented my hope that
+it was never to return. Surely the dark and terrific menaces of Mr.
+Falkland were rather the perturbed suggestions of his angry mind, than
+the final result of a deliberate and digested system! How happy should I
+feel, beyond the ordinary lot of man, if, after the terrors I had
+undergone, I should now find myself unexpectedly restored to the
+immunities of a human being!
+
+While I was thus soothing my mind with fond imaginations, it happened
+that a few bricklayers and their labourers came over from a distance of
+five or six miles, to work upon some additions to one of the better sort
+of houses in the town, which had changed its tenant. No incident could
+be more trivial than this, had it not been for a strange coincidence of
+time between this circumstance, and a change which introduced itself
+into my situation. This first manifested itself in a sort of shyness
+with which I was treated, first by one person, and then another, of my
+new-formed acquaintance. They were backward to enter into conversation
+with me, and answered my enquiries with an awkward and embarrassed air.
+When they met me in the street or the field, their countenances
+contracted a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun me. My scholars quitted
+me one after another; and I had no longer any employment in my
+mechanical profession. It is impossible to describe the sensations,
+which the gradual but uninterrupted progress of this revolution produced
+in my mind. It seemed as if I had some contagious disease, from which
+every man shrunk with alarm, and left me to perish unassisted and alone.
+I asked one man and another to explain to me the meaning of these
+appearances; but every one avoided the task, and answered in an evasive
+and ambiguous manner. I sometimes supposed that it was all a delusion of
+the imagination; till the repetition of the sensation brought the
+reality too painfully home to my apprehension. There are few things that
+give a greater shock to the mind, than a phenomenon in the conduct of
+our fellow men, of great importance to our concerns, and for which we
+are unable to assign any plausible reason. At times I was half inclined
+to believe that the change was not in other men, but that some
+alienation of my own understanding generated the horrid vision. I
+endeavoured to awaken from my dream, and return to my former state of
+enjoyment and happiness; but in vain. To the same consideration it may
+be ascribed, that, unacquainted with the source of the evil, observing
+its perpetual increase, and finding it, so far as I could perceive,
+entirely arbitrary in its nature, I was unable to ascertain its limits,
+or the degree in which it would finally overwhelm me.
+
+In the midst however of the wonderful and seemingly inexplicable nature
+of this scene, there was one idea that instantly obtruded itself, and
+that I could never after banish from my mind. It is Falkland! In vain I
+struggled against the seeming improbability of the supposition. In vain
+I said, "Mr. Falkland, wise as he is, and pregnant in resources, acts by
+human, not by supernatural means. He may overtake me by surprise, and in
+a manner of which I had no previous expectation; but he cannot produce a
+great and notorious effect without some visible agency, however
+difficult it may be to trace that agency to its absolute author. He
+cannot, like those invisible personages who are supposed from time to
+time to interfere in human affairs, ride in the whirlwind, shroud
+himself in clouds and impenetrable darkness, and scatter destruction
+upon the earth from his secret habitation." Thus it was that I bribed my
+imagination, and endeavoured to persuade myself that my present
+unhappiness originated in a different source from my former. All evils
+appeared trivial to me, in comparison with the recollection and
+perpetuation of my parent misfortune. I felt like a man distracted, by
+the incoherence of my ideas to my present situation, excluding from it
+the machinations of Mr. Falkland, on the one hand; and on the other, by
+the horror I conceived at the bare possibility of again encountering his
+animosity, after a suspension of many weeks, a suspension as I had hoped
+for ever. An interval like this was an age to a person in the calamitous
+situation I had so long experienced. But, in spite of my efforts, I
+could not banish from my mind the dreadful idea. My original conceptions
+of the genius and perseverance of Mr. Falkland had been such, that I
+could with difficulty think any thing impossible to him. I knew not how
+to set up my own opinions of material causes and the powers of the human
+mind, as the limits of existence. Mr. Falkland had always been to my
+imagination an object of wonder, and that which excites our wonder we
+scarcely suppose ourselves competent to analyse.
+
+It may well be conceived, that one of the first persons to whom I
+thought of applying for an explanation of this dreadful mystery was the
+accomplished Laura. My disappointment here cut me to the heart. I was
+not prepared for it. I recollected the ingenuousness of her nature, the
+frankness of her manners, the partiality with which she had honoured me.
+If I were mortified with the coldness, the ruggedness, and the cruel
+mistake of principles with which the village inhabitants repelled my
+enquiries, the mortification I suffered, only drove me more impetuously
+to seek the cure of my griefs from this object of my admiration. "In
+Laura," said I, "I am secure from these vulgar prejudices. I confide in
+her justice. I am sure she will not cast me off unheard, nor without
+strictly examining a question on all sides, in which every thing that is
+valuable to a person she once esteemed, may be involved."
+
+Thus encouraging myself, I turned my steps to the place of her
+residence. As I passed along I called up all my recollection, I summoned
+my faculties. "I may be made miserable," said I, "but it shall not be
+for want of any exertion of mine, that promises to lead to happiness. I
+will be clear, collected, simple in narrative, ingenuous in
+communication. I will leave nothing unsaid that the case may require. I
+will not volunteer any thing that relates to my former transactions with
+Mr. Falkland; but, if I find that my present calamity is connected with
+those transactions, I will not fear but that by an honest explanation I
+shall remove it."
+
+I knocked at the door. A servant appeared, and told me that her mistress
+hoped I would excuse her; she must really beg to dispense with my visit.
+
+I was thunderstruck. I was rooted to the spot. I had been carefully
+preparing my mind for every thing that I supposed likely to happen, but
+this event had not entered into my calculations. I roused myself in a
+partial degree, and walked away without uttering a word.
+
+I had not gone far before I perceived one of the workmen following me,
+who put into my hands a billet. The contents were these:--
+
+"MR. WILLIAMS,
+
+"Let me see you no more. I have a right at least to expect your
+compliance with this requisition; and, upon that condition, I pardon the
+enormous impropriety and guilt with which you have conducted yourself to
+me and my family.
+
+"LAURA DENISON."
+
+The sensations with which I read these few lines are indescribable. I
+found in them a dreadful confirmation of the calamity that on all sides
+invaded me. But what I felt most was the unmoved coldness with which
+they appeared to be written. This coldness from Laura, my comforter, my
+friend, my mother! To dismiss, to cast me off for ever, without one
+thought of compunction!
+
+I determined however, in spite of her requisition, and in spite of her
+coldness, to have an explanation with her. I did not despair of
+conquering the antipathy she harboured. I did not fear that I should
+rouse her from the vulgar and unworthy conception, of condemning a man,
+in points the most material to his happiness, without stating the
+accusations that are urged against him, and without hearing him in
+reply.
+
+Though I had no doubt, by means of resolution, of gaining access to her
+in her house, yet I preferred taking her unprepared, and not warmed
+against me by any previous contention. Accordingly, the next morning, at
+the time she usually devoted to half an hour's air and exercise, I
+hastened to her garden, leaped the paling, and concealed myself in an
+arbour. Presently I saw, from my retreat, the younger part of the family
+strolling through the garden, and from thence into the fields; but it
+was not my business to be seen by them. I looked after them however with
+earnestness, unobserved; and I could not help asking myself, with a
+deep and heartfelt sigh, whether it were possible that I saw them now
+for the last time?
+
+They had not advanced far into the fields, before their mother made her
+appearance. I observed in her her usual serenity and sweetness of
+countenance. I could feel my heart knocking against my ribs. My whole
+frame was in a tumult. I stole out of the arbour; and, as I advanced
+nearer, my pace became quickened.
+
+"For God's sake, madam," exclaimed I, "give me a hearing! Do not avoid
+me!"
+
+She stood still. "No, sir," she replied, "I shall not avoid you. I
+wished you to dispense with this meeting; but since I cannot obtain
+that--I am conscious of no wrong; and therefore, though the meeting
+gives me pain, it inspires me with no fear."
+
+"Oh, madam," answered I, "my friend! the object of all my reverence!
+whom I once ventured to call my mother! can you wish not to hear me? Can
+you have no anxiety for my justification, whatever may be the
+unfavourable impression you may have received against me?"
+
+"Not an atom. I have neither wish nor inclination to hear you. That tale
+which, in its plain and unadorned state, is destructive of the character
+of him to whom it relates, no colouring can make an honest one."
+
+"Good God! Can you think of condemning a man when you have heard only
+one side of his story?"
+
+"Indeed I can," replied she with dignity. "The maxim of hearing both
+sides may be very well in some cases; but it would be ridiculous to
+suppose that there are not cases, that, at the first mention, are too
+clear to admit the shadow of a doubt. By a well-concerted defence you
+may give me new reasons to admire your abilities; but I am acquainted
+with them already. I can admire your abilities, without tolerating your
+character."
+
+"Madam! Amiable, exemplary Laura! whom, in the midst of all your
+harshness and inflexibility, I honour! I conjure you, by every thing
+that is sacred, to tell me what it is that has filled you with this
+sudden aversion to me."
+
+"No, sir; that you shall never obtain from me. I have nothing to say to
+you. I stand still and hear you; because virtue disdains to appear
+abashed and confounded in the presence of vice. Your conduct even at
+this moment, in my opinion, condemns you. True virtue refuses the
+drudgery of explanation and apology. True virtue shines by its own
+light, and needs no art to set it off. You have the first principles of
+morality as yet to learn."
+
+"And can you imagine, that the most upright conduct is always superior
+to the danger of ambiguity?"
+
+"Exactly so. Virtue, sir, consists in actions, and not in words. The
+good man and the bad are characters precisely opposite, not characters
+distinguished from each other by imperceptible shades. The Providence
+that rules us all, has not permitted us to be left without a clew in the
+most important of all questions. Eloquence may seek to confound it; but
+it shall be my care to avoid its deceptive influence. I do not wish to
+have my understanding perverted, and all the differences of things
+concealed from my apprehension."
+
+"Madam, madam! it would be impossible for you to hold this language, if
+you had not always lived in this obscure retreat, if you had ever been
+conversant with the passions and institutions of men."
+
+"It may be so. And, if that be the case, I have great reason to be
+thankful to my God, who has thus enabled me to preserve the innocence of
+my heart, and the integrity of my understanding."
+
+"Can you believe then that ignorance is the only, or the safest,
+preservative of integrity?"
+
+"Sir, I told you at first, and I repeat to you again, that all your
+declamation is in vain. I wish you would have saved me and yourself that
+pain which is the only thing that can possibly result from it. But let
+us suppose that virtue could ever be the equivocal thing you would have
+me believe. Is it possible, if you had been honest, that you would not
+have acquainted me with your story? Is it possible, that you would have
+left me to have been informed of it by a mere accident, and with all the
+shocking aggravations you well knew that accident would give it? Is it
+possible you should have violated the most sacred of all trusts, and
+have led me unknowingly to admit to the intercourse of my children a
+character, which if, as you pretend, it is substantially honest, you
+cannot deny to be blasted and branded in the face of the whole world?
+Go, sir; I despise you. You are a monster and not a man. I cannot tell
+whether my personal situation misleads me; but, to my thinking, this
+last action of yours is worse than all the rest. Nature has constituted
+me the protector of my children. I shall always remember and resent the
+indelible injury you have done them. You have wounded me to the very
+heart, and have taught me to what a pitch the villainy of man can
+extend."
+
+"Madam, I can be silent no longer. I see that you have by some means
+come to a hearing of the story of Mr. Falkland."
+
+"I have. I am astonished you have the effrontery to pronounce his name.
+That name has been a denomination, as far back as my memory can reach,
+for the most exalted of mortals, the wisest and most generous of men."
+
+"Madam, I owe it to myself to set you right on this subject. Mr.
+Falkland--"
+
+"Mr. Williams, I see my children returning from the fields, and coming
+this way. The basest action you ever did was the obtruding yourself upon
+them as an instructor. I insist that you see them no more. I command you
+to be silent. I command you to withdraw. If you persist in your absurd
+resolution of expostulating with me, you must take some other time."
+
+I could continue no longer. I was in a manner heart-broken through the
+whole of this dialogue. I could not think of protracting the pain of
+this admirable woman, upon whom, though I was innocent of the crimes she
+imputed to me, I had inflicted so much pain already. I yielded to the
+imperiousness of her commands, and withdrew.
+
+I hastened, without knowing why, from the presence of Laura to my own
+habitation. Upon entering the house, an apartment of which I occupied, I
+found it totally deserted of its usual inhabitants. The woman and her
+children were gone to enjoy the freshness of the breeze. The husband was
+engaged in his usual out-door occupations. The doors of persons of the
+lower order in this part of the country are secured, in the day-time,
+only with a latch. I entered, and went into the kitchen of the family.
+Here, as I looked round, my eyes accidentally glanced upon a paper lying
+in one corner, which, by some association I was unable to explain,
+roused in me a strong sensation of suspicion and curiosity. I eagerly
+went towards it, caught it up, and found it to be the very paper of the
+WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY OF CALEB WILLIAMS, the discovery of
+which, towards the close of my residence in London, had produced in me
+such inexpressible anguish.
+
+This encounter at once cleared up all the mystery that hung upon my late
+transactions. Abhorred and intolerable certainty succeeded to the doubts
+which had haunted my mind. It struck me with the rapidity of lightning.
+I felt a sudden torpor and sickness that pervaded every fibre of my
+frame.
+
+Was there no hope that remained for me? Was acquittal useless? Was there
+no period, past or in prospect, that could give relief to my sufferings?
+Was the odious and atrocious falsehood that had been invented against
+me, to follow me wherever I went, to strip me of character, to deprive
+me of the sympathy and good-will of mankind, to wrest from me the very
+bread by which life must be sustained?
+
+For the space perhaps of half an hour the agony I felt from this
+termination to my tranquillity, and the expectation it excited of the
+enmity which would follow me through every retreat, was such as to
+bereave me of all consistent thinking, much more of the power of coming
+to any resolution. As soon as this giddiness and horror of the mind
+subsided, and the deadly calm that invaded my faculties was no more, one
+stiff and master gale gained the ascendancy, and drove me to an instant
+desertion of this late cherished retreat. I had no patience to enter
+into further remonstrance and explanation with the inhabitants of my
+present residence. I believed that it was in vain to hope to recover the
+favourable prepossession and tranquillity I had lately enjoyed. In
+encountering the prejudices that were thus armed against me, I should
+have to deal with a variety of dispositions, and, though I might succeed
+with some, I could not expect to succeed with all. I had seen too much
+of the reign of triumphant falsehood, to have that sanguine confidence
+in the effects of my innocence, which would have suggested itself to the
+mind of any other person of my propensities and my age. The recent
+instance which had occurred in my conversation with Laura might well
+contribute to discourage me. I could not endure the thought of opposing
+the venom that was thus scattered against me, in detail and through its
+minuter particles. If ever it should be necessary to encounter it, if I
+were pursued like a wild beast, till I could no longer avoid turning
+upon my hunters, I would then turn upon the true author of this
+unprincipled attack; I would encounter the calumny in its strong hold; I
+would rouse myself to an exertion hitherto unessayed; and, by the
+firmness, intrepidity, and unalterable constancy I should display, would
+yet compel mankind to believe Mr. Falkland a suborner and a murderer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+I hasten to the conclusion of my melancholy story. I began to write soon
+after the period to which I have now conducted it. This was another
+resource that my mind, ever eager in inventing means to escape from my
+misery, suggested. In my haste to withdraw myself from the retreat in
+Wales, where first the certainty of Mr. Falkland's menaces was confirmed
+to me, I left behind me the apparatus of my etymological enquiries, and
+the papers I had written upon the subject. I have never been able to
+persuade myself to resume this pursuit. It is always discouraging, to
+begin over again a laborious task, and exert one's self to recover a
+position we had already occupied. I knew not how soon or how abruptly I
+might be driven from any new situation; the appendages of the study in
+which I had engaged were too cumbrous for this state of dependence and
+uncertainty; they only served to give new sharpness to the enmity of my
+foe, and new poignancy to my hourly-renewing distress.
+
+But what was of greatest importance, and made the deepest impression
+upon my mind, was my separation from the family of Laura. Fool that I
+was, to imagine that there was any room for me in the abodes of
+friendship and tranquillity! It was now first, that I felt, with the
+most intolerable acuteness, how completely I was cut off from the whole
+human species. Other connections I had gained, comparatively without
+interest; and I saw them dissolved without the consummation of agony. I
+had never experienced the purest refinements of friendship, but in two
+instances, that of Collins, and this of the family of Laura. Solitude,
+separation, banishment! These are words often in the mouths of human
+beings; but few men except myself have felt the full latitude of their
+meaning. The pride of philosophy has taught us to treat man as an
+individual. He is no such thing. He holds necessarily, indispensably, to
+his species. He is like those twin-births, that have two heads indeed,
+and four hands; but, if you attempt to detach them from each other, they
+are inevitably subjected to miserable and lingering destruction.
+
+It was this circumstance, more than all the rest, that gradually gorged
+my heart with abhorrence of Mr. Falkland. I could not think of his name
+but with a sickness and a loathing that seemed more than human. It was
+by his means that I suffered the loss of one consolation after another,
+of every thing that was happiness, or that had the resemblance of
+happiness.
+
+The writing of these memoirs served me as a source of avocation for
+several years. For some time I had a melancholy satisfaction in it. I
+was better pleased to retrace the particulars of calamities that had
+formerly afflicted me, than to look forward, as at other times I was too
+apt to do, to those by which I might hereafter be overtaken. I conceived
+that my story, faithfully digested, would carry in it an impression of
+truth that few men would be able to resist; or, at worst, that, by
+leaving it behind me when I should no longer continue to exist,
+posterity might be induced to do me justice; and, seeing in my example
+what sort of evils are entailed upon mankind by society as it is at
+present constituted, might be inclined to turn their attention upon the
+fountain from which such bitter waters have been accustomed to flow. But
+these motives have diminished in their influence. I have contracted a
+disgust for life and all its appendages. Writing, which was at first a
+pleasure, is changed into a burthen. I shall compress into a small
+compass what remains to be told.
+
+I discovered, not long after the period of which I am speaking, the
+precise cause of the reverse I had experienced in my residence in Wales,
+and, included in that cause, what it was I had to look for in my future
+adventures. Mr. Falkland had taken the infernal Gines into his pay, a
+man critically qualified for the service in which he was now engaged, by
+the unfeeling brutality of his temper, by his habits of mind at once
+audacious and artful, and by the peculiar animosity and vengeance he had
+conceived against me. The employment to which this man was hired, was
+that of following me from place to place, blasting my reputation, and
+preventing me from the chance, by continuing long in one residence, of
+acquiring a character for integrity, that should give new weight to any
+accusation I might at a future time be induced to prefer. He had come to
+the seat of my residence with the bricklayers and labourers I have
+mentioned; and, while he took care to keep out of sight so far as
+related to me, was industrious in disseminating that which, in the eye
+of the world, seemed to amount to a demonstration of the profligacy and
+detestableness of my character. It was no doubt from him that the
+detested scroll had been procured, which I had found in my habitation
+immediately prior to my quitting it. In all this Mr. Falkland, reasoning
+upon his principles, was only employing a necessary precaution. There
+was something in the temper of his mind, that impressed him with
+aversion to the idea of violently putting an end to my existence; at the
+same time that unfortunately he could never deem himself sufficiently
+secured against my recrimination, so long as I remained alive. As to the
+fact of Gines being retained by him for this tremendous purpose, he by
+no means desired that it should become generally known; but neither did
+he look upon the possibility of its being known with terror. It was
+already too notorious for his wishes, that I had advanced the most
+odious charges against him. If he regarded me with abhorrence as the
+adversary of his fame, those persons who had had occasion to be in any
+degree acquainted with our history, did not entertain less abhorrence
+against me for my own sake. If they should at any time know the pains he
+exerted in causing my evil reputation to follow me, they would consider
+it as an act of impartial justice, perhaps as a generous anxiety to
+prevent other men from being imposed upon and injured, as he had been.
+
+What expedient was I to employ for the purpose of counteracting the
+meditated and barbarous prudence, which was thus destined, in all
+changes of scene, to deprive me of the benefits and consolations of
+human society? There was one expedient against which I was absolutely
+determined--disguise. I had experienced so many mortifications, and such
+intolerable restraint, when I formerly had recourse to it; it was
+associated in my memory with sensations of such acute anguish, that my
+mind was thus far entirely convinced: life was not worth purchasing at
+so high a price! But, though in this respect I was wholly resolved,
+there was another point that did not appear so material, and in which
+therefore I was willing to accommodate myself to circumstances. I was
+contented, if that would insure my peace, to submit to the otherwise
+unmanly expedient of passing by a different name.
+
+But the change of my name, the abruptness with which I removed from
+place to place, the remoteness and the obscurity which I proposed to
+myself in the choice of my abode, were all insufficient to elude the
+sagacity of Gines, or the unrelenting constancy with which Mr. Falkland
+incited my tormentor to pursue me. Whithersoever I removed myself it was
+not long before I had occasion to perceive this detested adversary in my
+rear. No words can enable me to do justice to the sensations which this
+circumstance produced in me. It was like what has been described of the
+eye of Omniscience, pursuing the guilty sinner, and darting a ray that
+awakens him to new sensibility, at the very moment that, otherwise,
+exhausted nature would lull him into a temporary oblivion of the
+reproaches of his conscience. Sleep fled from my eyes. No walls could
+hide me from the discernment of this hated foe. Every where his industry
+was unwearied to create for me new distress. Rest I had none; relief I
+had none: never could I count upon an instant's security; never could I
+wrap myself in the shroud of oblivion. The minutes in which I did not
+actually perceive him, were contaminated and blasted with the certain
+expectation of his speedy interference. In my first retreat I had passed
+a few weeks of delusive tranquillity, but never after was I happy enough
+to attain to so much as that shadowy gratification. I spent some years
+in this dreadful vicissitude of pain. My sensations at certain periods
+amounted to insanity.
+
+I pursued in every succeeding instance the conduct I had adopted at
+first. I determined never to enter into a contest of accusation and
+defence with the execrable Gines. If I could have submitted to it in
+other respects, what purpose would it answer? I should have but an
+imperfect and mutilated story to tell. This story had succeeded with
+persons already prepossessed in my favour by personal intercourse; but
+could it succeed with strangers? It had succeeded so long as I was able
+to hide myself from my pursuers; but could it succeed now, that this
+appeared impracticable, and that they proceeded by arming against me a
+whole vicinity at once?
+
+It is inconceivable the mischiefs that this kind of existence included.
+Why should I insist upon such aggravations as hunger, beggary, and
+external wretchedness? These were an inevitable consequence. It was by
+the desertion of mankind that, in each successive instance, I was made
+acquainted with my fate. Delay in such a moment served but to increase
+the evil; and when I fled, meagreness and penury were the ordinary
+attendants of my course. But this was a small consideration. Indignation
+at one time, and unconquerable perseverance at another, sustained me,
+where humanity, left to itself, would probably have sunk.
+
+It has already appeared that I was not of a temper to endure calamity,
+without endeavouring, by every means I could devise, to elude and disarm
+it. Recollecting, as I was habituated to do, the various projects by
+which my situation could be meliorated, the question occurred to me,
+"Why should I be harassed by the pursuits of this Gines? Why, man to
+man, may I not, by the powers of my mind, attain the ascendancy over
+him? At present he appears to be the persecutor, and I the persecuted:
+is not this difference the mere creature of the imagination? May I not
+employ my ingenuity to vex him with difficulties, and laugh at the
+endless labour to which he will be condemned?"
+
+Alas, this is a speculation for a mind at ease! It is not the
+persecution, but the catastrophe which is annexed to it, that makes the
+difference between the tyrant and the sufferer! In mere corporal
+exertion the hunter perhaps is upon a level with the miserable animal he
+pursues! But could it be forgotten by either of us, that at every stage
+Gines was to gratify his malignant passions, by disseminating charges of
+the most infamous nature, and exciting against me the abhorrence of
+every honest bosom, while I was to sustain the still-repeated
+annihilation of my peace, my character, and my bread? Could I, by any
+refinement of reason, convert this dreadful series into sport? I had no
+philosophy that qualified me for so extraordinary an effort. If, under
+other circumstances, I could even have entertained so strange an
+imagination, I was restrained in the present instance by the necessity
+of providing for myself the means of subsistence, and the fetters which,
+through that necessity, the forms of human society imposed upon my
+exertions.
+
+In one of those changes of residence, to which my miserable fate
+repeatedly compelled me, I met, upon a road which I was obliged to
+traverse, the friend of my youth, my earliest and best beloved friend,
+the venerable Collins. It was one of those misfortunes which served to
+accumulate my distress, that this man had quitted the island of Great
+Britain only a very few weeks before that fatal reverse of fortune which
+had ever since pursued me with unrelenting eagerness. Mr. Falkland, in
+addition to the large estate he possessed in England, had a very
+valuable plantation in the West Indies. This property had been greatly
+mismanaged by the person who had the direction of it on the spot; and,
+after various promises and evasions on his part, which, however they
+might serve to beguile the patience of Mr. Falkland, had been attended
+with no salutary fruits, it was resolved that Mr. Collins should go over
+in person, to rectify the abuses which had so long prevailed. There had
+even been some idea of his residing several years, if not settling
+finally, upon the plantation. From that hour to the present I had never
+received the smallest intelligence respecting him.
+
+I had always considered the circumstance of his critical absence as one
+of my severest misfortunes. Mr. Collins had been one of the first
+persons, even in the period of my infancy, to conceive hopes of me, as
+of something above the common standard; and had contributed more than
+any other to encourage and assist my juvenile studies. He had been the
+executor of the little property of my father, who had fixed upon him for
+that purpose in consideration of the mutual affection that existed
+between us; and I seemed, on every account, to have more claim upon his
+protection than upon that of any other human being. I had always
+believed that, had he been present in the crisis of my fortune, he would
+have felt a conviction of my innocence; and, convinced himself, would,
+by means of the venerableness and energy of his character, have
+interposed so effectually, as to have saved me the greater part of my
+subsequent misfortunes.
+
+There was yet another idea in my mind relative to this subject, which
+had more weight with me, than even the substantial exertions of
+friendship I should have expected from him. The greatest aggravation of
+my present lot was, that I was cut off from the friendship of mankind. I
+can safely affirm, that poverty and hunger, that endless wanderings,
+that a blasted character and the curses that clung to my name, were all
+of them slight misfortunes compared to this. I endeavoured to sustain
+myself by the sense of my integrity, but the voice of no man upon earth
+echoed to the voice of my conscience. "I called aloud; but there was
+none to answer; there was none that regarded." To me the whole world was
+unhearing as the tempest, and as cold as the torpedo. Sympathy, the
+magnetic virtue, the hidden essence of our life, was extinct. Nor was
+this the sum of my misery. This food, so essential to an intelligent
+existence, seemed perpetually renewing before me in its fairest colours,
+only the more effectually to elude my grasp, and to mock my hunger. From
+time to time I was prompted to unfold the affections of my soul, only to
+be repelled with the greater anguish, and to be baffled in a way the
+most intolerably mortifying.
+
+No sight therefore could give me a purer delight than that which now
+presented itself to my eyes. It was some time however, before either of
+us recognised the person of the other. Ten years had elapsed since our
+last interview. Mr. Collins looked much older than he had done at that
+period; in addition to which, he was, in his present appearance, pale,
+sickly, and thin. These unfavourable effects had been produced by the
+change of climate, particularly trying to persons in an advanced period
+of life. Add to which, I supposed him to be at that moment in the West
+Indies. I was probably as much altered in the period that had elapsed as
+he had been. I was the first to recollect him. He was on horseback; I on
+foot. I had suffered him to pass me. In a moment the full idea of who he
+was rushed upon my mind; I ran; I called with an impetuous voice; I was
+unable to restrain the vehemence of my emotions.
+
+The ardour of my feelings disguised my usual tone of speaking, which
+otherwise Mr. Collins would infallibly have recognised. His sight was
+already dim; he pulled up his horse till I should overtake him; and then
+said, "Who are you? I do not know you."
+
+"My father!" exclaimed I, embracing one of his knees with fervour and
+delight, "I am your son; once your little Caleb, whom you a thousand
+times loaded with your kindness!"
+
+The unexpected repetition of my name gave a kind of shuddering emotion
+to my friend, which was however checked by his age, and the calm and
+benevolent philosophy that formed one of his most conspicuous habits.
+
+"I did not expect to see you!" replied he: "I did not wish it!"
+
+"My best, my oldest friend!" answered I, respect blending itself with my
+impatience, "do not say so! I have not a friend any where in the whole
+world but you! In you at least let me find sympathy and reciprocal
+affection! If you knew how anxiously I have thought of you during the
+whole period of your absence, you would not thus grievously disappoint
+me in your return!"
+
+"How is it," said Mr. Collins, gravely, "that you have been reduced to
+this forlorn condition? Was it not the inevitable consequence of your
+own actions?"
+
+"The actions of others, not mine! Does not your heart tell you that I am
+innocent?"
+
+"No. My observation of your early character taught me that you would be
+extraordinary; but, unhappily, all extraordinary men are not good men:
+that seems to be a lottery, dependent on circumstances apparently the
+most trivial."
+
+"Will you hear my justification? I am as sure as I am of my existence,
+that I can convince you of my purity."
+
+"Certainly, if you require it, I will hear you. But that must not be
+just now. I could have been glad to decline it wholly. At my age I am
+not fit for the storm; and I am not so sanguine as you in my expectation
+of the result. Of what would you convince me? That Mr. Falkland is a
+suborner and murderer?"
+
+I made no answer. My silence was an affirmative to the question.
+
+"And what benefit will result from this conviction? I have known you a
+promising boy, whose character might turn to one side or the other as
+events should decide. I have known Mr. Falkland in his maturer years,
+and have always admired him, as the living model of liberality and
+goodness. If you could change all my ideas, and show me that there was
+no criterion by which vice might be prevented from being mistaken for
+virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my
+interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what?
+What is it you propose? The death of Mr. Falkland by the hands of the
+hangman."
+
+"No; I will not hurt a hair of his head, unless compelled to it by a
+principle of defence. But surely you owe me justice?"
+
+"What justice? The justice of proclaiming your innocence? You know what
+consequences are annexed to that. But I do not believe I shall find you
+innocent. If you even succeed in perplexing my understanding, you will
+not succeed in enlightening it. Such is the state of mankind, that
+innocence, when involved in circumstances of suspicion, can scarcely
+ever make out a demonstration of its purity; and guilt can often make us
+feel an insurmountable reluctance to the pronouncing it guilt.
+Meanwhile, for the purchase of this uncertainty, I must sacrifice all
+the remaining comforts of my life. I believe Mr. Falkland to be
+virtuous; but I know him to be prejudiced. He would never forgive me
+even this accidental parley, if by any means he should come to be
+acquainted with it."
+
+"Oh, argue not the consequences that are possible to result!" answered
+I, impatiently, "I have a right to your kindness; I have a right to your
+assistance!"
+
+"You have them. You have them to a certain degree; and it is not likely
+that, by any process of examination, you can have them entire. You know
+my habits of thinking. I regard you as vicious; but I do not consider
+the vicious as proper objects of indignation and scorn. I consider you
+as a machine; you are not constituted, I am afraid, to be greatly useful
+to your fellow men: but you did not make yourself; you are just what
+circumstances irresistibly compelled you to be. I am sorry for your ill
+properties; but I entertain no enmity against you, nothing but
+benevolence. Considering you in the light in which I at present consider
+you, I am ready to contribute every thing in my power to your real
+advantage, and would gladly assist you, if I knew how, in detecting and
+extirpating the errors that have misled you. You have disappointed me,
+but I have no reproaches to utter: it is more necessary for me to feel
+compassion for you, than that I should accumulate your misfortune by my
+censures."
+
+What could I say to such a man as this? Amiable, incomparable man! Never
+was my mind more painfully divided than at that moment. The more he
+excited my admiration, the more imperiously did my heart command me,
+whatever were the price it should cost, to extort his friendship. I was
+persuaded that severe duty required of him, that he should reject all
+personal considerations, that he should proceed resolutely to the
+investigation of the truth, and that, if he found the result terminating
+in my favour, he should resign all his advantages, and, deserted as I
+was by the world, make a common cause, and endeavour to compensate the
+general injustice. But was it for me to force this conduct upon him, if,
+now in his declining years, his own fortitude shrank from it? Alas,
+neither he nor I foresaw the dreadful catastrophe that was so closely
+impending! Otherwise, I am well assured that no tenderness for his
+remaining tranquillity would have withheld him from a compliance with my
+wishes! On the other hand, could I pretend to know what evils might
+result to him from his declaring himself my advocate? Might not his
+integrity be browbeaten and defeated, as mine had been? Did the
+imbecility of his grey hairs afford no advantage to my terrible
+adversary in the contest? Might not Mr. Falkland reduce him to a
+condition as wretched and low as mine? After all, was it not vice in me
+to desire to involve another man in my sufferings? If I regarded them as
+intolerable, this was still an additional reason why I should bear them
+alone.
+
+Influenced by these considerations, I assented to his views. I assented
+to be thought hardly of by the man in the world whose esteem I most
+ardently desired, rather than involve him in possible calamity. I
+assented to the resigning what appeared to me at that moment as the last
+practicable comfort of my life; a comfort, upon the thought of which,
+while I surrendered it, my mind dwelt with undescribable longings. Mr.
+Collins was deeply affected with the apparent ingenuousness with which I
+expressed my feelings. The secret struggle of his mind was, "Can this be
+hypocrisy? The individual with whom I am conferring, if virtuous, is one
+of the most disinterestedly virtuous persons in the world." We tore
+ourselves from each other. Mr. Collins promised, as far as he was able,
+to have an eye upon my vicissitudes, and to assist me, in every respect
+that was consistent with a just recollection of consequences. Thus I
+parted as it were with the last expiring hope of my mind; and
+voluntarily consented, thus maimed and forlorn, to encounter all the
+evils that were yet in store for me.
+
+This is the latest event which at present I think it necessary to
+record. I shall doubtless hereafter have further occasion to take up the
+pen. Great and unprecedented as my sufferings have been, I feel
+intimately persuaded that there are worse sufferings that await me. What
+mysterious cause is it that enables me to write this, and not to perish
+under the horrible apprehension!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+It is as I foreboded. The presage with which I was visited was
+prophetic. I am now to record a new and terrible revolution of my
+fortune and my mind.
+
+Having made experiment of various situations with one uniform result, I
+at length determined to remove myself, if possible, from the reach of my
+persecutor, by going into voluntary banishment from my native soil. This
+was my last resource for tranquillity, for honest fame, for those
+privileges to which human life is indebted for the whole of its value.
+"In some distant climate," said I, "surely I may find that security
+which is necessary to persevering pursuit; surely I may lift my head
+erect, associate with men upon the footing of a man, acquire
+connections, and preserve them!" It is inconceivable with what ardent
+Teachings of the soul I aspired to this termination.
+
+This last consolation was denied me by the inexorable Falkland.
+
+At the time the project was formed I was at no great distance from the
+east coast of the island, and I resolved to take ship at Harwich, and
+pass immediately into Holland. I accordingly repaired to that place, and
+went, almost as soon as I arrived, to the port. But there was no vessel
+perfectly ready to sail. I left the port, and withdrew to an inn, where,
+after some time, I retired to a chamber. I was scarcely there before the
+door of the room was opened, and the man whose countenance was the most
+hateful to my eyes, Gines, entered the apartment. He shut the door as
+soon as he entered.
+
+"Youngster," said he, "I have a little private intelligence to
+communicate to you. I come as a friend, and that I may save you a
+labour-in-vain trouble. If you consider what I have to say in that
+light, it will be the better for you. It is my business now, do you see,
+for want of a better, to see that you do not break out of bounds. Not
+that I much matter having one man for my employer, or dancing attendance
+after another's heels; but I have special kindness for you, for some
+good turns that you wot of, and therefore I do not stand upon
+ceremonies! You have led me a very pretty round already; and, out of the
+love I bear you, you shall lead me as much further, if you will. But
+beware the salt seas! They are out of my orders. You are a prisoner at
+present, and I believe all your life will remain so. Thanks to the
+milk-and-water softness of your former master! If I had the ordering of
+these things, it should go with you in another fashion. As long as you
+think proper, you are a prisoner within the rules; and the rules with
+which the soft-hearted squire indulges you, are all England, Scotland,
+and Wales. But you are not to go out of these climates. The squire is
+determined you shall never pass the reach of his disposal. He has
+therefore given orders that, whenever you attempt so to do, you shall be
+converted from a prisoner at large to a prisoner in good earnest. A
+friend of mine followed you just now to the harbour; I was within call;
+and, if there had been any appearance of your setting your foot from
+land, we should have been with you in a trice, and laid you fast by the
+heels. I would advise you, for the future, to keep at a proper distance
+from the sea, for fear of the worst. You see I tell you all this for
+your good. For my part, I should be better satisfied if you were in
+limbo, with a rope about your neck, and a comfortable bird's eye
+prospect to the gallows: but I do as I am directed; and so good night to
+you!"
+
+The intelligence thus conveyed to me occasioned an instantaneous
+revolution in both my intellectual and animal system. I disdained to
+answer, or take the smallest notice of the fiend by whom it was
+delivered. It is now three days since I received it, and from that
+moment to the present my blood has been in a perpetual ferment. My
+thoughts wander from one idea of horror to another, with incredible
+rapidity. I have had no sleep. I have scarcely remained in one posture
+for a minute together. It has been with the utmost difficulty that I
+have been able to command myself far enough to add a few pages to my
+story. But, uncertain as I am of the events of each succeeding hour, I
+determined to force myself to the performance of this task. All is not
+right within me. How it will terminate, God knows. I sometimes fear that
+I shall be wholly deserted of my reason.
+
+What--dark, mysterious, unfeeling, unrelenting tyrant!--is it come to
+this? When Nero and Caligula swayed the Roman sceptre, it was a fearful
+thing to offend these bloody rulers. The empire had already spread
+itself from climate to climate, and from sea to sea. If their unhappy
+victim fled to the rising of the sun, where the luminary of day seems to
+us first to ascend from the waves of the ocean, the power of the tyrant
+was still behind him. If he withdrew to the west, to Hesperian darkness,
+and the shores of barbarian Thule, still he was not safe from his
+gore-drenched foe.--Falkland! art thou the offspring, in whom the
+lineaments of these tyrants are faithfully preserved? Was the world,
+with all its climates, made in vain for thy helpless unoffending victim?
+
+Tremble!
+
+Tyrants have trembled, surrounded with whole armies of their
+Janissaries! What should make thee inaccessible to my fury? No, I will
+use no daggers! I will unfold a tale!--I will show thee to the world for
+what thou art; and all the men that live, shall confess my truth!--Didst
+thou imagine that I was altogether passive, a mere worm, organised to
+feel sensations of pain, but no emotion of resentment? Didst thou
+imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains however
+great, miseries however dreadful? Didst thou believe me impotent,
+imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive thy ruin,
+and no energy to perpetrate it?
+
+I will tell a tale--! The justice of the country shall hear me! The
+elements of nature in universal uproar shall not interrupt me! I will
+speak with a voice more fearful than thunder!--Why should I be supposed
+to speak from any dishonourable motive? I am under no prosecution now! I
+shall not now appear to be endeavouring to remove a criminal indictment
+from myself, by throwing it back on its author!--Shall I regret the ruin
+that will overwhelm thee? Too long have I been tender-hearted and
+forbearing! What benefit has ever resulted from my mistaken clemency?
+There is no evil thou hast scrupled to accumulate upon me! Neither will
+I be more scrupulous! Thou hast shown no mercy; and thou shalt receive
+none!--I must be calm! bold as a lion, yet collected!
+
+This is a moment pregnant with fate. I know--I think I know--that I will
+be triumphant, and crush my seemingly omnipotent foe. But, should it be
+otherwise, at least he shall not be every way successful. His fame shall
+not be immortal as he thinks. These papers shall preserve the truth;
+they shall one day be published, and then the world shall do justice on
+us both. Recollecting that, I shall not die wholly without consolation.
+It is not to be endured that falsehood and tyranny should reign for
+ever.
+
+How impotent are the precautions of man against the eternally existing
+laws of the intellectual world! This Falkland has invented against me
+every species of foul accusation. He has hunted me from city to city.
+He has drawn his lines of circumvallation round me that I may not
+escape. He has kept his scenters of human prey for ever at my heels. He
+may hunt me out of the world.--In vain! With this engine, this little
+pen, I defeat all his machinations; I stab him in the very point he was
+most solicitous to defend!
+
+Collins! I now address myself to you. I have consented that you should
+yield me no assistance in my present terrible situation. I am content to
+die rather than do any thing injurious to your tranquillity. But
+remember, you are my father still! I conjure you, by all the love you
+ever bore me, by the benefits you have conferred on me, by the
+forbearance and kindness towards you that now penetrates my soul, by my
+innocence--for, if these be the last words I shall ever write, I die
+protesting my innocence!--by all these, or whatever tie more sacred has
+influence on your soul, I conjure you, listen to my last request!
+Preserve these papers from destruction, and preserve them from Falkland!
+It is all I ask! I have taken care to provide a safe mode of conveying
+them into your possession: and I have a firm confidence, which I will
+not suffer to depart from me, that they will one day find their way to
+the public!
+
+The pen lingers in my trembling fingers! Is there any thing I have left
+unsaid?--The contents of the fatal trunk, from which all my misfortunes
+originated, I have never been able to ascertain. I once thought it
+contained some murderous instrument or relic connected with the fate of
+the unhappy Tyrrel. I am now persuaded that the secret it encloses, is a
+faithful narrative of that and its concomitant transactions, written by
+Mr. Falkland, and reserved in case of the worst, that, if by any
+unforeseen event his guilt should come to be fully disclosed, it might
+contribute to redeem the wreck of his reputation. But the truth or the
+falsehood of this conjecture is of little moment. If Falkland shall
+never be detected to the satisfaction of the world, such a narrative
+will probably never see the light. In that case this story of mine may
+amply, severely perhaps, supply its place.
+
+I know not what it is that renders me thus solemn. I have a secret
+foreboding, as if I should never again be master of myself. If I succeed
+in what I now meditate respecting Falkland, my precaution in the
+disposal of these papers will have been unnecessary; I shall no longer
+be reduced to artifice and evasion. If I fail, the precaution will
+appear to have been wisely chosen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+All is over. I have carried into execution my meditated attempt. My
+situation is totally changed; I now sit down to give an account of it.
+For several weeks after the completion of this dreadful business, my
+mind was in too tumultuous a state to permit me to write. I think I
+shall now be able to arrange my thoughts sufficiently for that purpose.
+Great God! how wondrous, how terrible are the events that have
+intervened since I was last employed in a similar manner! It is no
+wonder that my thoughts were solemn, and my mind filled with horrible
+forebodings!
+
+Having formed my resolution, I set out from Harwich, for the
+metropolitan town of the county in which Mr. Falkland resided. Gines, I
+well knew, was in my rear. That was of no consequence to me. He might
+wonder at the direction I pursued, but he could not tell with what
+purpose I pursued it. My design was a secret, carefully locked up in my
+own breast. It was not without a sentiment of terror that I entered a
+town which had been the scene of my long imprisonment. I proceeded to
+the house of the chief magistrate the instant I arrived, that I might
+give no time to my adversary to counterwork my proceeding.
+
+I told him who I was, and that I was come from a distant part of the
+kingdom, for the purpose of rendering him the medium of a charge of
+murder against my former patron. My name was already familiar to him. He
+answered, that he could not take cognizance of my deposition; that I was
+an object of universal execration in that part of the world; and he was
+determined upon no account to be the vehicle of my depravity.
+
+I warned him to consider well what he was doing. I called upon him for
+no favour; I only applied to him in the regular exercise of his
+function. Would he take upon him to say that he had a right, at his
+pleasure, to suppress a charge of this complicated nature? I had to
+accuse Mr. Falkland of repeated murders. The perpetrator knew that I was
+in possession of the truth upon the subject; and, knowing that, I went
+perpetually in danger of my life from his malice and revenge. I was
+resolved to go through with the business, if justice were to be obtained
+from any court in England. Upon what pretence did he refuse my
+deposition? I was in every respect a competent witness. I was of age to
+understand the nature of an oath; I was in my perfect senses; I was
+untarnished by the verdict of any jury, or the sentence of any judge.
+His private opinion of my character could not alter the law of the land.
+I demanded to be confronted with Mr. Falkland, and I was well assured I
+should substantiate the charge to the satisfaction of the whole world.
+If he did not think proper to apprehend him upon my single testimony, I
+should be satisfied if he only sent him notice of the charge, and
+summoned him to appear.
+
+The magistrate, finding me thus resolute, thought proper a little to
+lower his tone. He no longer absolutely refused to comply with my
+requisition, but condescended to expostulate with me. He represented to
+me Mr. Falkland's health, which had for some years been exceedingly
+indifferent; his having been once already brought to the most solemn
+examination upon this charge; the diabolical malice in which alone my
+proceeding must have originated; and the ten-fold ruin it would bring
+down upon my head. To all these representations my answer was short. "I
+was determined to go on, and would abide the consequences." A summons
+was at length granted, and notice sent to Mr. Falkland of the charge
+preferred against him.
+
+Three days elapsed before any further step could be taken in this
+business. This interval in no degree contributed to tranquillise my
+mind. The thought of preferring a capital accusation against, and
+hastening the death of, such a man as Mr. Falkland, was by no means an
+opiate to reflection. At one time I commended the action, either as just
+revenge (for the benevolence of my nature was in a great degree turned
+to gall), or as necessary self-defence, or as that which, in an
+impartial and philanthropical estimate, included the smallest evil. At
+another time I was haunted with doubts. But, in spite of these
+variations of sentiment, I uniformly determined to persist! I felt as if
+impelled by a tide of unconquerable impulse. The consequences were such
+as might well appal the stoutest heart. Either the ignominious execution
+of a man whom I had once so deeply venerated, and whom now I sometimes
+suspected not to be without his claims to veneration; or a confirmation,
+perhaps an increase, of the calamities I had so long endured. Yet these
+I preferred to a state of uncertainty. I desired to know the worst; to
+put an end to the hope, however faint, which had been so long my
+torment; and, above all, to exhaust and finish the catalogue of
+expedients that were at my disposition. My mind was worked up to a state
+little short of frenzy. My body was in a burning fever with the
+agitation of my thoughts. When I laid my hand upon my bosom or my head,
+it seemed to scorch them with the fervency of its heat. I could not sit
+still for a moment. I panted with incessant desire that the dreadful
+crisis I had so eagerly invoked, were come, and were over.
+
+After an interval of three days, I met Mr. Falkland in the presence of
+the magistrate to whom I had applied upon the subject. I had only two
+hours' notice to prepare myself; Mr. Falkland seeming as eager as I to
+have the question brought to a crisis, and laid at rest for ever. I had
+an opportunity, before the examination, to learn that Mr. Forester was
+drawn by some business on an excursion on the continent; and that
+Collins, whose health when I saw him was in a very precarious state, was
+at this time confined with an alarming illness. His constitution had
+been wholly broken by his West Indian expedition. The audience I met at
+the house of the magistrate consisted of several gentlemen and others
+selected for the purpose; the plan being, in some respects, as in the
+former instance, to find a medium between the suspicious air of a
+private examination, and the indelicacy, as it was styled, of an
+examination exposed to the remark of every casual spectator.
+
+I can conceive of no shock greater than that I received from the sight
+of Mr. Falkland. His appearance on the last occasion on which we met
+had been haggard, ghost-like, and wild, energy in his gestures, and
+frenzy in his aspect. It was now the appearance of a corpse. He was
+brought in in a chair, unable to stand, fatigued and almost destroyed by
+the journey he had just taken. His visage was colourless; his limbs
+destitute of motion, almost of life. His head reclined upon his bosom,
+except that now and then he lifted it up, and opened his eyes with a
+languid glance; immediately after which he sunk back into his former
+apparent insensibility. He seemed not to have three hours to live. He
+had kept his chamber for several weeks; but the summons of the
+magistrate had been delivered to him at his bed-side, his orders
+respecting letters and written papers being so peremptory that no one
+dared to disobey them. Upon reading the paper he was seized with a very
+dangerous fit; but, as soon as he recovered, he insisted upon being
+conveyed, with all practicable expedition, to the place of appointment.
+Falkland, in the most helpless state, was still Falkland, firm in
+command, and capable to extort obedience from every one that approached
+him.
+
+What a sight was this to me! Till the moment that Falkland was presented
+to my view, my breast was steeled to pity. I thought that I had coolly
+entered into the reason of the case (passion, in a state of solemn and
+omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be coolness to him in whom it
+domineers), and that I had determined impartially and justly. I believed
+that, if Mr. Falkland were permitted to persist in his schemes, we must
+both of us be completely wretched. I believed that it was in my power,
+by the resolution I had formed, to throw my share of this wretchedness
+from me, and that his could scarcely be increased. It appeared therefore
+to my mind, to be a mere piece of equity and justice, such as an
+impartial spectator would desire, that one person should be miserable in
+preference to two; that one person rather than two should be
+incapacitated from acting his part, and contributing his share to the
+general welfare. I thought that in this business I had risen superior to
+personal considerations, and judged with a total neglect of the
+suggestions of self-regard. It is true, Mr. Falkland was mortal, but,
+notwithstanding his apparent decay, he might live long. Ought I to
+submit to waste the best years of my life in my present wretched
+situation? He had declared that his reputation should be for ever
+inviolate; this was his ruling passion, the thought that worked his soul
+to madness. He would probably therefore leave a legacy of persecution to
+be received by me from the hands of Gines, or some other villain equally
+atrocious, when he should himself be no more. Now or never was the time
+for me to redeem my future life from endless woe.
+
+But all these fine-spun reasonings vanished before the object that was
+now presented to me. "Shall I trample upon a man thus dreadfully
+reduced? Shall I point my animosity against one, whom the system of
+nature has brought down to the grave? Shall I poison, with sounds the
+most intolerable to his ears, the last moments of a man like Falkland?
+It is impossible. There must have been some dreadful mistake in the
+train of argument that persuaded me to be the author of this hateful
+scene. There must have been a better and more magnanimous remedy to the
+evils under which I groaned."
+
+It was too late: the mistake I had committed was now gone past all power
+of recall. Here was Falkland, solemnly brought before a magistrate to
+answer to a charge of murder. Here I stood, having already declared
+myself the author of the charge, gravely and sacredly pledged to support
+it. This was my situation; and, thus situated, I was called upon
+immediately to act. My whole frame shook. I would eagerly have consented
+that that moment should have been the last of my existence. I however
+believed, that the conduct now most indispensably incumbent on me was to
+lay the emotions of my soul naked before my hearers. I looked first at
+Mr. Falkland, and then at the magistrate and attendants, and then at Mr.
+Falkland again. My voice was suffocated with agony. I began:--
+
+"Why cannot I recall the last four days of my life? How was it possible
+for me to be so eager, so obstinate, in a purpose so diabolical? Oh,
+that I had listened to the expostulations of the magistrate that hears
+me, or submitted to the well-meant despotism of his authority! Hitherto
+I have been only miserable; henceforth I shall account myself base!
+Hitherto, though hardly treated by mankind, I stood acquitted at the bar
+of my own conscience. I had not filled up the measure of my
+wretchedness!
+
+"Would to God it were possible for me to retire from this scene without
+uttering another word! I would brave the consequences--I would submit to
+any imputation of cowardice, falsehood, and profligacy, rather than add
+to the weight of misfortune with which Mr. Falkland is overwhelmed. But
+the situation, and the demands of Mr. Falkland himself, forbid me. He,
+in compassion for whose fallen state I would willingly forget every
+interest of my own, would compel me to accuse, that he might enter upon
+his justification. I will confess every sentiment of my heart.
+
+"No penitence, no anguish, can expiate the folly and the cruelty of this
+last act I have perpetrated. But Mr. Falkland well knows--I affirm it in
+his presence--how unwillingly I have proceeded to this extremity. I
+have reverenced him; he was worthy of reverence: I have loved him; he
+was endowed with qualities that partook of divine.
+
+"From the first moment I saw him, I conceived the most ardent
+admiration. He condescended to encourage me; I attached myself to him
+with the fulness of my affection. He was unhappy; I exerted myself with
+youthful curiosity to discover the secret of his woe. This was the
+beginning of misfortune.
+
+"What shall I say?--He was indeed the murderer of Tyrrel; he suffered
+the Hawkinses to be executed, knowing that they were innocent, and that
+he alone was guilty. After successive surmises, after various
+indiscretions on my part, and indications on his, he at length confided
+to me at full the fatal tale!
+
+"Mr. Falkland! I most solemnly conjure you to recollect yourself! Did I
+ever prove myself unworthy of your confidence? The secret was a most
+painful burthen to me; it was the extremest folly that led me
+unthinkingly to gain possession of it; but I would have died a thousand
+deaths rather than betray it. It was the jealousy of your own thoughts,
+and the weight that hung upon your mind, that led you to watch my
+motions, and to conceive alarm from every particle of my conduct.
+
+"You began in confidence; why did you not continue in confidence? The
+evil that resulted from my original imprudence would then have been
+comparatively little. You threatened me: did I then betray you? A word
+from my lips at that time would have freed me from your threats for
+ever. I bore them for a considerable period, and at last quitted your
+service, and threw myself a fugitive upon the world, in silence. Why did
+you not suffer me to depart? You brought me back by stratagem and
+violence, and wantonly accused me of an enormous felony! Did I then
+mention a syllable of the murder, the secret of which was in my
+possession?
+
+"Where is the man that has suffered more from the injustice of society
+than I have done? I was accused of a villainy that my heart abhorred. I
+was sent to jail. I will not enumerate the horrors of my prison, the
+lightest of which would make the heart of humanity shudder. I looked
+forward to the gallows! Young, ambitious, fond of life, innocent as the
+child unborn, I looked forward to the gallows! I believed that one word
+of resolute accusation against my patron would deliver me; yet I was
+silent, I armed myself with patience, uncertain whether it were better
+to accuse or to die. Did this show me a man unworthy to be trusted?
+
+"I determined to break out of prison. With infinite difficulty, and
+repeated miscarriages, I at length effected my purpose. Instantly a
+proclamation, with a hundred guineas reward, was issued for apprehending
+me. I was obliged to take shelter among the refuse of mankind, in the
+midst of a gang of thieves. I encountered the most imminent peril of my
+life when I entered this retreat, and when I quitted it. Immediately
+after, I travelled almost the whole length of the kingdom, in poverty
+and distress, in hourly danger of being retaken and manacled like a
+felon. I would have fled my country; I was prevented. I had recourse to
+various disguises; I was innocent, and yet was compelled to as many arts
+and subterfuges as could have been entailed on the worst of villains. In
+London I was as much harassed and as repeatedly alarmed as I had been in
+my flight through the country. Did all these persecutions persuade me to
+put an end to my silence? No: I suffered them with patience and
+submission; I did not make one attempt to retort them upon their author.
+
+"I fell at last into the hands of the miscreants that are nourished with
+human blood. In this terrible situation I, for the first time,
+attempted, by turning informer, to throw the weight from myself. Happily
+for me, the London magistrate listened to my tale with insolent
+contempt.
+
+"I soon, and long, repented of my rashness, and rejoiced in my
+miscarriage.
+
+"I acknowledge that, in various ways, Mr. Falkland showed humanity
+towards me during this period. He would have prevented my going to
+prison at first; he contributed towards my subsistence during my
+detention; he had no share in the pursuit that had been set on foot
+against me; he at length procured my discharge, when brought forward for
+trial. But a great part of his forbearance was unknown to me; I supposed
+him to be my unrelenting pursuer. I could not forget that, whoever
+heaped calamities on me in the sequel, they all originated in his forged
+accusation.
+
+"The prosecution against me for felony was now at an end. Why were not
+my sufferings permitted to terminate then, and I allowed to hide my
+weary head in some obscure yet tranquil retreat? Had I not sufficiently
+proved my constancy and fidelity? Would not a compromise in this
+situation have been most wise and most secure? But the restless and
+jealous anxiety of Mr. Falkland would not permit him to repose the least
+atom of confidence. The only compromise that he proposed was that, with
+my own hand, I should sign myself a villain. I refused this proposal,
+and have ever since been driven from place to place, deprived of peace,
+of honest fame, even of bread. For a long time I persisted in the
+resolution that no emergency should convert me into the assailant. In an
+evil hour I at last listened to my resentment and impatience, and the
+hateful mistake into which I fell has produced the present scene.
+
+"I now see that mistake in all its enormity. I am sure that if I had
+opened my heart to Mr. Falkland, if I had told to him privately the tale
+that I have now been telling, he could not have resisted my reasonable
+demand. After all his precautions, he must ultimately have depended upon
+my forbearance. Could he be sure that, if I were at last worked up to
+disclose every thing I knew, and to enforce it with all the energy I
+could exert, I should obtain no credit? If he must in every case be at
+my mercy, in which mode ought he to have sought his safety, in
+conciliation, or in inexorable cruelty?
+
+"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature. Yes; in spite of the catastrophe of
+Tyrrel, of the miserable end of the Hawkinses, and of all that I have
+myself suffered, I affirm that he has qualities of the most admirable
+kind. It is therefore impossible that he could have resisted a frank and
+fervent expostulation, the frankness and the fervour in which the whole
+soul is poured out. I despaired, while it was yet time to have made the
+just experiment; but my despair was criminal, was treason against the
+sovereignty of truth.
+
+"I have told a plain and unadulterated tale. I came hither to curse, but
+I remain to bless. I came to accuse, but am compelled to applaud. I
+proclaim to all the world, that Mr. Falkland is a man worthy of
+affection and kindness, and that I am myself the basest and most odious
+of mankind! Never will I forgive myself the iniquity of this day. The
+memory will always haunt me, and embitter every hour of my existence.
+In thus acting I have been a murderer--a cool, deliberate, unfeeling
+murderer.--I have said what my accursed precipitation has obliged me to
+say. Do with me as you please! I ask no favour. Death would be a
+kindness, compared to what I feel!"
+
+Such were the accents dictated by my remorse. I poured them out with
+uncontrollable impetuosity; for my heart was pierced, and I was
+compelled to give vent to its anguish. Every one that heard me, was
+petrified with astonishment. Every one that heard me, was melted into
+tears. They could not resist the ardour with which I praised the great
+qualities of Falkland; they manifested their sympathy in the tokens of
+my penitence.
+
+How shall I describe the feelings of this unfortunate man? Before I
+began, he seemed sunk and debilitated, incapable of any strenuous
+impression. When I mentioned the murder, I could perceive in him an
+involuntary shuddering, though it was counteracted partly by the
+feebleness of his frame, and partly by the energy of his mind. This was
+an allegation he expected, and he had endeavoured to prepare himself for
+it. But there was much of what I said, of which he had had no previous
+conception. When I expressed the anguish of my mind, he seemed at first
+startled and alarmed, lest this should be a new expedient to gain credit
+to my tale. His indignation against me was great for having retained all
+my resentment towards him, thus, as it might be, to the last hour of his
+existence. It was increased when he discovered me, as he supposed, using
+a pretence of liberality and sentiment to give new edge to my hostility.
+But as I went on he could no longer resist. He saw my sincerity; he was
+penetrated with my grief and compunction. He rose from his seat,
+supported by the attendants, and--to my infinite astonishment--threw
+himself into my arms!
+
+"Williams," said he, "you have conquered! I see too late the greatness
+and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault and not
+yours, that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my
+bosom, that I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious
+accusation you might have brought against me. But I see that the artless
+and manly story you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer.
+All my prospects are concluded. All that I most ardently desired, is for
+ever frustrated. I have spent a life of the basest cruelty, to cover one
+act of momentary vice, and to protect myself against the prejudices of
+my species. I stand now completely detected. My name will be consecrated
+to infamy, while your heroism, your patience, and your virtues will be
+for ever admired. You have inflicted on me the most fatal of all
+mischiefs; but I bless the hand that wounds me. And now,"--turning to
+the magistrate--"and now, do with me as you please. I am prepared to
+suffer all the vengeance of the law. You cannot inflict on me more than
+I deserve. You cannot hate me, more than I hate myself. I am the most
+execrable of all villains. I have for many years (I know not how long)
+dragged on a miserable existence in insupportable pain. I am at last, in
+recompense for all my labours and my crimes, dismissed from it with the
+disappointment of my only remaining hope, the destruction of that for
+the sake of which alone I consented to exist. It was worthy of such a
+life, that it should continue just long enough to witness this final
+overthrow. If however you wish to punish me, you must be speedy in your
+justice; for, as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I
+feel that death and infamy must seize me together."
+
+I record the praises bestowed on me by Falkland, not because I deserved
+them, but because they serve to aggravate the baseness of my cruelty. He
+survived this dreadful scene but three days. I have been his murderer.
+It was fit that he should praise my patience, who has fallen a victim,
+life and fame, to my precipitation! It would have been merciful in
+comparison, if I had planted a dagger in his heart. He would have
+thanked me for my kindness. But, atrocious, execrable wretch that I have
+been! I wantonly inflicted on him an anguish a thousand times worse than
+death. Meanwhile I endure the penalty of my crime. His figure is ever in
+imagination before me. Waking or sleeping, I still behold him. He seems
+mildly to expostulate with me for my unfeeling behaviour. I live the
+devoted victim of conscious reproach. Alas! I am the same Caleb Williams
+that, so short a time ago, boasted that, however great were the
+calamities I endured, I was still innocent.
+
+Such has been the result of a project I formed, for delivering myself
+from the evil that had so long attended me. I thought that, if Falkland
+were dead, I should return once again to all that makes life worth
+possessing. I thought that, if the guilt of Falkland were established,
+fortune and the world would smile upon my efforts. Both these events are
+accomplished; and it is now only that I am truly miserable.
+
+Why should my reflections perpetually centre upon myself?--self, an
+overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland,
+I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh
+nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear I will
+consecrate to thy ashes! A nobler spirit lived not among the sons of
+men. Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned
+with a god-like ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in
+the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil,
+from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a
+happier field and a purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate
+into usefulness, is thus concerted into henbane and deadly nightshade.
+
+Falkland! thou enteredst upon thy career with the purest and most
+laudable intentions. But thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy
+earliest youth; and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy
+return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
+madness. Soon, too soon, by this fatal coincidence, were the blooming
+hopes of thy youth blasted for ever. From that moment thou only
+continuedst to live to the phantom of departed honour. From that moment
+thy benevolence was, in a great part, turned into rankling jealousy and
+inexorable precaution. Year after year didst thou spend in this
+miserable project of imposture; and only at last continuedst to live,
+long enough to see, by my misjudging and abhorred intervention, thy
+closing hope disappointed, and thy death accompanied with the foulest
+disgrace!
+
+I began these memoirs with the idea of vindicating my character. I have
+now no character that I wish to vindicate: but I will finish them that
+thy story may be fully understood; and that, if those errors of thy life
+be known which thou so ardently desiredst to conceal, the world may at
+least not hear and repeat a half-told and mangled tale.
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+
+  <title>Caleb Williams, by William Godwin.</title>
+  <style type="text/css">
+  /*<![CDATA[*/
+  <!--
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+  .note, .footnote        {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+                         font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+  .poem                   {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%;
+                         text-align: left;}
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+  .poem p                 {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
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+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caleb Williams
+       Things As They Are
+
+Author: William Godwin
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2004 [EBook #11323]
+[This File last updated: October 19, 2010]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB WILLIAMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+  <h1>CALEB WILLIAMS</h1>
+
+  <h2>OR THINGS AS THEY ARE</h2>
+
+  <h2>BY WILLIAM GODWIN</h2>
+
+  <h3>WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST A. BAKER, M.A.</h3>
+
+  <h4>LONDON</h4>
+
+
+  <h3>1903</h3>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li><a href="#DRAMATIS_PERSONAE">DRAMATIS PERSONAE</a></li>
+    <li><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></li>
+    <li><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a></li>
+    <li><a href="#AUTHORS_LATEST_PREFACE">AUTHOR'S LATEST PREFACE.</a></li>
+    <li><a href="#PREFACE_TO_THE_FIRST_EDITION">PREFACE TO THE FIRST
+    EDITION.</a></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#VOLUME_THE_FIRST">VOLUME THE FIRST.</a>
+      <ul>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CI">Chapter I.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CII">Chapter II.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CIII">Chapter III.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CIV">Chapter IV.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CV">Chapter V.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CVI">Chapter VI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CVII">Chapter VII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CVIII">Chapter VIII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CIX">Chapter IX.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CX">Chapter X.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CXI">Chapter XI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V1_CXII">Chapter XII.</a></li>
+      </ul>
+    </li>
+
+    <li><a href="#VOLUME_THE_SECOND">VOLUME THE SECOND.</a>
+      <ul>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CI">Chapter I.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CII">Chapter II.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CIII">Chapter III.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CIV">Chapter IV.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CV">Chapter V.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CVI">Chapter VI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CVII">Chapter VII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CVIII">Chapter VIII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CIX">Chapter IX.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CX">Chapter X.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CXI">Chapter XI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CXII">Chapter XII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CXIII">Chapter XIII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V2_CXIV">Chapter XIV.</a></li>
+      </ul>
+    </li>
+
+    <li><a href="#VOLUME_THE_THIRD">VOLUME THE THIRD.</a>
+      <ul>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CI">Chapter I.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CII">Chapter II.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CIII">Chapter III.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CIV">Chapter IV.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CV">Chapter V.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CVI">Chapter VI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CVII">Chapter VII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CVIII">Chapter VIII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CIX">Chapter IX.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CX">Chapter X.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CXI">Chapter XI.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CXII">Chapter XII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CXIII">Chapter XIII.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CXIV">Chapter XIV.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#V3_CXV">Chapter XV.</a></li>
+        <li><a href="#POSTSCRIPT">Postscript.</a></li>
+      </ul>
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="DRAMATIS_PERSONAE" id="DRAMATIS_PERSONAE"></a>
+
+  <h2>DRAMATIS PERSONAE</h2>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>MR. FERDINANDO FALKLAND, a high-spirited and highly cultured gentleman,
+    a country squire in "a remote county of England."</p>
+
+    <p>CALEB WILLIAMS, a youth, his secretary, the discoverer of his secret,
+    and the supposed narrator of the consequent events.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. COLLINS, Falkland's steward and Caleb's friend.</p>
+
+    <p>THOMAS, a servant of Falkland's.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. FORESTER, Falkland's brother-in-law.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. BARNABAS TYRREL, a brutal and tyrannical squire.</p>
+
+    <p>MISS EMILY MELVILLE, his cousin and dependent, whom he cruelly
+    maltreats and does to death.</p>
+
+    <p>GRIMES, a brutal rustic, suborned by Tyrrel to abduct Miss
+    Melville.</p>
+
+    <p>DR. WILSON; MRS. HAMMOND, friends of Miss Melville.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. HAWKINS, farmer; YOUNG HAWKINS, his son, Victims of Tyrrel's
+    brutality, and wrongfully hanged as his murderers.</p>
+
+    <p>GINES, a robber and thief-taker, instrument of Falkland's vengeance
+    upon Caleb.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. RAYMOND, an "Arcadian" captain of robbers.</p>
+
+    <p>LARKINS, one of his band.</p>
+
+    <p>AN OLD HAG, housekeeper to the robbers.</p>
+
+    <p>A GAOLER.</p>
+
+    <p>MISS PEGGY, the gaoler's daughter.</p>
+
+    <p>MRS. MARNEY, a poor gentlewoman, Caleb's friend in distress.</p>
+
+    <p>MR. SPURREL, a friend who informs on Caleb.</p>
+
+    <p>MRS. DENISON, a cultivated lady with whom Caleb is for a while on
+    friendly terms.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>
+
+  <h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+  <p>The reputation of WILLIAM GODWIN as a social philosopher, and the merits
+  of his famous novel, "Caleb Williams," have been for more than a century the
+  subject of extreme divergencies of judgment among critics. "The first
+  systematic anarchist," as he is called by Professor Saintsbury, aroused
+  bitter contention with his writings during his own lifetime, and his
+  opponents have remained so prejudiced that even the staid bibliographer
+  Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a place where one would
+  think the most flagitious author safe from animosity, speaks of Godwin's
+  private life in terms that are little less than scurrilous. Over against
+  this persistent acrimony may be put the fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul,
+  his biographer, to represent the favourable judgment of our own time, whilst
+  I will venture to quote one remarkable passage that voices the opinions of
+  many among Godwin's most eminent contemporaries.</p>
+
+  <p>In "The Letters of Charles Lamb," Sir T.N. Talfourd says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "Indifferent altogether to the politics of the age, Lamb could not help
+    being struck with productions of its newborn energies so remarkable as the
+    works and the character of Godwin. He seemed to realise in himself what
+    Wordsworth long afterwards described, 'the central calm at the heart of
+    all agitation.' Through the medium of his mind the stormy convulsions of
+    society were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring wore
+    the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold the future
+    happiness of mankind, not with the inspiration of the poet, but with the
+    grave and passionless voice of the oracle. There was nothing better
+    calculated at once to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful
+    patriots than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on
+    the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his species. No one
+    would have suspected the author of those wild theories which startled the
+    wise and shocked the prudent in the calm, gentlemanly person who rarely
+    said anything above the most gentle commonplace, and took interest in
+    little beyond the whist-table."
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) was son and grandson of Dissenting ministers,
+  and was destined for the same profession. In theology he began as a
+  Calvinist, and for a while was tinctured with the austere doctrines of the
+  Sandemanians. But his religious views soon took an unorthodox turn, and in
+  1782, falling out with his congregation at Stowmarket, he came up to London
+  to earn his bread henceforward as a man of letters. In 1793 Godwin became
+  one of the most famous men in England by the publication of his "Political
+  Justice," a work that his biographer would place side by side with the
+  "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," the "Essay on Education," and "Emile," as
+  one of "the unseen levers which have moved the changes of the times."
+  Although the book came out at what we should call a "prohibitive price," it
+  had an enormous circulation, and brought its author in something like 1,000
+  guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb Williams," which was published the next
+  year, he illustrated in scenes from real life many of the principles
+  enunciated in his philosophical work. "Caleb Williams" went through a number
+  of editions, and was dramatized by Colman the younger under the title of
+  "The Iron Chest." It has now been out of print for many years. Godwin wrote
+  several other novels, but one alone is readable now, "St. Leon," which is
+  philosophical in idea and purpose, and contains some passages of singular
+  eloquence and beauty.</p>
+
+  <p>Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
+  Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was the
+  gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly fond of
+  whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many celebrated men
+  and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran were among his closest
+  male friends, while the story of his friendships with Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia
+  Opie, with the lady immortalized by Shelley as Maria Gisborne, and with
+  those literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee, authors of the "Canterbury
+  Tales," has a certain sentimental interest. Afterwards he became known to
+  Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. He married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His
+  later years were clouded by great embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he
+  put out of reach of the worst privations by the gift of a small sinecure,
+  that of yeoman usher of the Exchequer. He died in 1836.</p>
+
+  <p>Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by Godwin's
+  contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir T. N.
+  Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey and Allan
+  Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity. Hazlitt's opinion
+  is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "A masterpiece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
+    chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
+    finest possible manner in the character of Falkland; as in Caleb Williams
+    (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece), we see the
+    very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which these two
+    characters are contrived to relieve and set off each other has never been
+    surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception of the immortal
+    satire of Cervantes."
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "It has lived&mdash;though in comparative obscurity&mdash;for over a
+    century, and high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged for that
+    period raises a presumption that a book deserves the title of
+    classic."&mdash;<i>National Review, February</i>, 1902.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
+  advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more
+  particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
+  think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed to
+  illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes him."
+  He says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
+    some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this idea,
+    I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and, last
+    of all, the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+    adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension
+    of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
+    ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most fearful
+    alarm. This was the project of my third volume."
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
+  situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
+  pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined in
+  the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought. Falkland
+  is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by the social
+  system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of that system. The
+  reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the extraordinary contest between
+  Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the tragic situations that it involves.
+  Compared with these the denunciation of the social system is a matter of
+  secondary interest; but it was natural that the author of the "Political
+  Justice," with his mind preoccupied by the defects of the English social
+  system, should make those defects the, evil agencies of his plot. As the
+  essential conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which
+  everything is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to
+  the story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their
+  immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of the
+  law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and ruins
+  his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the occasion of
+  Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the abandonment of the
+  innocent Hawkinses to the gallows, is the consequence of what Godwin
+  expressly denounces, punishment for murder. "I conceived it to be in the
+  highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man qualified for the
+  most essential and extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act
+  which, whatever were its merits, could not be retrieved." Then a new element
+  is imported into the train of causation, Caleb's insatiable curiosity, and
+  the strife begins between these well-matched antagonists, the man of wealth
+  and station utilizing all the advantages granted him by the state of society
+  to crush his enemy. Godwin, then, was justified in declaring that his book
+  comprehended "a general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded
+  despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man." Such were the words of
+  the original preface, which was suppressed for a short time owing to the
+  fears caused by the trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft and other
+  revolutionists, with whom Godwin was in profound sympathy. Had he intended
+  "Caleb Williams," however, from its first inception, to be an imaginative
+  version of the "Political Justice," he would have had to invent a different
+  plan and different characters. The arguments of a sociological novel lack
+  cogency unless the characters are fairly representative of average mankind.
+  Godwin's principal actors are both, to say the least, exceptional. They are
+  lofty idealizations of certain virtues and powers of mind. Falkland is like
+  Jean Valjean, a superhuman creature; and, indeed, "Caleb Williams" may well
+  be compared on one side with "Les Misérables," for Victor Hugo's avowed
+  purpose, likewise, was the denunciation of social tyranny. But the
+  characteristics that would have weakened the implied theorem, had such been
+  the main object, are the very things that make the novel more powerful as
+  drama of a grandiose, spiritual kind. The high and concentrated imagination
+  that created such a being as Falkland, and the intensity of passion with
+  which Caleb's fatal energy of mind is sustained through that long,
+  despairing struggle, are of greater artistic value than the mechanical
+  symmetry by which morals are illustrated.</p>
+
+  <p>E. A. B.</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>
+
+  <h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+  <h3>BY THE AUTHOR.</h3>
+
+  <p>The following narrative is intended to answer a purpose more general and
+  important than immediately appears upon the face of it. The question now
+  afloat in the world respecting THINGS AS THEY ARE is the most interesting
+  that can be presented to the human mind. While one party pleads for
+  reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms the existing
+  constitution of society. It seemed as if something would be gained for the
+  decision of this question if that constitution were faithfully developed in
+  its practical effects. What is now presented to the public is no refined and
+  abstract speculation; it is a study and delineation of things passing in the
+  moral world. It is but of late that the inestimable importance of political
+  principles has been adequately apprehended. It is now known to philosophers
+  that the spirit and character of the Government intrudes itself into every
+  rank of society. But this is a truth highly worthy to be communicated to
+  persons whom books of philosophy and science are never likely to reach.
+  Accordingly, it was proposed, in the invention of the following work, to
+  comprehend, as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow,
+  a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which
+  man becomes the destroyer of man. If the author shall have taught a valuable
+  lesson, without subtracting from the interest and passion by which a
+  performance of this sort ought to be characterised, he will have reason to
+  congratulate himself upon the vehicle he has chosen.</p>
+
+  <p><i>May</i> 12, 1794.</p>
+
+  <p>This preface was withdrawn in the original edition, in compliance with
+  the alarms of booksellers. "Caleb Williams" made his first appearance in the
+  world in the same month in which the sanguinary plot broke out against the
+  liberties of Englishmen, which was happily terminated by the acquittal of
+  its first intended victims in the close of that year. Terror was the order
+  of the day; and it was feared that even the humble novelist might be shown
+  to be constructively a traitor.</p>
+
+  <p><i>October</i> 29, 1795.</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="AUTHORS_LATEST_PREFACE" id="AUTHORS_LATEST_PREFACE"></a>
+
+  <h2>AUTHOR'S LATEST PREFACE.</h2>
+
+  <p>LONDON, <i>November</i> 20, 1832.</p>
+
+  <p>"CALEB WILLIAMS" has always been regarded by the public with an unusual
+  degree of favour. The proprietor of "THE STANDARD NOVELS" has therefore
+  imagined that even an account of the concoction and mode of writing of the
+  work would be viewed with some interest.</p>
+
+  <p>I finished the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice," the first work
+  which may be considered as written by me in a certain degree in the maturity
+  of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in January, 1793; and
+  about the middle of the following month the book was published. It was my
+  fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my pen as the sole instrument
+  for supplying my current expenses. By the liberality of my bookseller, Mr.
+  George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I was enabled then, and for nearly ten
+  years before, to meet these expenses, while writing different things of
+  obscure note, the names of which, though innocent and in some degree useful,
+  I am rather inclined to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my
+  favourite work, and from that time gave up every other occupation that might
+  interfere with it. My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my
+  wants at a specified rate while the book was in the train of composition.
+  Finally, I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its
+  publication, and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to what
+  species of industry I should next devote myself.</p>
+
+  <p>I had always felt in myself some vocation towards the composition of a
+  narrative of fictitious adventure; and among the things of obscure note
+  which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature. It
+  is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should have
+  suggested itself on the present occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had
+  been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from boyhood,
+  I was perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What shall I do to be for ever known,</p>
+
+    <p>And make the age to come my own?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching my
+  object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very often
+  I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I felt ever and
+  anon impelled to repeat my effort.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced that
+  my object of building to myself a name would never be attained by merely
+  repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said, even though I
+  should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a more than usual
+  point and elegance. The world, I believed, would accept nothing from me with
+  distinguishing favour that did not bear upon the face of it the undoubted
+  stamp of originality. Having long ruminated upon the principles of Political
+  Justice, I persuaded myself that I could offer to the public, in a treatise
+  on this subject, things at once new, true, and important. In the progress of
+  the work I became more sanguine and confident. I talked over my ideas with a
+  few familiar friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous
+  encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some inconsiderable
+  degree, got before its publication, and a certain number of persons were
+  prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false modesty in me to say
+  that its acceptance, when published, did not nearly come up to everything
+  that could soberly have been expected by me. In consequence of this, the
+  tone of my mind, both during the period in which I was engaged in the work
+  and afterwards, acquired a certain elevation, and made me now unwilling to
+  stoop to what was insignificant.</p>
+
+  <p>I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
+  some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this idea, I
+  invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and last of all
+  the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of adventures of
+  flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being
+  overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity and
+  resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was
+  the project of my third volume. I was next called upon to conceive a
+  dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that
+  the pursuer should feel, incessantly to alarm and harass his victim, with an
+  inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace
+  and security. This I apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder,
+  to the investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+  unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a sufficient
+  motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might deprive him of
+  peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in his power. This
+  constituted the outline of my second volume.</p>
+
+  <p>The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account for
+  the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer should be
+  invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution that nothing
+  could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor
+  could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale be answered
+  without his appearing to have been originally endowed with a mighty store of
+  amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to the first act
+  of murder should be judged worthy of the deepest regret, and should be seen
+  in some measure to have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was
+  necessary to make him, so to speak, the tenant of an atmosphere of romance,
+  so that every reader should feel prompted almost to worship him for his high
+  qualities. Here were ample materials for a first volume.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention
+  from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of
+  adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of plot
+  would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and interest in a
+  tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the reader, which can
+  scarcely be generated with equal success in any other way.</p>
+
+  <p>I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down
+  hints for my story before I engaged seriously and methodically in its
+  composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded to
+  my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or three
+  sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these memorandums. They
+  were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly enough to secure a perfect
+  recollection of their meaning, within the time necessary for drawing out the
+  story at full, in short paragraphs of two, three, four, five, or six lines
+  each.</p>
+
+  <p>I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the
+  most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the
+  afflatus was upon me. I held it for a maxim that any portion that was
+  written when I was not fully in the vein told for considerably worse than
+  nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than industry
+  against the grain. Idleness was only time lost; and the next day, it may be,
+  was as promising as ever. It was merely a day perished from the calendar.
+  But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong spirit, constituted an
+  obstacle that it was next to impossible to correct and set right again. I
+  wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for a week or ten days not a line. Yet
+  all came to the same thing in the sequel. On an average, a volume of "Caleb
+  Williams" cost me four months, neither less nor more.</p>
+
+  <p>It must be admitted, however, that during the whole period, bating a few
+  intervals, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself a
+  thousand times, "I will write a tale that shall constitute an epoch in the
+  mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly
+  the same man that he was before."&mdash;I put these things down just as they
+  happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it will sound like
+  the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such perhaps ought to be the
+  state of mind of an author when he does his best. At any rate, I have said
+  nothing of my vainglorious impulse for nearly forty years.</p>
+
+  <p>When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume, I was
+  prevailed upon by the extreme importunity of an old and intimate friend to
+  allow him the perusal of my manuscript. On the second day he returned it
+  with a note to this purpose: "I return you your manuscript, because I
+  promised to do so. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should have
+  thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly prove the
+  grave of your literary fame."</p>
+
+  <p>I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly
+  critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety before I recovered
+  the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I felt no
+  implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But it was all I
+  had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed decision. It stood
+  in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and I did not feel
+  disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I tell that the second
+  and third judgment would be more favourable than the first? Then what would
+  have been the result? No; I had nothing for it but to wrap myself in my own
+  integrity. By dint of resolution I became invulnerable. I resolved to go on
+  to the end, trusting as I could to my own anticipations of the whole, and
+  bidding the world wait its time before it should be admitted to the
+  consult.</p>
+
+  <p>I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But
+  I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making the
+  hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted in all
+  my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the best
+  adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in which my
+  imagination revelled the most freely was the analysis of the private and
+  internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife
+  in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the
+  gradually accumulating impulses which led the personages I had to describe
+  primarily to adopt the particular way of proceeding in which they afterwards
+  embarked.</p>
+
+  <p>When I had determined on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my
+  method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to bear
+  on my subject. I never entertained the fear that in this way of proceeding I
+  should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors. I imagined that I
+  had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which would always preserve
+  me from plagiarism. I read other authors, that I might see what they had
+  done, or, more properly, that I might forcibly hold my mind and occupy my
+  thoughts in a particular train, I and my predecessors travelling in some
+  sense to the same goal, at the same time that I struck out a path of my own,
+  without ultimately heeding the direction they pursued, and disdaining to
+  inquire whether by any chance it for a few steps coincided or did not
+  coincide with mine.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, in the instance of "Caleb Williams," I read over a little old book,
+  entitled "The Adventures of Mademoiselle de St. Phale," a French Protestant
+  in the times of the fiercest persecution of the Huguenots, who fled through
+  France in the utmost terror, in the midst of eternal alarms and hair-breadth
+  escapes, having her quarters perpetually beaten up, and by scarcely any
+  chance finding a moment's interval of security. I turned over the pages of a
+  tremendous compilation, entitled "God's Revenge against Murder," where the
+  beam of the eye of Omniscience was represented as perpetually pursuing the
+  guilty, and laying open his most hidden retreats to the light of day. I was
+  extremely conversant with the "Newgate Calendar" and the "Lives of the
+  Pirates." In the meantime no works of fiction came amiss to me, provided
+  they were written with energy. The authors were still employed upon the same
+  mine as myself, however different was the vein they pursued: we were all of
+  us engaged in exploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing the
+  various rencontres and clashes that may occur between man and man in the
+  diversified scene of human life.</p>
+
+  <p>I rather amused myself with tracing a certain similitude between the
+  story of Caleb Williams and the tale of Bluebeard, than derived any hints
+  from that admirable specimen of the terrific. Falkland was my Bluebeard, who
+  had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which, if discovered, he might expect to
+  have all the world roused to revenge against him. Caleb Williams was the
+  wife who, in spite of warning, persisted in his attempts to discover the
+  forbidden secret; and, when he had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to
+  escape the consequences, as the wife of Bluebeard in washing the key of the
+  ensanguined chamber, who, as often as she cleared the stain of blood from
+  the one side, found it showing itself with frightful distinctness on the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of my third volume, I
+  found myself completely at a stand. I rested on my arms from the 2nd of
+  January, 1794, to the 1st of April following, without getting forward in the
+  smallest degree. It has ever been thus with me in works of any continuance.
+  The bow will not be for ever bent:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I endeavoured, however, to take my repose to myself in security, and not
+  to inflict a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the
+  meantime, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of that
+  month carried on my work with unabated speed to the end.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and mode
+  of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became sensible
+  that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and insipid parts does
+  the book contain! How terribly unequal does it appear to me! From time to
+  time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. And, when I had
+  done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their
+  vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in a
+  pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion. I was in
+  this respect greatly impressed with the confession of one of the most
+  accomplished readers and excellent critics that any author could have fallen
+  in with (the unfortunate Joseph Gerald). He told me that he had received my
+  book late one evening, and had read through the three volumes before he
+  closed his eyes. Thus, what had cost me twelve months' labour, ceaseless
+  heartaches and industry, now sinking in despair, and now roused and
+  sustained in unusual energy, he went over in a few hours, shut the book,
+  laid himself on his pillow, slept, and was refreshed, and cried,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I had thought to have said something here respecting the concoction of
+  "St. Leon" and "Fleetwood." But all that occurs to me on the subject seems
+  to be anticipated in the following</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="PREFACE_TO_THE_FIRST_EDITION" id=
+  "PREFACE_TO_THE_FIRST_EDITION"></a>
+
+  <h2>PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.</h2>
+
+  <p><i>February 14, 1805.</i></p>
+
+  <p>Yet another novel from the same pen, which has twice before claimed the
+  patience of the public in this form. The unequivocal indulgence which has
+  been extended to my two former attempts, renders me doubly solicitous not to
+  forfeit the kindness I have experienced.</p>
+
+  <p>One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: "not to repeat
+  myself." Caleb Williams was a story of very surprising and uncommon events,
+  but which were supposed to be entirely within the laws and established
+  course of nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit. The story of St.
+  Leon is of the miraculous class; and its design, to "mix human feelings and
+  passions with incredible situations, and thus render them impressive and
+  interesting."</p>
+
+  <p>Some of those fastidious readers&mdash;they may be classed among the best
+  friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously
+  considered&mdash;who are willing to discover those faults which do not offer
+  themselves to every eye, have remarked that both these tales are in a
+  vicious style of writing; that Horace has long ago decided that the story we
+  cannot believe we are by all the laws of criticism called upon to hate; and
+  that even the adventures of the honest secretary, who was first heard of ten
+  years ago, are so much out of the usual road that not one reader in a
+  million can ever fear they will happen to himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I have served you
+  with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, though I cannot say with any
+  sanguine hope of obtaining your approbation.</p>
+
+  <p>The following story consists of such adventures as for the most part have
+  occurred to at least one half of the Englishmen now existing who are of the
+  same rank of life as my hero. Most of them have been at college, and shared
+  in college excesses; most of them have afterward run a certain gauntlet of
+  dissipation; most have married, and, I am afraid, there are few of the
+  married tribe who have not at some time or other had certain small
+  misunderstandings with their wives.<a name="footnotetag1" id=
+  "footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> To be sure, they
+  have not all of them felt and acted under these trite adventures as my hero
+  does. In this little work the reader will scarcely find anything to "elevate
+  and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must consist in the liveliness
+  with which it brings things home to the imagination, and the reality it
+  gives to the scenes it pourtrays.</p>
+
+  <p>Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
+  novelty&mdash;a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
+  well-known line of Pope; it relates:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Things often done, but never yet described."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to
+  avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
+  Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents I
+  relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If I
+  have told them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books which
+  should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of what is
+  passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much, by this
+  choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It is so easy
+  to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty authors have done
+  before! If I had foreseen from the first all the difficulty of my project,
+  my courage would have failed me to undertake the execution of it.</p>
+
+  <p>Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the
+  favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation on
+  the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was not
+  always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is treated in the
+  "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of their assertion. The
+  answer to this remark is exceedingly simple. The production referred to in
+  it, the first foundation of its author's claim to public distinction and
+  favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain what new institutions in
+  political society might be found more conducive to general happiness than
+  those which at present prevail. In the course of this disquisition it was
+  enquired whether marriage, as it stands described and supported in the laws
+  of England, might not with advantage admit of certain modifications. Can
+  anything be more distinct than such a proposition on the one hand and a
+  recommendation on the other that each man for himself should supersede and
+  trample upon the institutions of the country in which he lives? A thousand
+  things might be found excellent and salutary, if brought into general
+  practice, which would in some cases appear ridiculous, and in others be
+  attended with tragical consequences, if prematurely acted upon by a solitary
+  individual. The author of "Political Justice," as appears again and again in
+  the pages of that work, is the last man in the world to recommend a pitiful
+  attempt, by scattered examples, to renovate the face of society, instead of
+  endeavouring, by discussion and reasoning, to effect a grand and
+  comprehensive improvement in the sentiments of its members.</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="VOLUME_THE_FIRST" id="VOLUME_THE_FIRST"></a>
+
+  <h2>VOLUME THE FIRST.</h2>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CI" id="V1_CI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+  <p>My life has for several years been a theatre of calamity. I have been a
+  mark for the vigilance of tyranny, and I could not escape. My fairest
+  prospects have been blasted. My enemy has shown himself inaccessible to
+  entreaties, and untired in persecution. My fame, as well as my happiness,
+  has become his victim. Every one, as far as my story has been known, has
+  refused to assist me in my distress, and has execrated my name. I have not
+  deserved this treatment. My own conscience witnesses in behalf of that
+  innocence, my pretensions to which are regarded in the world as incredible.
+  There is now, however, little hope that I shall escape from the toils that
+  universally beset me. I am incited to the penning of these memoirs only by a
+  desire to divert my mind from the deplorableness of my situation, and a
+  faint idea that posterity may by their means be induced to render me a
+  justice which my contemporaries refuse. My story will, at least, appear to
+  have that consistency which is seldom attendant but upon truth.</p>
+
+  <p>I was born of humble parents, in a remote county of England. Their
+  occupations were such as usually fall to the lot of peasants, and they had
+  no portion to give me, but an education free from the usual sources of
+  depravity, and the inheritance, long since lost by their unfortunate
+  progeny! of an honest fame. I was taught the rudiments of no science, except
+  reading, writing, and arithmetic. But I had an inquisitive mind, and
+  neglected no means of information from conversation or books. My improvement
+  was greater than my condition in life afforded room to expect.</p>
+
+  <p>There are other circumstances deserving to be mentioned as having
+  influenced the history of my future life. I was somewhat above the middle
+  stature. Without being particularly athletic in appearance, or large in my
+  dimensions, I was uncommonly vigorous and active. My joints were supple, and
+  I was formed to excel in youthful sports. The habits of my mind, however,
+  were to a certain degree at war with the dictates of boyish vanity. I had
+  considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of the village gallants, and
+  contrived to satisfy my love of praise with an unfrequent apparition at
+  their amusements. My excellence in these respects, however, gave a turn to
+  my meditations. I delighted to read of feats of activity, and was
+  particularly interested by tales in which corporeal ingenuity or strength
+  are the means resorted to for supplying resources and conquering
+  difficulties. I inured myself to mechanical pursuits, and devoted much of my
+  time to an endeavour after mechanical invention.</p>
+
+  <p>The spring of action which, perhaps more than any other, characterised
+  the whole train of my life, was curiosity. It was this that gave me my
+  mechanical turn; I was desirous of tracing the variety of effects which
+  might be produced from given causes. It was this that made me a sort of
+  natural philosopher; I could not rest till I had acquainted myself with the
+  solutions that had been invented for the phenomena of the universe. In fine,
+  this produced in me an invincible attachment to books of narrative and
+  romance. I panted for the unravelling of an adventure with an anxiety,
+  perhaps almost equal to that of the man whose future happiness or misery
+  depended on its issue. I read, I devoured compositions of this sort. They
+  took possession of my soul; and the effects they produced were frequently
+  discernible in my external appearance and my health. My curiosity, however,
+  was not entirely ignoble: village anecdotes and scandal had no charms for
+  me: my imagination must be excited; and when that was not done, my curiosity
+  was dormant.</p>
+
+  <p>The residence of my parents was within the manor of Ferdinando Falkland,
+  a country squire of considerable opulence. At an early age I attracted the
+  favourable notice of Mr. Collins, this gentleman's steward, who used to call
+  in occasionally at my father's. He observed the particulars of my progress
+  with approbation, and made a favourable report to his master of my industry
+  and genius.</p>
+
+  <p>In the summer of the year ----, Mr. Falkland visited his estate in our
+  county after an absence of several months. This was a period of misfortune
+  to me. I was then eighteen years of age. My father lay dead in our cottage.
+  I had lost my mother some years before. In this forlorn situation I was
+  surprised with a message from the squire, ordering me to repair to the
+  mansion-house the morning after my father's funeral.</p>
+
+  <p>Though I was not a stranger to books, I had no practical acquaintance
+  with men. I had never had occasion to address a person of this elevated
+  rank, and I felt no small uneasiness and awe on the present occasion. I
+  found Mr. Falkland a man of small stature, with an extreme delicacy of form
+  and appearance. In place of the hard-favoured and inflexible visages I had
+  been accustomed to observe, every muscle and petty line of his countenance
+  seemed to be in an inconceivable degree pregnant with meaning. His manner
+  was kind, attentive, and humane. His eye was full of animation; but there
+  was a grave and sad solemnity in his air, which, for want of experience, I
+  imagined was the inheritance of the great, and the instrument by which the
+  distance between them and their inferiors was maintained. His look bespoke
+  the unquietness of his mind, and frequently wandered with an expression of
+  disconsolateness and anxiety.</p>
+
+  <p>My reception was as gracious and encouraging as I could possibly desire.
+  Mr. Falkland questioned me respecting my learning, and my conceptions of men
+  and things, and listened to my answers with condescension and approbation.
+  This kindness soon restored to me a considerable part of my self-possession,
+  though I still felt restrained by the graceful, but unaltered dignity of his
+  carriage. When Mr. Falkland had satisfied his curiosity, he proceeded to
+  inform me that he was in want of a secretary, that I appeared to him
+  sufficiently qualified for that office, and that, if, in my present change
+  of situation, occasioned by the death of my father, I approved of the
+  employment, he would take me into his family.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt highly flattered by the proposal, and was warm in the expression
+  of my acknowledgments. I set eagerly about the disposal of the little
+  property my father had left, in which I was assisted by Mr. Collins. I had
+  not now a relation in the world, upon whose kindness and interposition I had
+  any direct claim. But, far from regarding this deserted situation with
+  terror, I formed golden visions of the station I was about to occupy. I
+  little suspected that the gaiety and lightness of heart I had hitherto
+  enjoyed were upon the point of leaving me for ever, and that the rest of my
+  days were devoted to misery and alarm.</p>
+
+  <p>My employment was easy and agreeable. It consisted partly in the
+  transcribing and arranging certain papers, and partly in writing from my
+  master's dictation letters of business, as well as sketches of literary
+  composition. Many of these latter consisted of an analytical survey of the
+  plans of different authors and conjectural speculations upon hints they
+  afforded, tending either to the detection of their errors, or the carrying
+  forward their discoveries. All of them bore powerful marks of a profound and
+  elegant mind, well stored with literature, and possessed of an uncommon
+  share of activity and discrimination.</p>
+
+  <p>My station was in that part of the house which was appropriated for the
+  reception of books, it being my duty to perform the functions of librarian
+  as well as secretary. Here my hours would have glided in tranquillity and
+  peace, had not my situation included in it circumstances totally different
+  from those which attended me in my father's cottage. In early life my mind
+  had been much engrossed by reading and reflection: my intercourse with my
+  fellow mortals was occasional and short. But, in my new residence, I was
+  excited by every motive of interest and novelty to study my master's
+  character; and I found in it an ample field for speculation and
+  conjecture.</p>
+
+  <p>His mode of living was in the utmost degree recluse and solitary. He had
+  no inclination to scenes of revelry and mirth. He avoided the busy haunts of
+  men; nor did he seem desirous to compensate for this privation by the
+  confidence of friendship. He appeared a total stranger to every thing which
+  usually bears the appellation of pleasure. His features were scarcely ever
+  relaxed into a smile, nor did that air which spoke the unhappiness of his
+  mind at any time forsake them: yet his manners were by no means such as
+  denoted moroseness and misanthropy. He was compassionate and considerate for
+  others, though the stateliness of his carriage and the reserve of his temper
+  were at no time interrupted. His appearance and general behaviour might have
+  strongly interested all persons in his favour; but the coldness of his
+  address, and the impenetrableness of his sentiments, seemed to forbid those
+  demonstrations of kindness to which one might otherwise have been
+  prompted.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the general appearance of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was
+  extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant gloom
+  had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical; but this
+  proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than an unfeeling disposition;
+  and when reflection recurred, he appeared willing that the weight of his
+  misfortune should fall wholly upon himself. Sometimes he entirely lost his
+  self-possession, and his behaviour was changed into frenzy: he would strike
+  his forehead, his brows became knit, his features distorted, and his teeth
+  ground one against the other. When he felt the approach of these symptoms, he
+  would suddenly rise, and, leaving the occupation, whatever it was, in which
+  he was engaged, hasten into a solitude upon which no person dared to
+  intrude.</p>
+
+  <p>It must not be supposed that the whole of what I am describing was
+  visible to the persons about him; nor, indeed, was I acquainted with it in
+  the extent here stated but after a considerable time, and in gradual
+  succession. With respect to the domestics in general, they saw but little of
+  their master. None of them, except myself, from the nature of my functions,
+  and Mr. Collins, from the antiquity of his service and the respectableness
+  of his character, approached Mr. Falkland, but at stated seasons and for a
+  very short interval. They knew him only by the benevolence of his actions,
+  and the principles of inflexible integrity by which he was ordinarily
+  guided; and though they would sometimes indulge their conjectures respecting
+  his singularities, they regarded him upon the whole with veneration, as a
+  being of a superior order.</p>
+
+  <p>One day, when I had been about three months in the service of my patron,
+  I went to a closet, or small apartment, which was separated from the library
+  by a narrow gallery that was lighted by a small window near the roof. I had
+  conceived that there was no person in the room, and intended only to put any
+  thing in order that I might find out of its place. As I opened the door, I
+  heard at the same instant a deep groan, expressive of intolerable anguish.
+  The sound of the door in opening seemed to alarm the person within; I heard
+  the lid of a trunk hastily shut, and the noise as of fastening a lock. I
+  conceived that Mr. Falkland was there, and was going instantly to retire;
+  but at that moment a voice, that seemed supernaturally tremendous,
+  exclaimed, Who is there? The voice was Mr. Falkland's. The sound of it
+  thrilled my very vitals. I endeavoured to answer, but my speech failed, and
+  being incapable of any other reply, I instinctively advanced within the door
+  into the room. Mr. Falkland was just risen from the floor upon which he had
+  been sitting or kneeling. His face betrayed strong symptoms of confusion.
+  With a violent effort, however, these symptoms vanished, and instantaneously
+  gave place to a countenance sparkling with rage.</p>
+
+  <p>"Villain!" cried he, "what has brought you here?" I hesitated a confused
+  and irresolute answer. "Wretch!" interrupted Mr. Falkland, with
+  uncontrollable impatience, "you want to ruin me. You set yourself as a spy
+  upon my actions; but bitterly shall you repent your insolence. Do you think
+  you shall watch my privacies with impunity?" I attempted to defend myself.
+  "Begone, devil!" rejoined he. "Quit the room, or I will trample you into
+  atoms." Saying this, he advanced towards me. But I was already sufficiently
+  terrified, and vanished in a moment. I heard the door shut after me with
+  violence; and thus ended this extraordinary scene.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw him again in the evening, and he was then tolerably composed. His
+  behaviour, which was always kind, was now doubly attentive and soothing. He
+  seemed to have something of which he wished to disburthen his mind, but to
+  want words in which to convey it. I looked at him with anxiety and
+  affection. He made two unsuccessful efforts, shook his head, and then
+  putting five guineas into my hand, pressed it in a manner that I could feel
+  proceeded from a mind pregnant with various emotions, though I could not
+  interpret them. Having done this, he seemed immediately to recollect
+  himself, and to take refuge in the usual distance and solemnity of his
+  manner.</p>
+
+  <p>I easily understood that secrecy was one of the things expected from me;
+  and, indeed, my mind was too much disposed to meditate upon what I had heard
+  and seen, to make it a topic of indiscriminate communication. Mr. Collins,
+  however, and myself happened to sup together that evening, which was but
+  seldom the case, his avocations obliging him to be much abroad. He could not
+  help observing an uncommon dejection and anxiety in my countenance, and
+  affectionately enquired into the reason. I endeavoured to evade his
+  questions, but my youth and ignorance of the world gave me little advantage
+  for that purpose. Beside this, I had been accustomed to view Mr. Collins
+  with considerable attachment, and I conceived from the nature of his
+  situation that there could be small impropriety in making him my confident
+  in the present instance. I repeated to him minutely every thing that had
+  passed, and concluded with a solemn declaration that, though treated with
+  caprice, I was not anxious for myself; no inconvenience or danger should
+  ever lead me to a pusillanimous behaviour; and I felt only for my patron,
+  who, with every advantage for happiness, and being in the highest degree
+  worthy of it, seemed destined to undergo unmerited distress.</p>
+
+  <p>In answer to my communication, Mr. Collins informed me that some
+  incidents, of a nature similar to that which I related, had fallen under his
+  own knowledge, and that from the whole he could not help concluding that our
+  unfortunate patron, was at times disordered in his intellects. "Alas!"
+  continued he, "it was not always thus! Ferdinando Falkland was once the
+  gayest of the gay. Not indeed of that frothy sort, who excite contempt
+  instead of admiration, and whose levity argues thoughtlessness rather than
+  felicity. His gaiety was always accompanied with dignity. It was the gaiety
+  of the hero and the scholar. It was chastened with reflection and
+  sensibility, and never lost sight either of good taste or humanity. Such as
+  it was however, it denoted a genuine hilarity of heart, imparted an
+  inconceivable brilliancy to his company and conversation, and rendered him
+  the perpetual delight of the diversified circles he then willingly
+  frequented. You see nothing of him, my dear Williams, but the ruin of that
+  Falkland who was courted by sages, and adored by the fair. His youth,
+  distinguished in its outset by the most unusual promise, is tarnished. His
+  sensibility is shrunk up and withered by events the most disgustful to his
+  feelings. His mind was fraught with all the rhapsodies of visionary honour;
+  and, in his sense, nothing but the grosser part, the mere shell of Falkland,
+  was capable of surviving the wound that his pride has sustained."</p>
+
+  <p>These reflections of my friend Collins strongly tended to inflame my
+  curiosity, and I requested him to enter into a more copious explanation.
+  With this request he readily complied; as conceiving that whatever delicacy
+  it became him to exercise in ordinary cases, it would be out of place in my
+  situation; and thinking it not improbable that Mr. Falkland, but for the
+  disturbance and inflammation of his mind, would be disposed to a similar
+  communication. I shall interweave with Mr. Collins's story various
+  information which I afterwards received from other quarters, that I may give
+  all possible perspicuity to the series of events. To avoid confusion in my
+  narrative, I shall drop the person of Collins, and assume to be myself the
+  historian of our patron. To the reader it may appear at first sight as if
+  this detail of the preceding life of Mr. Falkland were foreign to my
+  history. Alas! I know from bitter experience that it is otherwise. My heart
+  bleeds at the recollection of his misfortunes, as if they were my own. How
+  can it fail to do so? To his story the whole fortune of my life was linked:
+  because he was miserable, my happiness, my name, and my existence have been
+  irretrievably blasted.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CII" id="V1_CII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+  <p>Among the favourite authors of his early years were the heroic poets of
+  Italy. From them he imbibed the love of chivalry and romance. He had too
+  much good sense to regret the times of Charlemagne and Arthur. But, while
+  his imagination was purged by a certain infusion of philosophy, he conceived
+  that there was in the manners depicted by these celebrated poets something
+  to imitate, as well as something to avoid. He believed that nothing was so
+  well calculated to make men delicate, gallant, and humane, as a temper
+  perpetually alive to the sentiments of birth and honour. The opinions he
+  entertained upon these topics were illustrated in his conduct, which was
+  assiduously conformed to the model of heroism that his fancy suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>With these sentiments he set out upon his travels, at the age at which
+  the grand tour is usually made; and they were rather confirmed than shaken
+  by the adventures that befel him. By inclination he was led to make his
+  longest stay in Italy; and here he fell into company with several young
+  noblemen whose studies and principles were congenial to his own. By them he
+  was assiduously courted, and treated with the most distinguished applause.
+  They were delighted to meet with a foreigner, who had imbibed all the
+  peculiarities of the most liberal and honourable among themselves. Nor was
+  he less favoured and admired by the softer sex. Though his stature was
+  small, his person had an air of uncommon dignity. His dignity was then
+  heightened by certain additions which were afterwards obliterated,&mdash;an
+  expression of frankness, ingenuity, and unreserve, and a spirit of the most
+  ardent enthusiasm. Perhaps no Englishman was ever in an equal degree
+  idolised by the inhabitants of Italy.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not possible for him to have drunk so deeply of the fountain of
+  chivalry without being engaged occasionally in affairs of honour, all of
+  which were terminated in a manner that would not have disgraced the
+  chevalier Bayard himself. In Italy, the young men of rank divide themselves
+  into two classes,&mdash;those who adhere to the pure principles of ancient
+  gallantry, and those who, being actuated by the same acute sense of injury
+  and insult, accustom themselves to the employment of hired bravoes as their
+  instruments of vengeance. The whole difference, indeed, consists in the
+  precarious application of a generally received distinction. The most
+  generous Italian conceives that there are certain persons whom it would be
+  contamination for him to call into the open field. He nevertheless believes
+  that an indignity cannot be expiated but with blood, and is persuaded that
+  the life of a man is a trifling consideration, in comparison of the
+  indemnification to be made to his injured honour. There is, therefore,
+  scarcely any Italian that would upon some occasions scruple assassination.
+  Men of spirit among them, notwithstanding the prejudices of their education,
+  cannot fail to have a secret conviction of its baseness, and will be
+  desirous of extending as far as possible the cartel of honour. Real or
+  affected arrogance teaches others to regard almost the whole species as
+  their inferiors, and of consequence incites them to gratify their vengeance
+  without danger to their persons. Mr. Falkland met with some of these. But
+  his undaunted spirit and resolute temper gave him a decisive advantage even
+  in such perilous rencounters. One instance, among many, of his manner of
+  conducting himself among this proud and high-spirited people it may be
+  proper to relate. Mr. Falkland is the principal agent in my history; and Mr.
+  Falkland in the autumn and decay of his vigour, such as I found him, cannot
+  be completely understood without a knowledge of his previous character, as
+  it was in all the gloss of youth, yet unassailed by adversity, and unbroken
+  in upon by anguish or remorse.</p>
+
+  <p>At Rome he was received with particular distinction at the house of
+  marquis Pisani, who had an only daughter, the heir of his immense fortune,
+  and the admiration of all the young nobility of that metropolis. Lady
+  Lucretia Pisani was tall, of a dignified form, and uncommonly beautiful. She
+  was not deficient in amiable qualities, but her soul was haughty, and her
+  carriage not unfrequently contemptuous. Her pride was nourished by the
+  consciousness of her charms, by her elevated rank, and the universal
+  adoration she was accustomed to receive.</p>
+
+  <p>Among her numerous lovers count Malvesi was the individual most favoured
+  by her father, nor did his addresses seem indifferent to her. The count was
+  a man of considerable accomplishments, and of great integrity and
+  benevolence of disposition. But he was too ardent a lover, to be able always
+  to preserve the affability of his temper. The admirers whose addresses were
+  a source of gratification to his mistress, were a perpetual uneasiness to
+  him. Placing his whole happiness in the possession of this imperious beauty,
+  the most trifling circumstances were capable of alarming him for the
+  security of his pretensions. But most of all he was jealous of the English
+  cavalier. Marquis Pisani, who had spent many years in France, was by no
+  means partial to the suspicious precautions of Italian fathers, and indulged
+  his daughter in considerable freedoms. His house and his daughter, within
+  certain judicious restraints, were open to the resort of male visitants.
+  But, above all, Mr. Falkland, as a foreigner, and a person little likely to
+  form pretensions to the hand of Lucretia, was received upon a footing of
+  great familiarity. The lady herself, conscious of innocence, entertained no
+  scruple about trifles, and acted with the confidence and frankness of one
+  who is superior to suspicion.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland, after a residence of several weeks at Rome, proceeded to
+  Naples. Meanwhile certain incidents occurred that delayed the intended
+  nuptials of the heiress of Pisani. When he returned to Rome Count Malvesi
+  was absent. Lady Lucretia, who had been considerably amused before with the
+  conversation of Mr. Falkland, and who had an active and enquiring mind, had
+  conceived, in the interval between his first and second residence at Rome, a
+  desire to be acquainted with the English language, inspired by the lively
+  and ardent encomiums of our best authors that she had heard from their
+  countryman. She had provided herself with the usual materials for that
+  purpose, and had made some progress during his absence. But upon his return
+  she was forward to make use of the opportunity, which, if missed, might
+  never occur again with equal advantage, of reading select passages of our
+  poets with an Englishman of uncommon taste and capacity.</p>
+
+  <p>This proposal necessarily led to a more frequent intercourse. When Count
+  Malvesi returned, he found Mr. Falkland established almost as an inmate of
+  the Pisani palace. His mind could not fail to be struck with the
+  criticalness of the situation. He was perhaps secretly conscious that the
+  qualifications of the Englishman were superior to his own; and he trembled
+  for the progress that each party might have made in the affection of the
+  other, even before they were aware of the danger. He believed that the match
+  was in every respect such as to flatter the ambition of Mr. Falkland; and he
+  was stung even to madness by the idea of being deprived of the object
+  dearest to his heart by this tramontane upstart.</p>
+
+  <p>He had, however, sufficient discretion first to demand an explanation of
+  Lady Lucretia. She, in the gaiety of her heart, trifled with his anxiety.
+  His patience was already exhausted, and he proceeded in his expostulation,
+  in language that she was by no means prepared to endure with apathy. Lady
+  Lucretia had always been accustomed to deference and submission; and, having
+  got over something like terror, that was at first inspired by the imperious
+  manner in which she was now catechised, her next feeling was that of the
+  warmest resentment. She disdained to satisfy so insolent a questioner, and
+  even indulged herself in certain oblique hints calculated to strengthen his
+  suspicions. For some time she described his folly and presumption in terms
+  of the most ludicrous sarcasm, and then, suddenly changing her style, bid
+  him never let her see him more except upon the footing of the most distant
+  acquaintance, as she was determined never again to subject herself to so
+  unworthy a treatment. She was happy that he had at length disclosed to her
+  his true character, and would know how to profit of her present experience
+  to avoid a repetition of the same danger. All this passed in the full career
+  of passion on both sides, and Lady Lucretia had no time to reflect upon what
+  might be the consequence of thus exasperating her lover.</p>
+
+  <p>Count Malvesi left her in all the torments of frenzy. He believed that
+  this was a premeditated scene, to find a pretence for breaking off an
+  engagement that was already all but concluded; or, rather, his mind was
+  racked with a thousand conjectures: he alternately thought that the
+  injustice might be hers or his own; and he quarrelled with Lady Lucretia,
+  himself, and the whole world. In this temper he hastened to the hotel of the
+  English cavalier. The season of expostulation was now over, and he found
+  himself irresistibly impelled to justify his precipitation with the lady, by
+  taking for granted that the subject of his suspicion was beyond the reach of
+  doubt.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland was at home. The first words of the count were an abrupt
+  accusation of duplicity in the affair of Lady Lucretia, and a challenge. The
+  Englishman had an unaffected esteem for Malvesi, who was in reality a man of
+  considerable merit, and who had been one of Mr. Falkland's earliest Italian
+  acquaintance, they having originally met at Milan. But more than this, the
+  possible consequence of a duel in the present instance burst upon his mind.
+  He had the warmest admiration for Lady Lucretia, though his feelings were
+  not those of a lover; and he knew that, however her haughtiness might
+  endeavour to disguise it, she was impressed with a tender regard for Count
+  Malvesi. He could not bear to think that any misconduct of his should
+  interrupt the prospects of so deserving a pair. Guided by these sentiments,
+  he endeavoured to expostulate with the Italian. But his attempts were
+  ineffectual. His antagonist was drunk with choler, and would not listen to a
+  word that tended to check the impetuosity of his thoughts. He traversed the
+  room with perturbed steps, and even foamed with anguish and fury. Mr.
+  Falkland, finding that all was to no purpose, told the count, that, if he
+  would return to-morrow at the same hour, he would attend him to any scene of
+  action he should think proper to select.</p>
+
+  <p>From Count Malvesi Mr. Falkland immediately proceeded to the palace of
+  Pisani. Here he found considerable difficulty in appeasing the indignation
+  of Lady Lucretia. His ideas of honour would by no means allow him to win her
+  to his purpose by disclosing the cartel he had received; otherwise that
+  disclosure would immediately have operated as the strongest motive that
+  could have been offered to this disdainful beauty. But, though she dreaded
+  such an event, the vague apprehension was not strong enough to induce her
+  instantly to surrender all the stateliness of her resentment. Mr. Falkland,
+  however, drew so interesting a picture of the disturbance of Count Malvesi's
+  mind, and accounted in so flattering a manner for the abruptness of his
+  conduct, that this, together with the arguments he adduced, completed the
+  conquest of Lady Lucretia's resentment. Having thus far accomplished his
+  purpose, he proceeded to disclose to her every thing that had passed.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day Count Malvesi appeared, punctual to his appointment, at Mr.
+  Falkland's hotel. Mr. Falkland came to the door to receive him, but
+  requested him to enter the house for a moment, as he had still an affair of
+  three minutes to despatch. They proceeded to a parlour. Here Mr. Falkland
+  left him, and presently returned leading in Lady Lucretia herself, adorned
+  in all her charms, and those charms heightened upon the present occasion by
+  a consciousness of the spirited and generous condescension she was exerting.
+  Mr. Falkland led her up to the astonished count; and she, gently laying her
+  hand upon the arm of her lover, exclaimed with the most attractive grace,
+  "Will you allow me to retract the precipitate haughtiness into which I was
+  betrayed?" The enraptured count, scarcely able to believe his senses, threw
+  himself upon his knees before her, and stammered out his reply, signifying
+  that the precipitation had been all his own, that he only had any
+  forgiveness to demand, and, though they might pardon, he could never pardon
+  himself for the sacrilege he had committed against her and this god-like
+  Englishman. As soon as the first tumults of his joy had subsided, Mr.
+  Falkland addressed him thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Count Malvesi, I feel the utmost pleasure in having thus by peaceful
+  means disarmed your resentment, and effected your happiness. But I must
+  confess, you put me to a severe trial. My temper is not less impetuous and
+  fiery than your own, and it is not at all times that I should have been thus
+  able to subdue it. But I considered that in reality the original blame was
+  mine. Though your suspicion was groundless, it was not absurd. We have been
+  trifling too much in the face of danger. I ought not, under the present
+  weakness of our nature and forms of society, to have been so assiduous in my
+  attendance upon this enchanting woman. It would have been little wonder, if,
+  having so many opportunities, and playing the preceptor with her as I have
+  done, I had been entangled before I was aware, and harboured a wish which I
+  might not afterwards have had courage to subdue. I owed you an atonement for
+  this imprudence.</p>
+
+  <p>"But the laws of honour are in the utmost degree rigid; and there was
+  reason to fear that, however anxious I were to be your friend, I might be
+  obliged to be your murderer. Fortunately, the reputation of my courage is
+  sufficiently established, not to expose it to any impeachment by my
+  declining your present defiance. It was lucky, however, that in our
+  interview of yesterday you found me alone, and that accident by that means
+  threw the management of the affair into my disposal. If the transaction
+  should become known, the conclusion will now become known along with the
+  provocation, and I am satisfied. But if the challenge had been public, the
+  proofs I had formerly given of courage would not have excused my present
+  moderation; and, though desirous to have avoided the combat, it would not
+  have been in my power. Let us hence each of us learn to avoid haste and
+  indiscretion, the consequences of which may be inexpiable but with blood;
+  and may Heaven bless you in a consort of whom I deem you every way
+  worthy!"</p>
+
+  <p>I have already said that this was by no means the only instance, in the
+  course of his travels, in which Mr. Falkland acquitted himself in the most
+  brilliant manner as a man of gallantry and virtue. He continued abroad
+  during several years, every one of which brought some fresh accession to the
+  estimation in which he was held, as well as to his own impatience of stain
+  or dishonour. At length he thought proper to return to England, with the
+  intention of spending the rest of his days at the residence of his
+  ancestors.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CIII" id="V1_CIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+  <p>From the moment he entered upon the execution of this purpose, dictated
+  as it probably was by an unaffected principle of duty, his misfortunes took
+  their commencement. All I have further to state of his history is the
+  uninterrupted persecution of a malignant destiny, a series of adventures
+  that seemed to take their rise in various accidents, but pointing to one
+  termination. Him they overwhelmed with an anguish he was of all others least
+  qualified to bear; and these waters of bitterness, extending beyond him,
+  poured their deadly venom upon others. I being myself the most unfortunate
+  of their victims.</p>
+
+  <p>The person in whom these calamities originated was Mr. Falkland's nearest
+  neighbour, a man of estate equal to his own, by name Barnabas Tyrrel. This
+  man one might at first have supposed of all others least qualified from
+  instruction, or inclined by the habits of his life, to disturb the
+  enjoyments of a mind so richly endowed as that of Mr. Falkland. Mr. Tyrrel
+  might have passed for a true model of the English squire. He was early left
+  under the tuition of his mother, a woman of narrow capacity, and who had no
+  other child. The only remaining member of the family it may be necessary to
+  notice was Miss Emily Melville, the orphan daughter of Mr. Tyrrel's paternal
+  aunt; who now resided in the family mansion, and was wholly dependent on the
+  benevolence of its proprietors.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Tyrrel appeared to think that there was nothing in the world so
+  precious as her hopeful Barnabas. Every thing must give way to his
+  accommodation and advantage; every one must yield the most servile obedience
+  to his commands. He must not be teased or restricted by any forms of
+  instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the arts of writing
+  and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he was muscular and
+  sturdy; and, confined to the <i>ruelle</i> of his mother, he made much such
+  a figure as the whelp-lion that a barbarian might have given for a lap-dog
+  to his mistress.</p>
+
+  <p>But he soon broke loose from these trammels, and formed an acquaintance
+  with the groom and the game-keeper. Under their instruction he proved as
+  ready a scholar, as he had been indocile and restive to the pedant who held
+  the office of his tutor. It was now evident that his small proficiency in
+  literature was by no means to be ascribed to want of capacity. He discovered
+  no contemptible sagacity and quick-wittedness in the science of horse-flesh,
+  and was eminently expert in the arts of shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor
+  did he confine himself to these, but added the theory and practice of
+  boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff. These exercises added ten-fold
+  robustness and vigour to his former qualifications.</p>
+
+  <p>His stature, when grown, was somewhat more than five feet ten inches in
+  height, and his form might have been selected by a painter as a model for
+  that hero of antiquity, whose prowess consisted in felling an ox with his
+  fist, and devouring him at a meal. Conscious of his advantage in this
+  respect, he was insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors, and
+  insolent to his equals. The activity of his mind being diverted from the
+  genuine field of utility and distinction, showed itself in the rude tricks
+  of an overgrown lubber. Here, as in all his other qualifications, he rose
+  above his competitors; and if it had been possible to overlook the callous
+  and unrelenting disposition which they manifested, one could scarcely have
+  denied his applause to the invention these freaks displayed, and the rough,
+  sarcastic wit with which they were accompanied.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel was by no means inclined to permit these extraordinary merits
+  to rust in oblivion. There was a weekly assembly at the nearest market-town,
+  the resort of all the rural gentry. Here he had hitherto figured to the
+  greatest advantage as grand master of the <i>coterie</i>, no one having an
+  equal share of opulence, and the majority, though still pretending to the
+  rank of gentry, greatly his inferior in this essential article. The young
+  men in this circle looked up to this insolent bashaw with timid respect,
+  conscious of the comparative eminence that unquestionably belonged to the
+  powers of his mind; and he well knew how to maintain his rank with an
+  inflexible hand. Frequently indeed he relaxed his features, and assumed a
+  temporary appearance of affableness and familiarity; but they found by
+  experience, that if any one, encouraged by his condescension, forgot the
+  deference which Mr. Tyrrel considered as his due, he was soon taught to
+  repent his presumption. It was a tiger that thought proper to toy with a
+  mouse, the little animal every moment in danger of being crushed by the
+  fangs of his ferocious associate. As Mr. Tyrrel had considerable copiousness
+  of speech, and a rich, but undisciplined imagination, he was always sure of
+  an audience. His neighbours crowded round, and joined in the ready laugh,
+  partly from obsequiousness, and partly from unfeigned admiration. It
+  frequently happened, however; that, in the midst of his good humour, a
+  characteristic refinement of tyranny would suggest itself to his mind. When
+  his subjects, encouraged by his familiarity, had discarded their precaution,
+  the wayward fit would seize him, a sudden cloud overspread his brow, his
+  voice transform from the pleasant to the terrible, and a quarrel of a straw
+  immediately ensue with the first man whose face he did not like. The
+  pleasure that resulted to others from the exuberant sallies of his
+  imagination was, therefore, not unalloyed with sudden qualms of apprehension
+  and terror. It may be believed that this despotism did not gain its final
+  ascendancy without being contested in the outset. But all opposition was
+  quelled with a high hand by this rural Antaeus. By the ascendancy of his
+  fortune, and his character among his neighbours, he always reduced his
+  adversary to the necessity of encountering him at his own weapons, and did
+  not dismiss him without making him feel his presumption through every joint
+  in his frame. The tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently
+  endured, had not his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of
+  that authority which his rank and prowess originally obtained.</p>
+
+  <p>The situation of our squire with the fair was still more enviable than
+  that which he maintained among persons of his own sex. Every mother taught
+  her daughter to consider the hand of Mr. Tyrrel as the highest object of her
+  ambition. Every daughter regarded his athletic form and his acknowledged
+  prowess with a favourable eye. A form eminently athletic is, perhaps, always
+  well proportioned; and one of the qualifications that women are early taught
+  to look for in the male sex, is that of a protector. As no man was
+  adventurous enough to contest his superiority, so scarcely any woman in this
+  provincial circle would have scrupled to prefer his addresses to those of
+  any other admirer. His boisterous wit had peculiar charms for them; and
+  there was no spectacle more flattering to their vanity, than seeing this
+  Hercules exchange his club for a distaff. It was pleasing to them to
+  consider, that the fangs of this wild beast, the very idea of which inspired
+  trepidation into the boldest hearts, might be played with by them with the
+  utmost security.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the rival that Fortune, in her caprice, had reserved for the
+  accomplished Falkland. This untamed, though not undiscerning brute, was
+  found capable of destroying the prospects of a man the most eminently
+  qualified to enjoy and to communicate happiness. The feud that sprung up
+  between them was nourished by concurring circumstances, till it attained a
+  magnitude difficult to be paralleled; and, because they regarded each other
+  with a deadly hatred, I have become an object of misery and abhorrence.</p>
+
+  <p>The arrival of Mr. Falkland gave an alarming shock to the authority of
+  Mr. Tyrrel in the village assembly and in all scenes of indiscriminate
+  resort. His disposition by no means inclined him to withhold himself from
+  scenes of fashionable amusement; and he and his competitor were like two
+  stars fated never to appear at once above the horizon. The advantages Mr.
+  Falkland possessed in the comparison are palpable; and had it been
+  otherwise, the subjects of his rural neighbour were sufficiently disposed to
+  revolt against his merciless dominion. They had hitherto submitted from
+  fear, and not from love; and, if they had not rebelled, it was only for want
+  of a leader. Even the ladies regarded Mr. Falkland with particular
+  complacence. His polished manners were peculiarly in harmony with feminine
+  delicacy. The sallies of his wit were far beyond those of Mr. Tyrrel in
+  variety and vigour; in addition to which they had the advantage of having
+  their spontaneous exuberance guided and restrained by the sagacity of a
+  cultivated mind. The graces of his person were enhanced by the elegance of
+  his deportment; and the benevolence and liberality of his temper were upon
+  all occasions conspicuous. It was common indeed to Mr. Tyrrel, together with
+  Mr. Falkland, to be little accessible to sentiments of awkwardness and
+  confusion. But for this Mr. Tyrrel was indebted to a self-satisfied
+  effrontery, and a boisterous and over-bearing elocution, by which he was
+  accustomed to discomfit his assailants; while Mr. Falkland, with great
+  ingenuity and candour of mind, was enabled by his extensive knowledge of the
+  world, and acquaintance with his own resources, to perceive almost
+  instantaneously the proceeding it most became him to adopt.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival with uneasiness and
+  aversion. He often commented upon it to his particular confidents as a thing
+  altogether inconceivable. Mr. Falkland he described as an animal that was
+  beneath contempt. Diminutive and dwarfish in his form, he wanted to set up a
+  new standard of human nature, adapted to his miserable condition. He wished
+  to persuade people that the human species were made to be nailed to a chair,
+  and to pore over books. He would have them exchange those robust exercises
+  which make us joyous in the performance, and vigorous in the consequences,
+  for the wise labour of scratching our heads for a rhyme and counting our
+  fingers for a verse. Monkeys were as good men as these. A nation of such
+  animals would have no chance with a single regiment of the old English
+  votaries of beef and pudding. He never saw any thing come of learning but to
+  make people foppish and impertinent; and a sensible man would not wish a
+  worse calamity to the enemies of his nation, than to see them run mad after
+  such pernicious absurdities. It was impossible that people could seriously
+  feel any liking for such a ridiculous piece of goods as this outlandish
+  foreign-made Englishman. But he knew very well how it was: it was a
+  miserable piece of mummery that was played only in spite of him. But God for
+  ever blast his soul, if he were not bitterly revenged upon them all!</p>
+
+  <p>If such were the sentiments of Mr. Tyrrel, his patience found ample
+  exercise in the language which was held by the rest of his neighbours on the
+  same subject. While he saw nothing in Mr. Falkland but matter of contempt,
+  they appeared to be never weary of recounting his praises. Such dignity,
+  such affability, so perpetual an attention to the happiness of others, such
+  delicacy of sentiment and expression! Learned without ostentation, refined
+  without foppery, elegant without effeminacy! Perpetually anxious to prevent
+  his superiority from being painfully felt, it was so much the more certainly
+  felt to be real, and excited congratulation instead of envy in the
+  spectator. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the revolution of
+  sentiment in this rural vicinity belongs to one of the most obvious features
+  of the human mind. The rudest exhibition of art is at first admired, till a
+  nobler is presented, and we are taught to wonder at the facility with which
+  before we had been satisfied. Mr. Tyrrel thought there would be no end to
+  the commendation; and expected when their common acquaintance would fall
+  down and adore the intruder. The most inadvertent expression of applause
+  inflicted upon him the torment of demons. He writhed with agony, his
+  features became distorted, and his looks inspired terror. Such suffering
+  would probably have soured the kindest temper; what must have been its
+  effect upon Mr. Tyrrel's, always fierce, unrelenting, and abrupt?</p>
+
+  <p>The advantages of Mr. Falkland seemed by no means to diminish with their
+  novelty. Every new sufferer from Mr. Tyrrel's tyranny immediately went over
+  to the standard of his adversary. The ladies, though treated by their rustic
+  swain with more gentleness than the men, were occasionally exposed to his
+  capriciousness and insolence. They could not help remarking the contrast
+  between these two leaders in the fields of chivalry, the one of whom paid no
+  attention to any one's pleasure but his own, while the other seemed all
+  good-humour and benevolence. It was in vain that Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured to
+  restrain the ruggedness of his character. His motive was impatience, his
+  thoughts were gloomy, and his courtship was like the pawings of an elephant.
+  It appeared as if his temper had been more human while he indulged in its
+  free bent, than now that he sullenly endeavoured to put fetters upon its
+  excesses.</p>
+
+  <p>Among the ladies of the village-assembly already mentioned, there was
+  none that seemed to engage more of the kindness of Mr. Tyrrel than Miss
+  Hardingham. She was also one of the few that had not yet gone over to the
+  enemy, either because she really preferred the gentleman who was her oldest
+  acquaintance, or that she conceived from calculation this conduct best
+  adapted to insure her success in a husband. One day, however, she thought
+  proper, probably only by way of experiment, to show Mr. Tyrrel that she
+  could engage in hostilities, if he should at any time give her sufficient
+  provocation. She so adjusted her manoeuvres as to be engaged by Mr. Falkland
+  as his partner for the dance of the evening, though without the smallest
+  intention on the part of that gentleman (who was unpardonably deficient in
+  the sciences of anecdote and match-making) of giving offence to his country
+  neighbour. Though the manners of Mr. Falkland were condescending and
+  attentive, his hours of retirement were principally occupied in
+  contemplations too dignified for scandal, and too large for the altercations
+  of a vestry, or the politics of an election-borough.</p>
+
+  <p>A short time before the dances began, Mr. Tyrrel went up to his fair
+  inamorata, and entered into some trifling conversation with her to fill up
+  the time, as intending in a few minutes to lead her forward to the field. He
+  had accustomed himself to neglect the ceremony of soliciting beforehand a
+  promise in his favour, as not supposing it possible that any one would dare
+  dispute his behests; and, had it been otherwise, he would have thought the
+  formality unnecessary in this case, his general preference to Miss
+  Hardingham being notorious.</p>
+
+  <p>While he was thus engaged, Mr. Falkland came up. Mr. Tyrrel always
+  regarded him with aversion and loathing. Mr. Falkland, however, slided in a
+  graceful and unaffected manner into the conversation already begun; and the
+  animated ingenuousness of his manner was such, as might for the time have
+  disarmed the devil of his malice. Mr. Tyrrel probably conceived that his
+  accosting Miss Hardingham was an accidental piece of general ceremony, and
+  expected every moment when he would withdraw to another part of the
+  room.</p>
+
+  <p>The company now began to be in motion for the dance, and Mr. Falkland
+  signified as much to Miss Hardingham. "Sir," interrupted Mr. Tyrrel
+  abruptly, "that lady is my partner."&mdash;"I believe not, sir: that lady
+  has been so obliging as to accept my invitation."&mdash;"I tell you, sir,
+  no. Sir, I have an interest in that lady's affections; and I will suffer no
+  man to intrude upon my claims."&mdash;"The lady's affections are not the
+  subject of the present question."&mdash;"Sir, it is to no purpose to parley.
+  Make room, sir!"&mdash;Mr. Falkland gently repelled his antagonist. "Mr.
+  Tyrrel!" returned he, with some firmness, "let us have no altercation in
+  this business: the master of the ceremonies is the proper person to decide
+  in a difference of this sort, if we cannot adjust it: we can neither of us
+  intend to exhibit our valour before the ladies, and shall therefore
+  cheerfully submit to his verdict."&mdash;"Damn me, sir, if I
+  understand&mdash;" "Softly, Mr. Tyrrel; I intended you no offence. But, sir,
+  no man shall prevent my asserting that to which I have once acquired a
+  claim!"</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland uttered these words with the most unruffled temper in the
+  world. The tone in which he spoke had acquired elevation, but neither
+  roughness nor impatience. There was a fascination in his manner that made
+  the ferociousness of his antagonist subside into impotence. Miss Hardingham
+  had begun to repent of her experiment, but her alarm was speedily quieted by
+  the dignified composure of her new partner. Mr. Tyrrel walked away without
+  answering a word. He muttered curses as he went, which the laws of honour
+  did not oblige Mr. Falkland to overhear, and which indeed it would have been
+  no easy task to have overheard with accuracy. Mr. Tyrrel would not, perhaps,
+  have so easily given up his point, had not his own good sense presently
+  taught him, that, however eager he might be for revenge, this was not the
+  ground he should desire to occupy. But, though he could not openly resent
+  this rebellion against his authority, he brooded over it in the recesses of
+  a malignant mind; and it was evident enough that he was accumulating
+  materials for a bitter account, to which he trusted his adversary should one
+  day be brought.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CIV" id="V1_CIV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+  <p>This was only one out of innumerable instances, that every day seemed to
+  multiply, of petty mortifications which Mr. Tyrrel was destined to endure on
+  the part of Mr. Falkland. In all of them Mr. Falkland conducted himself with
+  such unaffected propriety, as perpetually to add to the stock of his
+  reputation. The more Mr. Tyrrel struggled with his misfortune, the more
+  conspicuous and inveterate it became. A thousand times he cursed his stars,
+  which took, as he apprehended, a malicious pleasure in making Mr. Falkland,
+  at every turn, the instrument of his humiliation. Smarting under a
+  succession of untoward events, he appeared to feel, in the most exquisite
+  manner, the distinctions paid to his adversary, even in those points in
+  which he had not the slightest pretensions. An instance of this now
+  occurred.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare, a poet whose works have done immortal honour to the country
+  that produced him, had lately retired, after a life spent in the sublimest
+  efforts of genius, to enjoy the produce of his economy, and the reputation
+  he had acquired, in this very neighbourhood. Such an inmate was looked up to
+  by the country gentlemen with a degree of adoration. They felt a conscious
+  pride in recollecting that the boast of England was a native of their
+  vicinity; and they were by no means deficient in gratitude when they saw
+  him, who had left them an adventurer, return into the midst of them, in the
+  close of his days, crowned with honours and opulence. The reader is
+  acquainted with his works: he has, probably, dwelt upon them with transport;
+  and I need not remind him of their excellence: but he is, perhaps, a
+  stranger to his personal qualifications; he does not know that his
+  productions were scarcely more admirable than his conversation. In company
+  he seemed to be the only person ignorant of the greatness of his fame. To
+  the world his writings will long remain a kind of specimen of what the human
+  mind is capable of performing; but no man perceived their defects so acutely
+  as he, or saw so distinctly how much yet remained to be effected: he alone
+  appeared to look upon his works with superiority and indifference. One of
+  the features that most eminently distinguished him was a perpetual suavity
+  of manners, a comprehensiveness of mind, that regarded the errors of others
+  without a particle of resentment, and made it impossible for any one to be
+  his enemy. He pointed out to men their mistakes with frankness and
+  unreserve, his remonstrances produced astonishment and conviction, but
+  without uneasiness, in the party to whom they were addressed: they felt the
+  instrument that was employed to correct their irregularities, but it never
+  mangled what it was intended to heal. Such were the moral qualities that
+  distinguished him among his acquaintance. The intellectual accomplishments
+  he exhibited were, principally, a tranquil and mild enthusiasm, and a
+  richness of conception which dictated spontaneously to his tongue, and
+  flowed with so much ease, that it was only by retrospect you could be made
+  aware of the amazing variety of ideas that had been presented.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare certainly found few men in this remote situation that were
+  capable of participating in his ideas and amusements. It has been among the
+  weaknesses of great men to fly to solitude, and converse with woods and
+  groves, rather than with a circle of strong and comprehensive minds like
+  their own. From the moment of Mr. Falkland's arrival in the neighbourhood,
+  Mr. Clare distinguished him in the most flattering manner. To so penetrating
+  a genius there was no need of long experience and patient observation to
+  discover the merits and defects of any character that presented itself. The
+  materials of his judgment had long since been accumulated; and, at the close
+  of so illustrious a life, he might almost be said to see through nature at a
+  glance. What wonder that he took some interest in a mind in a certain degree
+  congenial with his own? But to Mr. Tyrrel's diseased imagination, every
+  distinction bestowed on his neighbour seemed to be expressly intended as an
+  insult to him. On the other hand, Mr. Clare, though gentle and benevolent in
+  his remonstrances to a degree that made the taking offence impossible, was
+  by no means parsimonious of praise, or slow to make use of the deference
+  that was paid him, for the purpose of procuring justice to merit.</p>
+
+  <p>It happened at one of those public meetings at which Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+  Tyrrel were present, that the conversation, in one of the most numerous sets
+  into which the company was broken, turned upon the poetical talents of the
+  former. A lady, who was present, and was distinguished for the acuteness of
+  her understanding, said, she had been favoured with a sight of a poem he had
+  just written, entitled <i>An Ode to the Genius of Chivalry</i>, which
+  appeared to her of exquisite merit. The curiosity of the company was
+  immediately excited, and the lady added, she had a copy in her pocket, which
+  was much at their service, provided its being thus produced would not be
+  disagreeable to the author. The whole circle immediately entreated Mr.
+  Falkland to comply with their wishes, and Mr. Clare, who was one of the
+  company, enforced their petition. Nothing gave this gentleman so much
+  pleasure as to have an opportunity of witnessing and doing justice to the
+  exhibition of intellectual excellence. Mr. Falkland had no false modesty or
+  affectation, and therefore readily yielded his consent.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel accidentally sat at the extremity of this circle. It cannot be
+  supposed that the turn the conversation had taken was by any means agreeable
+  to him. He appeared to wish to withdraw himself, but there seemed to be some
+  unknown power that, as it were by enchantment, retained him in his place,
+  and made him consent to drink to the dregs the bitter potion which envy had
+  prepared for him.</p>
+
+  <p>The poem was read to the rest of the company by Mr. Clare, whose
+  elocution was scarcely inferior to his other accomplishments. Simplicity,
+  discrimination, and energy constantly attended him in the act of reading,
+  and it is not easy to conceive a more refined delight than fell to the lot
+  of those who had the good fortune to be his auditors. The beauties of Mr.
+  Falkland's poem were accordingly exhibited with every advantage. The
+  successive passions of the author were communicated to the hearer. What was
+  impetuous, and what was solemn, were delivered with a responsive feeling,
+  and a flowing and unlaboured tone. The pictures conjured up by the creative
+  fancy of the poet were placed full to view, at one time overwhelming the
+  soul with superstitious awe, and at another transporting it with luxuriant
+  beauty.</p>
+
+  <p>The character of the hearers upon this occasion has already been
+  described. They were, for the most part, plain, unlettered, and of little
+  refinement. Poetry in general they read, when read at all, from the mere
+  force of imitation, and with few sensations of pleasure; but this poem had a
+  peculiar vein of glowing inspiration. This very poem would probably have
+  been seen by many of them with little effect; but the accents of Mr. Clare
+  carried it home to the heart. He ended: and, as the countenances of his
+  auditors had before sympathised with the passions of the composition, so now
+  they emulated each other in declaring their approbation. Their sensations
+  were of a sort to which they were little accustomed. One spoke, and another
+  followed by a sort of uncontrollable impulse; and the rude and broken manner
+  of their commendations rendered them the more singular and remarkable. But
+  what was least to be endured was the behaviour of Mr. Clare. He returned the
+  manuscript to the lady from whom he had received it, and then, addressing
+  Mr. Falkland, said with emphasis and animation, "Ha! this is as it should
+  be. It is of the right stamp. I have seen too many hard essays strained from
+  the labour of a pedant, and pastoral ditties distressed in lack of a
+  meaning. They are such as you sir, that we want. Do not forget, however,
+  that the Muse was not given to add refinements to idleness, but for the
+  highest and most invaluable purposes. Act up to the magnitude of your
+  destiny."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment after, Mr. Clare quitted his seat, and with Mr. Falkland and two
+  or three more withdrew. As soon as they were gone, Mr. Tyrrel edged further
+  into the circle. He had sat silent so long that he seemed ready to burst
+  with gall and indignation. "Mighty pretty verses!" said he, half talking to
+  himself, and not addressing any particular person: "why, ay, the verses are
+  well enough. Damnation! I should like to know what a ship-load of such stuff
+  is good for."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, surely," said the lady who had introduced Mr. Falkland's Ode on the
+  present occasion, "you must allow that poetry is an agreeable and elegant
+  amusement."</p>
+
+  <p>"Elegant, quotha!--Why, look at this Falkland! A puny bit of a thing! In
+  the devil's name, madam, do you think he would write poetry if he could do
+  any thing better?"</p>
+
+  <p>The conversation did not stop here. The lady expostulated. Several other
+  persons, fresh from the sensation they had felt, contributed their share.
+  Mr. Tyrrel grew more violent in his invectives, and found ease in uttering
+  them. The persons who were able in any degree to check his vehemence were
+  withdrawn. One speaker after another shrunk back into silence, too timid to
+  oppose, or too indolent to contend with, the fierceness of his passion. He
+  found the appearance of his old ascendancy; but he felt its deceitfulness
+  and uncertainty, and was gloomily dissatisfied.</p>
+
+  <p>In his return from this assembly he was accompanied by a young man, whom
+  similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents, and
+  whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have thought that
+  Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the dialogue he had just
+  been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his recollection the anguish
+  he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What a pitiful scoundrel is here
+  to make all this bustle about! But women and fools always will be fools;
+  there is no help for that! Those that set them on have most to answer for;
+  and most of all, Mr. Clare. He is a man that ought to know something of the
+  world, and past being duped by gewgaws and tinsel. He seemed, too, to have
+  some notion of things: I should not have suspected him of hallooing to a cry
+  of mongrels without honesty or reason. But the world is all alike. Those
+  that seem better than their neighbours, are only more artful. They mean the
+  same thing, though they take a different road. He deceived me for a while,
+  but it is all out now. They are the makers of the mischief. Fools might
+  blunder, but they would not persist, if people that ought to set them right
+  did not encourage them to go wrong."</p>
+
+  <p>A few days after this adventure Mr. Tyrrel was surprised to receive a
+  visit from Mr. Falkland. Mr. Falkland proceeded, without ceremony, to
+  explain the motive of his coming.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, "I am come to have an amicable explanation with
+  you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Explanation! What is my offence?"</p>
+
+  <p>"None in the world, sir; and for that reason I conceive this the fittest
+  time to come to a right understanding."</p>
+
+  <p>"You are in a devil of a hurry, sir. Are you clear that this haste will
+  not mar, instead of make an understanding?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I am, sir. I have great faith in the purity of my intentions,
+  and I will not doubt, when you perceive the view with which I come, that you
+  will willingly co-operate with it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mayhap, Mr. Falkland, we may not agree about that. One man thinks one
+  way, and another man thinks another. Mayhap I do not think I have any great
+  reason to be pleased with you already."</p>
+
+  <p>"It may be so. I cannot, however, charge myself with having given you
+  reason to be displeased."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, you have no right to put me out of humour with myself. If you
+  come to play upon me, and try what sort of a fellow you shall have to deal
+  with, damn me if you shall have any reason to hug yourself upon the
+  experiment."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing, sir, is more easy for us than to quarrel. If you desire that,
+  there is no fear that you will find opportunities."</p>
+
+  <p>"Damn me, sir, if I do not believe you are come to bully me."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel! sir&mdash;have a care!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Of what, sir!--Do you threaten me? Damn my soul! who are you? what do
+  you come here for?"</p>
+
+  <p>The fieriness of Mr. Tyrrel brought Mr. Falkland to his recollection.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am wrong," said he. "I confess it. I came for purposes of peace. With
+  that view I have taken the liberty to visit you. Whatever therefore might be
+  my feelings upon another occasion, I am bound to suppress them now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Ho!--Well, sir: and what have you further to offer?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel," proceeded Mr. Falkland, "you will readily imagine that the
+  cause that brought me was not a slight one. I would not have troubled you
+  with a visit, but for important reasons. My coming is a pledge how deeply I am
+  myself impressed with what I have to communicate.</p>
+
+  <p>"We are in a critical situation. We are upon the brink of a whirlpool
+  which, if once it get hold of us, will render all further deliberation
+  impotent. An unfortunate jealousy seems to have insinuated itself between
+  us, which I would willingly remove; and I come to ask your assistance. We
+  are both of us nice of temper; we are both apt to kindle, and warm of
+  resentment. Precaution in this stage can be dishonourable to neither; the
+  time may come when we shall wish we had employed it, and find it too late.
+  Why should we be enemies? Our tastes are different; our pursuits need not
+  interfere. We both of us amply possess the means of happiness; We may be
+  respected by all, and spend a long life of tranquillity and enjoyment. Will
+  it be wise in us to exchange this prospect for the fruits of strife? A
+  strife between persons with our peculiarities and our weaknesses, includes
+  consequences that I shudder to think of. I fear, sir, that it is pregnant
+  with death at least to one of us, and with misfortune and remorse to the
+  survivor."</p>
+
+  <p>"Upon my soul, you are a strange man! Why trouble me with your prophecies
+  and forebodings?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Because it is necessary to your happiness! Because it becomes me to
+  tell you of our danger now, rather than wait till my character will allow
+  this tranquillity no longer!</p>
+
+  <p>"By quarrelling we shall but imitate the great mass of mankind, who could
+  easily quarrel in our place. Let us do better. Let us show that we have the
+  magnanimity to contemn petty misunderstandings. By thus judging we shall do
+  ourselves most substantial honour. By a contrary conduct we shall merely
+  present a comedy for the amusement of our acquaintance."</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you think so? there may be something in that. Damn me, if I consent
+  to be the jest of any man living."</p>
+
+  <p>"You are right, Mr. Tyrrel. Let us each act in the manner best calculated
+  to excite respect. We neither of us wish to change roads; let us each suffer
+  the other to pursue his own track unmolested. Be this our compact; and by
+  mutual forbearance let us preserve mutual peace."</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this, Mr. Falkland offered his hand to Mr. Tyrrel in token of
+  fellowship. But the gesture was too significant. The wayward rustic, who
+  seemed to have been somewhat impressed by what had preceded, taken as he now
+  was by surprise, shrunk back. Mr. Falkland was again ready to take fire upon
+  this new slight, but he checked himself.</p>
+
+  <p>"All this is very unaccountable," cried Mr. Tyrrel. "What the devil can
+  have made you so forward, if you had not some sly purpose to answer, by
+  which I am to be overreached?"</p>
+
+  <p>"My purpose," replied Mr. Falkland, "is a manly and an honest purpose.
+  Why should you refuse a proposition dictated by reason, and an equal regard
+  to the interest of each?"</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel had had an opportunity for pause, and fell back into his
+  habitual character.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, in all this I must own there is some frankness. Now I will
+  return you like for like. It is no matter how I came by it, my temper is
+  rough, and will not be controlled. Mayhap you may think it is a weakness,
+  but I do not desire to see it altered. Till you came, I found myself very
+  well: I liked my neighbours, and my neighbours humoured me. But now the case
+  is entirely altered; and, as long as I cannot stir abroad without meeting
+  with some mortification in which you are directly or remotely concerned, I
+  am determined to hate you. Now, sir, if you will only go out of the county
+  or the kingdom, to the devil if you please, so as I may never hear of you
+  any more, I will promise never to quarrel with you as long as I live. Your
+  rhymes and your rebusses, your quirks and your conundrums, may then be every
+  thing that is grand for what I care."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel, be reasonable! Might not I as well desire you to leave the
+  county, as you desire me? I come to you, not as to a master, but an equal.
+  In the society of men we must have something to endure, as well as to enjoy.
+  No man must think that the world was made for him. Let us take things as we
+  find them; and accommodate ourselves as we can to unavoidable
+  circumstances."</p>
+
+  <p>"True, sir; all this is fine talking. But I return to my text: we are as
+  God made us. I am neither a philosopher nor a poet, to set out upon a
+  wild-goose chase of making myself a different man from what you find me. As
+  for consequences, what must be must be. As we brew we must bake. And so, do
+  you see? I shall not trouble myself about what is to be, but stand up to it
+  with a stout heart when it comes. Only this I can tell you, that as long as
+  I find you thrust into my dish every day I shall hate you as bad as senna
+  and valerian. And damn me, if I do not think I hate you the more for coming
+  to-day in this pragmatical way, when nobody sent for you, on purpose to show
+  how much wiser you are than all the world besides."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel, I have done. I foresaw consequences, and came as a friend. I
+  had hoped that, by mutual explanation, we should have come to a better
+  understanding. I am disappointed; but, perhaps, when you coolly reflect on
+  what has passed, you will give me credit for my intentions, and think that
+  my proposal was not an unreasonable one."</p>
+
+  <p>Having said this, Mr. Falkland departed. Through the interview he, no
+  doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the
+  warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he was
+  most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that was
+  calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he suppressed his
+  passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent. The interview was
+  prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it unquestionably served to widen
+  the breach it was intended to heal.</p>
+
+  <p>For Mr. Tyrrel, he had recourse to his old expedient, and unburthened the
+  tumult of his thoughts to his confidential friend. "This," cried he, "is a
+  new artifice of the fellow, to prove his imagined superiority. We knew well
+  enough that he had the gift of the gab. To be sure, if the world were to be
+  governed by words, he would be in the right box. Oh, yes, he had it all
+  hollow! But what signifies prating? Business must be done in another guess
+  way than that. I wonder what possessed me that I did not kick him! But that
+  is all to come. This is only a new debt added to the score, which he shall
+  one day richly pay. This Falkland haunts me like a demon. I cannot wake but
+  I think of him. I cannot sleep but I see him. He poisons all my pleasures. I
+  should be glad to see him torn with tenter-hooks, and to grind his
+  heart-strings with my teeth. I shall know no joy till I see him ruined.
+  There may be some things right about him; but he is my perpetual torment.
+  The thought of him hangs like a dead weight upon my heart, and I have a
+  right to shake it off. Does he think I will feel all that I endure for
+  nothing?"</p>
+
+  <p>In spite of the acerbity of Mr. Tyrrel's feelings, it is probable,
+  however, he did some justice to his rival. He regarded him, indeed, with
+  added dislike; but he no longer regarded him as a despicable foe. He avoided
+  his encounter; he forbore to treat him with random hostility; he seemed to
+  lie in wait for his victim, and to collect his venom for a mortal
+  assault.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CV" id="V1_CV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+  <p>It was not long after that a malignant distemper broke out in the
+  neighbourhood, which proved fatal to many of the inhabitants, and was of
+  unexampled rapidity in its effects. One of the first persons that was seized
+  with it was Mr. Clare. It may be conceived, what grief and alarm this
+  incident spread through the vicinity. Mr. Clare was considered by them as
+  something more than mortal. The equanimity of his behaviour, his unassuming
+  carriage, his exuberant benevolence and goodness of heart, joined with his
+  talents, his inoffensive wit, and the comprehensiveness of his intelligence,
+  made him the idol of all that knew him. In the scene of his rural retreat,
+  at least, he had no enemy. All mourned the danger that now threatened him.
+  He appeared to have had the prospect of long life, and of going down to his
+  grave full of years and of honour. Perhaps these appearances were deceitful.
+  Perhaps the intellectual efforts he had made, which were occasionally more
+  sudden, violent, and unintermitted, than a strict regard to health would
+  have dictated, had laid the seed of future disease. But a sanguine observer
+  would infallibly have predicted, that his temperate habits, activity of
+  mind, and unabated cheerfulness, would be able even to keep death at bay for
+  a time, and baffle the attacks of distemper, provided their approach were
+  not uncommonly rapid and violent. The general affliction, therefore, was
+  doubly pungent upon the present occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>But no one was so much affected as Mr. Falkland. Perhaps no man so well
+  understood the value of the life that was now at stake. He immediately
+  hastened to the spot; but he found some difficulty in gaining admission. Mr.
+  Clare, aware of the infectious nature of his disease, had given directions
+  that as few persons as possible should approach him. Mr. Falkland sent up
+  his name. He was told that he was included in the general orders. He was
+  not, however, of a temper to be easily repulsed; he persisted with
+  obstinacy, and at length carried his point, being only reminded in the first
+  instance to employ those precautions which experience has proved most
+  effectual for counteracting infection.</p>
+
+  <p>He found Mr. Clare in his bed-chamber, but not in bed. He was sitting in
+  his night-gown at a bureau near the window. His appearance was composed and
+  cheerful, but death was in his countenance. "I had a great inclination,
+  Falkland," said he, "not to have suffered you to come in; and yet there is
+  not a person in the world it could give me more pleasure to see. But, upon
+  second thoughts, I believe there are few people that could run into a danger
+  of this kind with a better prospect of escaping. In your case, at least, the
+  garrison will not, I trust, be taken through the treachery of the commander.
+  I cannot tell how it is that I, who can preach wisdom to you, have myself
+  been caught. But do not be discouraged by my example. I had no notice of my
+  danger, or I would have acquitted myself better."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland having once established himself in the apartment of his
+  friend, would upon no terms consent to retire. Mr. Clare considered that
+  there was perhaps less danger in this choice, than in the frequent change
+  from the extremes of a pure to a tainted air, and desisted from
+  expostulation. "Falkland," said he, "when you came in, I had just finished
+  making my will. I was not pleased with what I had formerly drawn up upon
+  that subject, and I did not choose in my present situation to call in an
+  attorney. In fact, it would be strange if a man of sense, with pure and
+  direct intentions, should not be able to perform such a function for
+  himself."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare continued to act in the same easy and disengaged manner as in
+  perfect health. To judge from the cheerfulness of his tone and the firmness
+  of his manner, the thought would never once have occurred that he was dying.
+  He walked, he reasoned, he jested, in a way that argued the most perfect
+  self-possession. But his appearance changed perceptibly for the worse every
+  quarter of an hour. Mr. Falkland kept his eye perpetually fixed upon him,
+  with mingled sentiments of anxiety and admiration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Falkland," said he, after having appeared for a short period absorbed in
+  thought, "I feel that I am dying. This is a strange distemper of mine.
+  Yesterday I seemed in perfect health, and to-morrow I shall be an insensible
+  corpse. How curious is the line that separates life and death to mortal men!
+  To be at one moment active, gay, penetrating, with stores of knowledge at
+  one's command, capable of delighting, instructing, and animating mankind,
+  and the next, lifeless and loathsome, an incumbrance upon the face of the
+  earth! Such is the history of many men, and such will be mine.</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel as if I had yet much to do in the world; but it will not be. I
+  must be contented with what is past. It is in vain that I muster all my
+  spirits to my heart. The enemy is too mighty and too merciless for me; he
+  will not give me time so much as to breathe. These things are not yet at
+  least in our power: they are parts of a great series that is perpetually
+  flowing. The general welfare, the great business of the universe, will go
+  on, though I bear no further share in promoting it. That task is reserved
+  for younger strengths, for you, Falkland, and such as you. We should be
+  contemptible indeed if the prospect of human improvement did not yield us a
+  pure and perfect delight, independently of the question of our existing to
+  partake of it. Mankind would have little to envy to future ages, if they had
+  all enjoyed a serenity as perfect as mine has been for the latter half of my
+  existence."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare sat up through the whole day, indulging himself in easy and
+  cheerful exertions, which were perhaps better calculated to refresh and
+  invigorate the frame, than if he had sought repose in its direct form. Now
+  and then he was visited with a sudden pang; but it was no sooner felt, than
+  he seemed to rise above it, and smiled at the impotence of these attacks.
+  They might destroy him, but they could not disturb. Three or four times he
+  was bedewed with profuse sweats; and these again were succeeded by an
+  extreme dryness and burning heat of the skin. He was next covered with small
+  livid spots: symptoms of shivering followed, but these he drove away with a
+  determined resolution. He then became tranquil and composed, and, after some
+  time, decided to go to bed, it being already night. "Falkland," said he,
+  pressing his hand, "the task of dying is not so difficult as some imagine.
+  When one looks back from the brink of it, one wonders that so total a
+  subversion can take place at so easy a price."</p>
+
+  <p>He had now been some time in bed, and, as every thing was still, Mr.
+  Falkland hoped that he slept; but in that he was mistaken. Presently Mr.
+  Clare threw back the curtain, and looked in the countenance of his friend.
+  "I cannot sleep," said he. "No, if I could sleep, it would be the same thing
+  as to recover; and I am destined to have the worst in this battle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Falkland, I have been thinking about you. I do not know any one whose
+  future usefulness I contemplate with greater hope. Take care of yourself. Do
+  not let the world be defrauded of your virtues. I am acquainted with your
+  weakness as well as your strength. You have an impetuosity, and an
+  impatience of imagined dishonour, that, if once set wrong, may make you as
+  eminently mischievous as you will otherwise be useful. Think seriously of
+  exterminating this error!</p>
+
+  <p>"But if I cannot, in the brief expostulation my present situation will
+  allow, produce this desirable change in you, there is at least one thing I
+  can do. I can put you upon your guard against a mischief I foresee to be
+  imminent. Beware of Mr. Tyrrel. Do not commit the mistake of despising him
+  as an unequal opponent. Petty causes may produce great mischiefs. Mr. Tyrrel
+  is boisterous, rugged, and unfeeling; and you are too passionate, too
+  acutely sensible of injury. It would be truly to be lamented, if a man so
+  inferior, so utterly unworthy to be compared with you, should be capable of
+  changing your whole history into misery and guilt. I have a painful
+  presentiment upon my heart, as if something dreadful would reach you from
+  that quarter. Think of this. I exact no promise from you. I would not
+  shackle you with the fetters of superstition; I would have you governed by
+  justice and reason."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland was deeply affected with this expostulation. His sense of
+  the generous attention of Mr. Clare at such a moment, was so great as almost
+  to deprive him of utterance. He spoke in short sentences, and with visible
+  effort. "I will behave better," replied he. "Never fear me! Your admonitions
+  shall not be thrown away upon me."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare adverted to another subject. "I have made you my executor; you
+  will not refuse me this last office of friendship. It is but a short time
+  that I have had the happiness of knowing you; but in that short time I have
+  examined you well, and seen you thoroughly. Do not disappoint the sanguine
+  hope I have entertained!</p>
+
+  <p>"I have left some legacies. My former connections, while I lived amidst
+  the busy haunts of men, as many of them as were intimate, are all of them
+  dear to me. I have not had time to summon them about me upon the present
+  occasion, nor did I desire it. The remembrances of me will, I hope, answer a
+  better purpose than such as are usually thought of on similar
+  occasions."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Clare, having thus unburthened his mind, spoke no more for several
+  hours. Towards morning Mr. Falkland quietly withdrew the curtain, and looked
+  at the dying man. His eyes were open, and were now gently turned towards his
+  young friend. His countenance was sunk, and of a death-like appearance. "I
+  hope you are better," said Falkland in a half whisper, as if afraid of
+  disturbing him. Mr. Clare drew his hand from the bed-clothes, and stretched
+  it forward; Mr. Falkland advanced, and took hold of it. "Much better," said
+  Mr. Clare, in a voice inward and hardly articulate; "the struggle is now
+  over; I have finished my part; farewell! remember!" These were his last
+  words. He lived still a few hours; his lips were sometimes seen to move; he
+  expired without a groan.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland had witnessed the scene with much anxiety. His hopes of a
+  favourable crisis, and his fear of disturbing the last moments of his
+  friend, had held him dumb. For the last half hour he had stood up, with his
+  eyes intently fixed upon Mr. Clare. He witnessed the last gasp, the last
+  little convulsive motion of the frame. He continued to look; he sometimes
+  imagined that he saw life renewed. At length he could deceive himself no
+  longer, and exclaimed with a distracted accent, "And is this all?" He would
+  have thrown himself upon the body of his friend; the attendants withheld,
+  and would have forced him into another apartment. But he struggled from
+  them, and hung fondly over the bed. "Is this the end of genius, virtue, and
+  excellence? Is the luminary of the world thus for ever gone? Oh, yesterday!
+  yesterday! Clare, why could not I have died in your stead? Dreadful moment!
+  Irreparable loss! Lost in the very maturity and vigour of his mind! Cut off
+  from a usefulness ten thousand times greater than any he had already
+  exhibited! Oh, his was a mind to have instructed sages, and guided the moral
+  world! This is all we have left of him! The eloquence of those lips is gone!
+  The incessant activity of that heart is still! The best and wisest of men is
+  gone, and the world is insensible of its loss!"</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel heard the intelligence of Mr. Clare's death with emotion, but
+  of a different kind. He avowed that he had not forgiven him his partial
+  attachment to Mr. Falkland, and therefore could not recall his remembrance
+  with kindness. But if he could have overlooked his past injustice,
+  sufficient care, it seems, was taken to keep alive his resentment.
+  "Falkland, forsooth, attended him on his death-bed, as if nobody else were
+  worthy of his confidential communications." But what was worst of all was
+  this executorship. "In every thing this pragmatical rascal throws me behind.
+  Contemptible wretch, that has nothing of the man about him! Must he
+  perpetually trample upon his betters? Is every body incapable of saying what
+  kind of stuff a man is made of? caught with mere outside? choosing the
+  flimsy before the substantial? And upon his death-bed too? [Mr. Tyrrel with
+  his uncultivated brutality mixed, as usually happens, certain rude notions
+  of religion.] Sure the sense of his situation might have shamed him. Poor
+  wretch! his soul has a great deal to answer for. He has made my pillow
+  uneasy; and, whatever may be the consequences, it is he we have to thank for
+  them."</p>
+
+  <p>The death of Mr. Clare removed the person who could most effectually have
+  moderated the animosities of the contending parties, and took away the great
+  operative check upon the excesses of Mr. Tyrrel. This rustic tyrant had been
+  held in involuntary restraint by the intellectual ascendancy of his
+  celebrated neighbour: and, notwithstanding the general ferocity of his
+  temper, he did not appear till lately to have entertained a hatred against
+  him. In the short time that had elapsed from the period in which Mr. Clare
+  had fixed his residence in the neighbourhood, to that of the arrival of Mr.
+  Falkland from the Continent, the conduct of Mr. Tyrrel had even shown tokens
+  of improvement. He would indeed have been better satisfied not to have had
+  even this intruder into a circle where he had been accustomed to reign. But
+  with Mr. Clare he could have no rivalship; the venerable character of Mr.
+  Clare disposed him to submission: this great man seemed to have survived all
+  the acrimony of contention, and all the jealous subtleties of a mistaken
+  honour.</p>
+
+  <p>The effects of Mr. Clare's suavity however, so far as related to Mr.
+  Tyrrel, had been in a certain degree suspended by considerations of
+  rivalship between this gentleman and Mr. Falkland. And, now that the
+  influence of Mr. Clare's presence and virtues was entirely removed, Mr.
+  Tyrrel's temper broke out into more criminal excesses than ever. The added
+  gloom which Mr. Falkland's neighbourhood inspired, overflowed upon all his
+  connections; and the new examples of his sullenness and tyranny which every
+  day afforded, reflected back upon this accumulated and portentous feud.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CVI" id="V1_CVI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+  <p>The consequences of all this speedily manifested themselves. The very
+  next incident in the story was in some degree decisive of the catastrophe.
+  Hitherto I have spoken only of preliminary matters, seemingly unconnected
+  with each other, though leading to that state of mind in both parties which
+  had such fatal effects. But all that remains is rapid and tremendous. The
+  death-dealing mischief advances with an accelerated motion, appearing to
+  defy human wisdom and strength to obstruct its operation.</p>
+
+  <p>The vices of Mr. Tyrrel, in their present state of augmentation, were
+  peculiarly exercised upon his domestics and dependents. But the principal
+  sufferer was the young lady mentioned on a former occasion, the orphan
+  daughter of his father's sister. Miss Melville's mother had married
+  imprudently, or rather unfortunately, against the consent of her relations,
+  all of whom had agreed to withdraw their countenance from her in consequence
+  of that precipitate step. Her husband had turned out to be no better than an
+  adventurer; had spent her fortune, which in consequence of the
+  irreconcilableness of her family was less than he expected, and had broken
+  her heart. Her infant daughter was left without any resource. In this
+  situation the representations of the people with whom she happened to be
+  placed, prevailed upon Mrs. Tyrrel, the mother of the squire, to receive her
+  into her family. In equity, perhaps, she was entitled to that portion of
+  fortune which her mother had forfeited by her imprudence, and which had gone
+  to swell the property of the male representative. But this idea had never
+  entered into the conceptions of either mother or son. Mrs. Tyrrel conceived
+  that she performed an act of the most exalted benevolence in admitting Miss
+  Emily into a sort of equivocal situation, which was neither precisely that
+  of a domestic, nor yet marked with the treatment that might seem due to one
+  of the family.</p>
+
+  <p>She had not, however, at first been sensible of all the mortifications
+  that might have been expected from her condition. Mrs. Tyrrel, though proud
+  and imperious, was not ill-natured. The female, who lived in the family in
+  the capacity of housekeeper, was a person who had seen better days, and
+  whose disposition was extremely upright and amiable. She early contracted a
+  friendship for the little Emily, who was indeed for the most part committed
+  to her care. Emily, on her side, fully repaid the affection of her
+  instructress, and learned with great docility the few accomplishments Mrs.
+  Jakeman was able to communicate. But most of all she imbibed her cheerful
+  and artless temper, that extracted the agreeable and encouraging from all
+  events, and prompted her to communicate her sentiments, which were never of
+  the cynical cast, without modification or disguise. Besides the advantages
+  Emily derived from Mrs. Jakeman, she was permitted to take lessons from the
+  masters who were employed at Tyrrel Place for the instruction of her cousin;
+  and indeed, as the young gentleman was most frequently indisposed to attend
+  to them, they would commonly have had nothing to do, had it not been for the
+  fortunate presence of Miss Melville. Mrs. Tyrrel therefore encouraged the
+  studies of Emily on that score; in addition to which she imagined that this
+  living exhibition of instruction might operate as an indirect allurement to
+  her darling Barnabas, the only species of motive she would suffer to be
+  presented. Force she absolutely forbade; and of the intrinsic allurements of
+  literature and knowledge she had no conception.</p>
+
+  <p>Emily, as she grew up, displayed an uncommon degree of sensibility, which
+  under her circumstances would have been a source of perpetual
+  dissatisfaction, had it not been qualified with an extreme sweetness and
+  easiness of temper. She was far from being entitled to the appellation of a
+  beauty. Her person was <i>petite</i> and trivial; her complexion savoured of
+  the <i>brunette</i>; and her face was marked with the small-pox,
+  sufficiently to destroy its evenness and polish, though not enough to
+  destroy its expression. But, though her appearance was not beautiful, it did
+  not fail to be in a high degree engaging. Her complexion was at once
+  healthful and delicate; her long dark eye-brows adapted themselves with
+  facility to the various conceptions of her mind; and her looks bore the
+  united impression of an active discernment and a good-humoured frankness.
+  The instruction she had received, as it was entirely of a casual nature,
+  exempted her from the evils of untutored ignorance, but not from a sort of
+  native wildness, arguing a mind incapable of guile itself, or of suspecting
+  it in others. She amused, without seeming conscious of the refined sense
+  which her observations contained; or rather, having never been debauched
+  with applause, she set light by her own qualifications, and talked from the
+  pure gaiety of a youthful heart acting upon the stores of a just
+  understanding, and not with any expectation of being distinguished and
+  admired.</p>
+
+  <p>The death of her aunt made very little change in her situation. This
+  prudent lady, who would have thought it little less than sacrilege to have
+  considered Miss Melville as a branch of the stock of the Tyrrels, took no
+  more notice of her in her will than barely putting her down for one hundred
+  pounds in a catalogue of legacies to her servants. She had never been
+  admitted into the intimacy and confidence of Mrs. Tyrrel; and the young
+  squire, now that she was left under his sole protection, seemed inclined to
+  treat her with even more liberality than his mother had done. He had seen
+  her grow up under his eye, and therefore, though there were but six years
+  difference in their ages, he felt a kind of paternal interest in her
+  welfare. Habit had rendered her in a manner necessary to him, and, in every
+  recess from the occupations of the field and the pleasures of the table, he
+  found himself solitary and forlorn without the society of Miss Melville.
+  Nearness of kindred, and Emily's want of personal beauty, prevented him from
+  ever looking on her with the eyes of desire. Her accomplishments were
+  chiefly of the customary and superficial kind, dancing and music. Her skill
+  in the first led him sometimes to indulge her with a vacant corner in his
+  carriage, when he went to the neighbouring assembly; and, in whatever light
+  he might himself think proper to regard her, he would have imagined his
+  chambermaid, introduced by him, entitled to an undoubted place in the most
+  splendid circle. Her musical talents were frequently employed for his
+  amusement. She had the honour occasionally of playing him to sleep after the
+  fatigues of the chase; and, as he had some relish for harmonious sounds, she
+  was frequently able to soothe him by their means from the perturbations of
+  which his gloomy disposition was so eminently a slave. Upon the whole, she
+  might be considered as in some sort his favourite. She was the mediator to
+  whom his tenants and domestics, when they had incurred his displeasure, were
+  accustomed to apply; the privileged companion, that could approach this lion
+  with impunity in the midst of his roarings. She spoke to him without fear;
+  her solicitations were always good-natured and disinterested; and when he
+  repulsed her, he disarmed himself of half his terrors, and was contented to
+  smile at her presumption.</p>
+
+  <p>Such had been for some years the situation of Miss Melville. Its
+  precariousness had been beguiled by the uncommon forbearance with which she
+  was treated by her savage protector. But his disposition, always brutal, had
+  acquired a gradual accession of ferocity since the settlement of Mr.
+  Falkland in his neighbourhood. He now frequently forgot the gentleness with
+  which he had been accustomed to treat his good-natured cousin. Her little
+  playful arts were not always successful in softening his rage; and he would
+  sometimes turn upon her blandishments with an impatient sternness that made
+  her tremble. The careless ease of her disposition, however, soon effaced
+  these impressions, and she fell without variation into her old habits.</p>
+
+  <p>A circumstance occurred about this time which gave peculiar strength to
+  the acrimony of Mr. Tyrrel, and ultimately brought to its close the felicity
+  that Miss Melville, in spite of the frowns of fortune, had hitherto enjoyed.
+  Emily was exactly seventeen when Mr. Falkland returned from the continent.
+  At this age she was peculiarly susceptible of the charms of beauty, grace,
+  and moral excellence, when united in a person of the other sex. She was
+  imprudent, precisely because her own heart was incapable of guile. She had
+  never yet felt the sting of the poverty to which she was condemned, and had
+  not reflected on the insuperable distance that custom has placed between the
+  opulent and the poorer classes of the community. She beheld Mr. Falkland,
+  whenever he was thrown in her way at any of the public meetings, with
+  admiration; and, without having precisely explained to herself the
+  sentiments she indulged, her eyes followed him through all the changes of
+  the scene, with eagerness and impatience. She did not see him, as the rest
+  of the assembly did, born to one of the amplest estates in the county, and
+  qualified to assert his title to the richest heiress. She thought only of
+  Falkland, with those advantages which were most intimately his own, and of
+  which no persecution of adverse fortune had the ability to deprive him. In a
+  word, she was transported when he was present; he was the perpetual subject
+  of her reveries and her dreams; but his image excited no sentiment in her
+  mind beyond that of the immediate pleasure she took in his idea.</p>
+
+  <p>The notice Mr. Falkland bestowed on her in return, appeared sufficiently
+  encouraging to a mind so full of prepossession as that of Emily. There was a
+  particular complacency in his looks when directed towards her. He had said
+  in a company, of which one of the persons present repeated his remarks to
+  Miss Melville, that she appeared to him amiable and interesting; that he
+  felt for her unprovided and destitute situation; and that he should have
+  been glad to be more particular in his attention to her, had he not been
+  apprehensive of doing her a prejudice in the suspicious mind of Mr. Tyrrel.
+  All this she considered as the ravishing condescension of a superior nature;
+  for, if she did not recollect with sufficient assiduity his gifts of
+  fortune, she was, on the other hand, filled with reverence for his
+  unrivalled accomplishments. But, while she thus seemingly disclaimed all
+  comparison between Mr. Falkland and herself, she probably cherished a
+  confused feeling as if some event, that was yet in the womb of fate, might
+  reconcile things apparently the most incompatible. Fraught with these
+  prepossessions, the civilities that had once or twice occurred in the bustle
+  of a public circle, the restoring her fan which she had dropped, or the
+  disembarrassing her of an empty tea-cup, made her heart palpitate, and gave
+  birth to the wildest chimeras in her deluded imagination.</p>
+
+  <p>About this time an event happened, that helped to give a precise
+  determination to the fluctuations of Miss Melville's mind. One evening, a
+  short time after the death of Mr. Clare, Mr. Falkland had been at the house
+  of his deceased friend in his quality of executor, and, by some accidents of
+  little intrinsic importance, had been detained three or four hours later
+  than he expected. He did not set out upon his return till two o'clock in the
+  morning. At this time, in a situation so remote from the metropolis, every
+  thing is as silent as it would be in a region wholly uninhabited. The moon
+  shone bright; and the objects around being marked with strong variations of
+  light and shade, gave a kind of sacred solemnity to the scene. Mr. Falkland
+  had taken Collins with him, the business to be settled at Mr. Clare's being
+  in some respects similar to that to which this faithful domestic had been
+  accustomed in the routine of his ordinary service. They had entered into
+  some conversation, for Mr. Falkland was not then in the habit of obliging
+  the persons about him by formality and reserve to recollect who he was. The
+  attractive solemnity of the scene made him break off the talk somewhat
+  abruptly, that he might enjoy it without interruption. They had not ridden
+  far, before a hollow wind seemed to rise at a distance, and they could hear
+  the hoarse roarings of the sea. Presently the sky on one side assumed the
+  appearance of a reddish brown, and a sudden angle in the road placed this
+  phenomenon directly before them. As they proceeded, it became more distinct,
+  and it was at length sufficiently visible that it was occasioned by a fire.
+  Mr. Falkland put spurs to his horse; and, as they approached, the object
+  presented every instant a more alarming appearance. The flames ascended with
+  fierceness; they embraced a large portion of the horizon; and, as they
+  carried up with them numerous little fragments of the materials that fed
+  them, impregnated with fire, and of an extremely bright and luminous colour,
+  they presented some feeble image of the tremendous eruption of a
+  volcano.</p>
+
+  <p>The flames proceeded from a village directly in their road. There were
+  eight or ten houses already on fire, and the whole seemed to be threatened
+  with immediate destruction. The inhabitants were in the utmost
+  consternation, having had no previous experience of a similar calamity. They
+  conveyed with haste their moveables and furniture into the adjoining fields.
+  When any of them had effected this as far as it could be attempted with
+  safety, they were unable to conceive any further remedy, but stood wringing
+  their hands, and contemplating the ravages of the fire in an agony of
+  powerless despair. The water that could be procured, in any mode practised
+  in that place, was but as a drop contending with an element in arms. The
+  wind in the mean time was rising, and the flames spread with more and more
+  rapidity.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland contemplated this scene for a few moments, as if ruminating
+  with himself as to what could be done. He then directed some of the country
+  people about him to pull down a house, next to one that was wholly on fire,
+  but which itself was yet untouched. They seemed astonished at a direction
+  which implied a voluntary destruction of property, and considered the task
+  as too much in the heart of the danger to be undertaken. Observing that they
+  were motionless, he dismounted from his horse, and called upon them in an
+  authoritative voice to follow him. He ascended the house in an instant, and
+  presently appeared upon the top of it, as if in the midst of the flames.
+  Having, with the assistance of two or three of the persons that followed him
+  most closely, and who by this time had supplied themselves with whatever
+  tools came next to hand, loosened the support of a stack of chimneys, he
+  pushed them headlong into the midst of the fire. He passed and repassed
+  along the roof; and, having set people to work in all parts, descended in
+  order to see what could be done in any other quarter. At this moment an
+  elderly woman burst from the midst of a house in flames: the utmost
+  consternation was painted in her looks; and, as soon as she could recollect
+  herself enough to have a proper idea of her situation, the subject of her
+  anxiety seemed, in an instant, to be totally changed. "Where is my child?"
+  cried she, and cast an anxious and piercing look among the surrounding
+  crowd. "Oh, she is lost! she is in the midst of flames! Save her! save her!
+  my child!" She filled the air with heart-rending shrieks. She turned towards
+  the house. The people that were near endeavoured to prevent her, but she
+  shook them off in a moment. She entered the passage; viewed the hideous
+  ruin; and was then going to plunge into the blazing staircase. Mr. Falkland
+  saw, pursued, and seized her by the arm; it was Mrs. Jakeman. "Stop!" he
+  cried, with a voice of grand, yet benevolent authority. "Remain you in the
+  street! I will seek, and will save her!" Mrs. Jakeman obeyed. He charged the
+  persons who were near to detain her; he enquired which was the apartment of
+  Emily. Mrs. Jakeman was upon a visit to a sister who lived in the village,
+  and had brought Emily along with her. Mr. Falkland ascended a neighbouring
+  house, and entered that in which Emily was, by a window in the roof.</p>
+
+  <p>He found her already awaked from her sleep; and, becoming sensible of her
+  danger, she had that instant wrapped a loose gown round her. Such is the
+  almost irresistible result of feminine habits; but, having done this, she
+  examined the surrounding objects with the wildness of despair. Mr. Falkland
+  entered the chamber. She flew into his arms with the rapidity of lightning.
+  She embraced and clung to him, with an impulse that did not wait to consult
+  the dictates of her understanding. Her emotions were indescribable. In a few
+  short moments she had lived an age in love. In two minutes Mr. Falkland was
+  again in the street with his lovely, half-naked burthen in his arms. Having
+  restored her to her affectionate protector, snatched from the immediate
+  grasp of death, from which, if he had not, none would have delivered her, he
+  returned to his former task. By his presence of mind, by his indefatigable
+  humanity and incessant exertions, he saved three fourths of the village from
+  destruction.</p>
+
+  <p>The conflagration being at length abated, he sought again Mrs. Jakeman
+  and Emily, who by this time had obtained a substitute for the garments she
+  had lost in the fire. He displayed the tenderest solicitude for the young
+  lady's safety, and directed Collins to go with as much speed as he could,
+  and send his chariot to attend her. More than an hour elapsed in this
+  interval. Miss Melville had never seen so much of Mr. Falkland upon any
+  former occasion; and the spectacle of such humanity, delicacy, firmness, and
+  justice in the form of man, as he crowded into this small space, was
+  altogether new to her, and in the highest degree fascinating. She had a
+  confused feeling as if there had been something indecorous in her behaviour
+  or appearance, when Mr. Falkland had appeared to her relief; and this
+  combined with her other emotions to render the whole critical and
+  intoxicating.</p>
+
+  <p>Emily no sooner arrived at the family mansion, than Mr. Tyrrel ran out to
+  receive her. He had just heard of the melancholy accident that had taken
+  place at the village, and was terrified for the safety of his good-humoured
+  cousin. He displayed those unpremeditated emotions which are common to
+  almost every individual of the human race. He was greatly shocked at the
+  suspicion that Emily might possibly have become the victim of a catastrophe
+  which had thus broken out in the dead of night. His sensations were of the
+  most pleasing sort when he folded her in his arms, and fearful apprehension
+  was instantaneously converted into joyous certainty. Emily no sooner entered
+  under the well known roof than her spirits were brisk, and her tongue
+  incessant in describing her danger and her deliverance. Mr. Tyrrel had
+  formerly been tortured with the innocent eulogiums she pronounced of Mr.
+  Falkland. But these were lameness itself, compared with the rich and various
+  eloquence that now flowed from her lips. Love had not the same effect upon
+  her, especially at the present moment, which it would have had upon a person
+  instructed to feign a blush, and inured to a consciousness of wrong. She
+  described his activity and resources, the promptitude with which every thing
+  was conceived, and the cautious but daring wisdom with which it was
+  executed. All was fairy-land and enchantment in the tenour of her artless
+  tale; you saw a beneficent genius surveying and controlling the whole, but
+  could have no notion of any human means by which his purposes were
+  effected.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel listened for a while to these innocent effusions with
+  patience; he could even bear to hear the man applauded, by whom he had just
+  obtained so considerable a benefit. But the theme by amplification became
+  nauseous, and he at length with some roughness put an end to the tale.
+  Probably, upon recollection, it appeared still more insolent and intolerable
+  than while it was passing; the sensation of gratitude wore off, but the
+  hyperbolical praise that had been bestowed still haunted his memory, and
+  sounded in his ear;&mdash;Emily had entered into the confederacy that
+  disturbed his repose. For herself, she was wholly unconscious of offence,
+  and upon every occasion quoted Mr. Falkland as the model of elegant manners
+  and true wisdom. She was a total stranger to dissimulation; and she could
+  not conceive that any one beheld the subject of her admiration with less
+  partiality than herself. Her artless love became more fervent than ever. She
+  flattered herself that nothing less than a reciprocal passion could have
+  prompted Mr. Falkland to the desperate attempt of saving her from the
+  flames; and she trusted that this passion would speedily declare itself, as
+  well as induce the object of her adoration to overlook her comparative
+  unworthiness.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured at first with some moderation to check Miss
+  Melville in her applauses, and to convince her by various tokens that the
+  subject was disagreeable to him. He was accustomed to treat her with
+  kindness. Emily, on her part, was disposed to yield an unreluctant
+  obedience, and therefore it was not difficult to restrain her. But upon the
+  very next occasion her favourite topic would force its way to her lips. Her
+  obedience was the acquiescence of a frank and benevolent heart; but it was
+  the most difficult thing in the world to inspire her with fear. Conscious
+  herself that she would not hurt a worm, she could not conceive that any one
+  would harbour cruelty and rancour against her. Her temper had preserved her
+  from obstinate contention with the persons under whose protection she was
+  placed; and, as her compliance was unhesitating, she had no experience of a
+  severe and rigorous treatment. As Mr. Tyrrel's objection to the very name of
+  Falkland became more palpable and uniform, Miss Melville increased in her
+  precaution. She would stop herself in the half-pronounced sentences that
+  were meant to his praise. This circumstance had necessarily an ungracious
+  effect; it was a cutting satire upon the imbecility of her kinsman. Upon
+  these occasions she would sometimes venture upon a good-humoured
+  expostulation:&mdash;"Dear sir! well, I wonder how you can be so
+  ill-natured! I am sure Mr. Falkland would do you any good office in the
+  world:"&mdash;till she was checked by some gesture of impatience and
+  fierceness.</p>
+
+  <p>At length she wholly conquered her heedlessness and inattention. But it
+  was too late. Mr. Tyrrel already suspected the existence of that passion
+  which she had thoughtlessly imbibed. His imagination, ingenious in torment,
+  suggested to him all the different openings in conversation, in which she
+  would have introduced the praise of Mr. Falkland, had she not been placed
+  under this unnatural restraint. Her present reserve upon the subject was
+  even more insufferable than her former loquacity. All his kindness for this
+  unhappy orphan gradually subsided. Her partiality for the man who was the
+  object of his unbounded abhorrence, appeared to him as the last persecution
+  of a malicious destiny. He figured himself as about to be deserted by every
+  creature in human form; all men, under the influence of a fatal enchantment,
+  approving only what was sophisticated and artificial, and holding the rude
+  and genuine offspring of nature in mortal antipathy. Impressed with these
+  gloomy presages, he saw Miss Melville with no sentiments but those of
+  rancorous aversion; and, accustomed as he was to the uncontrolled indulgence
+  of his propensities, he determined to wreak upon her a signal revenge.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CVII" id="V1_CVII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel consulted his old confident respecting the plan he should
+  pursue; who, sympathising as he did in the brutality and insolence of his
+  friend, had no idea that an insignificant girl, without either wealth or
+  beauty, ought to be allowed for a moment to stand in the way of the
+  gratifications of a man of Mr. Tyrrel's importance. The first idea of her
+  now unrelenting kinsman was to thrust her from his doors, and leave her to
+  seek her bread as she could. But he was conscious that this proceeding would
+  involve him in considerable obloquy; and he at length fixed upon a scheme
+  which, at the same time that he believed it would sufficiently shelter his
+  reputation, would much more certainly secure her mortification and
+  punishment.</p>
+
+  <p>For this purpose he fixed upon a young man of twenty, the son of one
+  Grimes, who occupied a small farm, the property of his confident. This
+  fellow he resolved to impose as a husband on Miss Melville, who, he shrewdly
+  suspected, guided by the tender sentiments she had unfortunately conceived
+  for Mr. Falkland, would listen with reluctance to any matrimonial proposal.
+  Grimes he selected as being in all respects the diametrical reverse of Mr.
+  Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of vicious propensities, but in an
+  inconceivable degree boorish and uncouth. His complexion was scarcely human;
+  his features were coarse, and strangely discordant and disjointed from each
+  other. His lips were thick, and the tone of his voice broad and unmodulated.
+  His legs were of equal size from one end to the other, and his feet
+  misshapen and clumsy. He had nothing spiteful or malicious in his
+  disposition, but he was a total stranger to tenderness; he could not feel
+  for those refinements in others, of which he had no experience in himself.
+  He was an expert boxer: his inclination led him to such amusements as were
+  most boisterous; and he delighted in a sort of manual sarcasm, which he
+  could not conceive to be very injurious, as it left no traces behind it. His
+  general manners were noisy and obstreperous; inattentive to others; and
+  obstinate and unyielding, not from any cruelty and ruggedness of temper, but
+  from an incapacity to conceive those finer feelings, that make so large a
+  part of the history of persons who are cast in a gentler mould.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the uncouth and half-civilised animal, which the industrious
+  malice of Mr. Tyrrel fixed upon as most happily adapted to his purpose.
+  Emily had hitherto been in an unusual degree exempted from the oppression of
+  despotism. Her happy insignificance had served her as a protection. No one
+  thought it worth his while to fetter her with those numerous petty
+  restrictions with which the daughters of opulence are commonly tormented.
+  She had the wildness, as well as the delicate frame, of the bird that
+  warbles unmolested in its native groves.</p>
+
+  <p>When therefore she heard from her kinsman the proposal of Mr. Grimes for
+  a husband, she was for a moment silent with astonishment at so unexpected a
+  suggestion. But as soon as she recovered her speech, she replied, "No, sir,
+  I do not want a husband."</p>
+
+  <p>"You do! Are not you always hankering after the men? It is high time you
+  should be settled."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Grimes! No, indeed! when I do have a husband, it shall not be such a
+  man as Mr. Grimes neither."</p>
+
+  <p>"Be silent! How dare you give yourself such unaccountable liberties?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord, I wonder what I should do with him. You might as well give me your
+  great rough water-dog, and bid me make him a silk cushion to lie in my
+  dressing-room. Besides, sir, Grimes is a common labouring man, and I am sure
+  I have always heard my aunt say that ours is a very great family."</p>
+
+  <p>"It is a lie! Our family! have you the impudence to think yourself one of
+  our family?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, sir, was not your grandpapa my grandpapa? How then can we be of a
+  different family?"</p>
+
+  <p>"From the strongest reason in the world. You are the daughter of a
+  rascally Scotchman, who spent every shilling of my aunt Lucy's fortune, and
+  left you a beggar. You have got an hundred pounds, and Grimes's father
+  promises to give him as much. How dare you look down upon your equals?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Indeed, sir, I am not proud. But, indeed and indeed, I can never love
+  Mr. Grimes. I am very happy as I am: why should I be married?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Silence your prating! Grimes will be here this afternoon. Look that you
+  behave well to him. If you do not, he will remember and repay, when you
+  least like it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nay, I am sure, sir&mdash;you are not in earnest?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not in earnest! Damn me, but we will see that. I can tell what you would
+  be at. You had rather be Mr. Falkland's miss, than the wife of a plain
+  downright yeoman. But I shall take care of you.&mdash;Ay, this comes of
+  indulgence. You must be taken down, miss. You must be taught the difference
+  between high-flown notions and realities. Mayhap you may take it a little in
+  dudgeon or so; but never mind that. Pride always wants a little smarting. If
+  you should be brought to shame, it is I that shall bear the blame of
+  it."</p>
+
+  <p>The tone in which Mr. Tyrrel spoke was so different from any thing to
+  which Miss Melville had been accustomed, that she felt herself wholly unable
+  to determine what construction to put upon it. Sometimes she thought he had
+  really formed a plan for imposing upon her a condition that she could not
+  bear so much as to think of. But presently she rejected this idea as an
+  unworthy imputation upon her kinsman, and concluded that it was only his
+  way, and that all he meant was to try her. To be resolved however, she
+  determined to consult her constant adviser, Mrs. Jakeman, and accordingly
+  repeated to her what had passed. Mrs. Jakeman saw the whole in a very
+  different light from that in which Emily had conceived it, and trembled for
+  the future peace of her beloved ward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord bless me, my dear mamma!" cried Emily, (this was the appellation
+  she delighted to bestow upon the good housekeeper,) "you cannot think so?
+  But I do not care. I will never marry Grimes, happen what will."</p>
+
+  <p>"But how will you help yourself? My master will oblige you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nay, now you think you are talking to a child indeed. It is I am to have
+  the man, not Mr. Tyrrel. Do you think I will let any body else choose a
+  husband for me? I am not such a fool as that neither."</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah, Emily! you little know the disadvantages of your situation. Your
+  cousin is a violent man, and perhaps will turn you out of doors, if you
+  oppose him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, mamma! it is very wicked of you to say so. I am sure Mr. Tyrrel is a
+  very good man, though he be a little cross now and then. He knows very well
+  that I am right to have a will of my own in such a thing as this, and nobody
+  is punished for doing what is right."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nobody ought, my dear child. But there are very wicked and tyrannical
+  men in the world."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, well, I will never believe my cousin is one of these."</p>
+
+  <p>"I hope he is not."</p>
+
+  <p>"And if he were, what then? To be sure I should he very sorry to make him
+  angry."</p>
+
+  <p>"What then! Why then my poor Emily would be a beggar. Do you think I
+  could bear to see that?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, no. Mr. Tyrrel has just told me that I have a hundred pounds. But if
+  I had no fortune, is not that the case with a thousand other folks? Why
+  should I grieve, for what they bear and are merry? Do not make yourself
+  uneasy, mamma. I am determined that I will do any thing rather than marry
+  Grimes; that is what I will."</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Jakeman could not bear the uneasy state of suspense in which this
+  conversation left her mind, and went immediately to the squire to have her
+  doubts resolved. The manner in which she proposed the question, sufficiently
+  indicated the judgment she had formed of the match.</p>
+
+  <p>"That is true," said Mr. Tyrrel, "I wanted to speak to you about this
+  affair. The girl has got unaccountable notions in her head, that will be the
+  ruin of her. You perhaps can tell where she had them. But, be that as it
+  will, it is high time something should be done. The shortest way is the
+  best, and to keep things well while they are well. In short, I am determined
+  she shall marry this lad: you do not know any harm of him, do you? You have
+  a good deal of influence with her, and I desire, do you see, that you will
+  employ it to lead her to her good: you had best, I can tell you. She is a
+  pert vixen! By and by she would be a whore, and at last no better than a
+  common trull, and rot upon a dunghill, if I were not at all these pains to
+  save her from destruction. I would make her an honest farmer's wife, and my
+  pretty miss cannot bear the thoughts of it!"</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon Grimes came according to appointment, and was left alone
+  with the young lady.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, miss," said he, "it seems the squire has a mind to make us man and
+  wife. For my part, I cannot say I should have thought of it. But, being as
+  how the squire has broke the ice, if so be as you like of the match, why I
+  am your man. Speak the word; a nod is as good as a wink to a blind
+  horse."</p>
+
+  <p>Emily was already sufficiently mortified at the unexpected proposal of
+  Mr. Tyrrel. She was confounded at the novelty of the situation, and still
+  more at the uncultivated rudeness of her lover, which even exceeded her
+  expectation. This confusion was interpreted by Grimes into diffidence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, come, never be cast down. Put a good face upon it. What though? My
+  first sweetheart was Bet Butterfield, but what of that? What must be must
+  be; grief will never fill the belly. She was a fine strapping wench, that is
+  the truth of it! five foot ten inches, and as stout as a trooper. Oh, she
+  would do a power of work! Up early and down late; milked ten cows with her
+  own hands; on with her cardinal, rode to market between her panniers, fair
+  weather and foul, hail, blow, or snow. It would have done your heart good to
+  have seen her frost-bitten cheeks, as red as a beefen from her own orchard!
+  Ah! she was a maid of mettle; would romp with the harvestmen, slap one upon
+  the back, wrestle with another, and had a rogue's trick and a joke for all
+  round. Poor girl! she broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be
+  sure I shall never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not
+  doubt that I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and
+  bashful as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have
+  touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss,
+  whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a
+  millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at the
+  bait, never doubt it. Yes, yes, we shall rub on main well together."</p>
+
+  <p>Emily by this time had in some degree mustered up her spirits, and began,
+  though with hesitation, to thank Mr. Grimes for his good opinion, but to
+  confess that she could never be brought to favour his addresses. She
+  therefore entreated him to desist from all further application. This
+  remonstrance on her part would have become more intelligible, had it not
+  been for his boisterous manners and extravagant cheerfulness, which
+  indisposed him to silence, and made him suppose that at half a word he had
+  sufficient intimation of another's meaning. Mr. Tyrrel, in the mean time,
+  was too impatient not to interrupt the scene before they could have time to
+  proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in the sequel to prevent the
+  young folks from being too intimately acquainted with each other's
+  inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the reluctance of Miss
+  Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness of an unbroken filly.
+  Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable that it would have made
+  any effectual impression upon him; as he was always accustomed to consider
+  women as made for the recreation of the men, and to exclaim against the
+  weakness of people who taught them to imagine they were to judge for
+  themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>As the suit proceeded, and Miss Melville saw more of her new admirer, her
+  antipathy increased. But, though her character was unspoiled by those false
+  wants, which frequently make people of family miserable while they have
+  every thing that nature requires within their reach, yet she had been little
+  used to opposition, and was terrified at the growing sternness of her
+  kinsman. Sometimes she thought of flying from a house which was now become
+  her dungeon; but the habits of her youth, and her ignorance of the world,
+  made her shrink from this project, when she contemplated it more nearly,
+  Mrs. Jakeman, indeed, could not think with patience of young Grimes as a
+  husband for her darling Emily; but her prudence determined her to resist
+  with all her might the idea on the part of the young lady of proceeding to
+  extremities. She could not believe that Mr. Tyrrel would persist in such an
+  unaccountable persecution, and she exhorted Miss Melville to forget for a
+  moment the unaffected independence of her character, and pathetically to
+  deprecate her cousin's obstinacy. She had great confidence in the ingenuous
+  eloquence of her ward. Mrs. Jakeman did not know what was passing in the
+  breast of the tyrant.</p>
+
+  <p>Miss Melville complied with the suggestion of her mamma. One morning
+  immediately after breakfast, she went to her harpsichord, and played one
+  after another several of those airs that were most the favourites of Mr.
+  Tyrrel. Mrs. Jakeman had retired; the servants were gone to their respective
+  employments. Mr. Tyrrel would have gone also; his mind was untuned, and he
+  did not take the pleasure he had been accustomed to take in the musical
+  performances of Emily. But her finger was now more tasteful than common. Her
+  mind was probably wrought up to a firmer and bolder tone, by the
+  recollection of the cause she was going to plead; at the same time that it
+  was exempt from those incapacitating tremors which would have been felt by
+  one that dared not look poverty in the face. Mr. Tyrrel was unable to leave
+  the apartment. Sometimes he traversed it with impatient steps; then he hung
+  over the poor innocent whose powers were exerted to please him; at length he
+  threw himself in a chair opposite, with his eyes turned towards Emily. It
+  was easy to trace the progress of his emotions. The furrows into which his
+  countenance was contracted were gradually relaxed; his features were
+  brightened into a smile; the kindness with which he had upon former
+  occasions contemplated Emily seemed to revive in his heart.</p>
+
+  <p>Emily watched her opportunity. As soon as she had finished one of the
+  pieces, she rose and went to Mr. Tyrrel.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now, have not I done it nicely? and after this will not you give me a
+  reward?"</p>
+
+  <p>"A reward! Ay, come here, and I will give you a kiss."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, that is not it. And yet you have not kissed me this many a day.
+  Formerly you said you loved me, and called me your Emily. I am sure you did
+  not love me better than I loved you. You have not forgot all the kindness
+  you once had for me?" added she anxiously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgot? No, no. How can you ask such a question? You shall be my dear
+  Emily still!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah, those were happy times!" she replied, a little mournfully. "Do you
+  know, cousin, I wish I could wake, and find that the last month&mdash;only
+  about a month&mdash;was a dream?"</p>
+
+  <p>"What do you mean by that?" said Mr. Tyrrel with an altered voice. "Have
+  a care! Do not put me out of humour. Do not come with your romantic notions
+  now."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, no: I have no romantic notions in my head. I speak of something upon
+  which the happiness of my life depends."</p>
+
+  <p>"I see what you would be at. Be silent. You know it is to no purpose to
+  plague me with your stubbornness. You will not let me be in good humour with
+  you for a moment. What my mind is determined upon about Grimes, all the
+  world shall not move me to give up."</p>
+
+  <p>"Dear, dear cousin! why, but consider now. Grimes is a rough rustic lout,
+  like Orson in the story-book. He wants a wife like himself. He would be as
+  uneasy and as much at a loss with me, as I with him. Why should we both of
+  us be forced to do what neither of us is inclined to? I cannot think what
+  could ever have put it into your head. But now, for goodness' sake, give it
+  up! Marriage is a serious thing. You should not think of joining two people
+  for a whim, who are neither of them fit for one another in any respect in
+  the world. We should feel mortified and disappointed all our lives. Month
+  would go after month, and year after year, and I could never hope to be my
+  own, but by the death of a person I ought to love. I am sure, sir, you
+  cannot mean me all this harm. What have I done, that I should deserve to
+  have you for an enemy?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I am not your enemy. I tell you that it is necessary to put you out of
+  harm's way. But, if I were your enemy, I could not be a worse torment to you
+  than you are to me. Are not you continually singing the praises of Falkland?
+  Are not you in love with Falkland? That man is a legion of devils to me! I
+  might as well have been a beggar! I might as well have been a dwarf or a
+  monster! Time was when I was thought entitled to respect. But now, debauched
+  by this Frenchified rascal, they call me rude, surly, a tyrant! It is true
+  that I cannot talk in finical phrases, flatter people with hypocritical
+  praise, or suppress the real feelings of my mind. The scoundrel knows his
+  pitiful advantages, and insults me upon them without ceasing. He is my rival
+  and my persecutor; and, at last, as if all this were not enough, he has
+  found means to spread the pestilence in my own family. You, whom we took up
+  out of charity, the chance-born brat of a stolen marriage! you must turn
+  upon your benefactor, and wound me in the point that of all others I could
+  least bear. If I were your enemy, should not I have reason? Could I ever
+  inflict upon you such injuries as you have made me suffer? And who are you?
+  The lives of fifty such cannot atone for an hour of my uneasiness. If you
+  were to linger for twenty years upon the rack, you would never feel what I
+  have felt. But I am your friend. I see which way you are going; and I am
+  determined to save you from this thief, this hypocritical destroyer of us
+  all. Every moment that the mischief is left to itself, it does but make bad
+  worse; and I am determined to save you out of hand."</p>
+
+  <p>The angry expostulations of Mr. Tyrrel suggested new ideas to the tender
+  mind of Miss Melville. He had never confessed the emotions of his soul so
+  explicitly before; but the tempest of his thoughts suffered him to be no
+  longer master of himself. She saw with astonishment that he was the
+  irreconcilable foe of Mr. Falkland, whom she had fondly imagined it was the
+  same thing to know and admire; and that he harboured a deep and rooted
+  resentment against herself. She recoiled, without well knowing why, before
+  the ferocious passions of her kinsman, and was convinced that she had
+  nothing to hope from his implacable temper. But her alarm was the prelude of
+  firmness, and not of cowardice.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, sir," replied she, "indeed I will not be driven any way that you
+  happen to like. I have been used to obey you, and, in all that is
+  reasonable, I will obey you still. But you urge me too far. What do you tell
+  me of Mr. Falkland? Have I ever done any thing to deserve your unkind
+  suspicions? I am innocent, and will continue innocent. Mr. Grimes is well
+  enough, and will no doubt find women that like him; but he is not fit for
+  me, and torture shall not force me to be his wife."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel was not a little astonished at the spirit which Emily
+  displayed upon this occasion. He had calculated too securely upon the
+  general mildness and suavity of her disposition. He now endeavoured to
+  qualify the harshness of his former sentiments.</p>
+
+  <p>"God damn my soul! And so you can scold, can you? You expect every body
+  to turn out of his way, and fetch and carry, just as you please? I could
+  find in my heart&mdash;But you know my mind. I insist upon it that you let
+  Grimes court you, and that you lay aside your sulks, and give him a fair
+  hearing. Will you do that? If then you persist in your wilfulness, why
+  there, I suppose, is an end of the matter. Do not think that any body is
+  going to marry you, whether you will or no. You are no such mighty prize, I
+  assure you. If you knew your own interest, you would be glad to take the
+  young fellow while he is willing."</p>
+
+  <p>Miss Melville rejoiced in the prospect, which the last words of her
+  kinsman afforded her, of a termination at no great distance to her present
+  persecutions. Mrs. Jakeman, to whom she communicated them, congratulated
+  Emily on the returning moderation and good sense of the squire, and herself
+  on her prudence in having urged the young lady to this happy expostulation.
+  But their mutual felicitations lasted not long. Mr. Tyrrel informed Mrs.
+  Jakeman of the necessity in which he found himself of sending her to a
+  distance, upon a business which would not fail to detain her several weeks;
+  and, though the errand by no means wore an artificial or ambiguous face, the
+  two friends drew a melancholy presage from this ill-timed separation. Mrs.
+  Jakeman, in the mean time, exhorted her ward to persevere, reminded her of
+  the compunction which had already been manifested by her kinsman, and
+  encouraged her to hope every thing from her courage and good temper. Emily,
+  on her part, though grieved at the absence of her protector and counsellor
+  at so interesting a crisis, was unable to suspect Mr. Tyrrel of such a degree
+  either of malice or duplicity as could afford ground for serious alarm. She
+  congratulated herself upon her delivery from so alarming a persecution, and
+  drew a prognostic of future success from this happy termination of the first
+  serious affair of her life. She exchanged a state of fortitude and alarm for
+  her former pleasing dreams respecting Mr. Falkland. These she bore without
+  impatience. She was even taught by the uncertainty of the event to desire to
+  prolong, rather than abridge, a situation which might be delusive, but which
+  was not without its pleasures.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CVIII" id="V1_CVIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Nothing could be further from Mr. Tyrrel's intention than to suffer his
+  project to be thus terminated. No sooner was he freed from the fear of his
+  housekeeper's interference, than he changed the whole system of his conduct.
+  He ordered Miss Melville to be closely confined to her apartment, and
+  deprived of all means of communicating her situation to any one out of his
+  own house. He placed over her a female servant, in whose discretion he could
+  confide, and who, having formerly been honoured with the amorous notices of
+  the squire, considered the distinctions that were paid to Emily at Tyrrel
+  Place as an usurpation upon her more reasonable claims. The squire himself
+  did every thing in his power to blast the young lady's reputation, and
+  represented to his attendants these precautions as necessary, to prevent her
+  from eloping to his neighbour, and plunging herself in total ruin.</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as Miss Melville had been twenty-four hours in durance, and there
+  was some reason to suppose that her spirit might be subdued to the emergency
+  of her situation, Mr. Tyrrel thought proper to go to her, to explain the
+  grounds of her present treatment, and acquaint her with the only means by
+  which she could hope for a change. Emily no sooner saw him, than she turned
+  towards him with an air of greater firmness than perhaps she had ever
+  assumed in her life, and accosted him thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, is it you? I wanted to see you. It seems I am shut up here by
+  your orders. What does this mean? What right have you to make a prisoner of
+  me? What do I owe you? Your mother left me a hundred pounds: have you ever
+  offered to make any addition to my fortune? But, if you had, I do not want
+  it. I do not pretend to be better than the children of other poor parents; I
+  can maintain myself as they do. I prefer liberty to wealth. I see you are
+  surprised at the resolution I exert. But ought I not to turn again, when I
+  am trampled upon? I should have left you before now, if Mrs. Jakeman had not
+  over-persuaded me, and if I had not thought better of you than by your
+  present behaviour I find you deserve. But now, sir, I intend to leave your
+  house this moment, and insist upon it, that you do not endeavour to prevent
+  me."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus saying, she rose, and went towards the door, while Mr. Tyrrel stood
+  thunderstruck at her magnanimity. Seeing, however, that she was upon the
+  point of being out of the reach of his power, he recovered himself and
+  pulled her back.</p>
+
+  <p>"What is in the wind now? Do you think, strumpet; that you shall get the
+  better of me by sheer impudence? Sit down! rest you satisfied!--So you want
+  to know by what right you are here, do you? By the right of possession. This
+  house is mine, and you are in my power. There is no Mrs. Jakeman now to
+  spirit you away; no, nor no Falkland to bully for you. I have countermined
+  you, damn me! and blown up your schemes. Do you think I will be contradicted
+  and opposed for nothing? When did you ever know any body resist my will
+  without being made to repent? And shall I now be browbeaten by a
+  chitty-faced girl?&mdash;I have not given you a fortune! Damn you! who
+  brought you up? I will make you a bill for clothing and lodging. Do not you
+  know that every creditor has a right to stop his runaway debtor. You may
+  think as you please; but here you are till you marry Grimes. Heaven and
+  earth shall not prevent but I will get the better of your obstinacy!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Ungenerous, unmerciful man! and so it is enough for you that I have
+  nobody to defend me! But I am not so helpless as you may imagine. You may
+  imprison my body, but you cannot conquer my mind. Marry Mr. Grimes! And is
+  this the way to bring me to your purpose? Every hardship I suffer puts still
+  further distant the end for which I am thus unjustly treated. You are not
+  used to have your will contradicted! When did I ever contradict it? And, in
+  a concern that is so completely my own, shall my will go for nothing? Would
+  you lay down this rule for yourself, and suffer no other creature to take
+  the benefit of it? I want nothing of you: how dare you refuse me the
+  privilege of a reasonable being, to live unmolested in poverty and
+  innocence? What sort of a man do you show yourself, you that lay claim to
+  the respect and applause of every one that knows you?"</p>
+
+  <p>The spirited reproaches of Emily had at first the effect to fill Mr.
+  Tyrrel with astonishment, and make him feel abashed and overawed in the
+  presence of this unprotected innocent. But his confusion was the result of
+  surprise. When the first emotion wore off, he cursed himself for being moved
+  by her expostulations; and was ten times more exasperated against her, for
+  daring to defy his resentment at a time when she had every thing to fear.
+  His despotic and unforgiving propensities stimulated him to a degree little
+  short of madness. At the same time his habits, which were pensive and
+  gloomy, led him to meditate a variety of schemes to punish her obstinacy. He
+  began to suspect that there was little hope of succeeding by open force, and
+  therefore determined to have recourse to treachery.</p>
+
+  <p>He found in Grimes an instrument sufficiently adapted to his purpose.
+  This fellow, without an atom of intentional malice, was fitted, by the mere
+  coarseness of his perceptions, for the perpetration of the greatest
+  injuries. He regarded both injury and advantage merely as they related to
+  the gratifications of appetite; and considered it an essential in true
+  wisdom, to treat with insult the effeminacy of those who suffer themselves
+  to be tormented with ideal misfortunes. He believed that no happier destiny
+  could befal a young woman than to be his wife; and he conceived that that
+  termination would amply compensate for any calamities she might suppose
+  herself to undergo in the interval. He was therefore easily prevailed upon,
+  by certain temptations which Mr. Tyrrel knew how to employ, to take part in
+  the plot into which Miss Melville was meant to be betrayed.</p>
+
+  <p>Matters being thus prepared, Mr. Tyrrel proceeded, through the means of
+  the gaoler (for the experience he already had of personal discussion did not
+  incline him to repeat his visits), to play upon the fears of his prisoner.
+  This woman, sometimes under the pretence of friendship, and sometimes with
+  open malice, informed Emily, from time to time, of the preparations that
+  were making for her marriage. One day, "the squire had rode over to look at
+  a neat little farm which was destined for the habitation of the new-married
+  couple;" and at another, "a quantity of live stock and household furniture
+  was procured, that every thing might be ready for their reception." She then
+  told her "of a licence that was bought, a parson in readiness, and a day
+  fixed for the nuptials." When Emily endeavoured, though with increased
+  misgivings, to ridicule these proceedings as absolutely nugatory without her
+  consent, her artful gouvernante related several stories of forced marriages,
+  and assured her that neither protestations, nor silence, nor fainting, would
+  be of any avail, either to suspend the ceremony, or to set it aside when
+  performed.</p>
+
+  <p>The situation of Miss Melville was in an eminent degree pitiable. She had
+  no intercourse but with her persecutors. She had not a human being with whom
+  to consult, who might afford her the smallest degree of consolation and
+  encouragement. She had fortitude; but it was neither confirmed nor directed
+  by the dictates of experience. It could not therefore be expected to be so
+  inflexible, as with better information it would, no doubt, have been found.
+  She had a clear and noble spirit; but she had some of her sex's errors. Her
+  mind sunk under the uniform terrors with which she was assailed, and her
+  health became visibly impaired.</p>
+
+  <p>Her firmness being thus far undermined, Grimes, in pursuance of his
+  instructions, took care, in his next interview, to throw out an insinuation
+  that, for his own part, he had never cared for the match, and since she was
+  so averse to it, would be better pleased that it should never take place.
+  Between one and the other however, he was got into a scrape, and now he
+  supposed he must marry, will he, nill he. The two squires would infallibly
+  ruin him upon the least appearance of backwardness on his part, as they were
+  accustomed to do every inferior that resisted their will. Emily was rejoiced
+  to find her admirer in so favourable a disposition; and earnestly pressed
+  him to give effect to this humane declaration. Her representations were full
+  of eloquence and energy. Grimes appeared to be moved at the fervency of her
+  manner; but objected the resentment of Mr. Tyrrel and his landlord. At
+  length, however, he suggested a project, in consequence of which he might
+  assist her in her escape, without its ever coming to their knowledge, as,
+  indeed, there was no likelihood that their suspicions would fix upon him.
+  "To be sure," said he, "you have refused me in a disdainful sort of a way,
+  as a man may say. Mayhap you thought I was no better 'an a brute: but I bear
+  you no malice, and I will show you that I am more kind-hearted 'an you have
+  been willing to think. It is a strange sort of a vagary you have taken, to
+  stand in your own light, and disoblige all your friends. But if you are
+  resolute, do you see? I scorn to be the husband of a lass that is not every
+  bit as willing as I; and so I will even help to put you in a condition to
+  follow your own inclinations."</p>
+
+  <p>Emily listened to these suggestions at first with eagerness and
+  approbation. But her fervency somewhat abated, when they came to discuss the
+  minute parts of the undertaking. It was necessary, as Grimes informed her,
+  that her escape should be effected in the dead of the night. He would
+  conceal himself for that purpose in the garden, and be provided with false
+  keys, by which to deliver her from her prison. These circumstances were by
+  no means adapted to calm her perturbed imagination. To throw herself into
+  the arms of the man whose intercourse she was employing every method to
+  avoid, and whom, under the idea of a partner for life, she could least of
+  all men endure, was, no doubt, an extraordinary proceeding. The attendant
+  circumstances of darkness and solitude aggravated the picture. The situation
+  of Tyrrel Place was uncommonly lonely; it was three miles from the nearest
+  village, and not less than seven from that in which Mrs. Jakeman's sister
+  resided, under whose protection Miss Melville was desirous of placing
+  herself. The ingenuous character of Emily did not allow her once to suspect
+  Grimes of intending to make an ungenerous and brutal advantage of these
+  circumstances; but her mind involuntarily revolted against the idea of
+  committing herself, alone, to the disposal of a man, whom she had lately
+  been accustomed to consider as the instrument of her treacherous
+  relation.</p>
+
+  <p>After having for some time revolved these considerations, she thought of
+  the expedient of desiring Grimes to engage Mrs. Jakeman's sister to wait for
+  her at the outside of the garden. But this Grimes peremptorily refused. He
+  even flew into a passion at the proposal. It showed very little gratitude,
+  to desire him to disclose to other people his concern in this dangerous
+  affair. For his part, he was determined, in consideration of his own safety,
+  never to appear in it to any living soul. If Miss did not believe him, when
+  he made this proposal out of pure good-nature, and would not trust him a
+  single inch, she might even see to the consequences herself. He was resolved
+  to condescend no further to the whims of a person who, in her treatment of
+  him, had shown herself as proud as Lucifer himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Emily exerted herself to appease his resentment; but all the eloquence of
+  her new confederate could not prevail upon her instantly to give up her
+  objection. She desired till the next day to consider of it. The day after
+  was fixed by Mr. Tyrrel for the marriage ceremony. In the mean time she was
+  pestered with intimations, in a thousand forms, of the fate that so nearly
+  awaited her. The preparations were so continued, methodical, and regular, as
+  to produce in her the most painful and aching anxiety. If her heart attained
+  a moment's intermission upon the subject, her female attendant was sure, by
+  some sly hint or sarcastical remark, to put a speedy termination to her
+  tranquillity. She felt herself, as she afterwards remarked, alone,
+  uninstructed, just broken loose, as it were, from the trammels of infancy,
+  without one single creature to concern himself in her fate. She, who till
+  then never knew an enemy, had now, for three weeks, not seen the glimpse of
+  a human countenance, that she had not good reason to consider as wholly
+  estranged to her at least, if not unrelentingly bent on her destruction. She
+  now, for the first time, experienced the anguish of never having known her
+  parents, and being cast upon the charity of people with whom she had too
+  little equality, to hope to receive from them the offices of friendship.</p>
+
+  <p>The succeeding night was filled with the most anxious thoughts. When a
+  momentary oblivion stole upon her senses, her distempered imagination
+  conjured up a thousand images of violence and falsehood; she saw herself in
+  the hands of her determined enemies, who did not hesitate by the most daring
+  treachery to complete her ruin. Her waking thoughts were not more consoling.
+  The struggle was too great for her constitution. As morning approached, she
+  resolved, at all hazards, to put herself into the hands of Grimes. This
+  determination was no sooner made, than she felt her heart sensibly
+  lightened. She could not conceive any evil which could result from this
+  proceeding, that deserved to be put in the balance against those which,
+  under the roof of her kinsman, appeared unavoidable.</p>
+
+  <p>When she communicated her determination to Grimes, it was not possible to
+  say whether he received pleasure or pain from the intimation. He smiled
+  indeed; but his smile was accompanied by a certain abrupt ruggedness of
+  countenance, so that it might equally well be the smile of sarcasm or of
+  congratulation. He, however, renewed his assurances of fidelity to his
+  engagements and punctuality of execution. Meanwhile the day was interspersed
+  with nuptial presents and preparations, all indicating the firmness as well
+  as security of the directors of the scene. Emily had hoped that, as the
+  crisis approached, they might have remitted something of their usual
+  diligence. She was resolved, in that case, if a fair opportunity had
+  offered, to give the slip both to her jailors, and to her new and
+  reluctantly chosen confederate. But, though extremely vigilant for that
+  purpose, she found the execution of the idea impracticable.</p>
+
+  <p>At length the night, so critical to her happiness, approached. The mind
+  of Emily could not fail, on this occasion, to be extremely agitated. She had
+  first exerted all her perspicacity to elude the vigilance of her attendant.
+  This insolent and unfeeling tyrant, instead of any relentings, had only
+  sought to make sport of her anxiety. Accordingly, in one instance she hid
+  herself, and, suffering Emily to suppose that the coast was clear, met her
+  at the end of the gallery, near the top of the staircase. "How do you do, my
+  dear?" said she, with an insulting tone. "And so the little dear thought
+  itself cunning enough to outwit me, did it? Oh, it was a sly little gipsy!
+  Go, go back, love; troop!" Emily felt deeply the trick that was played upon
+  her. She sighed, but disdained to return any answer to this low vulgarity.
+  Being once more in her chamber, she sat down in a chair, and remained buried
+  in reverie for more than two hours. After this she went to her drawers, and
+  turned over, in a hurrying confused way, her linen and clothes, having in
+  her mind the provision it would be necessary to make for her elopement. Her
+  jailor officiously followed her from place to place, and observed what she
+  did for the present in silence. It was now the hour of rest. "Good night,
+  child," said this saucy girl, in the act of retiring. "It is time to lock
+  up. For the few next hours, the time is your own. Make the best use of it!
+  Do'ee think ee can creep out at the key-hole, lovey? At eight o'clock you
+  see me again. And then, and then," added she, clapping her hands, "it is all
+  over. The sun is not surer to rise, than you and your honest man to be made
+  one."</p>
+
+  <p>There was something in the tone with which this slut uttered her
+  farewell, that suggested the question to Emily, "What does she mean? Is it
+  possible that she should know what has been planned for the few next
+  hours?"&mdash;This was the first moment that suspicion had offered itself,
+  and its continuance was short. With an aching heart she folded up the few
+  necessaries she intended to take with her. She instinctively listened, with
+  an anxiety that would almost have enabled her to hear the stirring of a
+  leaf. From time to time she thought her ear was struck with the sound of
+  feet; but the treading, if treading it were, was so soft, that she could
+  never ascertain whether it were a real sound, or the mere creature of the
+  fancy. Then all was still, as if the universal motion had been at rest. By
+  and by she conceived she overheard a noise as of buzzing and low-muttered
+  speech. Her heart palpitated; for a second time she began to doubt the
+  honesty of Grimes. The suggestion was now more anxious than before; but it
+  was too late. Presently she heard the sound of a key in her chamber-door,
+  and the rustic made his appearance. She started, and cried, "Are we
+  discovered? did not I hear you speak?" Grimes advanced on tiptoe with his
+  finger to his lip. "No, no," replied he, "all is safe!" He took her by the
+  hand, led her in silence out of the house, and then across the garden. Emily
+  examined with her eye the doors and passages as they proceeded, and looked
+  on all sides with fearful suspicion; but every thing was as vacant and still
+  as she herself could have wished. Grimes opened a back-door of the garden
+  already unlocked, that led into an unfrequented lane. There stood two horses
+  ready equipped for the journey, and fastened by their bridles to a post not
+  six yards distant from the garden. Grimes pushed the door after them.</p>
+
+  <p>"By Gemini," said he, "my heart was in my mouth. As I comed along to you,
+  I saw Mun, coachey, pop along from the back-door to the stables. He was
+  within a hop, step, and jump of me. But he had a lanthorn in his hand, and
+  he did not see me, being as I was darkling." Saying this, he assisted Miss
+  Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the route; on the contrary,
+  he was remarkably silent and contemplative, a circumstance by no means
+  disagreeable to Emily, to whom his conversation had never been
+  acceptable.</p>
+
+  <p>After having proceeded about two miles, they turned into a wood, through
+  which the road led to the place of their destination. The night was
+  extremely dark, at the same time that the air was soft and mild, it being
+  now the middle of summer. Under pretence of exploring the way, Grimes
+  contrived, when they had already penetrated into the midst of this gloomy
+  solitude, to get his horse abreast with that of Miss Melville, and then,
+  suddenly reaching out his hand, seized hold of her bridle. "I think we may
+  as well stop here a bit," said he.</p>
+
+  <p>"Stop!" exclaimed Emily with surprise; "why should we stop? Mr. Grimes,
+  what do you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, come," said he, "never trouble yourself to wonder. Did you think I
+  were such a goose, to take all this trouble merely to gratify your whim? I'
+  faith, nobody shall find me a pack-horse, to go of other folks' errands,
+  without knowing a reason why. I cannot say that I much minded to have you at
+  first; but your ways are enough to stir the blood of my grand-dad.
+  Far-fetched and dear-bought is always relishing. Your consent was so hard to
+  gain, that squire thought it was surest asking in the dark. A' said however,
+  a' would have no such doings in his house, and so, do ye see, we are comed
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>"For God's sake, Mr. Grimes, think what you are about! You cannot be base
+  enough to ruin a poor creature who has put herself under your
+  protection!</p>
+
+  <p>"Ruin! No, no, I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done. Nay,
+  none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as safe AS a
+  horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a mile of us; and,
+  if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you are a delicate morsel,
+  and there is no time to be lost!"</p>
+
+  <p>Miss Melville had but an instant in which to collect her thoughts. She
+  felt that there was little hope of softening the obstinate and insensible
+  brute in whose power she was placed. But the presence of mind and
+  intrepidity annexed to her character did not now desert her. Grimes had
+  scarcely finished his harangue, when, with a strong and unexpected jerk, she
+  disengaged the bridle from his grasp, and at the same time put her horse
+  upon full speed. She had scarcely advanced twice the length of her horse,
+  when Grimes recovered from his surprise, and pursued her, inexpressibly
+  mortified at being so easily overreached. The sound of his horse behind
+  served but to rouse more completely the mettle of that of Emily; whether by
+  accident or sagacity, the animal pursued without a fault the narrow and
+  winding way; and the chase continued the whole length of the wood.</p>
+
+  <p>At the extremity of this wood there was a gate. The recollection of this
+  softened a little the cutting disappointment of Grimes, as he thought
+  himself secure of putting an end, by its assistance, to the career of Emily;
+  nor was it very probable that any body would appear to interrupt his
+  designs, in such a place, and in the dead and silence of the night. By the
+  most extraordinary accident, however, they found a man on horseback in wait
+  at this gate. "Help, help!" exclaimed the affrighted Emily; "thieves!
+  murder! help!" The man was Mr. Falkland. Grimes knew his voice; and
+  therefore, though he attempted a sort of sullen resistance, it was feebly
+  made. Two other men, whom, by reason of the darkness, he had not at first
+  seen, and who were Mr. Falkland's servants, hearing the bustle of the
+  rencounter, and alarmed for the safety of their master, rode up; and then
+  Grimes, disappointed at the loss of his gratification, and admonished by
+  conscious guilt, shrunk from farther parley, and rode off in silence.</p>
+
+  <p>It may seem strange that Mr. Falkland should thus a second time have been
+  the saviour of Miss Melville, and that under circumstances the most
+  unexpected and singular. But in this instance it is easily to be accounted
+  for. He had heard of a man who lurked about this wood for robbery or some
+  other bad design, and that it was conjectured this man was Hawkins, another
+  of the victims of Mr. Tyrrel's rural tyranny, whom I shall immediately have
+  occasion to introduce. Mr. Falkland's compassion had already been strongly
+  excited in favour of Hawkins; he had in vain endeavoured to find him, and do
+  him good; and he easily conceived that, if the conjecture which had been
+  made in this instance proved true, he might have it in his power not only to
+  do what he had always intended, but further, to save from a perilous offence
+  against the laws and society a man who appeared to have strongly imbibed the
+  principles of justice and virtue. He took with him two servants, because,
+  going with the express design of encountering robbers, if robbers should be
+  found, he believed he should be inexcusable if he did not go provided
+  against possible accidents. But he had directed them, at the same time that
+  they kept within call, to be out of the reach of being seen; and it was only
+  the eagerness of their zeal that had brought them up thus early in the
+  present encounter.</p>
+
+  <p>This new adventure promised something extraordinary. Mr. Falkland did not
+  immediately recognise Miss Melville; and the person of Grimes was that of a
+  total stranger, whom he did not recollect to have ever seen. But it was easy
+  to understand the merits of the case, and the propriety of interfering. The
+  resolute manner of Mr. Falkland, conjoined with the dread which Grimes,
+  oppressed with a sense of wrong, entertained of the opposition of so
+  elevated a personage, speedily put the ravisher to flight. Emily was left
+  alone with her deliverer. He found her much more collected and calm, than
+  could reasonably have been expected from a person who had been, a moment
+  before, in the most alarming situation. She told him of the place to which
+  she desired to be conveyed, and he immediately undertook to escort her. As
+  they went along, she recovered that state of mind which inclined her to make
+  a person to whom she had such repeated obligations, and who was so eminently
+  the object of her admiration, acquainted with the events that had recently
+  befallen her. Mr. Falkland listened with eagerness and surprise. Though he
+  had already known various instances of Mr. Tyrrel's mean jealousy and
+  unfeeling tyranny, this surpassed them all; and he could scarcely credit his
+  ears while he heard the tale. His brutal neighbour seemed to realise all
+  that has been told of the passions of fiends. Miss Melville was obliged to
+  repeat, in the course of her tale, her kinsman's rude accusation against
+  her, of entertaining a passion for Mr. Falkland; and this she did with the
+  most bewitching simplicity and charming confusion. Though this part of the
+  tale was a source of real pain to her deliverer, yet it is not to be
+  supposed but that the flattering partiality of this unhappy girl increased
+  the interest he felt in her welfare, and the indignation he conceived
+  against her infernal kinsman.</p>
+
+  <p>They arrived without accident at the house of the good lady under whose
+  protection Emily desired to place herself. Here Mr. Falkland willingly left
+  her as in a place of security. Such conspiracies as that of which she was
+  intended to have been the victim, depend for their success upon the person
+  against whom they are formed being out of the reach of help; and the moment
+  they are detected, they are annihilated. Such reasoning will, no doubt, be
+  generally found sufficiently solid; and it appeared to Mr. Falkland
+  perfectly applicable to the present case. But he was mistaken.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CIX" id="V1_CIX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland had experienced the nullity of all expostulation with Mr.
+  Tyrrel, and was therefore content in the present case with confining his
+  attention to the intended victim. The indignation with which he thought of
+  his neighbour's character was now grown to such a height, as to fill him
+  with reluctance to the idea of a voluntary interview. There was indeed
+  another affair which had been contemporary with this, that had once more
+  brought these mortal enemies into a state of contest, and had contributed to
+  raise into a temper little short of madness, the already inflamed and
+  corrosive bitterness of Mr. Tyrrel.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a tenant of Mr. Tyrrel, one Hawkins;&mdash;I cannot mention his
+  name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it! This
+  Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Tyrrel, with a view of
+  protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire,
+  though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr. Tyrrel
+  himself. The first ground of their connection was this:&mdash;Hawkins,
+  beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned squire, had a small
+  freehold estate that he inherited from his father. This of course entitled
+  him to a vote in the county elections; and, a warmly contested election
+  having occurred, he was required by his landlord to vote for the candidate
+  in whose favour he had himself engaged. Hawkins refused to obey the mandate,
+  and soon after received notice to quit the farm he at that time rented.</p>
+
+  <p>It happened that Mr. Tyrrel had interested himself strongly in behalf of
+  the opposite candidate; and, as Mr. Tyrrel's estate bordered upon the seat
+  of Hawkins's present residence, the ejected countryman could think of no
+  better expedient than that of riding over to this gentleman's mansion, and
+  relating the case to him. Mr. Tyrrel heard him through with attention.
+  "Well, friend," said he, "it is very true that I wished Mr. Jackman to carry
+  his election; but you know it is usual in these cases for tenants to vote
+  just as their landlords please. I do not think proper to encourage
+  rebellion."&mdash;"All that is very right, and please you," replied Hawkins,
+  "and I would have voted at my landlord's bidding for any other man in the
+  kingdom but Squire Marlow. You must know one day his huntsman rode over my
+  fence, and so through my best field of standing corn. It was not above a
+  dozen yards about if he had kept the cart-road. The fellow had served me the
+  same sauce, an it please your honour, three or four times before. So I only
+  asked him what he did that for, and whether he had not more conscience than
+  to spoil people's crops o' that fashion? Presently the squire came up. He is
+  but a poor, weazen-face chicken of a gentleman, saving your honour's
+  reverence. And so he flew into a woundy passion, and threatened to horsewhip
+  me. I will do as much in reason to pleasure my landlord as arr a tenant he
+  has; but I will not give my vote to a man that threatens to horsewhip me.
+  And so, your honour, I and my wife and three children are to be turned out
+  of house and home, and what I am to do to maintain them God knows. I have
+  been a hard-working man, and have always lived well, and I do think the case
+  is main hard. Squire Underwood turns me out of my farm; and if your honour
+  do not take me in, I know none of the neighbouring gentry will, for fear, as
+  they say, of encouraging their own tenants to run rusty too."</p>
+
+  <p>This representation was not without its effect upon Mr. Tyrrel. "Well,
+  well, man," replied he, "we will see what can be done. Order and
+  subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to
+  require. As you tell the story, I cannot see that you are greatly to blame.
+  Marlow is a coxcombical prig, that is the truth on't; and if a man will
+  expose himself, why, he must even take what follows. I do hate a Frenchified
+  fop with all my soul: and I cannot say that I am much pleased with my
+  neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a rascal. Hawkins, I think,
+  is your name? You may call on Barnes, my steward, to-morrow, and he shall
+  speak to you."</p>
+
+  <p>While Mr. Tyrrel was speaking, he recollected that he had a farm vacant,
+  of nearly the same value as that which Hawkins at present rented under Mr.
+  Underwood. He immediately consulted his steward, and, finding the thing
+  suitable in every respect, Hawkins was installed out of hand in the
+  catalogue of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants. Mr. Underwood extremely resented this
+  proceeding, which indeed, as being contrary to the understood conventions of
+  the country gentlemen, few people but Mr. Tyrrel would have ventured upon.
+  There was an end, said Mr. Underwood, to all regulation, if tenants were to
+  be encouraged in such disobedience. It was not a question of this or that
+  candidate, seeing that any gentleman, who was a true friend to his country,
+  would rather lose his election than do a thing which, if once established
+  into a practice, would deprive them for ever of the power of managing any
+  election. The labouring people were sturdy and resolute enough of their own
+  accord; it became every day more difficult to keep them under any
+  subordination; and, if the gentlemen were so ill advised as to neglect the
+  public good, and encourage them in their insolence, there was no foreseeing
+  where it would end.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel was not of a stamp to be influenced by these remonstrances.
+  Their general spirit was sufficiently conformable to the sentiments he
+  himself entertained; but he was of too vehement a temper to maintain the
+  character of a consistent politician; and, however wrong his conduct might
+  be, he would by no means admit of its being set right by the suggestions of
+  others. The more his patronage of Hawkins was criticised, the more
+  inflexibly he adhered to it; and he was at no loss in clubs and other
+  assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute, his censurers. Beside
+  which, Hawkins had certain accomplishments which qualified him to be a
+  favourite with Mr. Tyrrel. The bluntness of his manner and the ruggedness of
+  his temper gave him some resemblance to his landord; and, as these qualities
+  were likely to be more frequently exercised on such persons as had incurred
+  Mr. Tyrrel's displeasure, than upon Mr. Tyrrel himself, they were not
+  observed without some degree of complacency. In a word, he every day
+  received new marks of distinction from his patron, and after some time was
+  appointed coadjutor to Mr. Barnes under the denomination of bailiff. It was
+  about the same period that he obtained a lease of the farm of which he was
+  tenant.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel determined, as occasion offered, to promote every part of the
+  family of this favoured dependent. Hawkins had a son, a lad of seventeen, of
+  an agreeable person, a ruddy complexion, and of quick and lively parts. This
+  lad was in an uncommon degree the favourite of his father, who seemed to
+  have nothing so much at heart as the future welfare of his son. Mr. Tyrrel
+  had noticed him two or three times with approbation; and the boy, being fond
+  of the sports of the field, had occasionally followed the hounds, and
+  displayed various instances, both of agility and sagacity, in presence of
+  the squire. One day in particular he exhibited himself with uncommon
+  advantage; and Mr. Tyrrel without further delay proposed to his father, to
+  take him into his family, and make him whipper-in to his hounds, till he
+  could provide him with some more lucrative appointment in his service.</p>
+
+  <p>This proposal was received by Hawkins with various marks of
+  mortification. He excused himself with hesitation for not accepting the
+  offered favour; said the lad was in many ways useful to him; and hoped his
+  honour would not insist upon depriving him of his assistance. This apology
+  might perhaps have been sufficient with any other man than Mr. Tyrrel; but
+  it was frequently observed of this gentleman that, when he had once formed a
+  determination, however slight, in favour of any measure, he was never
+  afterwards known to give it up, and that the only effect of opposition was
+  to make him eager and inflexible, in pursuit of that to which he had before
+  been nearly indifferent. At first he seemed to receive the apology of
+  Hawkins with good humour, and to see nothing in it but what was reasonable;
+  but afterwards, every time he saw the boy, his desire of retaining him in
+  his service was increased, and he more than once repeated to his father the
+  good disposition in which he felt himself towards him. At length he observed
+  that the lad was no more to be seen mingling in his favourite sports, and he
+  began to suspect that this originated in a determination to thwart him in
+  his projects.</p>
+
+  <p>Roused by this suspicion, which, to a man of Mr. Tyrrel's character, was
+  not of a nature to brook delay, he sent for Hawkins to confer with him.
+  "Hawkins," said he, in a tone of displeasure, "I am not satisfied with you.
+  I have spoken to you two or three times about this lad of yours, whom I am
+  desirous of taking into favour. What is the reason, sir, that you seem
+  unthankful and averse to my kindness? You ought to know that I am not to be
+  trifled with. I shall not be contented, when I offer my favours, to have
+  them rejected by such fellows as you. I made you what you are; and, if I
+  please, can make you more helpless and miserable than you were when I found
+  you. Have a care!"</p>
+
+  <p>"An it please your honour," said Hawkins, "you have been a very good
+  master to me, and I will tell you the whole truth. I hope you will na be
+  angry. This lad is my favourite, my comfort, and the stay of my age."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, and what then? Is that a reason you should hinder his
+  preferment?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Nay, pray your honour, hear me. I may be very weak for aught I know in
+  this case, but I cannot help it. My father was a clergyman. We have all of
+  us lived in a creditable way; and I cannot bear to think that this poor lad
+  of mine should go to service. For my part, I do not see any good that comes
+  by servants. I do not know, your honour, but, I think, I should not like my
+  Leonard to be such as they. God forgive me, if I wrong them! But this is a
+  very dear case, and I cannot bear to risk my poor boy's welfare, when I can
+  so easily, if you please, keep him out or harm's way. At present he is sober
+  and industrious, and, without being pert or surly, knows what is due to him.
+  I know, your honour, that it is main foolish of me to talk to you thus; but
+  your honour has been a good master to me, and I cannot bear to tell you a
+  lie."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel had heard the whole of this harangue in silence, because he
+  was too much astonished to open his mouth. If a thunderbolt had fallen at
+  his feet, he could not have testified greater surprise. He had thought that
+  Hawkins was so foolishly fond of his son, that he could not bear to trust
+  him out of his presence; but had never in the slightest degree suspected
+  what he now found to be the truth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, ho, you are a gentleman, are you? A pretty gentleman truly! your
+  father was a clergyman! Your family is too good to enter into my service!
+  Why you impudent rascal! was it for this that I took you up, when Mr.
+  Underwood dismissed you for your insolence to him? Have I been nursing a
+  viper in my bosom? Pretty master's manners will be contaminated truly? He
+  will not know what is due to him, but will be accustomed to obey orders! You
+  insufferable villain! Get out of my sight! Depend upon it, I will have no
+  gentlemen on my estate! I will off with them, root and branch, bag and
+  baggage! So do you hear, sir? come to me to-morrow morning, bring your son,
+  and ask my pardon; or, take my word for it, I will make you so miserable,
+  you shall wish you had never been born."</p>
+
+  <p>This treatment was too much for Hawkins's patience. "There is no need,
+  your honour, that I should come to you again about this affair. I have taken
+  up my determination, and no time can make any change in it. I am main sorry
+  to displease your worship, and I know that you can do me a great deal of
+  mischief. But I hope you will not be so hardhearted as to ruin a father only
+  for being fond of his child, even if so be that his fondness should make him
+  do a foolish thing. But I cannot help it, your honour: you must do as you
+  please. The poorest neger, as a man may say, has some point that he will not
+  part with. I will lose all that I have, and go to day-labour, and my son
+  too, if needs must; but I will not make a gentleman's servant of him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Very well, friend; very well!" replied Mr. Tyrrel, foaming with rage.
+  "Depend upon it, I will remember you! Your pride shall have a downfal! God
+  damn it! is it come to this? Shall a rascal that farms his forty acres,
+  pretend to beard the lord of the manor? I will tread you into paste! Let me
+  advise you, scoundrel, to shut up your house and fly, as if the devil was
+  behind you! You may think yourself happy, if I be not too quick for you yet,
+  if you escape in a whole skin! I would not suffer such a villain to remain
+  upon my land a day longer, if I could gain the Indies by it!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not so fast, your honour," answered Hawkins, sturdily. "I hope you will
+  think better of it, and see that I have not been to blame. But if you should
+  not, there is some harm that you can do me, and some harm that you cannot.
+  Though I am a plain, working man, your honour, do you see? yet I am a man
+  still. No; I have got a lease of my farm, and I shall not quit it o' thaten.
+  I hope there is some law for poor folk, as well as for rich."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel, unused to contradiction, was provoked beyond bearing at the
+  courage and independent spirit of his retainer. There was not a tenant upon
+  his estate, or at least not one of Hawkins's mediocrity of fortune, whom the
+  general policy of landowners, and still more the arbitrary and
+  uncontrollable temper of Mr. Tyrrel, did not effectually restrain from acts
+  of open defiance.</p>
+
+  <p>"Excellent, upon my soul! God damn my blood! but you are a rare fellow.
+  You have a lease, have you? You will not quit, not you! a pretty pass things
+  are come to, if a lease can protect such fellows as you against the lord of
+  a manor! But you are for a trial of skill? Oh, very well, friend, very well!
+  With all my soul! Since it is come to that, we will show you some pretty
+  sport before we have done! But get out of my sight, you rascal! I have not
+  another word to say to you! Never darken my doors again."</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins (to borrow the language of the world) was guilty in this affair
+  of a double imprudence. He talked to his landlord in a more peremptory
+  manner than the constitution and practices of this country allow a dependent
+  to assume. But above all, having been thus hurried away by his resentment,
+  he ought to have foreseen the consequences. It was mere madness in him to
+  think of contesting with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's eminence and fortune. It was
+  a fawn contending with a lion. Nothing could have been more easy to predict,
+  than that it was of no avail for him to have right on his side, when his
+  adversary had influence and wealth, and therefore could so victoriously
+  justify any extravagancies that he might think proper to commit. This maxim
+  was completely illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know
+  how to engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were
+  perhaps at first intended [witless and miserable precaution!] for the
+  safeguards of the poor.</p>
+
+  <p>From this moment Mr. Tyrrel was bent upon Hawkins's destruction; and he
+  left no means unemployed that could either harass or injure the object of
+  his persecution. He deprived him of his appointment of bailiff, and directed
+  Barnes and his other dependents to do him ill offices upon all occasions.
+  Mr. Tyrrel, by the tenure of his manor, was impropriator of the great
+  tithes, and this circumstance afforded him frequent opportunities of petty
+  altercation. The land of one part of Hawkins's farm, though covered with
+  corn, was lower than the rest; and consequently exposed to occasional
+  inundations from a river by which it was bounded. Mr. Tyrrel had a dam
+  belonging to this river privately cut, about a fortnight before the season
+  of harvest, and laid the whole under water. He ordered his servants to pull
+  away the fences of the higher ground during the night, and to turn in his
+  cattle, to the utter destruction of the crop. These expedients, however,
+  applied to only one part of the property of this unfortunate man. But Mr.
+  Tyrrel did not stop here. A sudden mortality took place among Hawkins's live
+  stock, attended with very suspicious circumstances. Hawkins's vigilance was
+  strongly excited by this event, and he at length succeeded in tracing the
+  matter so accurately, that he conceived he could bring it home to Mr. Tyrrel
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins had hitherto carefully avoided, notwithstanding the injuries he
+  had suffered, the attempting to right himself by legal process; being of
+  opinion that law was better adapted for a weapon of tyranny in the hands of
+  the rich, than for a shield to protect the humbler part of the community
+  against their usurpations. In this last instance however he conceived that
+  the offence was so atrocious, as to make it impossible that any rank could
+  protect the culprit against the severity of justice. In the sequel, he saw
+  reason to applaud himself for his former inactivity in this respect, and to
+  repent that any motive had been strong enough to persuade him into a
+  contrary system.</p>
+
+  <p>This was the very point to which Mr. Tyrrel wanted to bring him, and he
+  could scarcely credit his good fortune, when he was told that Hawkins had
+  entered an action. His congratulation upon this occasion was immoderate, as
+  he now conceived that the ruin of his late favourite was irretrievable. He
+  consulted his attorney, and urged him by every motive he could devise, to
+  employ the whole series of his subterfuges in the present affair. The direct
+  repelling of the charge exhibited against him was the least part of his
+  care; the business was, by affidavits, motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and
+  appeals, to protract the question from term to term, and from court to
+  court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel argued, be the disgrace of a civilized
+  country, if a gentleman, when insolently attacked in law by the scum of the
+  earth, could not convert the cause into a question of the longest purse, and
+  stick in the skirts of his adversary till he had reduced him to beggary.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel, however, was by no means so far engrossed by his law-suit, as
+  to neglect other methods of proceeding offensively against his tenant. Among
+  the various expedients that suggested themselves, there was one, which,
+  though it tended rather to torment than irreparably injure the sufferer, was
+  not rejected. This was derived from the particular situation of Hawkins's
+  house, barns, stacks, and outhouses. They were placed at the extremity of a
+  slip of land connecting them with the rest of the farm, and were surrounded
+  on three sides by fields, in the occupation of one of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants
+  most devoted to the pleasures of his landlord. The road to the market-town
+  ran at the bottom of the largest of these fields, and was directly in view
+  of the front of the house. No inconvenience had yet arisen from that
+  circumstance, as there had always been a broad path, that intersected this
+  field, and led directly from Hawkins's house to the road. This path, or
+  private road, was now, by concert of Mr. Tyrrel and his obliging tenant,
+  shut up, so as to make Hawkins a sort of prisoner in his own domains, and
+  oblige him to go near a mile about for the purposes of his traffic.</p>
+
+  <p>Young Hawkins, the lad who had been the original subject of dispute
+  between his father and the squire, had much of his father's spirit, and felt
+  an uncontrollable indignation against the successive acts of despotism of
+  which he was a witness. His resentment was the greater, because the
+  sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them flowed from
+  affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose removing the
+  ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in the face of his
+  father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion, without asking any
+  counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went in the middle of the
+  night, and removed all the obstructions that had been placed in the way of
+  the old path, broke the padlocks that had been fixed, and threw open the
+  gates.</p>
+
+  <p>In these operations he did not proceed unobserved, and the next day a
+  warrant was issued for apprehending him. He was accordingly carried before a
+  meeting of justices, and by them committed to the county gaol, to take his
+  trial for the felony at the next assizes. Mr. Tyrrel was determined to
+  prosecute the offence with the greatest severity; and his attorney, having
+  made the proper enquiries for that purpose, undertook to bring it under that
+  clause of the act 9 Geo. I. commonly called the Black Act, which declares
+  that "any person, armed with a sword, or other offensive weapon, and having
+  his face blackened, or being otherwise disguised, appearing in any warren or
+  place where hares or conies have been or shall be usually kept, and being
+  thereof duly convicted, shall be adjudged guilty of felony, and shall suffer
+  death, as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy." Young Hawkins, it
+  seemed, had buttoned the cape of his great coat over his face, as soon as he
+  perceived himself to be observed, and he was furnished with a wrenching-iron
+  for the purpose of breaking the padlocks. The attorney further undertook to
+  prove, by sufficient witnesses, that the field in question was a warren in
+  which hares were regularly fed. Mr. Tyrrel seized upon these pretences with
+  inexpressible satisfaction. He prevailed upon the justices, by the picture
+  he drew of the obstinacy and insolence of the Hawkinses, fully to commit the
+  lad upon this miserable charge; and it was by no means so certain as
+  paternal affection would have desired, that the same overpowering influence
+  would not cause in the sequel the penal clause to be executed in all its
+  strictness.</p>
+
+  <p>This was the finishing stroke to Hawkins's miseries: as he was not
+  deficient in courage, he had stood up against his other persecutions without
+  flinching. He was not unaware of the advantages which our laws and customs
+  give to the rich over the poor, in contentions of this kind. But, being once
+  involved, there was a stubbornness in his nature that would not allow him to
+  retract, and he suffered himself to hope, rather than expect, a favourable
+  issue. But in this last event he was wounded in the point that was nearest
+  his heart. He had feared to have his son contaminated and debased by a
+  servile station, and he now saw him transferred to the seminary of a gaol.
+  He was even uncertain as to the issue of his imprisonment, and trembled to
+  think what the tyranny of wealth might effect to blast his hopes for
+  ever.</p>
+
+  <p>From this moment his heart died within him. He had trusted to persevering
+  industry and skill, to save the wreck of his little property from the vulgar
+  spite of his landlord. But he had now no longer any spirit to exert those
+  efforts which his situation more than ever required. Mr. Tyrrel proceeded
+  without remission in his machinations; Hawkins's affairs every day grew more
+  desperate, and the squire, watching the occasion, took the earliest
+  opportunity of seizing upon his remaining property in the mode of a distress
+  for rent.</p>
+
+  <p>It was precisely in this stage of the affair, that Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+  Tyrrel accidentally met, in a private road near the habitation of the
+  latter. They were on horseback, and Mr. Falkland was going to the house of
+  the unfortunate tenant, who seemed upon the point of perishing under his
+  landlord's malice. He had been just made acquainted with the tale of this
+  persecution. It had indeed been an additional aggravation of Hawkins's
+  calamity, that Mr. Falkland, whose interference might otherwise have saved
+  him, had been absent from the neighbourhood for a considerable time. He had
+  been three months in London, and from thence had gone to visit his estates
+  in another part of the island. The proud and self-confident spirit of this
+  poor fellow always disposed him to depend, as long as possible, upon his own
+  exertions. He had avoided applying to Mr. Falkland, or indeed indulging
+  himself in any manner in communicating and bewailing his hard hap, in the
+  beginning of the contention, and, when the extremity grew more urgent, and
+  he would have been willing to recede in some degree from the stubbornness of
+  his measures, he found it no longer in his power. After an absence of
+  considerable duration, Mr. Falkland at length returned somewhat
+  unexpectedly; and having learned, among the first articles of country
+  intelligence, the distresses of this unfortunate yeoman, he resolved to ride
+  over to his house the next morning, and surprise him with all the relief it
+  was in his power to bestow.</p>
+
+  <p>At sight of Mr. Tyrrel in this unexpected rencounter, his face reddened
+  with indignation. His first feeling, as he afterwards said, was to avoid
+  him; but finding that he must pass him, he conceived that it would be want
+  of spirit not to acquaint him with his feelings on the present occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, somewhat abruptly, "I am sorry for a piece of news
+  which I have just heard."</p>
+
+  <p>"And pray, sir, what is your sorrow to me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"A great deal, sir: it is caused by the distresses of a poor tenant of
+  yours, Hawkins. If your steward have proceeded without your authority, I
+  think it right to inform you what he has done; and, if he have had your
+  authority, I would gladly persuade you to think better of it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland, it would be quite as well if you would mind your own
+  business, and leave me to mind mine. I want no monitor, and I will have
+  none."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mistake, Mr. Tyrrel; I am minding my own business. If I see you fall
+  into a pit, it is my business to draw you out and save your life. If I see
+  you pursuing a wrong mode of conduct, it is my business to set you right and
+  save your honour."</p>
+
+  <p>"Zounds, sir, do not think to put your conundrums upon me! Is not the man
+  my tenant? Is not my estate my own? What signifies calling it mine, if I am
+  not to have the direction of it? Sir, I pay for what I have: I owe no man a
+  penny; and I will not put my estate to nurse to you, nor the best he that
+  wears a head."</p>
+
+  <p>"It is very true," said Mr. Falkland, avoiding any direct notice of the
+  last words of Mr. Tyrrel, "that there is a distinction of ranks. I believe
+  that distinction is a good thing, and necessary to the peace of mankind.
+  But, however necessary it may be, we must acknowledge that it puts some
+  hardship upon the lower orders of society. It makes one's heart ache to
+  think, that one man is born to the inheritance of every superfluity, while
+  the whole share of another, without any demerit of his, is drudgery and
+  starving; and that all this is indispensable. We that are rich, Mr. Tyrrel,
+  must do every thing in our power to lighten the yoke of these unfortunate
+  people. We must not use the advantage that accident has given us with an
+  unmerciful hand. Poor wretches! they are pressed almost beyond bearing as it
+  is; and, if we unfeelingly give another turn to the machine, they will be
+  crushed into atoms."</p>
+
+  <p>This picture was not without its effect, even upon the obdurate mind of
+  Mr. Tyrrel.&mdash;"Well, sir, I am no tyrant. I know very well that tyranny
+  is a bad thing. But you do not infer from thence that these people are to do
+  as they please, and never meet with their deserts?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Tyrrel, I see that you are shaken in your animosity. Suffer me to
+  hail the new-born benevolence of your nature. Go with me to Hawkins. Do not
+  let us talk of his deserts! Poor fellow! he has suffered almost all that
+  human nature can endure. Let your forgiveness upon this occasion be the
+  earnest of good neighbourhood and friendship between you and me."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, sir, I will not go. I own there is something in what you say. I
+  always knew you had the wit to make good your own story, and tell a
+  plausible tale. But I will not be come over thus. It has been my character,
+  when I had once conceived a scheme of vengeance, never to forego it; and I
+  will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when every body forsook
+  him, and made a man of him; and the ungrateful rascal has only insulted me
+  for my pains. Curse me, if I ever forgive him! It would be a good jest
+  indeed, if I were to forgive the insolence of my own creature at the desire
+  of a man like you that has been my perpetual plague."</p>
+
+  <p>"For God's sake, Mr. Tyrrel, have some reason in your resentment! Let us
+  suppose that Hawkins has behaved unjustifiably, and insulted you: is that an
+  offence that never can be expiated? Must the father be ruined, and the son
+  hanged, to glut your resentment?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Damn me, sir, but you may talk your heart out; you shall get nothing of
+  me. I shall never forgive myself for having listened to you for a moment. I
+  will suffer nobody to stop the stream of my resentment; if I ever were to
+  forgive him, it should be at nobody's, entreaty but my own. But, sir, I
+  never will. If he and all his family were at my feet, I would order them all
+  to be hanged the next minute, if my power were as good as my will."</p>
+
+  <p>"And this is your decision, is it? Mr. Tyrrel, I am ashamed of you!
+  Almighty God! to hear you talk gives one a loathing for the institutions and
+  regulations of society, and would induce one to fly the very face of man!
+  But, no! society casts you out; man abominates you. No wealth, no rank, can
+  buy out your stain. You will live deserted in the midst of your species; you
+  will go into crowded societies, and no one will deign so much as to salute
+  you. They will fly from your glance as they would from the gaze of a
+  basilisk. Where do you expect to find the hearts of flint that shall
+  sympathise with yours? You have the stamp of misery, incessant, undivided,
+  unpitied misery!"</p>
+
+  <p>Thus saying, Mr. Falkland gave spurs to his horse, rudely pushed beside
+  Mr. Tyrrel, and was presently out of sight. Flaming indignation annihilated
+  even his favourite sense of honour, and he regarded his neighbour as a
+  wretch, with whom it was impossible even to enter into contention. For the
+  latter, he remained for the present motionless and petrified. The glowing
+  enthusiasm of Mr. Falkland was such as might well have unnerved the stoutest
+  foe. Mr. Tyrrel, in spite of himself, was blasted with the compunctions of
+  guilt, and unable to string himself for the contest. The picture Mr.
+  Falkland had drawn was prophetic. It described what Mr. Tyrrel chiefly
+  feared; and what in its commencements he thought he already felt. It was
+  responsive to the whispering of his own meditations; it simply gave body and
+  voice to the spectre that haunted him, and to the terrors of which he was an
+  hourly prey.</p>
+
+  <p>By and by, however, he recovered. The more he had been temporarily
+  confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such
+  hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with
+  violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have
+  recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a
+  coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his
+  vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his animosity
+  would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition of any time or
+  events. Vengeance was his nightly dream, and the uppermost of his waking
+  thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland had departed from this conference with a confirmed
+  disapprobation of the conduct of his neighbour, and an unalterable
+  resolution to do every thing in his power to relieve the distresses of
+  Hawkins. But he was too late. When he arrived, he found the house already
+  evacuated by its master. The family was removed nobody knew whither; Hawkins
+  had absconded, and, what was still more extraordinary, the boy Hawkins had
+  escaped on the very same day from the county gaol. The enquiries Mr.
+  Falkland set on foot after them were fruitless; no traces could be found of
+  the catastrophe of these unhappy people. That catastrophe I shall shortly
+  have occasion to relate, and it will be found pregnant with horror, beyond
+  what the blackest misanthropy could readily have suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>I go on with my tale. I go on to relate those incidents in which my own
+  fate was so mysteriously involved. I lift the curtain, and bring forward the
+  last act of the tragedy.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CX" id="V1_CX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+  <p>It may easily be supposed, that the ill temper cherished by Mr. Tyrrel in
+  his contention with Hawkins, and the increasing animosity between him and
+  Mr. Falkland, added to the impatience with which he thought of the escape of
+  Emily.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel heard with astonishment of the miscarriage of an expedient, of
+  the success of which he had not previously entertained the slightest
+  suspicion. He became frantic with vexation. Grimes had not dared to signify
+  the event of his expedition in person, and the footman whom he desired to
+  announce to his master that Miss Melville was lost, the moment after fled
+  from his presence with the most dreadful apprehensions. Presently he
+  bellowed for Grimes, and the young man at last appeared before him, more
+  dead than alive. Grimes he compelled to repeat the particulars of the tale;
+  which he had no sooner done, than he once again slunk away, shocked at the
+  execrations with which Mr. Tyrrel overwhelmed him. Grimes was no coward; but
+  he reverenced the inborn divinity that attends upon rank, as Indians worship
+  the devil. Nor was this all. The rage of Mr. Tyrrel was so ungovernable and
+  fierce, that few hearts could have been found so stout, as not to have
+  trembled before it with a sort of unconquerable inferiority.</p>
+
+  <p>He no sooner obtained a moment's pause than he began to recall to his
+  tempestuous mind the various circumstances of the case. His complaints were
+  bitter; and, in a tranquil observer, might have produced the united feeling
+  of pity for his sufferings, and horror at his depravity. He recollected all
+  the precautions he had used; he could scarcely find a flaw in the process;
+  and he cursed that blind and malicious power which delighted to cross his
+  most deep-laid schemes. "Of this malice he was beyond all other human beings
+  the object. He was mocked with the shadow of power; and when he lifted his
+  hand to smite, it was struck with sudden palsy. [In the bitterness of his
+  anguish, he forgot his recent triumph over Hawkins, or perhaps he regarded
+  it less as a triumph, than an overthrow, because it had failed of coming up
+  to the extent of his malice.] To what purpose had Heaven given him a feeling
+  of injury, and an instinct to resent, while he could in no case make his
+  resentment felt! It was only necessary for him to be the enemy of any
+  person, to insure that person's being safe against the reach of misfortune.
+  What insults, the most shocking and repeated, had he received from this
+  paltry girl! And by whom was she now torn from his indignation? By that
+  devil that haunted him at every moment, that crossed him at every step, that
+  fixed at pleasure his arrows in his heart, and made mows and mockery at his
+  insufferable tortures."</p>
+
+  <p>There was one other reflection that increased his anguish, and made him
+  careless and desperate as to his future conduct. It was in vain to conceal
+  from himself that his reputation would be cruelly wounded by this event. He
+  had imagined that, while Emily was forced into this odious marriage, she
+  would be obliged by decorum, as soon as the event was decided, to draw a
+  veil over the compulsion she had suffered. But this security was now lost,
+  and Mr. Falkland would take a pride in publishing his dishonour. Though the
+  provocations he had received from Miss Melville would, in his own opinion,
+  have justified him in any treatment he should have thought proper to
+  inflict, he was sensible the world would see the matter in a different
+  light. This reflection augmented the violence of his resolutions, and
+  determined him to refuse no means by which he could transfer the anguish
+  that now preyed upon his own mind to that of another.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the composure and magnanimity of Emily had considerably
+  subsided, the moment she believed herself in a place of safety. While danger
+  and injustice assailed her with their menaces, she found in herself a
+  courage that disdained to yield. The succeeding appearance of calm was more
+  fatal to her. There was nothing now, powerfully to foster her courage or
+  excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had passed, and her
+  soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while it was in act, she
+  had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at which Mr. Tyrrel had
+  been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had been in all instances a
+  stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to misfortune, she had suddenly and
+  without preparation been made the subject of the most infernal malignity.
+  When a man of robust and vigorous constitution has a fit of sickness, it
+  produces a more powerful effect, than the same indisposition upon a delicate
+  valetudinarian. Such was the case with Miss Melville. She passed the
+  succeeding night sleepless and uneasy, and was found in the morning with a
+  high fever. Her distemper resisted for the present all attempts to assuage
+  it, though there was reason to hope that the goodness of her constitution,
+  assisted by tranquillity and the kindness of those about her, would
+  ultimately surmount it. On the second day she was delirious. On the night of
+  that day she was arrested at the suit of Mr. Tyrrel, for a debt contracted
+  for board and necessaries for the last fourteen years.</p>
+
+  <p>The idea of this arrest, as the reader will perhaps recollect, first
+  occurred, in the conversation between Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville, soon
+  after he had thought proper to confine her to her chamber. But at that time
+  he had probably no serious conception of ever being induced to carry it into
+  execution. It had merely been mentioned by way of threat, and as the
+  suggestion of a mind, whose habits had long been accustomed to contemplate
+  every possible instrument of tyranny and revenge. But now, that the
+  unlooked-for rescue and escape of his poor kinswoman had wrought up his
+  thoughts to a degree of insanity, and that he revolved in the gloomy
+  recesses of his mind, how he might best shake off the load of disappointment
+  which oppressed him, the idea recurred with double force. He was not long in
+  forming his resolution; and, calling for Barnes his steward, immediately
+  gave him directions in what manner to proceed.</p>
+
+  <p>Barnes had been for several years the instrument of Mr. Tyrrel's
+  injustice. His mind was hardened by use, and he could, without remorse,
+  officiate as the spectator, or even as the author and director, of a scene
+  of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the present
+  occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Tyrrel's family had been
+  without a blot. She had not a single enemy; and it was impossible to
+  contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless innocence, without
+  emotions of sympathy and compassion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Your worship?&mdash;I do not understand you!--Arrest Miss&mdash;Miss
+  Emily!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes,&mdash;I tell you!--What is the matter with you?&mdash;Go instantly
+  to Swineard, the lawyer, and bid him finish the business out of hand!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord love your honour! Arrest her! Why she does not owe you a brass
+  farthing: she always lived upon your charity!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Ass! Scoundrel! I tell you she does owe me,&mdash;owes me eleven hundred
+  pounds.&mdash;The law justifies it.&mdash;What do you think laws were made
+  for? I do nothing but right, and right I will have."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your honour, I never questioned your orders in my life; but I must now.
+  I cannot see you ruin Miss Emily, poor girl! nay, and yourself too, for the
+  matter of that, and not say which way you are going. I hope you will bear
+  with me. Why, if she owed you ever so much, she cannot be arrested. She is
+  not of age."</p>
+
+  <p>"Will you have done?&mdash;Do not tell me of&mdash;It cannot, and It can.
+  It has been done before,&mdash;and it shall be done again. Let him dispute
+  it that dares! I will do it now and stand to it afterwards. Tell
+  Swineard,&mdash;if he make the least boggling, it is as much as his life is
+  worth;&mdash;he shall starve by inches."</p>
+
+  <p>"Pray, your honour, think better of it. Upon my life, the whole country
+  will cry shame of it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Barnes!--What do you mean? I am not used to be talked to, and I cannot
+  hear it! You have been a good fellow to me upon many occasions&mdash;But, if
+  I find you out for making one with them that dispute my authority, damn my
+  soul, if I do not make you sick of your life!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have done, your honour. I will not say another word except
+  this,&mdash;I have heard as how that Miss Emily is sick a-bed. You are
+  determined, you say, to put her in jail. You do not mean to kill her, I take
+  it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Let her die! I will not spare her for an hour&mdash;I will not always be
+  insulted. She had no consideration for me, and I have no mercy for
+  her.&mdash;I am in for it! They have provoked me past bearing,&mdash;and
+  they shall feel me! Tell Swineard, in bed or up, day or night, I will not
+  hear of an instant's delay."</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the directions of Mr. Tyrrel, and in strict conformity to his
+  directions were the proceedings of that respectable limb of the law he
+  employed upon the present occasion. Miss Melville had been delirious,
+  through a considerable part of the day on the evening of which the bailiff
+  and his follower arrived. By the direction of the physician whom Mr.
+  Falkland had ordered to attend her, a composing draught was administered;
+  and, exhausted as she was by the wild and distracted images that for several
+  hours had haunted her fancy, she was now sunk into a refreshing slumber.
+  Mrs. Hammond, the sister of Mrs. Jakeman, was sitting by her bed-side, full
+  of compassion for the lovely sufferer, and rejoicing in the calm
+  tranquillity that had just taken possession of her, when a little girl, the
+  only child of Mrs. Hammond, opened the street-door to the rap of the bailiff
+  He said he wanted to speak with Miss Melville, and the child answered that
+  she would go tell her mother. So saying, she advanced to the door of the
+  back-room upon the ground-floor, in which Emily lay; but the moment it was
+  opened, instead of waiting for the appearance of the mother, the bailiff
+  entered along with the girl.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Hammond looked up. "Who are you?" said she. "Why do you come in
+  here? Hush! be quiet!'</p>
+
+  <p>"I must speak with Miss Melville."</p>
+
+  <p>"Indeed, but you must not. Tell me your business. The poor child has been
+  light-headed all day. She has just fallen asleep, and must not be
+  disturbed."</p>
+
+  <p>"That is no business of mine. I must obey orders."</p>
+
+  <p>"Orders? Whose orders? What is it you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>At this moment Emily opened her eyes. "What noise is that? Pray let me be
+  quiet."</p>
+
+  <p>"Miss, I want to speak with you. I have got a writ against you for eleven
+  hundred pounds at the suit of squire Tyrrel."</p>
+
+  <p>At these words both Mrs. Hammond and Emily were dumb. The latter was
+  scarcely able to annex any meaning to the intelligence; and, though Mrs.
+  Hammond was somewhat better acquainted with the sort of language that was
+  employed, yet in this strange and unexpected connection it was almost as
+  mysterious to her as to poor Emily herself.</p>
+
+  <p>"A writ? How can she be in Mr. Tyrrel's debt? A writ against a
+  child!"</p>
+
+  <p>"It is no signification putting your questions to us. We only do as we
+  are directed. There is our authority. Look at it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord Almighty!" exclaimed Mrs. Hammond, "what does this mean? It is
+  impossible Mr. Tyrrel should have sent you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Good woman, none of your jabber to us! Cannot you read?"</p>
+
+  <p>"This is all a trick! The paper is forged! It is a vile contrivance to
+  get the poor orphan out of the hands of those with whom only she can be
+  safe. Proceed upon it at your peril!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Rest you content; that is exactly what we mean to do. Take my word, we
+  know very well what we are about."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, you would not tear her from her bed? I tell you, she is in a high
+  fever; she is light-headed; it would be death to remove her! You are
+  bailiffs, are not you? You are not murderers?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The law says nothing about that. We have orders to take her sick or
+  well. We will do her no harm except so far as we must perform our office, be
+  it how it will."</p>
+
+  <p>"Where would you take her? What is it you mean to do?"</p>
+
+  <p>"To the county jail. Bullock, go, order a post-chaise from the
+  Griffin!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Stay, I say! Give no such orders! Wait only three hours; I will send off
+  a messenger express to squire Falkland, and I am sure he will satisfy you as
+  to any harm that can come to you, without its being necessary to take the
+  poor child to jail."</p>
+
+  <p>"We have particular directions against that. We are not at liberty to
+  lose a minute. Why are not you gone? Order the horses to be put to
+  immediately!"</p>
+
+  <p>Emily had listened to the course of this conversation, which had
+  sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first
+  appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was thus
+  presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which she had
+  just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do not harass
+  yourself with useless efforts. I am very sorry for all the trouble I have
+  given you. But my misfortune is inevitable. Sir, if you will step into the
+  next room, I will dress myself, and attend you immediately."</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Hammond began to be equally aware that her struggles were to no
+  purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon
+  the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate, and
+  not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter invective, against the
+  hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and
+  moderation with the discharge of his function; but he was impenetrable to
+  all she could urge. In the mean while Emily yielded with the sweetest
+  resignation to an inevitable evil. Mrs. Hammond insisted that, at least,
+  they should permit her to attend her young lady in the chaise; and the
+  bailiff, though the orders he had received were so peremptory that he dared
+  not exercise his discretion as to the execution of the writ, began to have
+  some apprehensions of danger, and was willing to admit of any precaution
+  that was not in direct hostility to his functions. For the rest he
+  understood, that it was in all cases dangerous to allow sickness, or
+  apparent unfitness for removal, as a sufficient cause to interrupt a direct
+  process; and that, accordingly, in all doubtful questions and presumptive
+  murders, the practice of the law inclined, with a laudable partiality, to
+  the vindication of its own officers. In addition to these general rules, he
+  was influenced by the positive injunctions and assurances of Swineard, and
+  the terror which, through a circle of many miles, was annexed to the name of
+  Tyrrel. Before they departed, Mrs. Hammond despatched a messenger with a
+  letter of three lines to Mr. Falkland, informing him of this extraordinary
+  event. Mr. Falkland was from home when the messenger arrived, and not
+  expected to return till the second day; accident seemed in this instance to
+  favour the vengeance of Mr. Tyrrel, for he had himself been too much under
+  the dominion of an uncontrollable fury, to take a circumstance of this sort
+  into his estimate.</p>
+
+  <p>The forlorn state of these poor women, who were conducted, the one by
+  compulsion, the other a volunteer, to a scene so little adapted to their
+  accommodation as that of a common jail, may easily be imagined. Mrs. Hammond,
+  however, was endowed with a masculine courage and impetuosity of spirit,
+  eminently necessary in the difficulties they had to encounter. She was in
+  some degree fitted by a sanguine temper, and an impassioned sense of
+  injustice, for the discharge of those very offices which sobriety and calm
+  reflection might have prescribed. The health of Miss Melville was materially
+  affected by the surprise and removal she had undergone at the very time that
+  repose was most necessary for her preservation. Her fever became more
+  violent; her delirium was stronger; and the tortures of her imagination were
+  proportioned to the unfavourableness of the state in which the removal had
+  been effected. It was highly improbable that she could recover.</p>
+
+  <p>In the moments of suspended reason she was perpetually calling on the
+  name of Falkland. Mr. Falkland, she said, was her first and only love, and
+  he should be her husband. A moment after she exclaimed upon him in a
+  disconsolate, yet reproachful tone, for his unworthy deference to the
+  prejudices of the world. It was very cruel of him to show himself so proud,
+  and tell her that he would never consent to marry a beggar. But, if he were
+  proud, she was determined to be proud too. He should see that she would not
+  conduct herself like a slighted maiden, and that, though he could reject
+  her, it was not in his power to break her heart. At another time she
+  imagined she saw Mr. Tyrrel and his engine Grimes, their hands and garments
+  dropping with blood: and the pathetic reproaches she vented against them
+  might have affected a heart of stone. Then the figure of Falkland presented
+  itself to her distracted fancy, deformed with wounds, and of a deadly
+  paleness, and she shrieked with agony, while she exclaimed that such was the
+  general hardheartedness, that no one would make the smallest exertion for
+  his rescue. In such vicissitudes of pain, perpetually imagining to her self
+  unkindness, insult, conspiracy, and murder, she passed a considerable part
+  of two days.</p>
+
+  <p>On the evening of the second Mr. Falkland arrived, accompanied by Doctor
+  Wilson, the physician by whom she had previously been attended. The scene he
+  was called upon to witness was such as to be most exquisitely agonising to a
+  man of his acute sensibility. The news of the arrest had given him an
+  inexpressible shock; he was transported out of himself at the unexampled
+  malignity of its author. But, when he saw the figure of Miss Melville,
+  haggard, and a warrant of death written in her countenance, a victim to the
+  diabolical passions of her kinsman, it seemed too much to be endured. When
+  he entered, she was in the midst of one of her fits of delirium, and
+  immediately mistook her visitors for two assassins. She asked, where they
+  had hid her Falkland, her lord, her life, her husband! and demanded that
+  they should restore to her his mangled corpse, that she might embrace him
+  with her dying arms, breathe her last upon his lips, and be buried in the
+  same grave. She reproached them with the sordidness of their conduct in
+  becoming the tools of her vile cousin, who had deprived her of her reason,
+  and would never be contented till he had murdered her. Mr. Falkland tore
+  himself away from this painful scene, and, leaving Doctor Wilson with his
+  patient, desired him, when he had given the necessary directions, to follow
+  him to his inn.</p>
+
+  <p>The perpetual hurry of spirits in which Miss Melville had been kept for
+  several days, by the nature of her indisposition, was extremely exhausting
+  to her; and, in about an hour from the visit of Mr. Falkland, her delirium
+  subsided, and left her in so low a state as to render it difficult to
+  perceive any signs of life. Doctor Wilson, who had withdrawn, to soothe, if
+  possible, the disturbed and impatient thoughts of Mr. Falkland, was summoned
+  afresh upon this change of symptoms, and sat by the bed-side during the
+  remainder of the night. The situation of his patient was such, as to keep
+  him in momentary apprehension of her decease. While Miss Melville lay in
+  this feeble and exhausted condition, Mrs. Hammond betrayed every token of
+  the tenderest anxiety. Her sensibility was habitually of the acutest sort,
+  and the qualities of Emily were such as powerfully to fix her affection. She
+  loved her like a mother. Upon the present occasion, every sound, every
+  motion, made her tremble. Doctor Wilson had introduced another nurse, in
+  consideration of the incessant fatigue Mrs. Hammond had undergone; and he
+  endeavoured, by representations, and even by authority, to compel her to
+  quit the apartment of the patient. But she was uncontrollable; and he at
+  length found that he should probably do her more injury, by the violence
+  that would be necessary to separate her from the suffering innocent, than by
+  allowing her to follow her inclination. Her eye was a thousand times turned,
+  with the most eager curiosity, upon the countenance of Doctor Wilson,
+  without her daring to breathe a question respecting his opinion, lest he
+  should answer her by a communication of the most fatal tidings. In the mean
+  time she listened with the deepest attention to every thing that dropped
+  either from the physician or the nurse, hoping to collect as it were from
+  some oblique hint, the intelligence which she had not courage expressly to
+  require.</p>
+
+  <p>Towards morning the state of the patient seemed to take a favourable
+  turn. She dozed for near two hours, and, when she awoke, appeared perfectly
+  calm and sensible. Understanding that Mr. Falkland had brought the physician
+  to attend her, and was himself in her neighbourhood, she requested to see
+  him. Mr. Falkland had gone in the mean time, with one of his tenants, to
+  bail the debt, and now entered the prison to enquire whether the young lady
+  might be safely removed, from her present miserable residence, to a more
+  airy and commodious apartment. When he appeared, the sight of him revived in
+  the mind of Miss Melville an imperfect recollection of the wanderings of her
+  delirium. She covered her face with her fingers, and betrayed the most
+  expressive confusion, while she thanked him, with her usual unaffected
+  simplicity, for the trouble he had taken. She hoped she should not give him
+  much more; she thought she should get better. It was a shame, she said, if a
+  young and lively girl, as she was, could not contrive to outlive the
+  trifling misfortunes to which she had been subjected. But, while she said
+  this, she was still extremely weak. She tried to assume a cheerful
+  countenance; but it was a faint effort, which the feeble state of her frame
+  did not seem sufficient to support. Mr. Falkland and the doctor joined to
+  request her to keep herself quiet, and avoid for the present all occasions
+  of exertion.</p>
+
+  <p>Encouraged by these appearances, Mrs. Hammond ventured to follow the two
+  gentlemen out of the room, in order to learn from the physician what hopes
+  he entertained. Doctor Wilson acknowledged, that he found his patient at
+  first in a very unfavourable situation, that the symptoms were changed for
+  the better, and that he was not without some expectation of her recovery. He
+  added, however, that he could answer for nothing, that the next twelve hours
+  would be exceedingly critical, but that if she did not grow worse before
+  morning, he would then undertake for her life. Mrs. Hammond, who had
+  hitherto seen nothing but despair, now became frantic with joy. She burst
+  into tears of transport, blessed the physician in the most emphatic and
+  impassioned terms, and uttered a thousand extravagancies. Doctor Wilson
+  seized this opportunity to press her to give herself a little repose, to
+  which she consented, a bed being first procured for her in the room next to
+  Miss Melville's, she having charged the nurse to give her notice of any
+  alteration in the state of the patient.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Hammond enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep of several hours. It was
+  already night, when she was awaked by an unusual bustle in the next room.
+  She listened for a few moments, and then determined to go and discover the
+  occasion of it. As she opened her door for that purpose, she met the nurse
+  coming to her. The countenance of the messenger told her what it was she had
+  to communicate, without the use of words. She hurried to the bed-side, and
+  found Miss Melville expiring. The appearances that had at first been so
+  encouraging were of short duration. The calm of the morning proved to be
+  only a sort of lightening before death. In a few hours the patient grew
+  worse. The bloom of her countenance faded; she drew her breath with
+  difficulty; and her eyes became fixed. Doctor Wilson came in at this period,
+  and immediately perceived that all was over. She was for some time in
+  convulsions; but, these subsiding, she addressed the physician with a
+  composed, though feeble voice. She thanked him for his attention; and
+  expressed the most lively sense of her obligations to Mr. Falkland. She
+  sincerely forgave her cousin, and hoped he might never be visited by too
+  acute a recollection of his barbarity to her. She would have been contented
+  to live. Few persons had a sincerer relish of the pleasures of life; but she
+  was well pleased to die, rather than have become the wife of Grimes. As Mrs.
+  Hammond entered, she turned her countenance towards her, and with an
+  affectionate expression repeated her name. This was her last word; in less
+  than two hours from that time she breathed her last in the arms of this
+  faithful friend.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CXI" id="V1_CXI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+  <p>Such was the fate of Miss Emily Melville. Perhaps tyranny never exhibited
+  a more painful memorial of the detestation in which it deserves to be held.
+  The idea irresistibly excited in every spectator of the scene, was that of
+  regarding Mr. Tyrrel as the most diabolical wretch that had ever dishonoured
+  the human form. The very attendants upon this house of oppression, for the
+  scene was acted upon too public a stage not to be generally understood,
+  expressed their astonishment and disgust at his unparalleled cruelty.</p>
+
+  <p>If such were the feelings of men bred to the commission of injustice, it
+  is difficult to say what must have been those of Mr. Falkland. He raved, he
+  swore, he beat his head, he rent up his hair. He was unable to continue in
+  one posture, and to remain in one place. He burst away from the spot with
+  vehemence, as if he sought to leave behind him his recollection and his
+  existence. He seemed to tear up the ground with fierceness and rage. He
+  returned soon again. He approached the sad remains of what had been Emily,
+  and gazed on them with such intentness, that his eyes appeared, ready to
+  burst from their sockets. Acute and exquisite as were his notions of virtue
+  and honour, he could not prevent himself from reproaching the system of
+  nature, for having given birth to such a monster as Tyrrel. He was ashamed
+  of himself for wearing the same form. He could not think of the human
+  species with patience. He foamed with indignation against the laws of the
+  universe, that did not permit him to crush such reptiles at a blow, as we
+  would crush so many noxious insects. It was necessary to guard him like a
+  madman.</p>
+
+  <p>The whole office of judging what was proper to be done under the present
+  circumstances devolved upon Doctor Wilson. The doctor was a man of cool and
+  methodical habits of acting. One of the first ideas that suggested itself to
+  him was, that Miss Melvile was a branch of the family of Tyrrel. He did not
+  doubt of the willingness of Mr. Falkland to discharge every expense that
+  might be further incident to the melancholy remains of this unfortunate
+  victim; but he conceived that the laws of fashion and decorum required some
+  notification of the event to be made to the head of the family. Perhaps,
+  too, he had an eye to his interest in his profession, and was reluctant to
+  expose himself to the resentment of a person of Mr. Tyrrel's consideration
+  in the neighbourhood. But, with this weakness, he had nevertheless some
+  feelings in common with the rest of the world, and must have suffered
+  considerable violence, before he could have persuaded himself to be the
+  messenger; beside which, he did not think it right in the present situation
+  to leave Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>Doctor Wilson no sooner mentioned these ideas, than they seemed to make a
+  sudden impression on Mrs. Hammond, and she earnestly requested that she
+  might be permitted to carry the intelligence. The proposal was unexpected;
+  but the doctor did not very obstinately refuse his assent. She was
+  determined, she said, to see what sort of impression the catastrophe would
+  make upon the author of it; and she promised to comport herself with
+  moderation and civility. The journey was soon performed.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am come, sir," said she to Mr. Tyrrel, "to inform you that your
+  cousin, Miss Melville, died this afternoon."</p>
+
+  <p>"Died?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir. I saw her die. She died in these arms."</p>
+
+  <p>"Died? Who killed her? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who? Is it for you to ask that question? Your cruelty and malice killed
+  her!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Me?&mdash;my?&mdash;Poh! she is not dead&mdash;it cannot be&mdash;it is
+  not a week since she left this house."</p>
+
+  <p>"Do not you believe me? I say she is dead!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Have a care, woman! this is no matter for jesting. No: though she used
+  me ill, I would not believe her dead for all the world!"</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Hammond shook her head in a manner expressive at once of grief and
+  indignation.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, no, no, no! I will never believe that!--No, never!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Will you come with me, and convince your eyes? It is a sight worthy of
+  you; and will be a feast to such a heart as yours!"&mdash;Saying this, Mrs.
+  Hammond offered her hand, as if to conduct him to the spot.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyrrel shrunk back.</p>
+
+  <p>"If she be dead, what is that to me? Am I to answer for every thing that
+  goes wrong in the world?&mdash;What do you come here for? Why bring your
+  messages to me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"To whom should I bring them but to her kinsman,&mdash;and her
+  murderer."</p>
+
+  <p>"Murderer?&mdash;Did I employ knives or pistols? Did I give her poison? I
+  did nothing but what the law allows. If she be dead, nobody can say that I
+  am to blame!"</p>
+
+  <p>"To blame?&mdash;All the world will abhor and curse you. Were you such a
+  fool as to think, because men pay respect to wealth and rank, this would
+  extend to such a deed? They will laugh at so barefaced a cheat. The meanest
+  beggar will spurn and spit at you. Ay, you may well stand confounded at what
+  you have done. I will proclaim you to the whole world, and you will be
+  obliged to fly the very face of a human creature!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Good woman," said Mr. Tyrrel, extremely humbled, "talk no more in this
+  strain!--Emmy is not dead! I am sure&mdash;I hope&mdash;she is not
+  dead!--Tell me that you have only been deceiving me, and I will forgive you
+  every thing&mdash;I will forgive her&mdash;I will take her into
+  favour&mdash;I will do any thing you please!--I never meant her any
+  harm!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I tell you she is dead! You have murdered the sweetest innocent that
+  lived! Can you bring her back to life, as you have driven her out of it? If
+  you could, I would kneel to you twenty times a day! What is it you have
+  done?&mdash;Miserable wretch! did you think you could do and undo, and
+  change things this way and that, as you pleased?"</p>
+
+  <p>The reproaches of Mrs. Hammond were the first instance in which Mr.
+  Tyrrel was made to drink the full cup of retribution. This was, however,
+  only a specimen of a long series of contempt, abhorrence, and insult, that
+  was reserved for him. The words of Mrs. Hammond were prophetic. It evidently
+  appeared, that though wealth and hereditary elevation operate as an apology
+  for many delinquencies, there are some which so irresistibly address
+  themselves to the indignation of mankind, that, like death, they level all
+  distinctions, and reduce their perpetrator to an equality with the most
+  indigent and squalid of his species. Against Mr. Tyrrel, as the tyrannical
+  and unmanly murderer of Emily, those who dared not venture the unreserved
+  avowal of their sentiments muttered curses, deep, not loud; while the rest
+  joined in an universal cry of abhorrence and execration. He stood astonished
+  at the novelty of his situation. Accustomed as he had been to the obedience
+  and trembling homage of mankind, he had imagined they would be perpetual,
+  and that no excess on his part would ever be potent enough to break the
+  enchantment. Now he looked round, and saw sullen detestation in every face,
+  which with difficulty restrained itself, and upon the slightest provocation
+  broke forth with an impetuous tide, and swept away the mounds of
+  subordination and fear. His large estate could not purchase civility from
+  the gentry, the peasantry, scarcely from his own servants. In the
+  indignation of all around him he found a ghost that haunted him with every
+  change of place, and a remorse that stung his conscience, and exterminated
+  his peace. The neighbourhood appeared more and more every day to be growing
+  too hot for him to endure, and it became evident that he would ultimately be
+  obliged to quit the country. Urged by the flagitiousness of this last
+  example, people learned to recollect every other instance of his excesses,
+  and it was, no doubt, a fearful catalogue that rose up in judgment against
+  him. It seemed as if the sense of public resentment had long been gathering
+  strength unperceived, and now burst forth into insuppressible violence.</p>
+
+  <p>There was scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could
+  have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a
+  consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the
+  detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the
+  imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the
+  pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and undisguised
+  condemnation into which he was sunk with uncommon emotions of anger and
+  impatience. That he, at the beam of whose eye every countenance fell, and to
+  whom in the fierceness of his wrath no one was daring enough to reply,
+  should now be regarded with avowed dislike, and treated with unceremonious
+  censure, was a thing he could not endure to recollect or believe. Symptoms
+  of the universal disgust smote him at every instant, and at every blow he
+  writhed with intolerable anguish. His rage was unbounded and raving. He
+  repelled every attack with the fiercest indignation; while the more he
+  struggled, the more desperate his situation appeared to become. At length he
+  determined to collect his strength for a decisive effort, and to meet the
+  whole tide of public opinion in a single scene.</p>
+
+  <p>In pursuance of these thoughts he resolved to repair, without delay, to
+  the rural assembly which I have already mentioned in the course of my story.
+  Miss Melville had now been dead one month. Mr. Falkland had been absent the
+  last week in a distant part of the country, and was not expected to return
+  for a week longer. Mr. Tyrrel willingly embraced the opportunity, trusting,
+  if he could now effect his re-establishment, that he should easily preserve
+  the ground he had gained, even in the face of his formidable rival. Mr.
+  Tyrrel was not deficient in courage; but he conceived the present to be too
+  important an epoch in his life to allow him to make any unnecessary risk in
+  his chance for future ease and importance.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a sort of bustle that took place at his entrance into the
+  assembly, it having been agreed by the gentlemen of the assembly, that Mr.
+  Tyrrel was to be refused admittance, as a person with whom they did not
+  choose to associate. This vote had already been notified to him by letter by
+  the master of the ceremonies, but the intelligence was rather calculated,
+  with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's disposition, to excite defiance than to overawe.
+  At the door of the assembly he was personally met by the master of the
+  ceremonies, who had perceived the arrival of an equipage, and who now
+  endeavoured to repeat his prohibition: but he was thrust aside by Mr. Tyrrel
+  with an air of native authority and ineffable contempt. As he entered; every
+  eye was turned upon him. Presently all the gentlemen in the room assembled
+  round him. Some endeavoured to hustle him, and others began to expostulate.
+  But he found the secret effectually to silence the one set, and to shake off
+  the other. His muscular form, the well-known eminence of his intellectual
+  powers, the long habits to which every man was formed of acknowledging his
+  ascendancy, were all in his favour. He considered himself as playing a
+  desperate stake, and had roused all the energies he possessed, to enable him
+  to do justice to so interesting a transaction. Disengaged from the insects
+  that at first pestered him, he paced up and down the room with a magisterial
+  stride, and flashed an angry glance on every side. He then broke silence.
+  "If any one had any thing to say to him, he should know where and how to
+  answer him. He would advise any such person, however, to consider well what
+  he was about. If any man imagined he had any thing personally to complain
+  of, it was very well. But he did expect that nobody there would be ignorant
+  and raw enough to meddle with what was no business of theirs, and intrude
+  into the concerns of any man's private family."</p>
+
+  <p>This being a sort of defiance, one and another gentleman advanced to
+  answer it. He that was first began to speak; but Mr. Tyrrel, by the
+  expression of his countenance and a peremptory tone, by well-timed
+  interruptions and pertinent insinuations, caused him first to hesitate, and
+  then to be silent. He seemed to be fast advancing to the triumph he had
+  promised himself. The whole company were astonished. They felt the same
+  abhorrence and condemnation of his character; but they could not help
+  admiring the courage and resources he displayed upon the present occasion.
+  They could without difficulty have concentred afresh their indignant
+  feelings, but they seemed to want a leader.</p>
+
+  <p>At this critical moment Mr. Falkland entered the room. Mere accident had
+  enabled him to return sooner than he expected.</p>
+
+  <p>Both he and Mr. Tyrrel reddened at sight of each other. He advanced
+  towards Mr. Tyrrel without a moment's pause, and in a peremptory voice asked
+  him what he did there?</p>
+
+  <p>"Here? What do you mean by that? This place is as free to me as you, and
+  you are the last person to whom I shall deign to give an account of
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir, the place is not free to you. Do not you know, you have been voted
+  out? Whatever were your rights, your infamous conduct has forfeited
+  them."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. what do you call yourself, if you have anything to say to me, choose
+  a proper time and place. Do not think to put on your bullying airs under
+  shelter of this company! I will not endure it."</p>
+
+  <p>"You are mistaken, sir. This public scene is the only place where I can
+  have any thing to say to you. If you would not hear the universal
+  indignation of mankind, you must not come into the society of
+  men.&mdash;Miss Melville!--Shame upon you, inhuman, unrelenting tyrant! Can
+  you hear her name, and not sink into the earth? Can you retire into
+  solitude, and not see her pale and patient ghost rising to reproach you? Can
+  you recollect her virtues, her innocence, her spotless manners, her
+  unresentful temper, and not run distracted with remorse? Have you not killed
+  her in the first bloom of her youth? Can you bear to think that she now lies
+  mouldering in the grave through your cursed contrivance, that deserved a
+  crown, ten thousand times more than you deserve to live? And do you expect
+  that mankind will ever forget, or forgive such a deed? Go, miserable wretch;
+  think yourself too happy that you are permitted to fly the face of man! Why,
+  what a pitiful figure do you make at this moment! Do you think that any
+  thing could bring so hardened a wretch as you are to shrink from reproach,
+  if your conscience were not in confederacy with them that reproached you?
+  And were you fool enough to believe that any obstinacy, however determined,
+  could enable you to despise the keen rebuke of justice? Go, shrink into your
+  miserable self! Begone, and let me never be blasted with your sight
+  again!"</p>
+
+  <p>And here, incredible as it may appear, Mr. Tyrrel began to obey his
+  imperious censurer. His looks were full of wildness and horror; his limbs
+  trembled; and his tongue refused its office. He felt no power of resisting
+  the impetuous torrent of reproach that was poured upon him. He hesitated; he
+  was ashamed of his own defeat; he seemed to wish to deny it. But his
+  struggles were ineffectual; every attempt perished in the moment it was
+  made. The general voice was eager to abash him. As his confusion became more
+  visible, the outcry increased. It swelled gradually to hootings, tumult, and
+  a deafening noise of indignation. At length he willingly retired from the
+  public scene, unable any longer to endure the sensations it inflicted.</p>
+
+  <p>In about an hour and a half he returned. No precaution had been taken
+  against this incident, for nothing could be more unexpected. In the interval
+  he had intoxicated himself with large draughts of brandy. In a moment he was
+  in a part of the room where Mr. Falkland was standing, and with one blow of
+  his muscular arm levelled him with the earth. The blow however was not
+  stunning, and Mr. Falkland rose again immediately. It is obvious to perceive
+  how unequal he must have been in this species of contest. He was scarcely
+  risen before Mr. Tyrrel repeated his blow. Mr. Falkland was now upon his
+  guard, and did not fall. But the blows of his adversary were redoubled with
+  a rapidity difficult to conceive, and Mr. Falkland was once again brought to
+  the earth. In this situation Mr. Tyrrel kicked his prostrate enemy, and
+  stooped apparently with the intention of dragging him along the floor. All
+  this passed in a moment, and the gentlemen present had not time to recover
+  their surprise. They now interfered, and Mr. Tyrrel once more quitted the
+  apartment.</p>
+
+  <p>It is difficult to conceive any event more terrible to the individual
+  upon whom it fell, than the treatment which Mr. Falkland in this instance
+  experienced. Every passion of his life was calculated to make him feel it
+  more acutely. He had repeatedly exerted an uncommon energy and prudence, to
+  prevent the misunderstanding between Mr. Tyrrel and himself from proceeding
+  to extremities; but in vain! It was closed with a catastrophe, exceeding all
+  that he had feared, or that the most penetrating foresight could have
+  suggested. To Mr. Falkland disgrace was worse than death. The slightest
+  breath of dishonour would have stung him to the very soul. What must it have
+  been with this complication of ignominy, base, humiliating, and public?
+  Could Mr. Tyrrel have understood the evil he inflicted, even he, under all
+  his circumstances of provocation, could scarcely have perpetrated it. Mr.
+  Falkland's mind was full of uproar like the war of contending elements, and
+  of such suffering as casts contempt on the refinements of inventive cruelty.
+  He wished for annihilation, to lie down in eternal oblivion, in an
+  insensibility, which, compared with what he experienced, was scarcely less
+  enviable than beatitude itself. Horror, detestation, revenge, inexpressible
+  longings to shake off the evil, and a persuasion that in this case all
+  effort was powerless, filled his soul even to bursting.</p>
+
+  <p>One other event closed the transactions of this memorable evening. Mr.
+  Falkland was baffled of the vengeance that yet remained to him. Mr. Tyrrel
+  was found by some of the company dead in the street, having been murdered at
+  the distance of a few yards from the assembly house.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V1_CXII" id="V1_CXII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+  <p>I shall endeavour to state the remainder of this narrative in the words
+  of Mr. Collins. The reader has already had occasion to perceive that Mr.
+  Collins was a man of no vulgar order; and his reflections on the subject
+  were uncommonly judicious.</p>
+
+  <p>"This day was the crisis of Mr. Falkland's history. From hence took its
+  beginning that gloomy and unsociable melancholy, of which he has since been
+  the victim. No two characters can be in certain respects more strongly
+  contrasted, than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and subsequent to these
+  events. Hitherto he had been attended by a fortune perpetually prosperous.
+  His mind was sanguine; full of that undoubting confidence in its own powers
+  which prosperity is qualified to produce. Though the habits of his life were
+  those of a serious and sublime visionary they were nevertheless full of
+  cheerfulness and tranquillity. But from this moment, his pride, and the
+  lofty adventurousness of his spirit, were effectually subdued. From an
+  object of envy he was changed into an object of compassion. Life, which
+  hitherto no one had more exquisitely enjoyed, became a burden to him. No
+  more self-complacency, no more rapture, no more self-approving and
+  heart-transporting benevolence! He who had lived beyond any man upon the
+  grand and animating reveries of the imagination, seemed now to have no
+  visions but of anguish and despair. His case was peculiarly worthy of
+  sympathy, since, no doubt, if rectitude and purity of disposition could give
+  a title to happiness, few men could exhibit a more consistent and powerful
+  claim than Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>"He was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+  chivalry, ever to forget the situation, humiliating and dishonourable
+  according to his ideas, in which he had been placed upon this occasion.
+  There is a mysterious sort of divinity annexed to the person of a true
+  knight, that makes any species of brute violence committed upon it indelible
+  and immortal. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged along the floor!
+  Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not to be endured! No
+  future lustration could ever remove the stain: and, what was perhaps still
+  worse in the present case, the offender having ceased to exist, the
+  lustration which the laws of knight-errantry prescribe was rendered
+  impossible.</p>
+
+  <p>"In some future period of human improvement, it is probable, that that
+  calamity will be in a manner unintelligible, which in the present instance
+  contributed to tarnish and wither the excellence of one of the most elevated
+  and amiable of human minds. If Mr. Falkland had reflected with perfect
+  accuracy upon the case, he would probably have been able to look down with
+  indifference upon a wound, which, as it was, pierced to his very vitals. How
+  much more dignity, than in the modern duellist, do we find in Themistocles,
+  the most gallant of the Greeks; who, when Eurybiades, his commander in
+  chief, in answer to some of his remonstrances, lifted his cane over him with
+  a menacing air, accosted him in that noble apostrophe, 'Strike, but
+  hear!'</p>
+
+  <p>"How would a man of true discernment in such a case reply to his brutal
+  assailant? 'I make it my boast that I can endure calamity and pain: shall I
+  not be able to endure the trifling inconvenience that your folly can inflict
+  upon me? Perhaps a human being would be more accomplished, if he understood
+  the science of personal defence; but how few would be the occasions upon
+  which he would be called to exert it? How few persons would he encounter so
+  unjust and injurious as you, if his own conduct were directed by the
+  principles of reason and benevolence? Beside, how narrow would be the use of
+  this science when acquired? It will scarcely put the man of delicate make
+  and petty stature upon a level with the athletic pugilist; and, if it did in
+  some measure secure me against the malice of a single adversary, still my
+  person and my life, so far as mere force is concerned, would always be at
+  the mercy of two. Further than immediate defence against actual violence, it
+  could never be of use to me. The man who can deliberately meet his adversary
+  for the purpose of exposing the person of one or both of them to injury,
+  tramples upon every principle of reason and equity. Duelling is the vilest
+  of all egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and
+  exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an unintelligible
+  chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my exclusive attention.
+  I am unable to cope with you: what then? Can that circumstance dishonour me?
+  No; I can only be dishonoured by perpetrating an unjust action. My honour is
+  in my own keeping, beyond the reach of all mankind. Strike! I am passive. No
+  injury that you can inflict, shall provoke me to expose you or myself to
+  unnecessary evil. I refuse that; but I am not therefore pusillanimous: when
+  I refuse any danger or suffering by which the general good may be promoted,
+  then brand me for a coward!</p>
+
+  <p>"These reasonings, however simple and irresistible they must be found by
+  a dispassionate enquirer, are little reflected on by the world at large, and
+  were most of all uncongenial to the prejudices of Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>"But the public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon him,
+  intolerable as they were to be recollected, were not the whole of the
+  mischief that redounded to our unfortunate patron from the transactions of
+  that day. It was presently whispered that he was no other than the murderer
+  of his antagonist. This rumour was of too much importance to the very
+  continuance of his life, to justify its being concealed from him. He heard
+  it with inexpressible astonishment and horror; it formed a dreadful addition
+  to the load of intellectual anguish that already oppressed him. No man had
+  ever held his reputation more dear than Mr. Falkland; and now, in one day,
+  he was fallen under the most exquisite calamities, a complicated personal
+  insult, and the imputation of the foulest of crimes. He might have fled; for
+  no one was forward to proceed against a man so adored as Mr. Falkland, or in
+  revenge of one so universally execrated as Mr. Tyrrel. But flight he
+  disdained. In the mean time the affair was of the most serious magnitude,
+  and the rumour unchecked seemed daily to increase in strength. Mr. Falkland
+  appeared sometimes inclined to adopt such steps as might have been best
+  calculated to bring the imputation to a speedy trial. But he probably
+  feared, by too direct an appeal to judicature, to render more precise an
+  imputation, the memory of which he deprecated; at the same time that he was
+  sufficiently willing to meet the severest scrutiny, and, if he could not
+  hope to have it forgotten that he had ever been accused, to prove in the
+  most satisfactory manner that the accusation was unjust.</p>
+
+  <p>"The neighbouring magistrates at length conceived it necessary to take
+  some steps upon the subject. Without causing Mr. Falkland to be apprehended,
+  they sent to desire he would appear before them at one of their meetings.
+  The proceeding being thus opened, Mr. Falkland expressed his hope that, if
+  the business were likely to stop there, their investigation might at least
+  be rendered as solemn as possible. The meeting was numerous; every person of
+  a respectable class in society was admitted to be an auditor; the whole
+  town, one of the most considerable in the county, was apprised of the nature
+  of the business. Few trials, invested with all the forms of judgment, have
+  excited so general an interest. A trial, under the present circumstances,
+  was scarcely attainable; and it seemed to be the wish both of principal and
+  umpires, to give to this transaction all the momentary notoriety and
+  decisiveness of a trial.</p>
+
+  <p>"The magistrates investigated the particulars of the story. Mr. Falkland,
+  it appeared, had left the rooms immediately after his assailant; and though
+  he had been attended by one or two of the gentlemen to his inn, it was
+  proved that he had left them upon some slight occasion, as soon as he
+  arrived at it, and that, when they enquired for him of the waiters, he had
+  already mounted his horse and ridden home.</p>
+
+  <p>"By the nature of the case, no particular facts could be stated in
+  balance against these. As soon as they had been sufficiently detailed, Mr.
+  Falkland therefore proceeded to his defence. Several copies of his defence
+  were-made, and Mr. Falkland seemed, for a short time, to have had the idea
+  of sending it to the press, though, for some reason or other, he afterwards
+  suppressed it. I have one of the copies in my possession, and I will read it
+  to you."</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this, Mr. Collins rose, and took it from a private drawer in his
+  escritoire. During this action he appeared to recollect himself. He did not,
+  in the strict sense of the word, hesitate; but he was prompted to make some
+  apology for what he was doing.</p>
+
+  <p>"You seem never to have heard of this memorable transaction; and, indeed,
+  that is little to be wondered at, since the good nature of the world is
+  interested in suppressing it, and it is deemed a disgrace to a man to have
+  defended himself from a criminal imputation, though with circumstances the
+  most satisfactory and honourable. It may be supposed that this suppression
+  is particularly acceptable to Mr. Falkland; and I should not have acted in
+  contradiction to his modes of thinking in communicating the story to you,
+  had there not been circumstances of peculiar urgency, that seemed to render
+  the communication desirable." Saying this, he proceeded to read from the
+  paper in his hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gentlemen,</p>
+
+  <p>"I stand here accused of a crime, the most black that any human creature
+  is capable of perpetrating. I am innocent. I have no fear that I shall fail
+  to make every person in this company acknowledge my innocence. In the mean
+  time, what must be my feelings? Conscious as I am of deserving approbation
+  and not censure, of having passed my life in acts of justice and
+  philanthropy, can any thing be more deplorable than for me to answer to a
+  charge of murder? So wretched is my situation, that I cannot accept your
+  gratuitous acquittal, if you should be disposed to bestow it. I must answer
+  to an imputation, the very thought of which is ten thousand times worse to
+  me than death. I must exert the whole energy of my mind, to prevent my being
+  ranked with the vilest of men.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gentlemen, this is a situation in which a man may be allowed to boast.
+  Accursed situation! No man need envy me the vile and polluted triumph I am
+  now to gain! I have called no witnesses to my character. Great God! what
+  sort of character is that which must be supported by witnesses? But, if I
+  must speak, look round the company, ask of every one present, enquire of
+  your own hearts! Not one word of reproach was ever whispered against me. I
+  do not hesitate to call upon those who have known me most, to afford me the
+  most honourable testimony.</p>
+
+  <p>"My life has been spent in the keenest and most unintermitted sensibility
+  to reputation. I am almost indifferent as to what shall be the event of this
+  day. I would not open my mouth upon the occasion, if my life were the only
+  thing that was at stake. It is not in the power of your decision to restore
+  to me my unblemished reputation, to obliterate the disgrace I have suffered,
+  or to prevent it from being remembered that I have been brought to
+  examination upon a charge of murder. Your decision can never have the
+  efficacy to prevent the miserable remains of my existence from being the
+  most intolerable of all burthens.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am accused of having committed murder upon the body of Barnabas
+  Tyrrel. I would most joyfully have given every farthing I possess, and
+  devoted myself to perpetual beggary, to have preserved his life. His life
+  was precious to me, beyond that of all mankind. In my opinion, the greatest
+  injustice committed by his unknown assassin was that of defrauding me of my
+  just revenge. I confess that I would have called him out to the field, and
+  that our encounter should not have been terminated but by the death of one
+  or both of us. This would have been a pitiful and inadequate compensation
+  for his unparalleled insult, but it was all that remained.</p>
+
+  <p>"I ask for no pity, but I must openly declare that never was any
+  misfortune so horrible as mine. I would willingly have taken refuge from the
+  recollection of that night in a voluntary death. Life was now stripped of
+  all those recommendations, for the sake of which it was dear to me. But even
+  this consolation is denied me. I am compelled to drag for ever the
+  intolerable load of existence, upon penalty, if at any period, however
+  remote, I shake it off, of having that impatience regarded as confirming a
+  charge of murder. Gentlemen, if by your decision you could take away my
+  life, without that act being connected with my disgrace, I would bless the
+  cord that stopped the breath of my existence for ever.</p>
+
+  <p>"You all know how easily I might have fled from this purgation. If I had
+  been guilty, should I not have embraced the opportunity? But, as it was, I
+  could not. Reputation has been the idol, the jewel of my life. I could never
+  have borne to think that a human creature, in the remotest part of the
+  globe, should believe that I was a criminal. Alas! what a deity it is that I
+  have chosen for my worship! I have entailed upon myself everlasting agony
+  and despair!</p>
+
+  <p>"I have but one word to add. Gentlemen, I charge you to do me the
+  imperfect justice that is in your power! My life is a worthless thing. But
+  my honour, the empty remains of honour I have now to boast, is in your
+  judgment, and you will each of you, from this day, have imposed upon
+  yourselves the task of its vindicators. It is little that you can do for me;
+  but it is not less your duty to do that little. May that God who is the
+  fountain of honour and good prosper and protect you! The man who now stands
+  before you is devoted to perpetual barrenness and blast! He has nothing to
+  hope for beyond the feeble consolation of this day!"</p>
+
+  <p>"You will easily imagine that Mr. Falkland was discharged with every
+  circumstance of credit. Nothing is more to be deplored in human
+  institutions, than that the ideas of mankind should have annexed a sentiment
+  of disgrace to a purgation thus satisfactory and decisive. No one
+  entertained the shadow of a doubt upon the subject, and yet a mere
+  concurrence of circumstances made it necessary that the best of men should
+  be publicly put on his defence, as if really under suspicion of an atrocious
+  crime. It may be granted indeed that Mr. Falkland had his faults, but those
+  very faults placed him at a still further distance from the criminality in
+  question. He was the fool of honour and fame: a man whom, in the pursuit of
+  reputation, nothing could divert; who would have purchased the character of
+  a true, gallant, and undaunted hero, at the expense of worlds, and who
+  thought every calamity nominal but a stain upon his honour. How atrociously
+  absurd to suppose any motive capable of inducing such a man to play the part
+  of a lurking assassin? How unfeeling to oblige him to defend himself from
+  such an imputation? Did any man, and, least of all, a man of the purest
+  honour, ever pass in a moment, from a life unstained by a single act of
+  injury, to the consummation of human depravity?</p>
+
+  <p>"When the decision of the magistrates was declared, a general murmur of
+  applause and involuntary transport burst forth from every one present. It
+  was at first low, and gradually became louder. As it was the expression of
+  rapturous delight, and an emotion disinterested and divine, so there was an
+  indescribable something in the very sound, that carried it home to the
+  heart, and convinced every spectator that there was no merely personal
+  pleasure which ever existed, that would not be foolish and feeble in the
+  comparison. Every one strove who should most express his esteem of the
+  amiable accused. Mr. Falkland was no sooner withdrawn than the gentlemen
+  present determined to give a still further sanction to the business, by
+  their congratulations. They immediately named a deputation to wait upon him
+  for that purpose. Every one concurred to assist the general sentiment. It
+  was a sort of sympathetic feeling that took hold upon all ranks and degrees.
+  The multitude received him with huzzas, they took his horses from his
+  carriage, dragged him along in triumph, and attended him many miles on his
+  return to his own habitation. It seemed as if a public examination upon a
+  criminal charge, which had hitherto been considered in every event as a
+  brand of disgrace, was converted, in the present instance, into an occasion
+  of enthusiastic adoration and unexampled honour.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing could reach the heart of Mr. Falkland. He was not insensible to
+  the general kindness and exertions; but it was too evident that the
+  melancholy that had taken hold of his mind was invincible.</p>
+
+  <p>"It was only a few weeks after this memorable scene that the real
+  murderer was discovered. Every part of this story was extraordinary. The
+  real murderer was Hawkins. He was found with his son, under a feigned name,
+  at a village about thirty miles distant, in want of all the necessaries of
+  life. He had lived there, from the period of his flight, in so private a
+  manner, that all the enquiries that had been set on foot, by the benevolence
+  of Mr. Falkland, or the insatiable malice of Mr. Tyrrel, had been
+  insufficient to discover him. The first thing that had led to the detection
+  was a parcel of clothes covered with blood, that were found in a ditch, and
+  that, when drawn out, were known by the people of the village to belong to
+  this man. The murder of Mr. Tyrrel was not a circumstance that could be
+  unknown, and suspicion was immediately roused. A diligent search being made,
+  the rusty handle, with part of the blade of a knife, was found thrown in a
+  corner of his lodging, which, being applied to a piece of the point of a
+  knife that had been broken in the wound, appeared exactly to correspond.
+  Upon further enquiry two rustics, who had been accidentally on the spot,
+  remembered to have seen Hawkins and his son in the town that very evening
+  and to have called after them, and received no answer, though they were sure
+  of their persons. Upon this accumulated evidence both Hawkins and his son
+  were tried, condemned, and afterwards executed. In the interval between the
+  sentence and execution Hawkins confessed his guilt with many marks of
+  compunction; though there are persons by whom this is denied; but I have
+  taken some pains to enquire into the fact, and am persuaded that their
+  disbelief is precipitate and groundless.</p>
+
+  <p>"The cruel injustice that this man had suffered from his village-tyrant
+  was not forgotten upon the present occasion. It was by a strange fatality
+  that the barbarous proceedings of Mr. Tyrrel seemed never to fall short of
+  their completion; and even his death served eventually to consummate the
+  ruin of a man he hated; a circumstance which, if it could have come to his
+  knowledge, would perhaps have in some measure consoled him for his untimely
+  end. This poor Hawkins was surely entitled to some pity, since his being
+  finally urged to desperation, and brought, together with his son, to an
+  ignominious fate, was originally owing to the sturdiness of his virtue and
+  independence. But the compassion of the public was in a great measure shut
+  against him, as they thought it a piece of barbarous and unpardonable
+  selfishness, that he had not rather come boldly forward to meet the
+  consequences of his own conduct, than suffer a man of so much public worth
+  as Mr. Falkland, and who had been so desirous of doing him good, to be
+  exposed to the risk of being tried for a murder that he had committed.</p>
+
+  <p>"From this time to the present Mr. Falkland has been nearly such as you
+  at present see him. Though it be several years since these transactions, the
+  impression they made is for ever fresh in the mind of our unfortunate
+  patron. From thenceforward his habits became totally different. He had
+  before been fond of public scenes, and acting a part in the midst of the
+  people among whom he immediately resided. He now made himself a rigid
+  recluse. He had no associates, no friends. Inconsolable himself, he yet
+  wished to treat others with kindness. There was a solemn sadness in his
+  manner, attended with the most perfect gentleness and humanity. Every body
+  respects him, for his benevolence is unalterable; but there is a stately
+  coldness and reserve in his behaviour, which makes it difficult for those
+  about him to regard him with the familiarity of affection. These symptoms
+  are uninterrupted, except at certain times when his sufferings become
+  intolerable, and he displays the marks of a furious insanity. At those times
+  his language is fearful and mysterious, and he seems to figure to himself by
+  turns every sort of persecution and alarm, which may be supposed to attend
+  upon an accusation of murder. But, sensible of his own weakness, he is
+  anxious at such times to withdraw into solitude: and his domestics in
+  general know nothing of him, but the uncommunicative and haughty, but mild,
+  dejection that accompanies every thing he does."</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="VOLUME_THE_SECOND" id="VOLUME_THE_SECOND"></a>
+
+  <h2>VOLUME THE SECOND.</h2>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CI" id="V2_CI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+  <p>I have stated the narrative of Mr. Collins, interspersed with such other
+  information as I was able to collect, with all the exactness that my memory,
+  assisted by certain memorandums I made at the time, will afford. I do not
+  pretend to warrant the authenticity of any part of these memoirs, except so
+  much as fell under my own knowledge, and that part shall be given with the
+  same simplicity and accuracy, that I would observe towards a court which was
+  to decide in the last resort upon every thing dear to me. The same
+  scrupulous fidelity restrains me from altering the manner of Mr. Collins's
+  narrative to adapt it to the precepts of my own taste; and it will soon be
+  perceived how essential that narrative is to the elucidation of my
+  history.</p>
+
+  <p>The intention of my friend in this communication was to give me ease; but
+  he in reality added to my embarrassment. Hitherto I had had no intercourse
+  with the world and its passions; and, though I was not totally unacquainted
+  with them as they appear in books, this proved of little service to me when
+  I came to witness them myself. The case seemed entirely altered, when the
+  subject of those passions was continually before my eyes, and the events had
+  happened but the other day as it were, in the very neighbourhood where I
+  lived. There was a connection and progress in this narrative, which made it
+  altogether unlike the little village incidents I had hitherto known. My
+  feelings were successively interested for the different persons that were
+  brought upon the scene. My veneration was excited for Mr. Clare, and my
+  applause for the intrepidity of Mrs. Hammond. I was astonished that any
+  human creature should be so shockingly perverted as Mr. Tyrrel. I paid the
+  tribute of my tears to the memory of the artless Miss Melville. I found a
+  thousand fresh reasons to admire and love Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>At present I was satisfied with thus considering every incident in its
+  obvious sense. But the story I had heard was for ever in my thoughts, and I
+  was peculiarly interested to comprehend its full import. I turned it a
+  thousand ways, and examined it in every point of view. In the original
+  communication it appeared sufficiently distinct and satisfactory; but as I
+  brooded over it, it gradually became mysterious. There was something strange
+  in the character of Hawkins. So firm, so sturdily honest and just, as he
+  appeared at first; all at once to become a murderer! His first behaviour
+  under the prosecution, how accurately was it calculated to prepossess one in
+  his favour! To be sure, if he were guilty, it was unpardonable in him to
+  permit a man of so much dignity and worth as Mr. Falkland to suffer under
+  the imputation of his crime! And yet I could not help bitterly
+  compassionating the honest fellow, brought to the gallows, as he was,
+  strictly speaking, by the machinations of that devil incarnate, Mr. Tyrrel.
+  His son, too, that son for whom he voluntarily sacrificed his all, to die
+  with him at the same tree; surely never was a story more affecting!</p>
+
+  <p>Was it possible, after all, that Mr. Falkland should be the murderer? The
+  reader will scarcely believe, that the idea suggested itself to my mind that
+  I would ask him. It was but a passing thought; but it serves to mark the
+  simplicity of my character. Then I recollected the virtues of my master,
+  almost too sublime for human nature; I thought of his sufferings so
+  unexampled, so unmerited; and chid myself for the suspicion. The dying
+  confession of Hawkins recurred to my mind; and I felt that there was no
+  longer a possibility of doubting. And yet what was the meaning of all Mr.
+  Falkland's agonies and terrors? In fine, the idea having once occurred to my
+  mind, it was fixed there for ever. My thoughts fluctuated from conjecture to
+  conjecture, but this was the centre about which they revolved. I determined
+  to place myself as a watch upon my patron.</p>
+
+  <p>The instant I had chosen this employment for myself, I found a strange
+  sort of pleasure in it. To do what is forbidden always has its charms,
+  because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and
+  tyrannical in the prohibition. To be a spy upon Mr. Falkland! That there was
+  danger in the employment, served to give an alluring pungency to the choice.
+  I remembered the stern reprimand I had received, and his terrible looks; and
+  the recollection gave a kind of tingling sensation, not altogether unallied
+  to enjoyment. The further I advanced, the more the sensation was
+  irresistible. I seemed to myself perpetually upon the brink of being
+  countermined, and perpetually roused to guard my designs. The more
+  impenetrable Mr. Falkland was determined to be, the more uncontrollable was
+  my curiosity. Through the whole, my alarm and apprehension of personal
+  danger had a large mixture of frankness and simplicity, conscious of meaning
+  no ill, that made me continually ready to say every thing that was upon my
+  mind, and would not suffer me to believe that, when things were brought to
+  the test, any one could be seriously angry with me.</p>
+
+  <p>These reflections led gradually to a new state of my mind. When I had
+  first removed into Mr. Falkland's family, the novelty of the scene rendered
+  me cautious and reserved. The distant and solemn manners of my master seemed
+  to have annihilated my constitutional gaiety. But the novelty by degrees
+  wore off, and my constraint in the same degree diminished. The story I had
+  now heard, and the curiosity it excited, restored to me activity, eagerness,
+  and courage. I had always had a propensity to communicate my thoughts; my
+  age was, of course, inclined to talkativeness; and I ventured occasionally
+  in a sort of hesitating way, as if questioning whether such a conduct might
+  be allowed, to express my sentiments as they arose, in the presence of Mr.
+  Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>The first time I did so, he looked at me with an air of surprise, made me
+  no answer, and presently took occasion to leave me. The experiment was soon
+  after repeated. My master seemed half inclined to encourage me, and yet
+  doubtful whether he might venture.</p>
+
+  <p>He had long been a stranger to pleasure of every sort, and my artless and
+  untaught remarks appeared to promise him some amusement. Could an amusement
+  of this sort be dangerous?</p>
+
+  <p>In this uncertainty he could not probably find it in his heart to treat
+  with severity my innocent effusions. I needed but little encouragement; for
+  the perturbation of my mind stood in want of this relief. My simplicity,
+  arising from my being a total stranger to the intercourse of the world, was
+  accompanied with a mind in some degree cultivated with reading, and perhaps
+  not altogether destitute of observation and talent. My remarks were
+  therefore perpetually unexpected, at one time implying extreme ignorance,
+  and at another some portion of acuteness, but at all times having an air of
+  innocence, frankness, and courage. There was still an apparent want of
+  design in the manner, even after I was excited accurately to compare my
+  observations, and study the inferences to which they led; for the effect of
+  old habit was more visible than that of a recently conceived purpose which
+  was yet scarcely mature.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland's situation was like that of a fish that plays with the bait
+  employed to entrap him. By my manner he was in a certain degree encouraged
+  to lay aside his usual reserve, and relax his stateliness; till some abrupt
+  observation or interrogatory stung him into recollection, and brought back
+  his alarm. Still it was evident that he bore about him a secret wound.
+  Whenever the cause of his sorrows was touched, though in a manner the most
+  indirect and remote, his countenance altered, his distemper returned, and it
+  was with difficulty that he could suppress his emotions, sometimes
+  conquering himself with painful effort, and sometimes bursting into a sort
+  of paroxysm of insanity, and hastening to bury himself in solitude.</p>
+
+  <p>These appearances I too frequently interpreted into grounds of suspicion,
+  though I might with equal probability and more liberality have ascribed them
+  to the cruel mortifications he had encountered in the objects of his darling
+  ambition. Mr. Collins had strongly urged me to secrecy; and Mr. Falkland,
+  whenever my gesture or his consciousness impressed him with the idea of my
+  knowing more than I expressed, looked at me with wistful earnestness, as
+  questioning what was the degree of information I possessed, and how it was
+  obtained. But again at our next interview the simple vivacity of my manner
+  restored his tranquillity, obliterated the emotion of which I had been the
+  cause, and placed things afresh in their former situation.</p>
+
+  <p>The longer this humble familiarity on my part had continued, the more
+  effort it would require to suppress it; and Mr. Falkland was neither willing
+  to mortify me by a severe prohibition of speech, nor even perhaps to make me
+  of so much consequence, as that prohibition might seem to imply. Though I
+  was curious, it must not be supposed that I had the object of my enquiry for
+  ever in my mind, or that my questions and innuendoes were perpetually
+  regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed inquisitor. The secret wound of
+  Mr. Falkland's mind was much more uniformly present to his recollection than
+  to mine; and a thousand times he applied the remarks that occurred in
+  conversation; when I had not the remotest idea of such an application, till
+  some singularity in his manner brought it back to my thoughts. The
+  consciousness of this morbid sensibility, and the imagination that its
+  influence might perhaps constitute the whole of the case, served probably to
+  spur Mr. Falkland again to the charge, and connect a sentiment of shame,
+  with every project that suggested itself for interrupting the freedom of our
+  intercourse.</p>
+
+  <p>I will give a specimen of the conversations to which I allude; and, as it
+  shall be selected from those which began upon topics the most general and
+  remote, the reader will easily imagine the disturbance that was almost daily
+  endured by a mind so tremblingly alive as that of my patron.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pray, sir," said I, one day as I was assisting Mr. Falkland in arranging
+  some papers, previously to their being transcribed into his collection, "how
+  came Alexander of Macedon to be surnamed the Great?"</p>
+
+  <p>"How came it? Did you never read his history?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, Williams, and could you find no reasons there?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, I do not know, sir. I could find reasons why he should be so
+  famous; but every man that is talked of is not admired. Judges differ about
+  the merits of Alexander. Doctor Prideaux says in his Connection, that he
+  deserves only to be called the Great Cut-throat; and the author of Tom Jones
+  has written a volume, to prove that he and all other conquerors ought to be
+  classed with Jonathan Wild."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland reddened at these citations.</p>
+
+  <p>"Accursed blasphemy! Did these authors think that, by the coarseness of
+  their ribaldry, they could destroy his well-earned fame? Are learning,
+  sensibility, and taste, no securities to exempt their possessor from this
+  vulgar abuse? Did you ever read, Williams, of a man more gallant, generous,
+  and free? Was ever mortal so completely the reverse of every thing
+  engrossing and selfish? He formed to himself a sublime image of excellence,
+  and his only ambition was to realise it in his own story. Remember his
+  giving away every thing when he set out upon his grand expedition,
+  professedly reserving for himself nothing but hope. Recollect his heroic
+  confidence in Philip the physician, and his entire and unalterable
+  friendship for Ephestion. He treated the captive family of Darius with the
+  most cordial urbanity, and the venerable Sysigambis with all the tenderness
+  and attention of a son to his mother. Never take the judgment, Williams,
+  upon such a subject, of a clerical pedant or a Westminster justice. Examine
+  for yourself, and you will find in Alexander a model of honour, generosity,
+  and disinterestedness,&mdash;a man who, for the cultivated liberality of his
+  mind, and the unparalleled grandeur of his projects, must stand alone the
+  spectacle and admiration of all ages of the world."</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah, sir! it is a fine thing for us to sit here and compose his
+  panegyric. But shall I forget what a vast expense was bestowed in erecting
+  the monument of his fame? Was not he the common disturber of mankind? Did
+  not he over-run nations that would never have heard of him but for his
+  devastations? How many hundred thousands of lives did he sacrifice in his
+  career? What must I think of his cruelties; a whole tribe massacred for a
+  crime committed by their ancestors one hundred and fifty years before; fifty
+  thousand sold into slavery; two thousand crucified for their gallant defence
+  of their country? Man is surely a strange sort of creature, who never
+  praises any one more heartily than him who has spread destruction and ruin
+  over the face of nations!"</p>
+
+  <p>"The way of thinking you express, Williams, is natural enough, and I
+  cannot blame you for it. But let me hope that you will become more liberal.
+  The death of a hundred thousand men is at first sight very shocking; but
+  what in reality are a hundred thousand such men, more than a hundred
+  thousand sheep? It is mind, Williams, the generation of knowledge and
+  virtue, that we ought to love. This was the project of Alexander; he set out
+  in a great undertaking to civilise mankind; he delivered the vast continent
+  of Asia from the stupidity and degradation of the Persian monarchy: and,
+  though he was cut off in the midst of his career, we may easily perceive the
+  vast effects of his project. Grecian literature and cultivation, the
+  Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the Ptolemies followed, in nations which
+  before had been sunk to the condition of brutes. Alexander was the builder,
+  as notoriously as the destroyer, of cities."</p>
+
+  <p>"And yet, sir, I am afraid that the pike and the battle-axe are not the
+  right instruments for making men wise. Suppose it were admitted that the
+  lives of men were to be sacrificed without remorse if a paramount good were
+  to result, it seems to me as if murder and massacre were but a very
+  left-handed way of producing civilisation and love. But pray, do not you
+  think this great hero was a sort of a madman? What now will you say to his
+  firing the palace of Persepolis, his weeping for other worlds to conquer,
+  and his marching his whole army over the burning sands of Libya, merely to
+  visit a temple, and persuade mankind that he was the son of Jupiter
+  Ammon?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Alexander, my boy, has been much misunderstood. Mankind have revenged
+  themselves upon him by misrepresentation, for having so far eclipsed the
+  rest of his species. It was necessary to the realising his project, that he
+  should pass for a god. It was the only way by which he could get a firm hold
+  upon the veneration of the stupid and bigoted Persians. It was this, and not
+  a mad vanity, that was the source of his proceeding. And how much had he to
+  struggle with in this respect, in the unapprehending obstinacy of some of
+  his Macedonians?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why then, sir, at last Alexander did but employ means that all
+  politicians profess to use, as well as he. He dragooned men into wisdom, and
+  cheated them into the pursuit of their own happiness. But what is worse,
+  sir, this Alexander, in the paroxysm of his headlong rage, spared neither
+  friend nor foe. You will not pretend to justify the excesses of his
+  ungovernable passion. It is impossible, sure, that a word can be said for a
+  man whom a momentary provocation can hurry into the commission of
+  murders&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The instant I had uttered these words, I felt what it was that I had
+  done. There was a magnetical sympathy between me and my patron, so that
+  their effect was not sooner produced upon him, than my own mind reproached
+  me with the inhumanity of the allusion. Our confusion was mutual. The blood
+  forsook at once the transparent complexion of Mr. Falkland, and then rushed
+  back again with rapidity and fierceness. I dared not utter a word, lest I
+  should commit a new error, worse than that into which I had just fallen.
+  After a short, but severe, struggle to continue the conversation, Mr.
+  Falkland began with trepidation, but afterwards became calmer:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"You are not candid&mdash;Alexander&mdash;You must learn more
+  clemency&mdash;Alexander, I say, does not deserve this rigour. Do you
+  remember his tears, his remorse, his determined abstinence from food, which
+  he could scarcely be persuaded to relinquish? Did not that prove acute
+  feeling and a rooted principle of equity?&mdash;Well, well, Alexander was a
+  true and judicious lover of mankind, and his real merits have been little
+  comprehended."</p>
+
+  <p>I know not how to make the state of my mind at that moment accurately
+  understood. When one idea has got possession of the soul, it is scarcely
+  possible to keep it from finding its way to the lips. Error, once committed,
+  has a fascinating power, like that ascribed to the eyes of the rattlesnake,
+  to draw us into a second error. It deprives us of that proud confidence in
+  our own strength, to which we are indebted for so much of our virtue.
+  Curiosity is a restless propensity, and often does but hurry us forward the
+  more irresistibly, the greater is the danger that attends its
+  indulgence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Clitus," said I, "was a man of very coarse and provoking manners, was he
+  not?"</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland felt the full force of this appeal. He gave me a penetrating
+  look, as if he would see my very soul. His eyes were then in an instant
+  withdrawn. I could perceive him seized with a convulsive shuddering which,
+  though strongly counteracted, and therefore scarcely visible, had I know not
+  what of terrible in it. He left his employment, strode about the room in
+  anger, his visage gradually assumed an expression as of supernatural
+  barbarity, he quitted the apartment abruptly, and flung the door with a
+  violence that seemed to shake the house.</p>
+
+  <p>"Is this," said I, "the fruit of conscious guilt, or of the disgust that
+  a man of honour conceives at guilt undeservedly imputed?"</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CII" id="V2_CII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+  <p>The reader will feel how rapidly I was advancing to the brink of the
+  precipice. I had a confused apprehension of what I was doing, but I could
+  not stop myself. "Is it possible," said I, "that Mr. Falkland, who is thus
+  overwhelmed with a sense of the unmerited dishonour that has been fastened
+  upon him in the face of the world, will long endure the presence of a raw
+  and unfriended youth, who is perpetually bringing back that dishonour to his
+  recollection, and who seems himself the most forward to entertain the
+  accusation?"</p>
+
+  <p>I felt indeed that Mr. Falkland would not hastily incline to dismiss me,
+  for the same reason that restrained him from many other actions, which might
+  seem to savour of a too tender and ambiguous sensibility. But this
+  reflection was little adapted to comfort me. That he should cherish in his
+  heart a growing hatred against me, and that he should think himself obliged
+  to retain me a continual thorn in his side, was an idea by no means of
+  favourable augury to my future peace.</p>
+
+  <p>It was some time after this that, in clearing out a case of drawers, I
+  found a paper that, by some accident, had slipped behind one of the drawers,
+  and been overlooked. At another time perhaps my curiosity might have given
+  way to the laws of decorum, and I should have restored it unopened to my
+  master, its owner. But my eagerness for information had been too much
+  stimulated by the preceding incidents, to allow me at present to neglect any
+  occasion of obtaining it. The paper proved to be a letter written by the
+  elder Hawkins, and from its contents seemed to have been penned when he had
+  first been upon the point of absconding from the persecutions of Mr. Tyrrel.
+  It was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Honourable Sir,</p>
+
+  <p>"I have waited some time in daily hope of your honour's return into these
+  parts. Old Warnes and his dame, who are left to take care of your house,
+  tell me they cannot say when that will be, nor justly in what part of
+  England you are at present. For my share, misfortune comes so thick upon me,
+  that I must determine upon something (that is for certain), and out of hand.
+  Our squire, who I must own at first used me kindly enough, though I am
+  afraid that was partly out of spite to squire Underwood, has since
+  determined to be the ruin of me. Sir, I have been no craven; I fought it up
+  stoutly; for after all, you know, God bless your honour! it is but a man to
+  a man; but he has been too much for me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps if I were to ride over to the market-town and enquire of Munsle,
+  your lawyer, he could tell me how to direct to you. But having hoped and
+  waited o' this fashion, and all in vain, has put me upon other thoughts. I
+  was in no hurry, sir, to apply to you; for I do not love to be a trouble to
+  any body. I kept that for my last stake. Well, sir, and now that has failed
+  me like, I am ashamed, as it were, to have thought of it. Have not I, thinks
+  I, arms and legs as well as other people? I am driven out of house and home.
+  Well, and what then? Sure I arn't a cabbage, that if you pull it out of the
+  ground it must die. I am pennyless. True; and how many hundreds are there
+  that live from hand to mouth all the days of their life? (Begging your
+  honour's pardon) thinks I, if we little folks had but the wit to do for
+  ourselves, the great folks would not be such maggotty changelings as they
+  are. They would begin to look about them.</p>
+
+  <p>"But there is another thing that has swayed with me more than all the
+  rest. I do not know how to tell you, sir,&mdash;My poor boy, my Leonard, the
+  pride of my life, has been three weeks in the county jail. It is true
+  indeed, sir. Squire Tyrrel put him there. Now, sir, every time that I lay my
+  head upon my pillow under my own little roof, my heart smites me with the
+  situation of my Leonard. I do not mean so much for the hardship; I do not so
+  much matter that. I do not expect him to go through the world upon velvet! I
+  am not such a fool. But who can tell what may hap in a jail! I have been
+  three times to see him; and there is one man in the same quarter of the
+  prison that looks so wicked! I do not much fancy the looks of the rest. To
+  be sure, Leonard is as good a lad as ever lived. I think he will not give
+  his mind to such. But come what will, I am determined he shall not stay
+  among them twelve hours longer. I am an obstinate old fool perhaps; but I
+  have taken it into my head, and I will do it. Do not ask me what. But, if I
+  were to write to your honour, and wait for your answer, it might take a week
+  or ten days more. I must not think of it!</p>
+
+  <p>"Squire Tyrrel is very headstrong, and you, your honour, might be a
+  little hottish, or so. No, I would not have any body quarrel for me. There
+  has been mischief enough done already; and I will get myself out of the way.
+  So I write this, your honour, merely to unload my mind. I feel myself
+  equally as much bound to respect and love you, as if you had done every
+  thing for me, that I believe you would have done if things had chanced
+  differently. It is most likely you will never hear of me any more. If it
+  should be so, set your worthy heart at rest. I know myself too well, ever to
+  be tempted to do any thing that is really bad. I have now my fortune to seek
+  in the world. I have been used ill enough, God knows. But I bear no malice;
+  my heart is at peace with all mankind; and I forgive every body. It is like
+  enough that poor Leonard and I may have hardship enough to undergo, among
+  strangers, and being obliged to hide ourselves like housebreakers or
+  highwaymen. But I defy all the malice of fortune to make us do an ill thing.
+  That consolation we will always keep against all the crosses of a
+  heart-breaking world.</p>
+
+  <p>"God bless you!<br />
+  So prays,<br />
+  Your honour's humble servant to command,<br />
+  BENJAMIN HAWKINS."</p>
+
+  <p>I read this letter with considerable attention, and it occasioned me many
+  reflections. To my way of thinking it contained a very interesting picture
+  of a blunt, downright, honest mind. "It is a melancholy consideration," said
+  I to myself; "but such is man! To have judged from appearances one would
+  have said, this is a fellow to have taken fortune's buffets and rewards with
+  an incorruptible mind. And yet see where it all ends! This man was capable
+  of afterwards becoming a murderer, and finished his life at the gallows. O
+  poverty! thou art indeed omnipotent! Thou grindest us into desperation; thou
+  confoundest all our boasted and most deep-rooted principles; thou fillest us
+  to the very brim with malice and revenge, and renderest us capable of acts
+  of unknown horror! May I never be visited by thee in the fulness of thy
+  power!"</p>
+
+  <p>Having satisfied my curiosity with respect to this paper, I took care to
+  dispose of it in such a manner as that it should be found by Mr. Falkland;
+  at the same time that, in obedience to the principle which at present
+  governed me with absolute dominion, I was willing that the way in which it
+  offered itself to his attention should suggest to him the idea that it had
+  possibly passed through my hands. The next morning I saw him, and I exerted
+  myself to lead the conversation, which by this time I well knew how to
+  introduce, by insensible degrees to the point I desired. After several
+  previous questions, remarks, and rejoinders, I continued:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, after all, I cannot help feeling very uncomfortably as to my
+  ideas of human nature, when I find that there is no dependence to be placed
+  upon its perseverance, and that, at least among the illiterate, the most
+  promising appearances may end in the foulest disgrace."</p>
+
+  <p>"You think, then, that literature and a cultivated mind are the only
+  assurance for the constancy of our principles!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Humph!--why do you suppose, sir, that learning and ingenuity do not
+  often serve people rather to hide their crimes than to restrain them from
+  committing them? History tells us strange things in that respect."</p>
+
+  <p>"Williams," said Mr. Falkland, a little disturbed, "you are extremely
+  given to censure and severity."</p>
+
+  <p>"I hope not. I am sure I am most fond of looking on the other side of the
+  picture, and considering how many men have been aspersed, and even at some
+  time or other almost torn to pieces by their fellow-creatures, whom, when
+  properly understood, we find worthy of our reverence and love."</p>
+
+  <p>"Indeed," replied Mr. Falkland, with a sigh, "when I consider these
+  things I do not wonder at the dying exclamation of Brutus, 'O Virtue, I
+  sought thee as a substance, but I find thee an empty name!' I am too much
+  inclined to be of his opinion."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, to be sure, sir, innocence and guilt are too much confounded in
+  human life. I remember an affecting story of a poor man in the reign of
+  Queen Elizabeth, who would have infallibly been hanged for murder upon the
+  strength of circumstantial evidence, if the person really concerned had not
+  been himself upon the jury and prevented it."</p>
+
+  <p>In saying this I touched the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He
+  came up to me with a ferocious countenance, as if determined to force me
+  into a confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change his
+  design! he drew back with trepidation, and exclaimed, "Detested be the
+  universe, and the laws that govern it! Honour, justice, virtue, are all the
+  juggle of knaves! If it were in my power I would instantly crush the whole
+  system into nothing!"</p>
+
+  <p>I replied; "Oh, sir! things are not so bad as you imagine. The world was
+  made for men of sense to do what they will with. Its affairs cannot be
+  better than in the direction of the genuine heroes; and as in the end they
+  will be found the truest friends of the whole, so the multitude have nothing
+  to do but to look on, be fashioned, and admire."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland made a powerful effort to recover his tranquillity.
+  "Williams," said he, "you instruct me well. You have a right notion of
+  things, and I have great hopes of you. I will be more of a man; I will
+  forget the past, and do better for the time to come. The future, the future
+  is always our own."</p>
+
+  <p>"I am sorry, sir, that I have given you pain. I am afraid to say all that
+  I think. But it is my opinion that mistakes will ultimately be cleared up,
+  justice done, and the true state of things come to light, in spite of the
+  false colours that may for a time obscure it."</p>
+
+  <p>The idea I suggested did not give Mr. Falkland the proper degree of
+  delight. He suffered a temporary relapse. "Justice!"&mdash;he muttered. "I
+  do not know what is justice. My case is not within the reach of common
+  remedies; perhaps of none. I only know that I am miserable. I began life
+  with the best intentions and the most fervid philanthropy; and here I
+  am&mdash;miserable&mdash;miserable beyond expression or endurance."</p>
+
+  <p>Having said this, he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and re-assumed
+  his accustomed dignity and command. "How came this conversation?" cried he.
+  "Who gave you a right to be my confidant? Base, artful wretch that you are!
+  learn to be more respectful! Are my passions to be wound and unwound by an
+  insolent domestic? Do you think I will be an instrument to be played on at
+  your pleasure, till you have extorted all the treasures of my soul? Begone,
+  and fear lest you be made to pay for the temerity you have already
+  committed!"</p>
+
+  <p>There was an energy and determination in the gestures with which these
+  words were accompanied, that did not admit of their being disputed. My mouth
+  was closed; I felt as if deprived of all share of activity, and was only
+  able silently and passively to quit the apartment.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CIII" id="V2_CIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+  <p>Two days subsequent to this conversation, Mr. Falkland ordered me to be
+  called to him. [I shall continue to speak in my narrative of the silent, as
+  well as the articulate part of the intercourse between us. His countenance
+  was habitually animated and expressive, much beyond that of any other man I
+  have seen. The curiosity which, as I have said, constituted my ruling
+  passion, stimulated me to make it my perpetual study. It will also most
+  probably happen, while I am thus employed in collecting the scattered
+  incidents of my history, that I shall upon some occasions annex to
+  appearances an explanation which I was far from possessing at the time, and
+  was only suggested to me through the medium of subsequent events.]</p>
+
+  <p>When I entered the apartment, I remarked in Mr. Falkland's countenance an
+  unwonted composure. This composure however did not seem to result from
+  internal ease, but from an effort which, while he prepared himself for an
+  interesting scene, was exerted to prevent his presence of mind, and power of
+  voluntary action, from suffering any diminution.</p>
+
+  <p>"Williams," said he, "I am determined, whatever it may cost me, to have
+  an explanation with you. You are a rash and inconsiderate boy, and have
+  given me much disturbance. You ought to have known that, though I allow you
+  to talk with me upon indifferent subjects, it is very improper in you to
+  lead the conversation to any thing that relates to my personal concerns. You
+  have said many things lately in a very mysterious way, and appear to know
+  something more than I am aware of. I am equally at a loss to guess how you
+  came by your knowledge, as of what it consists. But I think I perceive too
+  much inclination on your part to trifle with my peace of mind. That ought
+  not to be, nor have I deserved any such treatment from you. But, be that as
+  it will, the guesses in which you oblige me to employ myself are too
+  painful. It is a sort of sporting with my feelings, which, as a man of
+  resolution, I am determined to bring to an end. I expect you therefore to
+  lay aside all mystery and equivocation, and inform me explicitly what it is
+  upon which your allusions are built. What is it you know? What is it you
+  want? I have been too much exposed already to unparalleled mortification and
+  hardship, and my wounds will not bear this perpetual tampering."</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel, sir," answered I, "how wrong I have been, and am ashamed that
+  such a one as I should have given you all this trouble and displeasure. I
+  felt it at the time; but I have been hurried along, I do not know how. I
+  have always tried to stop myself, but the demon that possessed me was too
+  strong for me. I know nothing, sir, but what Mr. Collins told me. He told me
+  the story of Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville and Hawkins. I am sure, sir, he
+  said nothing but what was to your honour, and proved you to be more an angel
+  than a man."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir: I found a letter written by that Hawkins the other day; did
+  not that letter fall into your hands? Did not you read it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"For God's sake, sir, turn me out of your house. Punish me in some way or
+  other, that I may forgive myself. I am a foolish, wicked, despicable wretch.
+  I confess, sir, I did read the letter."</p>
+
+  <p>"And how dared you read it? It was indeed very wrong of you. But we will
+  talk of that by and by. Well, and what did you say to the letter? You know
+  it seems, that Hawkins was hanged."</p>
+
+  <p>"I say, sir? why it went to my heart to read it. I say, as I said the day
+  before yesterday, that when I see a man of so much principle afterwards
+  deliberately proceeding to the very worst of crimes, I can scarcely bear to
+  think of it."</p>
+
+  <p>"That is what you say? It seems too you know&mdash;accursed
+  remembrance!--that I was accused of this crime?"</p>
+
+  <p>I was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir. You know too, perhaps, that from the hour the crime was
+  committed&mdash;yes, sir, that was the date [and as he said this, there was
+  somewhat frightful, I had almost said diabolical, in his
+  countenance]&mdash;I have not had an hour's peace; I became changed from the
+  happiest to the most miserable thing that lives; sleep has fled from my
+  eyes; joy has been a stranger to my thoughts; and annihilation I should
+  prefer a thousand times to the being that I am. As soon as I was capable of
+  a choice, I chose honour and the esteem of mankind as a good I preferred to
+  all others. You know, it seems, in how many ways my ambition has been
+  disappointed,&mdash;I do not thank Collins for having been the historian of
+  my disgrace,&mdash;would to God that night could be blotted from the memory
+  of man!--But the scene of that night, instead of perishing, has been a
+  source of ever new calamity to me, which must flow for ever! Am I then, thus
+  miserable and ruined, a proper subject upon which for you to exercise your
+  ingenuity, and improve your power of tormenting? Was it not enough that I
+  was publicly dishonoured? that I was deprived, by the pestilential influence
+  of some demon, of the opportunity of avenging my dishonour? No: in addition
+  to this, I have been charged with having in this critical moment intercepted
+  my own vengeance by the foulest of crimes. That trial is past. Misery itself
+  has nothing worse in store for me, except what you have inflicted: the
+  seeming to doubt of my innocence, which, after the fullest and most solemn
+  examination, has been completely established. You have forced me to this
+  explanation. You have extorted from me a confidence which I had no
+  inclination to make. But it is a part of the misery of my situation, that I
+  am at the mercy of every creature, however little, who feels himself
+  inclined to sport with my distress. Be content. You have brought me low
+  enough."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, sir, I am not content; I cannot be content! I cannot bear to think
+  what I have done. I shall never again be able to look in the face of the
+  best of masters and the best of men. I beg of you, sir, to turn me out of
+  your service. Let me go and hide myself where I may never see you more."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland's countenance had indicated great severity through the whole
+  of this conversation; but now it became more harsh and tempestuous than
+  ever. "How now, rascal!" cried he. "You want to leave me, do you? Who told
+  you that I wished to part with you? But you cannot bear to live with such a
+  miserable wretch as I am! You are not disposed to put up with the caprices
+  of a man so dissatisfied and unjust!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, sir! do not talk to me thus! Do with me any thing you will. Kill me
+  if you please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Kill you!" [Volumes could not describe the emotions with which this echo
+  of my words was given and received.]</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir, I could die to serve you! I love you more than I can express. I
+  worship you as a being of a superior nature. I am foolish, raw,
+  inexperienced,&mdash;worse than any of these;&mdash;but never did a thought
+  of disloyalty to your service enter into my heart."</p>
+
+  <p>Here our conversation ended; and the impression it made upon my youthful
+  mind it is impossible to describe. I thought with astonishment, even with
+  rapture, of the attention and kindness towards me I discovered in Mr.
+  Falkland, through all the roughness of his manner. I could never enough
+  wonder at finding myself, humble as I was by my birth, obscure as I had
+  hitherto been, thus suddenly become of so much importance to the happiness
+  of one of the most enlightened and accomplished men in England. But this
+  consciousness attached me to my patron more eagerly than ever, and made me
+  swear a thousand times, as I meditated upon my situation, that I would never
+  prove unworthy of so generous a protector.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CIV" id="V2_CIV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+  <p>Is it not unaccountable that, in the midst of all my increased veneration
+  for my patron, the first tumult of my emotion was scarcely subsided, before
+  the old question that had excited my conjectures recurred to my mind, Was he
+  the murderer? It was a kind of fatal impulse, that seemed destined to hurry
+  me to my destruction. I did not wonder at the disturbance that was given to
+  Mr. Falkland by any allusion, however distant, to this fatal affair. That
+  was as completely accounted for from the consideration of his excessive
+  sensibility in matters of honour, as it would have been upon the supposition
+  of the most atrocious guilt. Knowing, as he did, that such a charge had once
+  been connected with his name, he would of course be perpetually uneasy, and
+  suspect some latent insinuation at every possible opportunity. He would
+  doubt and fear, lest every man with whom he conversed harboured the foulest
+  suspicion against him. In my case he found that I was in possession of some
+  information, more than he was aware of, without its being possible for him
+  to decide to what it amounted, whether I had heard a just or unjust, a
+  candid or calumniatory tale. He had also reason to suppose that I gave
+  entertainment to thoughts derogatory to his honour, and that I did not form
+  that favourable judgment, which the exquisite refinement of his ruling
+  passion made indispensable to his peace. All these considerations would of
+  course maintain in him a state of perpetual uneasiness. But, though I could
+  find nothing that I could consider as justifying me in persisting in the
+  shadow of a doubt, yet, as I have said, the uncertainty and restlessness of
+  my contemplations would by no means depart from me.</p>
+
+  <p>The fluctuating state of my mind produced a contention of opposite
+  principles, that by turns usurped dominion over my conduct. Sometimes I was
+  influenced by the most complete veneration for my master; I placed an
+  unreserved confidence in his integrity and his virtue, and implicitly
+  surrendered my understanding for him to set it to what point he pleased. At
+  other times the confidence, which had before flowed with the most plenteous
+  tide, began to ebb; I was, as I had already been, watchful, inquisitive,
+  suspicious, full of a thousand conjectures as to the meaning of the most
+  indifferent actions. Mr. Falkland, who was most painfully alive to every
+  thing that related to his honour, saw these variations, and betrayed his
+  consciousness of them now in one manner, and now in another, frequently
+  before I was myself aware, sometimes almost before they existed. The
+  situation of both was distressing; we were each of us a plague to the other;
+  and I often wondered, that the forbearance and benignity of my master was
+  not at length exhausted, and that he did not determine to thrust from him
+  for ever so incessant an observer. There was indeed one eminent difference
+  between his share in the transaction and mine. I had some consolation in the
+  midst of my restlessness. Curiosity is a principle that carries its
+  pleasures, as well as its pains, along with it. The mind is urged by a
+  perpetual stimulus; it seems as if it were continually approaching to the
+  end of its race; and as the insatiable desire of satisfaction is its
+  principle of conduct, so it promises itself in that satisfaction an unknown
+  gratification, which seems as if it were capable of fully compensating any
+  injuries that may be suffered in the career. But to Mr. Falkland there was
+  no consolation. What he endured in the intercourse between us appeared to be
+  gratuitous evil. He had only to wish that there was no such person as myself
+  in the world, and to curse the hour when his humanity led him to rescue me
+  from my obscurity, and place me in his service.</p>
+
+  <p>A consequence produced upon me by the extraordinary nature of my
+  situation it is necessary to mention. The constant state of vigilance and
+  suspicion in which my mind was retained, worked a very rapid change in my
+  character. It seemed to have all the effect that might have been expected
+  from years of observation and experience. The strictness with which I
+  endeavoured to remark what passed in the mind of one man, and the variety of
+  conjectures into which I was led, appeared, as it were, to render me a
+  competent adept in the different modes in which the human intellect displays
+  its secret workings. I no longer said to myself, as I had done in the
+  beginning, "I will ask Mr. Falkland whether he were the murderer." On the
+  contrary, after having carefully examined the different kinds of evidence of
+  which the subject was susceptible, and recollecting all that had already
+  passed upon the subject, it was not without considerable pain, that I felt
+  myself unable to discover any way in which I could be perfectly and
+  unalterably satisfied of my patron's innocence. As to his guilt, I could
+  scarcely bring myself to doubt that in some way or other, sooner or later, I
+  should arrive at the knowledge of that, if it really existed. But I could
+  not endure to think, almost for a moment, of that side of the alternative as
+  true; and with all my ungovernable suspicion arising from the mysteriousness
+  of the circumstances, and all the delight which a young and unfledged mind
+  receives from ideas that give scope to all that imagination can picture of
+  terrible or sublime, I could not yet bring myself to consider Mr. Falkland's
+  guilt as a supposition attended with the remotest probability.</p>
+
+  <p>I hope the reader will forgive me for dwelling thus long on preliminary
+  circumstances. I shall come soon enough to the story of my own misery. I
+  have already said, that one of the motives which induced me to the penning
+  of this narrative, was to console myself in my insupportable distress. I
+  derive a melancholy pleasure from dwelling upon the circumstances which
+  imperceptibly paved the way to my ruin. While I recollect or describe past
+  scenes, which occurred in a more favourable period of my life, my attention
+  is called off for a short interval, from the hopeless misfortune in which I
+  am at present involved. The man must indeed possess an uncommon portion of
+  hardness of heart, who can envy me so slight a relief.&mdash;To proceed.</p>
+
+  <p>For some time after the explanation which had thus taken place between me
+  and Mr. Falkland, his melancholy, instead of being in the slightest degree
+  diminished by the lenient hand of time, went on perpetually to increase. His
+  fits of insanity&mdash;for such I must denominate them for want of a
+  distinct appellation, though it is possible they might not fall under the
+  definition that either the faculty or the court of chancery appropriate to
+  the term&mdash;became stronger and more durable than ever. It was no longer
+  practicable wholly to conceal them from the family, and even from the
+  neighbourhood. He would sometimes, without any previous notice, absent
+  himself from his house for two or three days, unaccompanied by servant or
+  attendant. This was the more extraordinary, as it was well known that he
+  paid no visits, nor kept up any sort of intercourse with the gentlemen of
+  the vicinity. But it was impossible that a man of Mr. Falkland's distinction
+  and fortune should long continue in such a practice, without its being
+  discovered what was become of him; though a considerable part of our county
+  was among the wildest and most desolate districts that are to be found in
+  South Britain. Mr. Falkland was sometimes seen climbing among the rocks,
+  reclining motionless for hours together upon the edge of a precipice, or
+  lulled into a kind of nameless lethargy of despair by the dashing of the
+  torrents. He would remain for whole nights together under the naked cope of
+  heaven, inattentive to the consideration either of place or time; insensible
+  to the variations of the weather, or rather seeming to be delighted with
+  that uproar of the elements, which partially called off his attention from
+  the discord and dejection that occupied his own mind.</p>
+
+  <p>At first, when we received intelligence at any time of the place to which
+  Mr. Falkland had withdrawn himself, some person of his household, Mr.
+  Collins or myself, but most generally myself, as I was always at home, and
+  always, in the received sense of the word, at leisure, went to him to
+  persuade him to return. But, after a few experiments, we thought it
+  advisable to desist, and leave him to prolong his absence, or to terminate
+  it, as might happen to suit his own inclination. Mr. Collins, whose grey
+  hairs and long services seemed to give him a sort of right to be
+  importunate, sometimes succeeded; though even in that case there was nothing
+  that could sit more uneasily upon Mr. Falkland than this insinuation as if
+  he wanted a guardian to take care of him, or as if he were in, or in danger
+  of falling into, a state in which he would be incapable of deliberately
+  controlling his own words and actions. At one time he would suddenly yield
+  to his humble, venerable friend, murmuring grievously at the constraint that
+  was put upon him, but without spirit enough even to complain of it with
+  energy. At another time, even though complying, he would suddenly burst out
+  in a paroxysm of resentment. Upon these occasions there was something
+  inconceivably, savagely terrible in his anger, that gave to the person
+  against whom it was directed the most humiliating and insupportable
+  sensations. Me he always treated, at these times, with fierceness, and drove
+  me from him with a vehemence lofty, emphatical, and sustained, beyond any
+  thing of which I should have thought human nature to be capable. These
+  sallies seemed always to constitute a sort of crisis in his indisposition;
+  and, whenever he was induced to such a premature return, he would fall
+  immediately after into a state of the most melancholy inactivity, in which
+  he usually continued for two or three days. It was by an obstinate fatality
+  that, whenever I saw Mr. Falkland in these deplorable situations, and
+  particularly when I lighted upon him after having sought him among the rocks
+  and precipices, pale, emaciated, solitary, and haggard, the suggestion would
+  continually recur to me, in spite of inclination, in spite of persuasion,
+  and in spite of evidence, Surely this man is a murderer!</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CV" id="V2_CV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+  <p>It was in one of the lucid intervals, as I may term them, that occurred
+  during this period, that a peasant was brought before him, in his character
+  of a justice of peace, upon an accusation of having murdered his fellow. As
+  Mr. Falkland had by this time acquired the repute of a melancholy
+  valetudinarian, it is probable he would not have been called upon to act in
+  his official character upon the present occasion, had it not been that two
+  or three of the neighbouring justices were all of them from home at once, so
+  that he was the only one to be found in a circuit of many miles. The reader
+  however must not imagine, though I have employed the word insanity in
+  describing Mr. Falkland's symptoms, that he was by any means reckoned for a
+  madman by the generality of those who had occasion to observe him. It is
+  true that his behaviour, at certain times, was singular and unaccountable;
+  but then, at other times, there was in it so much dignity, regularity, and
+  economy; he knew so well how to command and make himself respected; his
+  actions and carriage were so condescending, considerate, and benevolent,
+  that, far from having forfeited the esteem of the unfortunate or the many,
+  they were loud and earnest in his praises.</p>
+
+  <p>I was present at the examination of this peasant. The moment I heard of
+  the errand which had brought this rabble of visitors, a sudden thought
+  struck me. I conceived the possibility of rendering the incident subordinate
+  to the great enquiry which drank up all the currents of my soul. I said,
+  this man is arraigned of murder, and murder is the master-key that wakes
+  distemper in the mind of Mr. Falkland. I will watch him without remission. I
+  will trace all the mazes of his thought. Surely at such a time his secret
+  anguish must betray itself. Surely, if it be not my own fault, I shall now
+  be able to discover the state of his plea before the tribunal of unerring
+  justice.</p>
+
+  <p>I took my station in a manner most favourable to the object upon which my
+  mind was intent. I could perceive in Mr. Falkland's features, as he entered,
+  a strong reluctance to the business in which he was engaged; but there was
+  no possibility of retreating. His countenance was embarrassed and anxious;
+  he scarcely saw any body. The examination had not proceeded far, before he
+  chanced to turn his eye to the part of the room where I was. It happened in
+  this as in some preceding instances&mdash;we exchanged a silent look, by
+  which we told volumes to each other. Mr. Falkland's complexion turned from
+  red to pale, and from pale to red. I perfectly understood his feelings, and
+  would willingly have withdrawn myself. But it was impossible; my passions
+  were too deeply engaged; I was rooted to the spot; though my own life, that
+  of my master, or almost of a whole nation had been at stake, I had no power
+  to change my position.</p>
+
+  <p>The first surprise however having subsided, Mr. Falkland assumed a look
+  of determined constancy, and even seemed to increase in self-possession much
+  beyond what could have been expected from his first entrance. This he could
+  probably have maintained, had it not been that the scene, instead of being
+  permanent, was in some sort perpetually changing. The man who was brought
+  before him was vehemently accused by the brother of the deceased as having
+  acted from the most rooted malice. He swore that there had been an old
+  grudge between the parties, and related several instances of it. He affirmed
+  that the murderer had sought the earliest opportunity of wreaking his
+  revenge; had struck the first blow; and, though the contest was in
+  appearance only a common boxing match, had watched the occasion of giving a
+  fatal stroke, which was followed by the instant death of his antagonist.</p>
+
+  <p>While the accuser was giving in his evidence, the accused discovered
+  every token of the most poignant sensibility. At one time his features were
+  convulsed with anguish; tears unbidden trickled down his manly cheeks; and
+  at another he started with apparent astonishment at the unfavourable turn
+  that was given to the narrative, though without betraying any impatience to
+  interrupt. I never saw a man less ferocious in his appearance. He was tall,
+  well made, and comely. His countenance was ingenuous and benevolent, without
+  folly. By his side stood a young woman, his sweetheart, extremely agreeable
+  in her person, and her looks testifying how deeply she interested herself in
+  the fate of her lover. The accidental spectators were divided, between
+  indignation against the enormity of the supposed criminal, and compassion
+  for the poor girl that accompanied him. They seemed to take little notice of
+  the favourable appearances visible in the person of the accused, till, in
+  the sequel, those appearances were more forcibly suggested to their
+  attention. For Mr. Falkland, he was at one moment engrossed by curiosity and
+  earnestness to investigate the tale, while at another he betrayed a sort of
+  revulsion of sentiment, which made the investigation too painful for him to
+  support.</p>
+
+  <p>When the accused was called upon for his defence, he readily owned the
+  misunderstanding that had existed, and that the deceased was the worst enemy
+  he had in the world. Indeed he was his only enemy, and he could not tell the
+  reason that had made him so. He had employed every effort to overcome his
+  animosity, but in vain. The deceased had upon all occasions sought to
+  mortify him, and do him an ill turn; but he had resolved never to be engaged
+  in a broil with him, and till this day he had succeeded. If he had met with
+  a misfortune with any other man, people at least might have thought it
+  accident; but now it would always be believed that he had acted from secret
+  malice and a bad heart.</p>
+
+  <p>The fact was, that he and his sweetheart had gone to a neighbouring fair,
+  where this man had met them. The man had often tried to affront him; and his
+  passiveness, interpreted into cowardice, had perhaps encouraged the other to
+  additional rudeness. Finding that he had endured trivial insults to himself
+  with an even temper, the deceased now thought proper to turn his brutality
+  upon the young woman that accompanied him. He pursued them; he endeavoured
+  in various manners to harass and vex them; they had sought in vain to shake
+  him off. The young woman was considerably terrified. The accused
+  expostulated with their persecutor, and asked him how he could be so
+  barbarous as to persist in frightening a woman? He replied with an insulting
+  tone, "Then the woman should find some one able to protect her; people that
+  encouraged and trusted to such a thief as that, deserved no better!" The
+  accused tried every expedient he could invent; at length he could endure it
+  no longer; he became exasperated, and challenged the assailant. The
+  challenge was accepted; a ring was formed; he confided the care of his
+  sweetheart to a bystander; and unfortunately the first blow he struck proved
+  fatal.</p>
+
+  <p>The accused added, that he did not care what became of him. He had been
+  anxious to go through the world in an inoffensive manner, and now he had the
+  guilt of blood upon him. He did not know but it would be kindness in them to
+  hang him out of the way; for his conscience would reproach him as long as he
+  lived, and the figure of the deceased, as he had lain senseless and without
+  motion at his feet, would perpetually haunt him. The thought of this man, at
+  one moment full of life and vigour, and the next lifted a helpless corpse
+  from the ground, and all owing to him, was a thought too dreadful to be
+  endured. He had loved the poor maiden, who had been the innocent occasion of
+  this, with all his heart; but from this time he should never support the
+  sight of her. The sight would bring a tribe of fiends in its rear. One
+  unlucky minute had poisoned all his hopes, and made life a burden to him.
+  Saying this, his countenance fell, the muscles of his face trembled with
+  agony, and he looked the statue of despair.</p>
+
+  <p>This was the story of which Mr. Falkland was called upon to be the
+  auditor. Though the incidents were, for the most part, wide of those which
+  belonged to the adventures of the preceding volume, and there had been much
+  less policy and skill displayed on either part in this rustic encounter, yet
+  there were many points which, to a man who bore the former strongly in his
+  recollection, suggested a sufficient resemblance. In each case it was a
+  human brute persisting in a course of hostility to a man of benevolent
+  character, and suddenly and terribly cut off in the midst of his career.
+  These points perpetually smote upon the heart of Mr. Falkland. He at one
+  time started with astonishment, and at another shifted his posture, like a
+  man who is unable longer to endure the sensations that press upon him. Then
+  he new strung his nerves to stubborn patience. I could see, while his
+  muscles preserved an inflexible steadiness, tears of anguish roll down his
+  cheeks. He dared not trust his eyes to glance towards the side of the room
+  where I stood; and this gave an air of embarrassment to his whole figure.
+  But when the accused came to speak of his feelings, to describe the depth of
+  his compunction for an involuntary fault, he could endure it no longer. He
+  suddenly rose, and with every mark of horror and despair rushed out of the
+  room.</p>
+
+  <p>This circumstance made no material difference in the affair of the
+  accused. The parties were detained about half an hour. Mr. Falkland had
+  already heard the material parts of the evidence in person. At the
+  expiration of that interval, he sent for Mr. Collins out of the room. The
+  story of the culprit was confirmed by many witnesses who had seen the
+  transaction. Word was brought that my master was indisposed; and, at the
+  same time, the accused was ordered to be discharged. The vengeance of the
+  brother however, as I afterwards found, did not rest here, and he met with a
+  magistrate, more scrupulous or more despotic, by whom the culprit was
+  committed for trial.</p>
+
+  <p>This affair was no sooner concluded, than I hastened into the garden, and
+  plunged into the deepest of its thickets. My mind was full, almost to
+  bursting. I no sooner conceived myself sufficiently removed from all
+  observation, than my thoughts forced their way spontaneously to my tongue,
+  and I exclaimed, in a fit of uncontrollable enthusiasm, "This is the
+  murderer; the Hawkinses were innocent! I am sure of it! I will pledge my
+  life for it! It is out! It is discovered! Guilty, upon my soul!"</p>
+
+  <p>While I thus proceeded with hasty steps along the most secret paths of
+  the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts in
+  involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone a
+  total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind of
+  rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of rapid
+  emotion, burning with indignation and energy. In the very tempest and
+  hurricane of the passions, I seemed to enjoy the most soul-ravishing calm. I
+  cannot better express the then state of my mind than by saying, I was never
+  so perfectly alive as at that moment.</p>
+
+  <p>This state of mental elevation continued for several hours, but at length
+  subsided, and gave place to more deliberate reflection. One of the first
+  questions that then occurred was, what shall I do with the knowledge I have
+  been so eager to acquire? I had no inclination to turn informer. I felt what
+  I had had no previous conception of, that it was possible to love a
+  murderer, and, as I then understood it, the worst of murderers. I conceived
+  it to be in the highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man
+  qualified for the most essential and extensive utility, merely out of
+  retrospect to an act which, whatever were its merits, could not be
+  retrieved.</p>
+
+  <p>This thought led me to another, which had at first passed unnoticed. If I
+  had been disposed to turn informer, what had occurred amounted to no
+  evidence that was admissible in a court of justice. Well then, added I, if
+  it be such as would not be admitted at a criminal tribunal, am I sure it is
+  such as I ought to admit? There were twenty persons besides myself present
+  at the scene from which I pretend to derive such entire conviction. Not one
+  of them saw it in the light that I did. It either appeared to them a casual
+  and unimportant circumstance, or they thought it sufficiently accounted for
+  by Mr. Falkland's infirmity and misfortunes. Did it really contain such an
+  extent of arguments and application, that nobody but I was discerning enough
+  to see?</p>
+
+  <p>But all this reasoning produced no alteration in my way of thinking. For
+  this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: "Mr. Falkland is
+  the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!" Thus was
+  I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny. The state of my passions in
+  their progressive career, the inquisitiveness and impatience of my thoughts,
+  appeared to make this determination unavoidable.</p>
+
+  <p>An incident occurred while I was in the garden, that seemed to make no
+  impression upon me at the time, but which I recollected when my thoughts
+  were got into somewhat of a slower motion. In the midst of one of my
+  paroxysms of exclamation, and when I thought myself most alone, the shadow
+  of a man as avoiding me passed transiently by me at a small distance. Though
+  I had scarcely caught a faint glimpse of his person, there was something in
+  the occurrence that persuaded me it was Mr. Falkland. I shuddered at the
+  possibility of his having overheard the words of my soliloquy. But this
+  idea, alarming as it was, had not power immediately to suspend the career of
+  my reflections. Subsequent circumstances however brought back the
+  apprehension to my mind. I had scarcely a doubt of its reality, when
+  dinner-time came, and Mr. Falkland was not to be found. Supper and bed-time
+  passed in the same manner. The only conclusion made by his servants upon
+  this circumstance was, that he was gone upon one of his accustomed
+  melancholy rambles.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CVI" id="V2_CVI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+  <p>The period at which my story is now arrived seemed as if it were the very
+  crisis of the fortune of Mr. Falkland. Incident followed upon incident, in a
+  kind of breathless succession. About nine o'clock the next morning an alarm
+  was given, that one of the chimneys of the house was on fire. No accident
+  could be apparently more trivial; but presently it blazed with such fury, as
+  to make it clear that some beam of the house, which in the first building
+  had been improperly placed, had been reached by the flames. Some danger was
+  apprehended for the whole edifice. The confusion was the greater, in
+  consequence of the absence of the master, as well as of Mr. Collins, the
+  steward. While some of the domestics were employed in endeavouring to
+  extinguish the flames, it was thought proper that others should busy
+  themselves in removing the most valuable moveables to a lawn in the garden.
+  I took some command in the affair, to which indeed my station in the family
+  seemed to entitle me, and for which I was judged qualified by my
+  understanding and mental resources.</p>
+
+  <p>Having given some general directions, I conceived, that it was not enough
+  to stand by and superintend, but that I should contribute my personal labour
+  in the public concern. I set out for that purpose; and my steps, by some
+  mysterious fatality, were directed to the private apartment at the end of
+  the library. Here, as I looked round, my eye was suddenly caught by the
+  trunk mentioned in the first pages of my narrative.</p>
+
+  <p>My mind was already raised to its utmost pitch. In a window-seat of the
+  room lay a number of chisels and other carpenter's tools. I know not what
+  infatuation instantaneously seized me. The idea was too powerful to be
+  resisted. I forgot the business upon which I came, the employment of the
+  servants, and the urgency of general danger. I should have done the same if
+  the flames that seemed to extend as they proceeded, and already surmounted
+  the house, had reached this very apartment. I snatched a tool suitable for
+  the purpose, threw myself upon the ground, and applied with eagerness to a
+  magazine which inclosed all for which my heart panted. After two or three
+  efforts, in which the energy of uncontrollable passion was added to my
+  bodily strength, the fastenings gave way, the trunk opened, and all that I
+  sought was at once within my reach.</p>
+
+  <p>I was in the act of lifting up the lid, when Mr. Falkland entered, wild,
+  breathless, distracted in his looks! He had been brought home from a
+  considerable distance by the sight of the flames. At the moment of his
+  appearance the lid dropped down from my hand. He no sooner saw me than his
+  eyes emitted sparks of rage. He ran with eagerness to a brace of loaded
+  pistols which hung in the room, and, seizing one, presented it to my head. I
+  saw his design, and sprang to avoid it; but, with the same rapidity with
+  which he had formed his resolution, he changed it, and instantly went to the
+  window, and flung the pistol into the court below. He bade me begone with
+  his usual irresistible energy; and, overcome as I was already by the horror
+  of the detection, I eagerly complied.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment after, a considerable part of the chimney tumbled with noise
+  into the court below, and a voice exclaimed that the fire was more violent
+  than ever. These circumstances seemed to produce a mechanical effect upon my
+  patron, who, having first locked the closet, appeared on the outside of the
+  house, ascended the roof, and was in a moment in every place where his
+  presence was required. The flames were at length extinguished.</p>
+
+  <p>The reader can with difficulty form a conception of the state to which I
+  was now reduced. My act was in some sort an act of insanity; but how
+  undescribable are the feelings with which I looked back upon it! It was an
+  instantaneous impulse, a short-lived and passing alienation of mind; but
+  what must Mr. Falkland think of that alienation? To any man a person who had
+  once shown himself capable of so wild a flight of the mind, must appear
+  dangerous: how must he appear to a man under Mr. Falkland's circumstances? I
+  had just had a pistol held to my head, by a man resolved to put a period to
+  my existence. That indeed was past; but what was it that fate had yet in
+  reserve for me! The insatiable vengeance of a Falkland, of a man whose hands
+  were, to my apprehension, red with blood, and his thoughts familiar with
+  cruelty and murder. How great were the resources of his mind, resources
+  henceforth to be confederated for my destruction! This was the termination
+  of an ungoverned curiosity, an impulse that I had represented to myself as
+  so innocent or so venial.</p>
+
+  <p>In the high tide of boiling passion I had overlooked all consequences. It
+  now appeared to me like a dream. Is it in man to leap from the high-raised
+  precipice, or rush unconcerned into the midst of flames? Was it possible I
+  could have forgotten for a moment the awe-creating manners of Falkland, and
+  the inexorable fury I should awake in his soul? No thought of future
+  security had reached my mind. I had acted upon no plan. I had conceived no
+  means of concealing my deed, after it had once been effected. But it was
+  over now. One short minute had effected a reverse in my situation, the
+  suddenness of which the history of man, perhaps is unable to surpass.</p>
+
+  <p>I have always been at a loss to account for my having plunged thus
+  headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of unexplained
+  and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity of nature, into
+  another sentiment of the same general character. This was the first instance
+  in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All was confusion around me, and
+  all changed into hurricane within. The general situation, to my unpractised
+  apprehension, appeared desperate, and I by contagion became alike desperate.
+  At first I had been in some degree calm and collected, but that too was a
+  desperate effort; and when it gave way, a kind of instant insanity became
+  its successor.</p>
+
+  <p>I had now every thing to fear. And yet what was my fault? It proceeded
+  from none of those errors which are justly held up to the aversion of
+  mankind; my object had been neither wealth, nor the means of indulgence, nor
+  the usurpation of power. No spark of malignity had harboured in my soul. I
+  had always reverenced the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland; I reverenced it
+  still. My offence had merely been a mistaken thirst of knowledge. Such
+  however it was, as to admit neither of forgiveness nor remission. This epoch
+  was the crisis of my fate, dividing what may be called the offensive part
+  from the defensive, which has been the sole business of my remaining years.
+  Alas! my offence was short, not aggravated by any sinister intention: but
+  the reprisals I was to suffer are long, and can terminate only with my
+  life!</p>
+
+  <p>In the state in which I found myself, when the recollection of what I had
+  done flowed back upon my mind, I was incapable of any resolution. All was
+  chaos and uncertainty within me. My thoughts were too full of horror to be
+  susceptible of activity. I felt deserted of my intellectual powers, palsied
+  in mind, and compelled to sit in speechless expectation of the misery to
+  which I was destined. To my own conception I was like a man, who, though
+  blasted with lightning, and deprived for ever of the power of motion, should
+  yet retain the consciousness of his situation. Death-dealing despair was the
+  only idea of which I was sensible.</p>
+
+  <p>I was still in this situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His
+  message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening and
+  loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure who
+  should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the power of
+  arranging my ideas and directing my steps. I understood, that the minute the
+  affair of the fire was over Mr. Falkland had retired to his own room. It was
+  evening before he ordered me to be called.</p>
+
+  <p>I found in him every token of extreme distress, except that there was an
+  air of solemn and sad composure that crowned the whole. For the present, all
+  appearance of gloom, stateliness, and austerity was gone. As I entered he
+  looked up, and, seeing who it was, ordered me to bolt the door. I obeyed. He
+  went round the room, and examined its other avenues. He then returned to
+  where I stood. I trembled in every joint of my frame. I exclaimed within
+  myself, "What scene of death has Roscius now to act?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Williams!" said he, in a tone which had more in it of sorrow than
+  resentment, "I have attempted your life! I am a wretch devoted to the scorn
+  and execration of mankind!" There he stopped.</p>
+
+  <p>"If there be one being on the whole earth that feels the scorn and
+  execration due to such a wretch more strongly than another, it is myself. I
+  have been kept in a state of perpetual torture and madness. But I can put an
+  end to it and its consequences; and, so far at least as relates to you, I am
+  determined to do it. I know the price, and&mdash;I will make the
+  purchase.</p>
+
+  <p>"You must swear," said he. "You must attest every sacrament, divine and
+  human, never to disclose what I am now to tell you."&mdash;He dictated the
+  oath, and I repeated it with an aching heart. I had no power to offer a word
+  of remark.</p>
+
+  <p>"This confidence," said he, "is of your seeking, not of mine. It is
+  odious to me, and is dangerous to you."</p>
+
+  <p>Having thus prefaced the disclosure he had to make, he paused. He seemed
+  to collect himself as for an effort of magnitude. He wiped his face with his
+  handkerchief. The moisture that incommoded him appeared not to be tears, but
+  sweat.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look at me. Observe me. Is it not strange that such a one as I should
+  retain lineaments of a human creature? I am the blackest of villains. I am
+  the murderer of Tyrrel. I am the assassin of the Hawkinses."</p>
+
+  <p>I started with terror, and was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"What a story is mine! Insulted, disgraced, polluted in the face of
+  hundreds, I was capable of any act of desperation. I watched my opportunity,
+  followed Mr. Tyrrel from the rooms, seized a sharp-pointed knife that fell
+  in my way, came behind him, and stabbed him to the heart. My gigantic
+  oppressor rolled at my feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"All are but links of one chain. A blow! A murder! My next business was
+  to defend myself, to tell so well-digested a lie as that all mankind should
+  believe it true. Never was a task so harrowing and intolerable!</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, thus far fortune favoured me; she favoured me beyond my desire.
+  The guilt was removed from me, and cast upon another; but this I was to
+  endure. Whence came the circumstantial evidence against him, the broken
+  knife and the blood, I am unable to tell. I suppose, by some miraculous
+  accident, Hawkins was passing by, and endeavoured to assist his oppressor in
+  the agonies of death. You have heard his story; you have read one of his
+  letters. But you do not know the thousandth part of the proofs of his simple
+  and unalterable rectitude that I have known. His son suffered with him; that
+  son, for the sake of whose happiness and virtue he ruined himself, and would
+  have died a hundred times.&mdash;I have had feelings, but I cannot describe
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>"This it is to be a gentleman! a man of honour! I was the fool of fame.
+  My virtue, my honesty, my everlasting peace of mind, were cheap sacrifices
+  to be made at the shrine of this divinity. But, what is worse, there is
+  nothing that has happened that has in any degree contributed to my cure. I
+  am as much the fool of fame as ever. I cling to it to my last breath. Though
+  I be the blackest of villains, I will leave behind me a spotless and
+  illustrious name. There is no crime so malignant, no scene of blood so
+  horrible, in which that object cannot engage me. It is no matter that I
+  regard these things at a distance with aversion;&mdash;I am sure of it;
+  bring me to the test, and I shall yield. I despise myself, but thus I am;
+  things are gone too far to be recalled.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why is it that I am compelled to this confidence? From the love of fame.
+  I should tremble at the sight of every pistol or instrument of death that
+  offered itself to my hands; and perhaps my next murder may not be so
+  fortunate as those I have already committed. I had no alternative but to
+  make you my confidant or my victim. It was better to trust you with the
+  whole truth under every seal of secrecy, than to live in perpetual fear of
+  your penetration or your rashness.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you know what it is you have done? To gratify a foolishly inquisitive
+  humour, you have sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but can
+  never share my affection. I will benefit you in respect of fortune, but I
+  shall always hate you. If ever an unguarded word escape from your lips, if
+  ever you excite my jealousy or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death
+  or worse. It is a dear bargain you have made. But it is too late to look
+  back. I charge and adjure you by every thing that is sacred, and that is
+  tremendous, preserve your faith!</p>
+
+  <p>"My tongue has now for the first time for several years spoken the
+  language of my heart; and the intercourse from this hour shall be shut for
+  ever. I want no pity. I desire no consolation. Surrounded as I am with
+  horrors, I will at least preserve my fortitude to the last. If I had been
+  reserved to a different destiny, I have qualities in that respect worthy of
+  a better cause. I can be mad, miserable, and frantic; but even in frenzy I
+  can preserve my presence of mind and discretion."</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the story I had been so desirous to know. Though my mind had
+  brooded upon the subject for months, there was not a syllable of it that did
+  not come to my ear with the most perfect sense of novelty. "Mr. Falkland is
+  a murderer!" said I, as I retired from the conference. This dreadful
+  appellative, "a murderer," made my very blood run cold within me. "He killed
+  Mr. Tyrrel, for he could not control his resentment and anger: he sacrificed
+  Hawkins the elder and Hawkins the younger, because he could upon no terms
+  endure the public loss of honour: how can I expect that a man thus
+  passionate and unrelenting will not sooner or later make me his victim?"</p>
+
+  <p>But, notwithstanding this terrible application of the story, an
+  application to which perhaps in some form or other, mankind are indebted for
+  nine tenths of their abhorrence against vice, I could not help occasionally
+  recurring to reflections of an opposite nature. "Mr. Falkland is a
+  murderer!" resumed I. "He might yet be a most excellent man, if he did but
+  think so." It is the thinking ourselves vicious then, that principally
+  contributes to make us vicious.</p>
+
+  <p>Amidst the shock I received from finding, what I had never suffered
+  myself constantly to believe, that my suspicions were true, I still
+  discovered new cause of admiration for my master. His menaces indeed were
+  terrible. But, when I recollected the offence I had given, so contrary to
+  every received principle of civilised society, so insolent and rude, so
+  intolerable to a man of Mr. Falkland's elevation, and in Mr. Falkland's
+  peculiarity of circumstances, I was astonished at his forbearance. There
+  were indeed sufficiently obvious reasons why he might not choose to proceed
+  to extremities with me. But how different from the fearful expectations I
+  had conceived were the calmness of his behaviour, and the regulated mildness
+  of his language! In this respect, I for a short time imagined that I was
+  emancipated from the mischiefs which had appalled me; and that, in having to
+  do with a man of Mr. Falkland's liberality, I had nothing rigorous to
+  apprehend.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is a miserable prospect," said I, "that he holds up to me. He
+  imagines that I am restrained by no principles, and deaf to the claims of
+  personal excellence. But he shall find himself mistaken. I will never become
+  an informer. I will never injure my patron; and therefore he will not be my
+  enemy. With all his misfortunes and all his errors, I feel that my soul
+  yearns for his welfare. If he have been criminal, that is owing to
+  circumstances; the same qualities under other circumstances would have been,
+  or rather were, sublimely beneficent."</p>
+
+  <p>My reasonings were, no doubt, infinitely more favourable to Mr. Falkland,
+  than those which human beings are accustomed to make in the case of such as
+  they style great criminals. This will not be wondered at, when it is
+  considered that I had myself just been trampling on the established
+  boundaries of obligation, and therefore might well have a fellow-feeling for
+  other offenders. Add to which, I had known Mr. Falkland from the first as a
+  beneficent divinity. I had observed at leisure, and with a minuteness which
+  could not deceive me, the excellent qualities of his heart; and I found him
+  possessed of a mind beyond comparison the most fertile and accomplished I
+  had ever known.</p>
+
+  <p>But though the terrors which had impressed me were considerably
+  alleviated, my situation was notwithstanding sufficiently miserable. The
+  ease and light-heartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of an
+  irresistible necessity had commanded me to "sleep no more." I was tormented
+  with a secret, of which I must never disburthen myself; and this
+  consciousness was, at my age, a source of perpetual melancholy. I had made
+  myself a prisoner, in the most intolerable sense of that term, for
+  years&mdash;perhaps for the rest of my life. Though my prudence and
+  discretion should be invariable, I must remember that I should have an
+  overseer, vigilant from conscious guilt, full of resentment at the
+  unjustifiable means by which I had extorted from him a confession, and whose
+  lightest caprice might at any time decide upon every thing that was dear to
+  me. The vigilance even of a public and systematical despotism is poor,
+  compared with a vigilance which is thus goaded by the most anxious passions
+  of the soul. Against this species of persecution I knew not how to invent a
+  refuge. I dared neither fly from the observation of Mr. Falkland, nor
+  continue exposed to its operation. I was at first indeed lulled in a certain
+  degree to security upon the verge of the precipice. But it was not long
+  before I found a thousand circumstances perpetually reminding me of my true
+  situation. Those I am now to relate are among the most memorable.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CVII" id="V2_CVII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+  <p>In no long time after the disclosure Mr. Falkland had made, Mr. Forester,
+  his elder brother by the mother's side, came to reside for a short period in
+  our family. This was a circumstance peculiarly adverse to my patron's habits
+  and inclinations. He had broken off, as I have already said, all intercourse
+  of visiting with his neighbours. He debarred himself every kind of amusement
+  and relaxation. He shrunk from the society of his fellows, and thought he
+  could never be sufficiently buried in obscurity and solitude. This principle
+  was, in most cases, of no difficult execution to a man of firmness. But Mr.
+  Falkland knew not how to avoid the visit of Mr. Forester. This gentleman was
+  just returned from a residence of several years upon the continent; and his
+  demand of an apartment in the house of his half-brother, till his own house
+  at the distance of thirty miles should be prepared for his reception, was
+  made with an air of confidence that scarcely admitted of a refusal. Mr.
+  Falkland could only allege, that the state of his health and spirits was
+  such, that he feared a residence at his house would be little agreeable to
+  his kinsman; and Mr. Forester conceived that this was a disqualification
+  which would always augment in proportion as it was tolerated, and hoped that
+  his society, by inducing Mr. Falkland to suspend his habits of seclusion,
+  would be the means of essential benefit. Mr. Falkland opposed him no
+  further. He would have been sorry to be thought unkind to a kinsman for whom
+  he had a particular esteem; and the consciousness of not daring to assign
+  the true reason, made him cautious of adhering to his objection.</p>
+
+  <p>The character of Mr. Forester was, in many respects, the reverse of that
+  of my master. His very appearance indicated the singularity of his
+  disposition. His figure was short and angular. His eyes were sunk far into
+  his head, and were overhung with eye-brows, black, thick, and bushy. His
+  complexion was swarthy, and his lineaments hard. He had seen much of the
+  world; but, to judge of him from his appearance and manners, one would have
+  thought that he had never moved from his fire-side.</p>
+
+  <p>His temper was acid, petulant, and harsh. He was easily offended by
+  trifles, respecting which, previously to the offence, the persons with whom
+  he had intercourse could have no suspicion of such a result. When offended,
+  his customary behaviour was exceedingly rugged. He thought only of setting
+  the delinquent right, and humbling him for his error; and, in his eagerness
+  to do this, overlooked the sensibility of the sufferer, and the pains he
+  inflicted. Remonstrance in such a case he regarded as the offspring of
+  cowardice, which was to be extirpated with a steady and unshrinking hand,
+  and not soothed with misjudging kindness and indulgence. As is usual in
+  human character, he had formed a system of thinking to suit the current of
+  his feelings. He held that the kindness we entertain for a man should be
+  veiled and concealed, exerted in substantial benefits, but not disclosed,
+  lest an undue advantage should be taken of it by its object.</p>
+
+  <p>With this rugged outside, Mr. Forester had a warm and generous heart. At
+  first sight all men were deterred by his manner, and excited to give him an
+  ill character. But the longer any one knew him, the more they approved him.
+  His harshness was then only considered as habit; and strong sense and active
+  benevolence were uppermost in the recollection of his familiar acquaintance.
+  His conversation, when he condescended to lay aside his snappish, rude, and
+  abrupt half-sentences, became flowing in diction, and uncommonly amusing
+  with regard to its substance. He combined, with weightiness of expression, a
+  dryness of characteristic humour, that demonstrated at once the vividness of
+  his observation, and the force of his understanding. The peculiarities of
+  this gentleman's character were not undisplayed in the scene to which he was
+  now introduced. Having much kindness in his disposition, he soon became
+  deeply interested in the unhappiness of his relation. He did every thing in
+  his power to remove it; but his attempts were rude and unskilful. With a
+  mind so accomplished and a spirit so susceptible as that of Mr. Falkland,
+  Mr. Forester did not venture to let loose his usual violence of manner; but,
+  if he carefully abstained from harshness, he was however wholly incapable of
+  that sweet and liquid eloquence of the soul, which would perhaps have stood
+  the fairest chance of seducing Mr. Falkland for a moment to forget his
+  anguish. He exhorted his host to rouse up his spirit, and defy the foul
+  fiend; but the tone of his exhortations found no sympathetic chord in the
+  mind of my patron. He had not the skill to carry conviction to an
+  understanding so well fortified in error. In a word, after a thousand
+  efforts of kindness to his entertainer, he drew off his forces, growling and
+  dissatisfied with his own impotence, rather than angry at the obstinacy of
+  Mr. Falkland. He felt no diminution of his affection for him, and was
+  sincerely grieved to find that he was so little capable of serving him. Both
+  parties in this case did justice to the merits of the other; at the same
+  time that the disparity of their humours was such, as to prevent the
+  stranger from being in any degree a dangerous companion to the master of the
+  house. They had scarcely one point of contact in their characters. Mr.
+  Forester was incapable of giving Mr. Falkland that degree either of pain or
+  pleasure, which can raise the soul into a tumult, and deprive it for a while
+  of tranquillity and self-command.</p>
+
+  <p>Our visitor was a man, notwithstanding appearances, of a peculiarly
+  sociable disposition, and, where he was neither interrupted nor
+  contradicted, considerably loquacious. He began to feel himself painfully
+  out of his element upon the present occasion. Mr. Falkland was devoted to
+  contemplation and solitude. He put upon himself some degree of restraint
+  upon the arrival of his kinsman, though even then his darling habits would
+  break out. But when they had seen each other a certain number of times, and
+  it was sufficiently evident that the society of either would be a burthen
+  rather than a pleasure to the other, they consented, by a sort of silent
+  compact, that each should be at liberty to follow his own inclination. Mr.
+  Falkland was, in a sense, the greatest gainer by this. He returned to the
+  habits of his choice, and acted, as nearly as possible, just as he would
+  have done if Mr. Forester had not been in existence. But the latter was
+  wholly at a loss. He had all the disadvantages of retirement, without being
+  able, as he might have done at his house, to bring his own associates or his
+  own amusements about him.</p>
+
+  <p>In this situation he cast his eyes upon me. It was his principle to do
+  every thing that his thoughts suggested, without caring for the forms of the
+  world. He saw no reason why a peasant, with certain advantages of education
+  and opportunity, might not be as eligible a companion as a lord; at the same
+  time that he was deeply impressed with the venerableness of old
+  institutions. Reduced as he was to a kind of last resort, he found me better
+  qualified for his purpose than any other of Mr. Falkland's household.</p>
+
+  <p>The manner in which he began this sort of correspondence was sufficiently
+  characteristical. It was abrupt; but it was strongly stamped with essential
+  benevolence. It was blunt and humorous; but there was attractiveness,
+  especially in a case of unequal intercourse, in that very rusticity by which
+  he levelled himself with the mass of his species. He had to reconcile
+  himself as well as to invite me; not to reconcile himself to the postponing
+  an aristocratical vanity, for of that he had a very slender portion, but to
+  the trouble of invitation, for he loved his ease. All this produced some
+  irregularity and indecision in his own mind, and gave a whimsical impression
+  to his behaviour.</p>
+
+  <p>On my part, I was by no means ungrateful for the distinction that was
+  paid me. My mind had been relaxed into temporary dejection, but my reserve
+  had no alloy of moroseness or insensibility. It did not long hold out
+  against the condescending attentions of Mr. Forester. I became gradually
+  heedful, encouraged, confiding. I had a most eager thirst for the knowledge
+  of mankind; and though no person perhaps ever purchased so dearly the
+  instructions he received in that school, the inclination was in no degree
+  diminished. Mr. Forester was the second man I had seen uncommonly worthy of
+  my analysis, and who seemed to my thoughts, arrived as I was at the end of
+  my first essay, almost as much deserving to be studied as Mr. Falkland
+  himself. I was glad to escape from the uneasiness of my reflections; and,
+  while engaged with this new friend, I forgot the criticalness of the evils
+  with which I was hourly menaced.</p>
+
+  <p>Stimulated by these feelings, I was what Mr. Forester wanted, a diligent
+  and zealous hearer, I was strongly susceptible of impression; and the
+  alternate impressions my mind received, visibly displayed themselves in my
+  countenance and gestures. The observations Mr. Forester had made in his
+  travels, the set of opinions he had formed, all amused and interested me.
+  His manner of telling a story, or explaining his thoughts, was forcible,
+  perspicuous, and original: his style in conversation had an uncommon zest.
+  Every thing he had to relate delighted me; while, in return, my sympathy, my
+  eager curiosity, and my unsophisticated passions, rendered me to Mr.
+  Forester a most desirable hearer. It is not to be wondered at, therefore,
+  that every day rendered our intercourse more intimate and cordial.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland was destined to be for ever unhappy; and it seemed as if no
+  new incident could occur, from which he was not able to extract food for
+  this imperious propensity. He was wearied with a perpetual repetition of
+  similar impressions; and entertained an invincible disgust against all that
+  was new. The visit of Mr. Forester he regarded with antipathy. He was
+  scarcely able to look at him without shuddering; an emotion which his guest
+  perceived, and pitied as the result of habit and disease, rather than of
+  judgment. None of his actions passed unremarked; the most indifferent
+  excited uneasiness and apprehension. The first overtures of intimacy between
+  me and Mr. Forester probably gave birth to sentiments of jealousy in the
+  mind of my master. The irregular, variable character of his visitor tended
+  to heighten them, by producing an appearance of inexplicableness and
+  mystery. At this time he intimated to me that it was not agreeable to him,
+  that there should be much intercourse between me and this gentleman.</p>
+
+  <p>What could I do? Young as I was, could it be expected that I should play
+  the philosopher, and put a perpetual curb upon my inclinations? Imprudent
+  though I had been, could I voluntarily subject myself to an eternal penance,
+  and estrangement from human society? Could I discourage a frankness so
+  perfectly in consonance with my wishes, and receive in an ungracious way a
+  kindness that stole away my heart?</p>
+
+  <p>Besides this, I was but ill prepared for the servile submission Mr.
+  Falkland demanded. In early life I had been accustomed to be much my own
+  master. When I first entered into Mr. Falkland's service, my personal habits
+  were checked by the novelty of my situation, and my affections were gained
+  by the high accomplishments of my patron. To novelty and its influence,
+  curiosity had succeeded: curiosity, so long as it lasted, was a principle
+  stronger in my bosom than even the love of independence. To that I would
+  have sacrificed my liberty or my life; to gratify it, I would have submitted
+  to the condition of a West Indian negro, or to the tortures inflicted by
+  North American savages. But the turbulence of curiosity had now
+  subsided.</p>
+
+  <p>As long as the threats of Mr. Falkland had been confined to generals, I
+  endured it. I was conscious of the unbecoming action I had committed, and
+  this rendered me humble. But, when he went further, and undertook to
+  prescribe to every article of my conduct, my patience was at an end. My
+  mind, before sufficiently sensible to the unfortunate situation to which my
+  imprudence had reduced me, now took a nearer and a more alarming view of the
+  circumstances of the case. Mr. Falkland was not an old man; he had in him
+  the principles of vigour, however they might seem to be shaken; he might
+  live as long as I should. I was his prisoner; and what a prisoner! All my
+  actions observed; all my gestures marked. I could move neither to the right
+  nor the left, but the eye of my keeper was upon me. He watched me; and his
+  vigilance was a sickness to my heart. For me there was no more freedom, no
+  more of hilarity, of thoughtlessness, or of youth. Was this the life upon
+  which I had entered with such warm and sanguine expectation? Were my days to
+  be wasted in this cheerless gloom; a galley-slave in the hands of the system
+  of nature, whom death only, the death of myself or my inexorable superior,
+  could free?</p>
+
+  <p>I had been adventurous in the gratification of an infantine and
+  unreasonable curiosity; and I resolved not to be less adventurous, if need
+  were, in the defence of every thing that can make life a blessing. I was
+  prepared for an amicable adjustment of interests: I would undertake that Mr.
+  Falkland should never sustain injury through my means; but I expected in
+  return that I should suffer no encroachment, but be left to the direction of
+  my own understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>I went on, then, to seek Mr. Forester's society with eagerness; and it is
+  the nature of an intimacy that does not decline, progressively to increase.
+  Mr. Falkland observed these symptoms with visible perturbation. Whenever I
+  was conscious of their being perceived by him, I betrayed tokens of
+  confusion: this did not tend to allay his uneasiness. One day he spoke to me
+  alone; and, with a look of mysterious but terrible import, expressed himself
+  thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Young man, take warning! Perhaps this is the last time you shall have an
+  opportunity to take it! I will not always be the butt of your simplicity and
+  inexperience, nor suffer your weakness to triumph over my strength! Why do
+  you trifle with me? You little suspect the extent of my power. At this
+  moment you are enclosed with the snares of my vengeance unseen by you, and,
+  at the instant that you flatter yourself you are already beyond their reach,
+  they will close upon you. You might as well think of escaping from the power
+  of the omnipresent God, as from mine! If you could touch so much as my
+  finger, you should expiate it in hours and months and years of a torment, of
+  which as yet you have not the remotest idea. Remember! I am not talking at
+  random! I do not utter a word, that, if you provoke me, shall not be
+  executed to the severest letter!"</p>
+
+  <p>It may be supposed that these menaces were not without their effect. I
+  withdrew in silence. My whole soul revolted against the treatment I endured,
+  and yet I could not utter a word. Why could not I speak the expostulations
+  of my heart, or propose the compromise I meditated? It was inexperience, and
+  not want of strength, that awed me. Every act of Mr. Falkland contained
+  something new, and I was unprepared to meet it. Perhaps it will be found
+  that the greatest hero owes the propriety of his conduct to the habit of
+  encountering difficulties, and calling out with promptness the energies of
+  his mind.</p>
+
+  <p>I contemplated the proceedings of my patron with the deepest
+  astonishment. Humanity and general kindness were fundamental parts of his
+  character; but in relation to me they were sterile and inactive. His own
+  interest required that he should purchase my kindness; but he preferred to
+  govern me by terror, and watch me with unceasing anxiety. I ruminated with
+  the most mournful sensations upon the nature of my calamity. I believed that
+  no human being was ever placed in a situation so pitiable as mine. Every
+  atom of my frame seemed to have a several existence, and to crawl within me.
+  I had but too much reason to believe that Mr. Falkland's threats were not
+  empty words. I knew his ability; I felt his ascendancy. If I encountered
+  him, what chance had I of victory? If I were defeated, what was the penalty
+  I had to suffer? Well then, the rest of my life must be devoted to slavish
+  subjection. Miserable sentence! And, if it were, what security had I against
+  the injustice of a man, vigilant, capricious, and criminal? I envied the
+  condemned wretch upon the scaffold; I envied the victim of the inquisition
+  in the midst of his torture. They know what they have to suffer. I had only
+  to imagine every thing terrible, and then say, "The fate reserved for me is
+  worse than this!"</p>
+
+  <p>It was well for me that these sensations were transient: human nature
+  could not long support itself under what I then felt. By degrees my mind
+  shook off its burthen. Indignation succeeded to emotions of terror. The
+  hostility of Mr. Falkland excited hostility in me. I determined I would
+  never calumniate him in matters of the most trivial import, much less betray
+  the grand secret upon which every thing dear to him depended. But, totally
+  abjuring the offensive, I resolved to stand firmly upon the defensive. The
+  liberty of acting as I pleased I would preserve, whatever might be the risk.
+  If I were worsted in the contest, I would at least have the consolation of
+  reflecting that I had exerted myself with energy. In proportion as I thus
+  determined, I drew off my forces from petty incursions, and felt the
+  propriety of acting with premeditation and system. I ruminated incessantly
+  upon plans of deliverance, but I was anxious that my choice should not be
+  precipitately made.</p>
+
+  <p>It was during this period of my deliberation and uncertainty that Mr.
+  Forester terminated his visit. He observed a strange distance in my
+  behaviour, and, in his good-natured, rough way, reproached me for it. I
+  could only answer with a gloomy look of mysterious import, and a mournful
+  and expressive silence. He sought me for an explanation, but I was now as
+  ingenious in avoiding as I had before been ardent to seek him; and he
+  quitted our house, as he afterwards told me, with an impression, that there
+  was some ill destiny that hung over it, which seemed fated to make all its
+  inhabitants miserable, without its being possible for a bystander to
+  penetrate the reason.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CVIII" id="V2_CVIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester had left us about three weeks, when Mr. Falkland sent me
+  upon some business to an estate he possessed in a neighbouring county, about
+  fifty miles from his principal residence. The road led in a direction wholly
+  wide of the habitation of our late visitor. I was upon my return from the
+  place to which I had been sent, when I began in fancy to take a survey of
+  the various circumstances of my condition, and by degrees lost, in the
+  profoundness of my contemplation, all attention to the surrounding objects.
+  The first determination of my mind was to escape from the lynx-eyed jealousy
+  and despotism of Mr. Falkland; the second to provide, by every effort of
+  prudence and deliberation I could devise, against the danger with which I
+  well knew my attempt must be accompanied.</p>
+
+  <p>Occupied with these meditations, I rode many miles before I perceived
+  that I had totally deviated from the right path. At length I roused myself,
+  and surveyed the horizon round me; but I could observe nothing with which my
+  organ was previously acquainted. On three sides, the heath stretched as far
+  as the eye could reach; on the fourth, I discovered at some distance a wood
+  of no ordinary dimensions. Before me, scarcely a single track could be
+  found, to mark that any human being had ever visited the spot. As the best
+  expedient I could devise, I bent my course towards the wood I have
+  mentioned, and then pursued, as well as I was able, the windings of the
+  inclosure. This led me, after some time, to the end of the heath; but I was
+  still as much at a loss as ever respecting the road I should pursue. The sun
+  was hid from me by a grey and cloudy atmosphere; I was induced to continue
+  along the skirts of the wood, and surmounted with some difficulty the hedges
+  and other obstacles that from time to time presented themselves. My thoughts
+  were gloomy and disconsolate; the dreariness of the day, and the solitude
+  which surrounded me, seemed to communicate a sadness to my soul. I had
+  proceeded a considerable way, and was overcome with hunger and fatigue, when
+  I discovered a road and a little inn at no great distance. I made up to
+  them, and upon enquiry found that, instead of pursuing the proper direction,
+  I had taken one that led to Mr. Forester's rather than to my own habitation.
+  I alighted, and was entering the house, when the appearance of that
+  gentleman struck my eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester accosted me with kindness, invited me into the room where he
+  had been sitting, and enquired what accident had brought me to that
+  place.</p>
+
+  <p>While he was speaking, I could not help recollecting the extraordinary
+  manner in which we were thus once more brought together, and a train of
+  ideas was by this means suggested to my mind. Some refreshment was, by Mr.
+  Forester's order, prepared for me; I sat down, and partook of it. Still this
+  thought dwelt upon my recollection:&mdash;"Mr. Falkland will never be made
+  acquainted with our meeting; I have an opportunity thrown in my way, which
+  if I do not improve, I shall deserve all the consequences that may result. I
+  can now converse with a friend, and a powerful friend, without fear of being
+  watched and overlooked." What wonder that I was tempted to disclose, not Mr.
+  Falkland's secret, but my own situation, and receive the advice of a man of
+  worth and experience, which might perhaps be adequately done without
+  entering into any detail injurious to my patron?</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester, on his part, expressed a desire to learn why it was I
+  thought myself unhappy, and why I had avoided him during the latter part of
+  his residence under the same roof, as evidently as I had before taken
+  pleasure in his communications. I replied, that I could give him but an
+  imperfect satisfaction upon these points; but what I could, I would
+  willingly explain. The fact, I proceeded, was, that there were reasons which
+  rendered it impossible for me to have a tranquil moment under the roof of
+  Mr. Falkland. I had revolved the matter again and again in my mind, and was
+  finally convinced that I owed it to myself to withdraw from his service. I
+  added, that I was sensible, by this half-confidence, I might rather seem to
+  merit the disapprobation of Mr. Forester than his countenance; but I
+  declared my persuasion that, if he could be acquainted with the whole
+  affair, however strange my behaviour might at present appear, he would
+  applaud my reserve.</p>
+
+  <p>He appeared to muse for a moment upon what I had said, and then asked
+  what reason I could have to complain of Mr. Falkland? I replied, that I
+  entertained the deepest reverence for my patron; I admired his abilities,
+  and considered him as formed for the benefit of his species. I should in my
+  own opinion be the vilest of miscreants, if I uttered a whisper to his
+  disadvantage. But this did not avail: I was not fit for him; perhaps I was
+  not good enough for him; at all events, I must be perpetually miserable so
+  long as I continued to live with him.</p>
+
+  <p>I observed Mr. Forester gaze upon me eagerly with curiosity and surprise;
+  but this circumstance I did not think proper to notice. Having recovered
+  himself, he enquired, why then, that being the case, I did not quit his
+  service? I answered, what he now touched upon was that which most of all
+  contributed to my misfortune. Mr. Falkland was not ignorant of my dislike to
+  my present situation; perhaps he thought it unreasonable, unjust; but I knew
+  that he would never be brought to consent to my giving way to it.</p>
+
+  <p>Here Mr. Forester interrupted me, and, smiling, said, I magnified
+  obstacles, and over-rated my own importance; adding, that he would undertake
+  to remove that difficulty, as well as to provide me with a more agreeable
+  appointment. This suggestion produced in me a serious alarm. I replied, that
+  I must entreat him upon no account to think of applying to Mr. Falkland upon
+  the subject. I added, that perhaps I was only betraying my imbecility; but
+  in reality, unacquainted as I was with experience and the world, I was
+  afraid, though disgusted with my present residence, to expose myself upon a
+  mere project of my own, to the resentment of so considerable a man as Mr.
+  Falkland. If he would favour me with his advice upon the subject, or if he
+  would only give me leave to hope for his protection in case of any
+  unforeseen accident, this was all I presumed to request; and, thus
+  encouraged. I would venture to obey the dictates of my inclination, and fly
+  in pursuit of my lost tranquillity.</p>
+
+  <p>Having thus opened myself to this generous friend, as far as I could do
+  it with propriety and safety, he sat for some time silent, with an air of
+  deep reflection. At length, with a countenance of unusual severity, and a
+  characteristic fierceness of manner and voice, he thus addressed me: "Young
+  man, perhaps you are ignorant of the nature of the conduct you at present
+  hold. May be, you do not know that where there is mystery, there is always
+  something at bottom that will not bear the telling. Is this the way to
+  obtain the favour of a man of consequence and respectability? To pretend to
+  make a confidence, and then tell him a disjointed story that has not common
+  sense in it!"</p>
+
+  <p>I answered, that, whatever were the amount of that prejudice, I must
+  submit. I placed my hope of a candid construction, in the present instance,
+  in the rectitude of his nature.</p>
+
+  <p>He went on: "You do so; do you? I tell you, sir, the rectitude of my
+  nature is an enemy to disguise. Come, boy, you must know that I understand
+  these things better than you. Tell all, or expect nothing from me but
+  censure and contempt."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir," replied I, "I have spoken from deliberation; I have told you my
+  choice, and, whatever be the result, I must abide by it. If in this
+  misfortune you refuse me your assistance, here I must end, having gained by
+  the communication only your ill opinion and displeasure."</p>
+
+  <p>He looked hard at me, as if he would see me through. At length he relaxed
+  his features, and softened his manner. "You are a foolish, headstrong boy,"
+  said he, "and I shall have an eye upon you. I shall never place in you the
+  confidence I have done. But&mdash;I will not desert you. At present, the
+  balance between approbation and dislike is in your favour. How long it will
+  last, I cannot tell; I engage for nothing. But it is my rule to act as I
+  feel. I will for this time do as you require;&mdash;and, pray God, it may
+  answer. I will receive you, either now or hereafter, under my roof, trusting
+  that I shall have no reason to repent, and that appearances will terminate
+  as favourably as I wish, though I scarcely know how to hope it."</p>
+
+  <p>We were engaged in the earnest discussion of subjects thus interesting to
+  my peace, when we were interrupted by an event the most earnestly to have
+  been deprecated. Without the smallest notice, and as if he had dropped upon
+  us from the clouds, Mr. Falkland burst into the room. I found afterwards
+  that Mr. Forester had come thus far upon an appointment to meet Mr.
+  Falkland, and that the place of their intended rendezvous was at the next
+  stage. Mr. Forester was detained at the inn where we now were by our
+  accidental rencounter, and in reality had for the moment forgotten his
+  appointment; while Mr. Falkland, not finding him where he expected,
+  proceeded thus far towards the house of his kinsman. To me the meeting was
+  most unaccountable in the world.</p>
+
+  <p>I instantly foresaw the dreadful complication of misfortune that was
+  included in this event. To Mr. Falkland, the meeting between me and his
+  relation must appear not accidental, but, on my part at least, the result of
+  design. I was totally out of the road I had been travelling by his
+  direction; I was in a road that led directly to the house of Mr. Forester.
+  What must he think of this? How must he suppose I came to that place? The
+  truth, if told, that I came there without design, and purely in consequence
+  of having lost my way, must appear to be the most palpable lie that ever was
+  devised.</p>
+
+  <p>Here then I stood detected in the fact of that intercourse which had been
+  so severely forbidden. But in this instance it was infinitely worse than in
+  those which had already given so much disturbance to Mr. Falkland. It was
+  then frank and unconcealed; and therefore the presumption was, that it was
+  for purposes that required no concealment. But the present interview, if
+  concerted, was in the most emphatical degree clandestine. Nor was it less
+  perilous than it was clandestine: it had been forbidden with the most
+  dreadful menaces; and Mr. Falkland was not ignorant how deep an impression
+  those menaces had made upon my imagination. Such a meeting therefore could
+  not have been concerted under such circumstances, for a trivial purpose, or
+  for any purpose that his heart did not ache to think of. Such was the amount
+  of my crime, such was the agony my appearance was calculated to inspire; and
+  it was reasonable to suppose that the penalty I had to expect would be
+  proportionable. The threats of Mr. Falkland still sounded in my ears, and I
+  was in a transport of terror.</p>
+
+  <p>The conduct of the same man in different circumstances, is often so
+  various as to render it very difficult to be accounted for. Mr. Falkland, in
+  this to him, terrible crisis, did not seem to be in any degree hurried away
+  by passion. For a moment he was dumb; his eyes glared with astonishment; and
+  the next moment, as it were, he had the most perfect calmness and
+  self-command. Had it been otherwise, I have no doubt that I should instantly
+  have entered into an explanation of the manner in which I came there, the
+  ingenuousness and consistency of which could not but have been in some
+  degree attended with a favourable event. But, as it was, I suffered myself
+  to be overcome; I yielded, as in a former instance, to the discomfiting
+  influence of surprise. I dared scarcely breathe; I observed the appearances
+  with equal anxiety and surprise. Mr. Falkland quietly ordered me to return
+  home, and take along with me the groom he had brought with him. I obeyed in
+  silence.</p>
+
+  <p>I afterwards understood, that he enquired minutely of Mr. Forester the
+  circumstances of our meeting; and that that gentleman, perceiving that the
+  meeting itself was discovered, and guided by habits of frankness, which,
+  when once rooted in a character, it is difficult to counteract, told Mr.
+  Falkland every thing that had passed, together with the remarks it had
+  suggested to his own mind. Mr. Falkland received the communication with an
+  ambiguous and studied silence, which by no means operated to my advantage in
+  the already poisoned mind of Mr. Forester. His silence was partly the direct
+  consequence of a mind watchful, inquisitive, and doubting; and partly
+  perhaps was adopted for the sake of the effect it was calculated to produce,
+  Mr. Falkland not being unwilling to encourage prejudices against a character
+  which might one day come in competition with his own.</p>
+
+  <p>As to me, I went home indeed, for this was not a moment to resist. Mr.
+  Falkland, with a premeditation to which he had given the appearance of
+  accident, had taken care to send with me a guard to attend upon his
+  prisoner. I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in the
+  history of despotism, from which the wretched victim is never known to come
+  forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were entering a
+  dungeon. I reflected that I was at the mercy of a man, exasperated at my
+  disobedience, and who was already formed to cruelty by successive murders.
+  My prospects were now closed; I was cut off for ever from pursuits that I
+  had meditated with ineffable delight; my death might be the event of a few
+  hours. I was a victim at the shrine of conscious guilt, that knew neither
+  rest nor satiety; I should be blotted from the catalogue of the living, and
+  my fate remain eternally a secret; the man who added my murder to his former
+  crimes, would show himself the next morning, and be hailed with the
+  admiration and applause of his species.</p>
+
+  <p>In the midst of these terrible imaginations, one idea presented itself
+  that alleviated my feelings. This was the recollection of the strange and
+  unaccountable tranquillity which Mr. Falkland had manifested, when he
+  discovered me in company with Mr. Forester. I was not deceived by this. I
+  knew that the calm was temporary, and would be succeeded by a tumult and
+  whirlwind of the most dreadful sort. But a man under the power of such
+  terrors as now occupied me catches at every reed. I said to myself, "This
+  tranquillity is a period it is incumbent upon me to improve; the shorter its
+  duration may be found, the more speedy am I obliged to be in the use of it."
+  In a word, I took the resolution, because I already stood in fear of the
+  vengeance of Mr. Falkland, to risk the possibility of provoking it in a
+  degree still more inexpiable, and terminate at once my present state of
+  uncertainty. I had now opened my case to Mr. Forester, and he had given me
+  positive assurances of his protection. I determined immediately to address
+  the following letter to Mr. Falkland. The consideration that, if he
+  meditated any thing tragical, such a letter would only tend to confirm him,
+  did not enter into the present feelings of my mind.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir,</p>
+
+  <p>"I have conceived the intention of quitting your service. This is a
+  measure we ought both of us to desire. I shall then be, what it is my duty
+  to be, master of my own actions. You will be delivered from the presence of
+  a person, whom you cannot prevail upon yourself to behold without unpleasing
+  emotions.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why should you subject me to an eternal penance? Why should you consign
+  my youthful hopes to suffering and despair? Consult the principles of
+  humanity that have marked the general course of your proceedings, and do not
+  let me, I entreat you, be made the subject of a useless severity. My heart
+  is impressed with gratitude for your favours. I sincerely ask your
+  forgiveness for the many errors of my conduct. I consider the treatment I
+  have received under your roof, as one almost uninterrupted scene of kindness
+  and generosity. I shall never forget my obligations to you, and will never
+  betray them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I remain, Sir,</p>
+
+  <p>"Your most grateful, respectful,</p>
+
+  <p>"and dutiful servant,</p>
+
+  <p>"CALEB WILLIAMS."</p>
+
+  <p>Such was my employment of the evening of a day which will be ever
+  memorable in the history of my life. Mr. Falkland not being yet returned,
+  though expected every hour, I was induced to make use of the pretence of
+  fatigue to avoid an interview. I went to bed. It may be imagined that my
+  slumbers were neither deep nor refreshing.</p>
+
+  <p>The next morning I was informed that my patron did not come home till
+  late; that he had enquired for me, and, being told that I was in bed, had
+  said nothing further upon the subject. Satisfied in this respect, I went to
+  the breakfasting parlour, and, though full of anxiety and trepidation,
+  endeavoured to busy myself in arranging the books, and a few other little
+  occupations, till Mr. Falkland should come down. After a short time I heard
+  his step, which I perfectly well knew how to distinguish, in the passage.
+  Presently he stopped, and, speaking to some one in a sort of deliberate, but
+  smothered voice, I overheard him repeat my name as enquiring for me. In
+  conformity to the plan I had persuaded myself to adopt, I now laid the
+  letter I had written upon the table at which he usually sat, and made my
+  exit at one door as Mr. Falkland entered at the other. This done, I
+  withdrew, with flutterings and palpitation, to a private apartment, a sort
+  of light closet at the end of the library, where I was accustomed not
+  unfrequently to sit.</p>
+
+  <p>I had not been here three minutes, when I heard the voice of Mr. Falkland
+  calling me. I went to him in the library. His manner was that of a man
+  labouring with some dreadful thought, and endeavouring to give an air of
+  carelessness and insensibility to his behaviour. Perhaps no carriage of any
+  other sort could have produced a sensation of such inexplicable horror, or
+  have excited, in the person who was its object, such anxious uncertainty
+  about the event.&mdash;"That is your letter," said he, throwing it.</p>
+
+  <p>"My lad," continued he, "I believe now you have played all your tricks,
+  and the farce is nearly at an end! With your apishness and absurdity however
+  you have taught me one thing; and, whereas before I have winced at them with
+  torture, I am now as tough as an elephant. I shall crush you in the end with
+  the same indifference, that I would any other little insect that disturbed
+  my serenity.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am unable to tell what brought about your meeting with Mr. Forester
+  yesterday. It might be design; it might be accident. But, I shall not forget
+  it. You write me here, that you are desirous to quit my service. To that I
+  have a short answer: You never shall quit it with life. If you attempt it,
+  you shall never cease to rue your folly as long as you exist. That is my
+  will; and I will not have it resisted. The very next time you disobey me in
+  that or any other article, there is an end of your vagaries for ever.
+  Perhaps your situation may be a pitiable one; it is for you to look to that.
+  I only know that it is in your power to prevent its growing worse; no time
+  nor chance shall ever make it better.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do not imagine I am afraid of you! I wear an armour, against which all
+  your weapons are impotent. I have dug a pit for you; and, whichever way you
+  move, backward or forward, to the right or the left, it is ready to swallow
+  you. Be still! If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth
+  shall hear your cries; prepare a tale however plausible, or however true,
+  the whole world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your innocence shall be
+  of no service to you; I laugh at so feeble a defence. It is I that say it;
+  you may believe what I tell you&mdash;Do you not know, miserable wretch!"
+  added he, suddenly altering his tone, and stamping upon the ground with
+  fury, "that I have sworn to preserve my reputation, whatever be the expense;
+  that I love it more than the whole world and its inhabitants taken together?
+  And do you think that you shall wound it? Begone, miscreant! reptile! and
+  cease to contend with insurmountable power!"</p>
+
+  <p>The part of my history which I am now relating is that which I reflect
+  upon with the least complacency. Why was it, that I was once more totally
+  overcome by the imperious carriage of Mr. Falkland, and unable to utter a
+  word? The reader will be presented with many occasions in the sequel, in
+  which I wanted neither facility in the invention of expedients, nor
+  fortitude in entering upon my justification. Persecution at length gave
+  firmness to my character, and taught me the better part of manhood. But in
+  the present instance I was irresolute, overawed, and abashed.</p>
+
+  <p>The speech I had heard was the dictate of frenzy, and it created in me a
+  similar frenzy. It determined me to do the very thing against which I was
+  thus solemnly warned, and fly from my patron's house. I could not enter into
+  parley with him; I could no longer endure the vile subjugation he imposed on
+  me. It was in vain that my reason warned me of the rashness of a measure, to
+  be taken without concert or preparation. I seemed to be in a state in which
+  reason had no power. I felt as if I could coolly survey the several
+  arguments of the case, perceive that they had prudence, truth, and common
+  sense on their side; and then answer, I am under the guidance of a director
+  more energetic than you.</p>
+
+  <p>I was not long in executing what I had thus rapidly determined. I fixed
+  on the evening of that very day as the period of my evasion. Even in this
+  short interval I had perhaps sufficient time for deliberation. But all
+  opportunity was useless to me; my mind was fixed, and each succeeding moment
+  only increased the unspeakable eagerness with which I meditated my escape.
+  The hours usually observed by our family in this country residence were
+  regular; and one in the morning was the time I selected for my
+  undertaking.</p>
+
+  <p>In searching the apartment where I slept, I had formerly discovered a
+  concealed door, which led to a small apartment of the most secret nature,
+  not uncommon in houses so old as that of Mr. Falkland, and which had perhaps
+  served as a refuge from persecution, or a security from the inveterate
+  hostilities of a barbarous age. I believed no person was acquainted with
+  this hiding-place but myself. I felt unaccountably impelled to remove into
+  it the different articles of my personal property. I could not at present
+  take them away with me. If I were never to recover them, I felt that it
+  would be a gratification to my sentiment, that no trace of my existence
+  should be found after my departure. Having completed their removal, and
+  waited till the hour I had previously chosen, I stole down quietly from my
+  chamber with a lamp in my hand. I went along a passage that led to a small
+  door opening into the garden, and then crossed the garden, to a gate that
+  intersected an elm-walk and a private horse-path on the outside.</p>
+
+  <p>I could scarcely believe my good fortune in having thus far executed my
+  design without interruption. The terrible images Mr. Falkland's menaces had
+  suggested to my mind, made me expect impediment and detection at every step;
+  though the impassioned state of my mind impelled me to advance with
+  desperate resolution. He probably however counted too securely upon the
+  ascendancy of his sentiments, when imperiously pronounced, to think it
+  necessary to take precautions against a sinister event. For myself, I drew a
+  favourable omen as to the final result of my project, from the smoothness of
+  success that attended it in the outset.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CIX" id="V2_CIX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+  <p>The first plan that had suggested itself to me was, to go to the nearest
+  public road, and take the earliest stage for London. There I believed I
+  should be most safe from discovery, if the vengeance of Mr. Falkland should
+  prompt him to pursue me; and I did not doubt, among the multiplied resources
+  of the metropolis, to find something which should suggest to me an eligible
+  mode of disposing of my person and industry. I reserved Mr. Forester in my
+  arrangement, as a last resource, not to be called forth unless for immediate
+  protection from the hand of persecution and power. I was destitute of that
+  experience of the world, which can alone render us fertile in resources, or
+  enable us to institute a just comparison between the resources that offer
+  themselves. I was like the fascinated animal, that is seized with the most
+  terrible apprehensions, at the same time that he is incapable of adequately
+  considering for his own safety.</p>
+
+  <p>The mode of my proceeding being digested, I traced, with a cheerful
+  heart, the unfrequented path it was now necessary for me to pursue. The
+  night was gloomy, and it drizzled with rain. But these were circumstances I
+  had scarcely the power to perceive; all was sunshine and joy within me. I
+  hardly felt the ground; I repeated to myself a thousand times, "I am free.
+  What concern have I with danger and alarm? I feel that I am free; I feel
+  that I will continue so. What power is able to hold in chains a mind ardent
+  and determined? What power can cause that man to die, whose whole soul
+  commands him to continue to live?" I looked back with abhorrence to the
+  subjection in which I had been held. I did not hate the author of my
+  misfortunes&mdash;truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the
+  hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable
+  loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be,
+  more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my
+  species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so
+  ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I
+  resolved&mdash;and this resolution has never been entirely forgotten by
+  me&mdash;to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill
+  the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer. My mind continued in this
+  enthusiastical state, full of confidence, and accessible only to such a
+  portion of fear as served rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion
+  than to generate anguish and distress, during the whole of this nocturnal
+  expedition. After a walk of three hours, I arrived, without accident, at the
+  village from which I hoped to have taken my passage for the metropolis. At
+  this early hour every thing was quiet; no sound of any thing human saluted
+  my ear. It was with difficulty that I gained admittance into the yard of the
+  inn, where I found a single ostler taking care of some horses. From him I
+  received the unwelcome tidings, that the coach was not expected till six
+  o'clock in the morning of the day after to-morrow, its route through that
+  town recurring only three times a week.</p>
+
+  <p>This intelligence gave the first check to the rapturous inebriation by
+  which my mind had been possessed from the moment I quitted the habitation of
+  Mr. Falkland. The whole of my fortune in ready cash consisted of about
+  eleven guineas. I had about fifty more, that had fallen to me from the
+  disposal of my property at the death of my father; but that was so vested as
+  to preclude it from immediate use, and I even doubted whether it would not
+  be found better ultimately to resign it, than, by claiming it, to risk the
+  furnishing a clew to what I most of all dreaded, the persecution of Mr.
+  Falkland. There was nothing I so ardently desired as the annihilation of all
+  future intercourse between us, that he should not know there was such a
+  person on the earth as myself, and that I should never more hear the
+  repetition of a name which had been so fatal to my peace.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus circumstanced, I conceived frugality to be an object by no means
+  unworthy of my attention, unable as I was to prognosticate what
+  discouragements and delays might present themselves to the accomplishment of
+  my wishes, after my arrival in London. For this and other reasons, I
+  determined to adhere to my design of travelling by the stage; it only
+  remaining for me to consider in what manner I should prevent the eventful
+  delay of twenty-four hours from becoming, by any untoward event, a source of
+  new calamity. It was by no means advisable to remain in the village where I
+  now was during this interval; nor did I even think proper to employ it, in
+  proceeding on foot along the great road. I therefore decided upon making a
+  circuit, the direction of which should seem at first extremely wide of my
+  intended route, and then, suddenly taking a different inclination, should
+  enable me to arrive by the close of day at a market-town twelve miles nearer
+  to the metropolis.</p>
+
+  <p>Having fixed the economy of the day, and persuaded myself that it was the
+  best which, under the circumstances, could be adopted, I dismissed, for the
+  most part, all further anxieties from my mind, and eagerly yielded myself up
+  to the different amusements that arose. I rested and went forward at the
+  impulse of the moment. At one time I reclined upon a bank immersed in
+  contemplation, and at another exerted myself to analyse the prospects which
+  succeeded each other. The haziness of the morning was followed by a
+  spirit-stirring and beautiful day. With the ductility so characteristic of a
+  youthful mind, I forgot the anguish which had lately been my continual
+  guest, and occupied myself entirely in dreams of future novelty and
+  felicity. I scarcely ever, in the whole course of my existence, spent a day
+  of more various or exquisite gratification. It furnished a strong, and
+  perhaps not an unsalutary contrast, to the terrors which had preceded, and
+  the dreadful scenes that awaited me.</p>
+
+  <p>In the evening I arrived at the place of my destination, and enquired for
+  the inn at which the coach was accustomed to call. A circumstance however
+  had previously excited my attention, and reproduced in me a state of
+  alarm.</p>
+
+  <p>Though it was already dark before I reached the town, my observation had
+  been attracted by a man, who passed me on horseback in the opposite
+  direction, about half a mile on the other side of the town. There was an
+  inquisitiveness in his gesture that I did not like; and, as far as I could
+  discern his figure, I pronounced him an ill-looking man. He had not passed
+  me more than two minutes before I heard the sound of a horse advancing
+  slowly behind me. These circumstances impressed some degree of uneasy
+  sensation upon my mind. I first mended my pace; and, this not appearing to
+  answer the purpose, I afterwards loitered, that the horseman might pass me.
+  He did so; and, as I glanced at him, I thought I saw that it was the same
+  man. He now put his horse into a trot, and entered the town. I followed; and
+  it was not long before I perceived him at the door of an alehouse, drinking
+  a mug of beer. This however the darkness prevented me from discovering, till
+  I was in a manner upon him. I pushed forward, and saw him no more, till, as
+  I entered the yard of the inn where I intended to sleep, the same man
+  suddenly rode up to me, and asked if my name were Williams.</p>
+
+  <p>This adventure, <i>while it had been passing</i>, expelled the gaiety of
+  my mind, and filled me with anxiety. The apprehension however that I felt,
+  appeared to me groundless: if I were pursued, I took it for granted it would
+  be by some of Mr. Falkland's people, and not by a stranger. The darkness
+  took from me some of the simplest expedients of precaution. I determined at
+  least to proceed to the inn, and make the necessary enquiries.</p>
+
+  <p>I no sooner heard the sound of the horse as I entered the yard, and the
+  question proposed to me by the rider, than the dreadful certainty of what I
+  feared instantly took possession of my mind. Every incident connected with
+  my late abhorred situation was calculated to impress me with the deepest
+  alarm. My first thought was, to betake myself to the fields, and trust to
+  the swiftness of my flight for safety. But this was scarcely practicable: I
+  remarked that my enemy was alone; and I believed that, man to man, I might
+  reasonably hope to get the better of him, either by the firmness of my
+  determination, or the subtlety of my invention.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus resolved, I replied in an impetuous and peremptory tone, that I was
+  the man he took me for; adding, "I guess your errand; but it is to no
+  purpose. You come to conduct me back to Falkland House; but no force shall
+  ever drag me to that place alive. I have not taken my resolution without
+  strong reasons; and all the world shall not persuade me to alter it. I am an
+  Englishman, and it is the privilege of an Englishman to be sole judge and
+  master of his own actions."</p>
+
+  <p>"You are in the devil of a hurry," replied the man, "to guess my
+  intentions, and tell your own. But your guess is right; and mayhap you may
+  have reason to be thankful that my errand is not something worse. Sure
+  enough the squire expects you;&mdash;but I have a letter, and when you have
+  read that, I suppose you will come off a little of your stoutness. If that
+  does not answer, it will then be time to think what is to be done next."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus saying, he gave me his letter, which was from Mr. Forester, whom, as
+  he told me, he had left at Mr. Falkland's house. I went into a room of the
+  inn for the purpose of reading it, and was followed by the bearer. The
+  letter was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>WILLIAMS,</p>
+
+  <p>"My brother Falkland has sent the bearer in pursuit of you. He expects
+  that, if found, you will return with him: I expect it too. It is of the
+  utmost consequence to your future honour and character. After reading these
+  lines, if you are a villain and a rascal, you will perhaps endeavour to fly;
+  if your conscience tells you, you are innocent, you will, out of all doubt,
+  come back. Show me then whether I have been your dupe: and, while I was won
+  over by your seeming ingenuousness, have suffered myself to be made the tool
+  of a designing knave. If you come, I pledge myself that, if you clear your
+  reputation, you shall not only be free to go wherever you please, but shall
+  receive every assistance in my power to give. Remember, I engage for nothing
+  further than that.</p>
+
+  <p>"VALENTINE FORESTER."</p>
+
+  <p>What a letter was this! To a mind like mine, glowing with the love of
+  virtue, such an address was strong enough to draw the person to whom it was
+  addressed from one end of the earth to the other. My mind was full of
+  confidence and energy. I felt my own innocence, and was determined to assert
+  it. I was willing to be driven out a fugitive; I even rejoiced in my escape,
+  and cheerfully went out into the world destitute of every provision, and
+  depending for my future prospects upon my own ingenuity.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus much, said I, Falkland! you may do. Dispose of me as you please with
+  respect to the goods of fortune; but you shall neither make prize of my
+  liberty, nor sully the whiteness of my name. I repassed in my thoughts every
+  memorable incident that had happened to me under his roof. I could recollect
+  nothing, except the affair of the mysterious trunk, out of which the shadow
+  of a criminal accusation could be extorted. In that instance my conduct had
+  been highly reprehensible, and I had never looked back upon it without
+  remorse and self-condemnation. But I did not believe that it was of the
+  nature of those actions which can be brought under legal censure. I could
+  still less persuade myself that Mr. Falkland, who shuddered at the very
+  possibility of detection, and who considered himself as completely in my
+  power, would dare to bring forward a subject so closely connected with the
+  internal agony of his soul. In a word, the more I reflected on the phrases
+  of Mr. Forester's billet, the less could I imagine the nature of those
+  scenes to which they were to serve as a prelude.</p>
+
+  <p>The inscrutableness however of the mystery they contained, did not
+  suffice to overwhelm my courage. My mind seemed to undergo an entire
+  revolution. Timid and embarrassed as I had felt myself, when I regarded Mr.
+  Falkland as my clandestine and domestic foe, I now conceived that the case
+  was entirely altered. "Meet me," said I, "as an open accuser: if we must
+  contend, let us contend in the face of day; and then, unparalleled as your
+  resources may be, I will not fear you." Innocence and guilt were, in my
+  apprehension, the things in the whole world the most opposite to each other.
+  I would not suffer myself to believe, that the former could be confounded
+  with the latter, unless the innocent man first allowed himself to be subdued
+  in mind, before he was defrauded of the good opinion of mankind. Virtue
+  rising superior to every calamity, defeating by a plain unvarnished tale all
+  the stratagems of Vice, and throwing back upon her adversary the confusion
+  with which he had hoped to overwhelm her, was one of the favourite subjects
+  of my youthful reveries. I determined never to prove an instrument of
+  destruction to Mr. Falkland; but I was not less resolute to obtain justice
+  to myself.</p>
+
+  <p>The issue of all these confident hopes I shall immediately have occasion
+  to relate. It was thus, with the most generous and undoubting spirit, that I
+  rushed upon irretrievable ruin.</p>
+
+  <p>"Friend," said I to the bearer, after a considerable interval of silence,
+  "you are right. This is, indeed, an extraordinary letter you have brought
+  me; but it answers its purpose. I will certainly go with you now, whatever
+  be the consequence. No person shall ever impute blame to me, so long as I
+  have it in my power to clear myself."</p>
+
+  <p>I felt, in the circumstances in which I was placed by Mr. Forester's
+  letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to return.
+  We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in silence. My mind
+  was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr. Forester's letter. I
+  knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr. Falkland's mind in accomplishing
+  the purposes he had at heart; but I also knew that every virtuous and
+  magnanimous principle was congenial to his character.</p>
+
+  <p>When we arrived, midnight was already past, and we were obliged to waken
+  one of the servants to give us admittance. I found that Mr. Forester had
+  left a message for me, in consideration of the possibility of my arrival
+  during the night, directing me immediately to go to bed, and to take care
+  that I did not come weary and exhausted to the business of the following
+  day. I endeavoured to take his advice; but my slumbers were unrefreshing and
+  disturbed. I suffered however no reduction of courage: the singularity of my
+  situation, my conjectures with respect to the present, my eagerness for the
+  future, did not allow me to sink into a languid and inactive state.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning the first person I saw was Mr. Forester. He told me that he
+  did not yet know what Mr. Falkland had to allege against me, for that he had
+  refused to know. He had arrived at the house of his brother by appointment
+  on the preceding day to settle some indispensable business, his intention
+  having been to depart the moment the business was finished, as he knew that
+  conduct on his part would be most agreeable to Mr. Falkland. But he was no
+  sooner come, than he found the whole house in confusion, the alarm of my
+  elopement having been given a few hours before. Mr. Falkland had despatched
+  servants in all directions in pursuit of me; and the servant from the
+  market-town arrived at the same moment with Mr. Forester, with intelligence
+  that a person answering the description he gave, had been there very early
+  in the morning enquiring respecting the stage to London.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland seemed extremely disturbed at this information, and
+  exclaimed on me with acrimony, as an unthankful and unnatural villain.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester replied, "Have more command of yourself, sir! Villain is a
+  serious appellation, and must not be trifled with. Englishmen are free; and
+  no man is to be charged with villainy, because he changes one source of
+  subsistence for another."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland shook his head, and with a smile, expressive of acute
+  sensibility, said, "Brother, brother, you are the dupe of his art. I always
+  considered him with an eye of suspicion, and was aware of his depravity. But
+  I have just discovered&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Stop, sir!" interrupted Mr. Forester. "I own I thought that, in a moment
+  of acrimony, you might be employing harsh epithets in a sort of random
+  style. But if you have a serious accusation to state, we must not be told of
+  that, till it is known whether the lad is within reach of a hearing. I am
+  indifferent myself about the good opinion of others. It is what the world
+  bestows and retracts with so little thought, that I can make no account of
+  its decision. But that does not authorise me lightly to entertain an ill
+  opinion of another. The slenderest allowance I think I can make to such as I
+  consign to be the example and terror of their species, is that of being
+  heard in their own defence. It is a wise principle that requires the judge
+  to come into court uninformed of the merits of the cause he is to try; and
+  to that principle I am determined to conform as an individual. I shall
+  always think it right to be severe and inflexible in my treatment of
+  offenders; but the severity I exercise in the sequel, must be accompanied
+  with impartiality and caution in what is preliminary."</p>
+
+  <p>While Mr. Forester related to me these particulars, he observed me ready
+  to break out into some of the expressions which the narrative suggested; but
+  he would not suffer me to speak. "No," said he; "I would not hear Mr.
+  Falkland against you; and I cannot hear you in your defence. I come to you
+  at present to speak, and not to hear. I thought it right to warn you of your
+  danger, but I have nothing more to do now. Reserve what you have to say to
+  the proper time. Make the best story you can for yourself&mdash;true, if
+  truth, as I hope, will serve your purpose; but, if not, the most plausible
+  and ingenious you can invent. That is what self-defence requires from every
+  man, where, as it always happens to a man upon his trial, he has the whole
+  world against him, and has his own battle to fight against the world.
+  Farewell; and God send you a good deliverance! If Mr. Falkland's accusation,
+  whatever it be, shall appear premature, depend upon having me more zealously
+  your friend than ever. If not, this is the last act of friendship you will
+  ever receive from me!"</p>
+
+  <p>It may be believed that this address, so singular, so solemn, so big with
+  conditional menace, did not greatly tend to encourage me. I was totally
+  ignorant of the charge to be advanced against me; and not a little
+  astonished, when it was in my power to be in the most formidable degree the
+  accuser of Mr. Falkland, to find the principles of equity so completely
+  reversed, as for the innocent but instructed individual to be the party
+  accused and suffering, instead of having, as was natural, the real criminal
+  at his mercy. I was still more astonished at the superhuman power Mr.
+  Falkland seemed to possess, of bringing the object of his persecution within
+  the sphere of his authority; a reflection attended with some check to that
+  eagerness and boldness of spirit, which now constituted the ruling passion
+  of my mind.</p>
+
+  <p>But this was no time for meditation. To the sufferer the course of events
+  is taken out of his direction, and he is hurried along with an irresistible
+  force, without finding it within the compass of his efforts to check their
+  rapidity. I was allowed only a short time to recollect myself, when my trial
+  commenced. I was conducted to the library, where I had passed so many happy
+  and so many contemplative hours, and found there Mr. Forester and three or
+  four of the servants already assembled, in expectation of me and my accuser.
+  Every thing was calculated to suggest to me that I must trust only in the
+  justice of the parties concerned, and had nothing to hope from their
+  indulgence. Mr. Falkland entered at one door, almost as soon as I entered at
+  the other.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CX" id="V2_CX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+  <p>He began: "It has been the principle of my life, never to inflict a
+  wilful injury upon any thing that lives; I need not express my regret, when
+  I find myself obliged to be the promulgator of a criminal charge. How gladly
+  would I pass unnoticed the evil I have sustained; but I owe it to society to
+  detect an offender, and prevent other men from being imposed upon, as I have
+  been, by an appearance of integrity."</p>
+
+  <p>"It would be better," interrupted Mr. Forester "to speak directly to the
+  point. We ought not, though unwarily, by apologising for ourselves, to
+  create at such a time a prejudice against an individual, against whom a
+  criminal accusation will always be prejudice enough."</p>
+
+  <p>"I strongly suspect," continued Mr. Falkland, "this young man, who has
+  been peculiarly the object of my kindness, of having robbed me to a
+  considerable amount."</p>
+
+  <p>"What," replied Mr. Forester, "are the grounds of your suspicion?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The first of them is the actual loss I have sustained, in notes, jewels,
+  and plate. I have missed bank-notes to the amount of nine hundred pounds,
+  three gold repeaters of considerable value, a complete set of diamonds, the
+  property of my late mother, and several other articles."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why," continued my arbitrator, astonishment grief, and a desire to
+  retain his self-possession, strong contending in his countenance and voice,
+  "do you fix on this young man as the instrument of the depredation?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I found him, on my coming home, upon the day when every thing was in
+  disorder from the alarm of fire, in the very act of quitting the private
+  apartment where these articles were deposited. He was confounded at seeing
+  me, and hastened to withdraw as soon as he possibly could."</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you say nothing to him&mdash;take no notice of the confusion your
+  sudden appearance produced?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I asked what was his errand in that place. He was at first so terrified
+  and overcome, that he could not answer me. Afterwards, with a good deal of
+  faltering, he said that, when all the servants were engaged in endeavouring
+  to save the most valuable part of my property, he had come hither with the
+  same view; but that he had as yet removed nothing."</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you immediately examine to see that every thing was safe?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I was accustomed to confide in his honesty, and I was suddenly
+  called away, in the present instance, to attend to the increasing progress
+  of the flames. I therefore only took out the key from the door of the
+  apartment, having first locked it, and, putting it in my pocket, hastened to
+  go where my presence seemed indispensably necessary."</p>
+
+  <p>"How long was it before you missed your property?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The same evening. The hurry of the scene had driven the circumstance
+  entirely out of my mind, till, going by accident near the apartment, the
+  whole affair, together with the singular and equivocal behaviour of
+  Williams, rushed at once upon my recollection. I immediately entered,
+  examined the trunk in which these things were contained, and, to my
+  astonishment, found the locks broken, and the property gone."</p>
+
+  <p>"What steps did you take upon this discovery?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I sent for Williams, and talked to him very seriously upon the subject.
+  But he had now perfectly recovered his self-command, and calmly and stoutly
+  denied all knowledge of the matter. I urged him with the enormousness of the
+  offence, but I made no impression. He did not discover either the surprise
+  and indignation one would have expected from a person entirely innocent, or
+  the uneasiness that generally attends upon guilt. He was rather silent and
+  reserved. I then informed him, that I should proceed in a manner different
+  from what he might perhaps expect. I would not, as is too frequent in such
+  cases, make a general search; for I had rather lose my property for ever
+  without redress, than expose a multitude of innocent persons to anxiety and
+  injustice. My suspicion, for the present, unavoidably fixed upon him. But,
+  in a matter of so great consequence, I was determined not to act upon
+  suspicion. I would neither incur the possibility of ruining him, being
+  innocent, nor be the instrument of exposing others to his depredations, if
+  guilty. I should therefore merely insist upon his continuing in my service.
+  He might depend upon it he should be well watched, and I trusted the whole
+  truth would eventually appear. Since he avoided confession now, I advised
+  him to consider how far it was likely he would come off with impunity at
+  last. This I determined on, that the moment he attempted an escape, I would
+  consider that as an indication of guilt, and proceed accordingly."</p>
+
+  <p>"What circumstances have occurred from that time to the present?"</p>
+
+  <p>"None upon which I can infer a certainty of guilt; several that agree to
+  favour a suspicion. From that time Williams was perpetually uneasy in his
+  situation, always desirous, as it now appears, to escape, but afraid to
+  adopt such a measure without certain precautions. It was not long after,
+  that you, Mr. Forester, became my visitor. I observed, with dissatisfaction,
+  the growing intercourse between you, reflecting on the equivocalness of his
+  character, and the attempt he would probably make to render you the dupe of
+  his hypocrisy. I accordingly threatened him severely; and I believe you
+  observed the change that presently after occurred in his behaviour with
+  relation to you."</p>
+
+  <p>"I did, and it appeared at that time mysterious and extraordinary."</p>
+
+  <p>"Some time after, as you well know, a rencounter took place between you,
+  whether accidental or intentional on his part I am not able to say, when he
+  confessed to you the uneasiness of his mind, without discovering the cause,
+  and openly proposed to you to assist him in his flight, and stand, in case
+  of necessity, between him and my resentment. You offered, it seems, to take
+  him into your service; but nothing, as he acknowledged, would answer his
+  purpose, that did not place his retreat wholly out of my power to
+  discover."</p>
+
+  <p>"Did it not appear extraordinary to you, that he should hope for any
+  effectual protection from me, while it remained perpetually in your power to
+  satisfy me of his unworthiness?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps he had hopes that I should not proceed to that step, at least so
+  long as the place of his retreat should be unknown to me, and of consequence
+  the event of my proceeding dubious. Perhaps he confided in his own powers,
+  which are far from contemptible, to construct a plausible tale, especially
+  as he had taken care to have the first impression in his favour. After all,
+  this protection, on your part, was merely reserved in case all other
+  expedients failed. He does not appear to have had any other sentiment upon
+  the subject, than that, if he were defeated in his projects for placing
+  himself beyond the reach of justice, it was better to have bespoken a place
+  in your patronage than to be destitute of every resource."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland having thus finished his evidence, called upon Robert, the
+  valet, to confirm the part of it which related to the day of the fire.</p>
+
+  <p>Robert stated, that he happened to be coming through the library that
+  day, a few minutes after Mr. Falkland's being brought home by the sight of
+  the fire; that he had found me standing there with every mark of
+  perturbation and fright; that he could not help stopping to notice it; that
+  he had spoken to me two or three times before he could obtain an answer; and
+  that all he could get from me at last was, that I was the most miserable
+  creature alive.</p>
+
+  <p>He further said, that in the evening of the same day Mr. Falkland called
+  him into the private apartment adjoining to the library, and bid him bring a
+  hammer and some nails. He then showed him a trunk standing in the apartment
+  with its locks and fastening broken, and ordered him to observe and remember
+  what he saw, but not to mention it to any one. Robert did not at that time
+  know what Mr. Falkland intended by these directions, which were given in a
+  manner uncommonly solemn and significant; but he entertained no doubt, that
+  the fastenings were broken and wrenched by the application of a chisel or
+  such-like instrument, with the intention of forcibly opening the trunk.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester observed upon this evidence, that as much of it as related
+  to the day of the fire seemed indeed to afford powerful reasons for
+  suspicion; and that the circumstances that had occurred since strangely
+  concurred to fortify that suspicion. Meantime, that nothing proper to be
+  done might be omitted, he asked whether in my flight I had removed my boxes,
+  to see whether by that means any trace could be discovered to confirm the
+  imputation. Mr. Falkland treated this suggestion slightly, saying, that if I
+  were the thief, I had no doubt taken the precaution to obviate so palpable a
+  means of detection. To this Mr. Forester only replied, that conjecture,
+  however skilfully formed, was not always realised in the actions and
+  behaviour of mankind; and ordered that my boxes and trunks, if found, should
+  be brought into the library. I listened to this suggestion with pleasure;
+  and, uneasy and confounded as I was at the appearances combined against me,
+  I trusted in this appeal to give a new face to my cause. I was eager to
+  declare the place where my property was deposited; and the servants, guided
+  by my direction, presently produced what was enquired for.</p>
+
+  <p>The two boxes that were first opened, contained nothing to confirm the
+  accusation against me; in the third were found a watch and several jewels,
+  that were immediately known to be the property of Mr. Falkland. The
+  production of this seemingly decisive evidence excited emotions of
+  astonishment and concern; but no person's astonishment appeared to be
+  greater than that of Mr. Falkland. That I should have left the stolen goods
+  behind me, would of itself have appeared incredible; but when it was
+  considered what a secure place of concealment I had found for them, the
+  wonder diminished; and Mr. Forester observed, that it was by no means
+  impossible I might conceive it easier to obtain possession of them
+  afterwards, than to remove them at the period of my precipitate flight.</p>
+
+  <p>Here however I thought it necessary to interfere. I fervently urged my
+  right to a fair and impartial construction. I asked Mr. Forester, whether it
+  were probable, if I had stolen these things, that I should not have
+  contrived, at least to remove them along with me? And again, whether, if I
+  had been conscious they would he found among my property, I should myself
+  have indicated the place where I had concealed it?</p>
+
+  <p>The insinuation I conveyed against Mr. Forester's impartiality overspread
+  his whole countenance, for an instant, with the flush of anger.</p>
+
+  <p>"Impartiality, young man! Yes, be sure, from me you shall experience an
+  impartial treatment! God send that may answer your purpose! Presently you
+  shall be heard at full in your own defence.</p>
+
+  <p>"You expect us to believe you innocent, because you did not remove these
+  things along with you. The money is removed. Where, sir, is that? We cannot
+  answer for the inconsistences and oversights of any human mind, and, least
+  of all, if that mind should appear to be disturbed with the consciousness of
+  guilt.</p>
+
+  <p>"You observe that it was by your own direction these boxes and trunks
+  have been found: that is indeed extraordinary. It appears little less than
+  infatuation. But to what purpose appeal to probabilities and conjecture, in
+  the face of incontestable facts? There, sir, are the boxes: you alone knew
+  where they were to be found; you alone had the keys: tell us then how this
+  watch and these jewels came to be contained in them?"</p>
+
+  <p>I was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>To the rest of the persons present I seemed to be merely the subject of
+  detection; but in reality I was, of all the spectators, that individual who
+  was most at a loss to conceive, through every stage of the scene, what,
+  would come next, and who listened to every word that was uttered with the
+  most uncontrollable amazement. Amazement however alternately yielded to
+  indignation and horror. At first I could not refrain from repeatedly
+  attempting to interrupt; but I was checked in these attempts by Mr.
+  Forester; and I presently felt how necessary it was to my future peace, that
+  I should collect the whole energy of my mind to repel the charge, and assert
+  my innocence.</p>
+
+  <p>Every thing being now produced that could be produced against me, Mr.
+  Forester turned to me with a look of concern and pity, and told me that now
+  was the time, if I chose to allege any thing in my defence. In reply to this
+  invitation, I spoke nearly as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I am innocent. It is in vain that circumstances are accumulated against
+  me; there is not a person upon earth less capable than I of the things of
+  which I am accused. I appeal to my heart&mdash;I appeal to my looks&mdash;I
+  appeal to every sentiment my tongue ever uttered."</p>
+
+  <p>I could perceive that the fervour with which I spoke made some impression
+  upon every one that heard me. But in a moment their eyes were turned upon
+  the property that lay before them, and their countenances changed. I
+  proceeded:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"One thing more I must aver;&mdash;Mr. Falkland is not deceived; he
+  perfectly knows that I am innocent."</p>
+
+  <p>I had no sooner uttered these words, than an involuntary cry of
+  indignation burst from every person in the room. Mr. Forester turned to me
+  with a look of extreme severity, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Young man, consider well what you are doing! It is the privilege of the
+  party accused to say whatever he thinks proper; and I will take care that
+  you shall enjoy that privilege in its utmost extent. But do you think it
+  will conduce in any respect to your benefit, to throw out such insolent and
+  intolerable insinuations?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I thank you most sincerely," replied I, "for your caution; but I well
+  know what it is I am doing. I make this declaration, not merely because it
+  is solemnly true, but because it is inseparably connected with my
+  vindication. I am the party accused, and I shall be told that I am not to be
+  believed in my own defence. I can produce no other witnesses of my
+  innocence; I therefore call upon Mr. Falkland to be my evidence. I ask
+  him&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you never boast to me in private of your power to ruin me? Did you
+  never say that, if once I brought on myself the weight of your displeasure,
+  my fall should be irreparable? Did you not tell me that, though I should
+  prepare in that case a tale however plausible or however true, you would
+  take care that the whole world should execrate me as an impostor? Were not
+  those your very words? Did you not add, that my innocence should be of no
+  service to me, and that you laughed at so feeble a defence? I ask you
+  further,&mdash;Did you not receive a letter from me the morning of the day
+  on which I departed, requesting your consent to my departure? Should I have
+  done that if my flight had been that of a thief? I challenge any man to
+  reconcile the expressions of that letter with this accusation. Should I have
+  begun with stating that I had conceived a desire to quit your service, if my
+  desire and the reasons for it, had been of the nature that is now alleged?
+  Should I have dared to ask for what reason I was thus subjected to an
+  eternal penance?"</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this, I took out a copy of my letter, and laid it open upon the
+  table.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland returned no immediate answer to my interrogations. Mr.
+  Forester turned to him, and said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, what is your reply to this challenge of your servant?"</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland answered, "Such a mode of defence scarcely calls for a
+  reply. But I answer, I held no such conversation; I never used such words; I
+  received no such letter. Surely it is no sufficient refutation of a criminal
+  charge, that the criminal repels what is alleged against him with volubility
+  of speech, and intrepidity of manner."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Forester then turned to me: "If," said he, "you trust your
+  vindication to the plausibility of your tale, you must take care to render
+  it consistent and complete. You have not told us what was the cause of the
+  confusion and anxiety in which Robert professes to have found you, why you
+  were so impatient to quit the service of Mr. Falkland, or how you account
+  for certain articles of his property being found in your possession."</p>
+
+  <p>"All that, sir," answered I, "is true. There are certain parts of my
+  story that I have not told. If they were told, they would not conduce to my
+  disadvantage, and they would make the present accusation appear still more
+  astonishing. But I cannot, as yet at least, prevail upon myself to tell
+  them. Is it necessary to give any particular and precise reasons why I
+  should wish to change the place of my residence? You all of you know the
+  unfortunate state of Mr. Falkland's mind. You know the sternness,
+  reservedness, and distance of his manners. If I had no other reasons, surely
+  it would afford small presumption of criminality that I should wish to
+  change his service for another.</p>
+
+  <p>"The question of how these articles of Mr. Falkland's property came to be
+  found in my possession, is more material. It is a question I am wholly
+  unable to answer. Their being found there, was at least as unexpected to me
+  as to any one of the persons now present. I only know that, as I have the
+  most perfect assurance of Mr. Falkland's being conscious of my
+  innocence&mdash;for, observe! I do not shrink from that assertion; I
+  reiterate it with new confidence&mdash;I therefore firmly and from my soul
+  believe, that their being there is of Mr. Falkland's contrivance."</p>
+
+  <p>I no sooner said this, than I was again interrupted by an involuntary
+  exclamation from every one present. They looked at me with furious glances,
+  as if they could have torn me to pieces. I proceeded:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I have now answered every thing that is alleged against me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Forester, you are a lover of justice; I conjure you not to violate
+  it in my person. You are a man of penetration; look at me! do you see any of
+  the marks of guilt? Recollect all that has ever passed under your
+  observation; is it compatible with a mind capable of what is now alleged
+  against me? Could a real criminal have shown himself so unabashed, composed,
+  and firm as I have now done?</p>
+
+  <p>"Fellow-servants! Mr. Falkland is a man of rank and fortune; he is your
+  master. I am a poor country lad, without a friend in the world. That is a
+  ground of real difference to a certain extent; but it is not a sufficient
+  ground for the subversion of justice. Remember, that I am in a situation
+  that is not to be trifled with; that a decision given against me now, in a
+  case in which I solemnly assure you I am innocent, will for ever deprive me
+  of reputation and peace of mind, combine the whole world in a league against
+  me, and determine perhaps upon my liberty and my life. If you
+  believe&mdash;if you see&mdash;if you know, that I am innocent, speak for
+  me. Do not suffer a pusillanimous timidity to prevent you from saving a
+  fellow-creature from destruction, who does not deserve to have a human being
+  for his enemy. Why have we the power of speech, but to communicate our
+  thoughts? I will never believe that a man, conscious of innocence, cannot
+  make other men perceive that he has that thought. Do not you feel that my
+  whole heart tells me. I am not guilty of what is imputed to me?</p>
+
+  <p>"To you, Mr. Falkland, I have nothing to say: I know you, and know that
+  you are impenetrable. At the very moment that you are urging such odious
+  charges against me, you admire my resolution and forbearance. But I have
+  nothing to hope from you. You can look upon my ruin without pity or remorse.
+  I am most unfortunate indeed in having to do with such an adversary. You
+  oblige me to say ill things of you; but I appeal to your own heart, whether
+  my language is that of exaggeration or revenge."</p>
+
+  <p>Every thing that could be alleged on either side being now concluded, Mr.
+  Forester undertook to make some remarks upon the whole.</p>
+
+  <p>"Williams," said he, "the charge against you is heavy; the direct
+  evidence strong; the corroborating circumstances numerous and striking. I
+  grant that you have shown considerable dexterity in your answers; but you
+  will learn, young man, to your cost, that dexterity, however powerful it may
+  be in certain cases, will avail little against the stubbornness of truth. It
+  is fortunate for mankind that the empire of talents has its limitations, and
+  that it is not in the power of ingenuity to subvert the distinctions of
+  right and wrong. Take my word for it, that the true merits of the case
+  against you will be too strong for sophistry to overturn; that justice will
+  prevail, and impotent malice be defeated.</p>
+
+  <p>"To you, Mr. Falkland, society is obliged for having placed this black
+  affair in its true light. Do not suffer the malignant aspersions of the
+  criminal to give you uneasiness. Depend upon it that they will be found of
+  no weight I have no doubt that your character, in the judgment of every
+  person that has heard them, stands higher than ever. We feel for your
+  misfortune, in being obliged to hear such calumnies from a person who has
+  injured you so grossly. But you must be considered in that respect as a
+  martyr in the public cause. The purity of your motives and dispositions is
+  beyond the reach of malice; and truth and equity will not fail to award, to
+  your calumniator infamy, and to you the love and approbation of mankind.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have now told you, Williams, what I think of your case. But I have no
+  right to assume to be your ultimate judge. Desperate as it appears to me, I
+  will give you one piece of advice, as if I were retained as a counsel to
+  assist you. Leave out of it whatever tends to the disadvantage of Mr.
+  Falkland. Defend yourself as well as you can, but do not attack your master.
+  It is your business to create in those who hear you a prepossession in your
+  favour. But the recrimination you have been now practising, will always
+  create indignation. Dishonesty will admit of some palliation. The deliberate
+  malice you have now been showing is a thousand times more atrocious. It
+  proves you to have the mind of a demon, rather than of a felon. Wherever you
+  shall repeat it, those who hear you will pronounce you guilty upon that,
+  even if the proper evidence against you were glaringly defective. If
+  therefore you would consult your interest, which seems to be your only
+  consideration, it is incumbent upon you by all means immediately to retract
+  that. If you desire to be believed honest, you must in the first place show
+  that you have a due sense of merit in others. You cannot better serve your
+  cause than by begging pardon of your master, and doing homage to rectitude
+  and worth, even when they are employed in vengeance against you."</p>
+
+  <p>It is easy to conceive that my mind sustained an extreme shock from the
+  decision of Mr. Forester; but his call upon me to retract and humble myself
+  before my accuser penetrated my whole soul with indignation. I
+  answered:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I have already told you I am innocent. I believe that I could not endure
+  the effort of inventing a plausible defence, if it were otherwise. You have
+  just affirmed that it is not in the power of ingenuity to subvert the
+  distinctions of right and wrong, and in that very instant I find them
+  subverted. This is indeed to me a very awful moment. New to the world, I
+  know nothing of its affairs but what has reached me by rumour, or is
+  recorded in books. I have come into it with all the ardour and confidence
+  inseparable from my years. In every fellow-being I expected to find a
+  friend. I am unpractised in its wiles, and have even no acquaintance with
+  its injustice. I have done nothing to deserve the animosity of mankind; but,
+  if I may judge from the present scene, I am henceforth to be deprived of the
+  benefits of integrity and honour. I am to forfeit the friendship of every
+  one I have hitherto known, and to be precluded from the power of acquiring
+  that of others. I must therefore be reduced to derive my satisfaction from
+  myself. Depend upon it, I will not begin that career by dishonourable
+  concessions. If I am to despair of the good-will of other men, I will at
+  least maintain the independence of my own mind. Mr. Falkland is my
+  implacable enemy. Whatever may be his merits in other respects, he is acting
+  towards me without humanity, without remorse, and without principle. Do you
+  think I will ever make submissions to a man by whom I am thus treated, that
+  I will fall down at the feet of one who is to me a devil, or kiss the hand
+  that is red with my blood?"</p>
+
+  <p>"In that respect," answered Mr. Forester, "do as you shall think proper.
+  I must confess that your firmness and consistency astonish me. They add
+  something to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you have chosen
+  the part which, all things considered, may serve your purpose best; though I
+  think more moderation would be more conciliating. The exterior of innocence
+  will, I grant, stagger the persons who may have the direction of your fate,
+  but it will never be able to prevail against plain and incontrovertible
+  facts. But I have done with you. I see in you a new instance of that abuse
+  which is so generally made of talents, the admiration of an undiscerning
+  public. I regard you with horror. All that remains is, that I should
+  discharge my duty, in consigning you, as a monster of depravity, to the
+  justice of your country."</p>
+
+  <p>"No," rejoined Mr. Falkland, "to that I can never consent. I have put a
+  restraint upon myself thus far, because it was right that evidence and
+  enquiry should take their course. I have suppressed all my habits and
+  sentiments, because it seemed due to the public that hypocrisy should be
+  unmasked. But I can suffer this violence no longer. I have through my whole
+  life interfered to protect, not overbear, the sufferer; and I must do so
+  now. I feel not the smallest resentment of his impotent attacks upon my
+  character; I smile at their malice; and they make no diminution in my
+  benevolence to their author. Let him say what he pleases; he cannot hurt me.
+  It was proper that he should be brought to public shame, that other people
+  might not be deceived by him as we have been. But there is no necessity for
+  proceeding further; and I must insist upon it that he be permitted to depart
+  wherever he pleases. I am sorry that public interest affords so gloomy a
+  prospect for his future happiness."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland," answered Mr. Forester, "these sentiments do honour to
+  your humanity; but I must not give way to them. They only serve to set in a
+  stronger light the venom of this serpent, this monster of ingratitude, who
+  first robs his benefactor, and then reviles him. Wretch that you are, will
+  nothing move you? Are you inaccessible to remorse? Are you not struck to the
+  heart with the unmerited goodness of your master? Vile calumniator! you are
+  the abhorrence of nature, the opprobrium of the human species, and the earth
+  can only be freed from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated!
+  Recollect, sir, that this monster, at the very moment that you are
+  exercising such unexampled forbearance in his behalf, has the presumption to
+  charge you with prosecuting a crime of which you know him to be innocent,
+  nay, with having conveyed the pretended stolen goods among his property, for
+  the express purpose of ruining him. By this unexampled villainy, he makes it
+  your duty to free the world from such a pest, and your interest to admit no
+  relaxing in your pursuit of him, lest the world should be persuaded by your
+  clemency to credit his vile insinuations."</p>
+
+  <p>"I care not for the consequences," replied Mr. Falkland; "I will obey the
+  dictates of my own mind. I will never lend my assistance to the reforming
+  mankind by axes and gibbets. I am sure things will never be as they ought,
+  till honour, and not law, be the dictator of mankind, till vice be taught to
+  shrink before the resistless might of inborn dignity, and not before the
+  cold formality of statutes. If my calumniator were worthy of my resentment,
+  I would chastise him with my own sword, and not that of the magistrate; but
+  in the present case I smile at his malice, and resolve to spare him, as the
+  generous lord of the forest spares the insect that would disturb his
+  repose."</p>
+
+  <p>"The language you now hold," said Mr. Forester, "is that of romance, and
+  not of reason. Yet I cannot but be struck with the contrast exhibited before
+  me, of the magnanimity of virtue, and the obstinate impenetrable injustice
+  of guilt. While your mind overflows with goodness, nothing can touch the
+  heart of this thrice-refined villain. I shall never forgive myself for
+  having once been entrapped by his detestable arts. This is no time for us to
+  settle the question between chivalry and law. I shall therefore simply
+  insist as a magistrate, having taken the evidence in this felony, upon my
+  right and duty of following the course of justice, and committing the
+  accused to the county jail."</p>
+
+  <p>After some further contest Mr. Falkland, finding Mr. Forester obstinate
+  and impracticable, withdrew his opposition. Accordingly a proper officer was
+  summoned from the neighbouring village, a mittimus made out, and one of Mr.
+  Falkland's carriages prepared to conduct me to the place of custody. It will
+  easily be imagined that this sudden reverse was very painfully felt by me. I
+  looked round on the servants who had been the spectators of my examination,
+  but not one of them, either by word or gesture, expressed compassion for my
+  calamity. The robbery of which I was accused appeared to them atrocious from
+  its magnitude; and whatever sparks of compassion might otherwise have sprung
+  up in their ingenuous and undisciplined minds, were totally obliterated by
+  indignation at my supposed profligacy in recriminating upon their worthy and
+  excellent master. My fate being already determined, and one of the servants
+  despatched for the officer, Mr. Forester and Mr. Falkland withdrew, and left
+  me in the custody of two others.</p>
+
+  <p>One of these was the son of a farmer at no great distance, who had been
+  in habits of long-established intimacy with my late father. I was willing
+  accurately to discover the state of mind of those who had been witnesses of
+  this scene, and who had had some previous opportunity of observing my
+  character and manners. I, therefore, endeavoured to open a conversation with
+  him. "Well, my good Thomas," said I, in a querulous tone, and with a
+  hesitating manner, "am I not a most miserable creature?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Do not speak to me, Master Williams! You have given me a shock that I
+  shall not get the better of for one while. You were hatched by a hen, as the
+  saying is, but you came of the spawn of a cockatrice. I am glad to my heart
+  that honest farmer Williams is dead; your villainy would else have made him
+  curse the day that ever he was born."</p>
+
+  <p>"Thomas, I am innocent! I swear by the great God that shall judge me
+  another day, I am innocent!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Pray, do not swear! for goodness' sake, do not swear! your poor soul is
+  damned enough without that. For your sake, lad, I will never take any body's
+  word, nor trust to appearances, tho' it should be an angel. Lord bless us!
+  how smoothly you palavered it over, for all the world, as if you had been as
+  fair as a new-born babe! But it will not do; you will never be able to
+  persuade people that black is white. For my own part, I have done with you.
+  I loved you yesterday, all one as if you had been my own brother. To-day I
+  love you so well, that I would go ten miles with all the pleasure in life to
+  see you hanged."</p>
+
+  <p>"Good God, Thomas! have you the heart? What a change! I call God to
+  witness, I have done nothing to deserve it! What a world do we live in!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold your tongue, boy! It makes my very heart sick to hear you! I would
+  not lie a night under the same roof with you for all the world! I should
+  expect the house to fall and crush such wickedness! I admire that the earth
+  does not open and swallow you alive! It is poison so much as to look at you!
+  If you go on at this hardened rate, I believe from my soul that the people
+  you talk to will tear you to pieces, and you will never live to come to the
+  gallows. Oh, yes, you do well to pity yourself; poor tender thing! that spit
+  venom all round you like a toad, and leave the very ground upon which you
+  crawl infected with your slime."</p>
+
+  <p>Finding the person with whom I talked thus impenetrable to all I could
+  say, and considering that the advantage to be gained was small, even if I
+  could overcome his prepossession, I took his advice, and was silent. It was
+  not much longer before every thing was prepared for my departure, and I was
+  conducted to the same prison which had so lately enclosed the wretched and
+  innocent Hawkinses. They too had been the victims of Mr. Falkland. He
+  exhibited, upon a contracted scale indeed, but in which the truth of
+  delineation was faithfully sustained, a copy of what monarchs are, who
+  reckon among the instruments of their power prisons of state.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CXI" id="V2_CXI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+  <p>For my own part, I had never seen a prison, and, like the majority of my
+  brethren, had given myself little concern to enquire what was the condition
+  of those who committed offence against, or became obnoxious to suspicion
+  from, the community. Oh, how enviable is the most tottering shed under which
+  the labourer retires to rest, compared with the residence of these
+  walls!</p>
+
+  <p>To me every thing was new,&mdash;the massy doors, the resounding locks,
+  the gloomy passages, the grated windows, and the characteristic looks of the
+  keepers, accustomed to reject every petition, and to steel their hearts
+  against feeling and pity. Curiosity, and a sense of my situation, induced me
+  to fix my eyes on the faces of these men; but in a few minutes I drew them
+  away with unconquerable loathing. It is impossible to describe the sort of
+  squalidness and filth with which these mansions are distinguished. I have
+  seen dirty faces in dirty apartments, which have nevertheless borne the
+  impression of health, and spoke carelessness and levity rather than
+  distress. But the dirt of a prison speaks sadness to the heart, and appears
+  to be already in a state of putridity and infection.</p>
+
+  <p>I was detained for more than an hour in the apartment of the keeper, one
+  turnkey after another coming in, that they might make themselves familiar
+  with my person. As I was already considered as guilty of felony to a
+  considerable amount, I underwent a rigorous search, and they took from me a
+  penknife, a pair of scissars, and that part of my money which was in gold.
+  It was debated whether or not these should be sealed up, to be returned to
+  me, as they said, as soon as I should be acquitted; and had I not displayed
+  an unexpected firmness of manner and vigour of expostulation, such was
+  probably the conduct that would have been pursued. Having undergone these
+  ceremonies, I was thrust into a day-room, in which all the persons then
+  under confinement for felony were assembled, to the number of eleven. Each
+  of them was too much engaged in his own reflections, to take notice of me.
+  Of these, two were imprisoned for horse-stealing, and three for having
+  stolen a sheep, one for shop-lifting, one for coining, two for
+  highway-robbery, and two for burglary.</p>
+
+  <p>The horse-stealers were engaged in a game at cards, which was presently
+  interrupted by a difference of opinion, attended with great
+  vociferation,&mdash;they calling upon one and another to decide it, to no
+  purpose; one paying no attention to their summons, and another leaving them
+  in the midst of their story, being no longer able to endure his own internal
+  anguish, in the midst of their mummery.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a custom among thieves to constitute a sort of mock tribunal of
+  their own body, from whose decision every one is informed whether he shall
+  be acquitted, respited, or pardoned, as well as respecting the supposed most
+  skilful way of conducting his defence. One of the housebreakers, who had
+  already passed this ordeal, and was stalking up and down the room with a
+  forced bravery, exclaimed to his companion, that he was as rich as the Duke
+  of Bedford himself. He had five guineas and a half, which was as much as he
+  could possibly spend in the course of the ensuing month; and what happened
+  after that, it was Jack Ketch's business to see to, not his. As he uttered
+  these words, he threw himself abruptly upon a bench that was near him, and
+  seemed to be asleep in a moment. But his sleep was uneasy and disturbed, his
+  breathing was hard, and, at intervals, had rather the nature of a groan. A
+  young fellow from the other side of the room came softly to the place where
+  he lay, with a large knife in his hand: and pressed the back of it with such
+  violence upon his neck, the head hanging over the side of the bench, that it
+  was not till after several efforts that he was able to rise. "Oh, Jack!"
+  cried this manual jester, "I had almost done your business for you!" The
+  other expressed no marks of resentment, but sullenly answered, "Damn you,
+  why did not you take the edge? It would have been the best thing you have
+  done this many a day!"<a name="footnotetag2" id="footnotetag2"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The case of one of the persons committed for highway-robbery was not a
+  little extraordinary. He was a common soldier of a most engaging
+  physiognomy, and two-and-twenty years of age. The prosecutor, who had been
+  robbed one evening, as he returned late from the alehouse, of the sum of
+  three shillings, swore positively to his person. The character of the
+  prisoner was such as has seldom been equalled. He had been ardent in the
+  pursuit of intellectual cultivation, and was accustomed to draw his
+  favourite amusement from the works of Virgil and Horace. The humbleness of
+  his situation, combined with his ardour for literature, only served to give
+  an inexpressible heightening to the interestingness of his character. He was
+  plain and unaffected; he assumed nothing; he was capable, when occasion
+  demanded, of firmness, but, in his ordinary deportment, he seemed unarmed
+  and unresisting, unsuspicious of guile in others, as he was totally free
+  from guile in himself. His integrity was proverbially great. In one instance
+  he had been intrusted by a lady to convey a sum of a thousand pounds to a
+  person at some miles distance: in another, he was employed by a gentleman,
+  during his absence, in the care of his house and furniture, to the value of
+  at least five times that sum. His habits of thinking were strictly his own,
+  full of justice, simplicity, and wisdom. He from time to time earned money
+  of his officers, by his peculiar excellence in furbishing arms; but he
+  declined offers that had been made him to become a Serjeant or a corporal,
+  saying that he did not want money, and that in a new situation he should
+  have less leisure for study. He was equally constant in refusing presents
+  that were offered him by persons who had been struck with his merit; not
+  that he was under the influence of false delicacy and pride, but that he had
+  no inclination to accept that, the want of which he did not feel to be an
+  evil. This man died while I was in prison. I received his last
+  breath.<a name="footnotetag3" id="footnotetag3"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The whole day I was obliged to spend in the company of these men, some of
+  them having really committed the actions laid to their charge, others whom
+  their ill fortune had rendered the victims of suspicion. The whole was a
+  scene of misery, such as nothing short of actual observation can suggest to
+  the mind. Some were noisy and obstreperous, endeavouring by a false bravery
+  to keep at bay the remembrance of their condition; while others, incapable
+  even of this effort, had the torment of their thoughts aggravated by the
+  perpetual noise and confusion that prevailed around them. In the faces of
+  those who assumed the most courage, you might trace the furrows of anxious
+  care and in the midst of their laboured hilarity dreadful ideas would ever
+  and anon intrude, convulsing their features, and working every line into an
+  expression of the keenest agony. To these men the sun brought no return of
+  joy. Day after day rolled on, but their state was immutable. Existence was
+  to them a scene of invariable melancholy; every moment was a moment of
+  anguish; yet did they wish to prolong that moment, fearful that the coming
+  period would bring a severer fate. They thought of the past with
+  insupportable repentance, each man contented to give his right hand to have
+  again the choice of that peace and liberty, which he had unthinkingly
+  bartered away. We talk of instruments of torture; Englishmen take credit to
+  themselves for having banished the use of them from their happy shore! Alas!
+  he that has observed the secrets of a prison, well knows that there is more
+  torture in the lingering existence of a criminal, in the silent intolerable
+  minutes that he spends, than in the tangible misery of whips and racks!</p>
+
+  <p>Such were our days. At sunset our jailors appeared, and ordered each man
+  to come away, and be locked into his dungeon. It was a bitter aggravation of
+  our fate, to be under the arbitrary control of these fellows. They felt no
+  man's sorrow; they were of all men least capable of any sort of feeling.
+  They had a barbarous and sullen pleasure in issuing their detested mandates,
+  and observing the mournful reluctance with which they were obeyed. Whatever
+  they directed, it was in vain to expostulate; fetters, and bread and water,
+  were the sure consequences of resistance. Their tyranny had no other limit
+  than their own caprice. To whom shall the unfortunate felon appeal? To what
+  purpose complain, when his complaints are sure to be received with
+  incredulity? A tale of mutiny and necessary precaution is the unfailing
+  refuge of the keeper, and this tale is an everlasting bar against
+  redress.</p>
+
+  <p>Our dungeons were cells, 7-1/2 feet by 6-1/2, below the surface of the
+  ground, damp, without window, light, or air, except from a few holes worked
+  for that purpose in the door. In some of these miserable receptacles three
+  persons were put to sleep together.<a name="footnotetag4" id=
+  "footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> I was fortunate
+  enough to have one to myself. It was now the approach of winter. We were not
+  allowed to have candles, and, as I have already said, were thrust in here at
+  sunset, and not liberated till the returning day. This was our situation for
+  fourteen or fifteen hours out of the four-and-twenty. I had never been
+  accustomed to sleep more than six or seven hours, and my inclination to
+  sleep was now less than ever. Thus was I reduced to spend half my day in
+  this dreary abode, and in complete darkness. This was no trifling
+  aggravation of my lot.</p>
+
+  <p>Among my melancholy reflections I tasked my memory, and counted over the
+  doors, the locks, the bolts, the chains, the massy walls, and grated
+  windows, that were between me and liberty. "These," said I, "are the engines
+  that tyranny sits down in cold and serious meditation to invent. This is the
+  empire that man exercises over man. Thus is a being, formed to expatiate, to
+  act, to smile, and enjoy, restricted and benumbed. How great must be his
+  depravity or heedlessness, who vindicates this scheme for changing health
+  and gaiety and serenity, into the wanness of a dungeon, and the deep furrows
+  of agony and despair!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank God," exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God,
+  with us no man can be punished without a crime!" Unthinking wretch! Is that
+  a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and fetters? Go,
+  go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons! witness their
+  unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their governors, the misery of
+  their inmates! After that, show me the man shameless enough to triumph, and
+  say, England has no Bastile! Is there any charge so frivolous, upon which
+  men are not consigned to those detested abodes? Is there any villainy that
+  is not practised by justices and prosecutors? But against all this perhaps
+  you have been told there is redress. Yes; a redress, that it is the
+  consummation of insult so much as to name! Where shall the poor wretch
+  reduced to the last despair, to whom acquittal perhaps comes just time
+  enough to save him from perishing,&mdash;where shall this man find leisure,
+  and much less money, to fee counsel and officers, and purchase the tedious
+  dear-bought remedy of the law? No; he is too happy to leave his dungeon, and
+  the memory of his dungeon, behind him; and the same tyranny and wanton
+  oppression become the inheritance of his successor.</p>
+
+  <p>For myself, I looked round upon my walls, and forward upon the premature
+  death I had too much reason to expect: I consulted my own heart, that
+  whispered nothing but innocence; and I said, "This is society. This is the
+  object, the distribution of justice, which is the end of human reason. For
+  this sages have toiled, and midnight oil has been wasted. This!"</p>
+
+  <p>The reader will forgive this digression from the immediate subject of my
+  story. If it should be said these are general remarks, let it be remembered
+  that they are the dear-bought, result of experience. It is from the fulness
+  of a bursting heart that reproach thus flows to my pen. These are not the
+  declamations of a man desirous to be eloquent. I have felt the iron of
+  slavery grating upon my soul.</p>
+
+  <p>I believed that misery, more pure than that which I now endured, had
+  never fallen to the lot of a human being. I recollected with astonishment my
+  puerile eagerness to be brought to the test, and have my innocence examined.
+  I execrated it, as the vilest and most insufferable pedantry. I exclaimed,
+  in the bitterness of my heart, "Of what value is a fair fame? It is the
+  jewel of men formed to be amused with baubles. Without it, I might have had
+  serenity of heart and cheerfulness of occupation, peace, and liberty; why
+  should I consign my happiness to other men's arbitration? But, if a fair
+  fame were of the most inexpressible value, is this the method which common
+  sense would prescribe to retrieve it? The language which these institutions
+  hold out to the unfortunate is, 'Come, and be shut out from the light of
+  day; be the associate of those whom society has marked out for her
+  abhorrence, be the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you
+  be cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and
+  honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or
+  folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the smallest
+  foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own innocence; and I
+  soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those who are regularly
+  subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom, even with all the
+  superciliousness and precipitation of our courts of justice, no evidence can
+  be found sufficient to convict. How slender then must be that man's portion
+  of information and discernment, who is willing to commit his character and
+  welfare to such guardianship!</p>
+
+  <p>But my case was even worse than this. I intimately felt that a trial,
+  such as our institutions have hitherto been able to make it, is only the
+  worthy sequel of such a beginning. What chance was there after the purgation
+  I was now suffering, that I should come out acquitted at last? What
+  probability was there that the trial I had endured in the house of Mr.
+  Falkland was not just as fair as any that might be expected to follow? No; I
+  anticipated my own condemnation.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus was I cut off, for ever, from all that existence has to
+  bestow&mdash;from all the high hopes I had so often conceived&mdash;from all
+  the future excellence my soul so much delighted to imagine,&mdash;to spend a
+  few weeks in a miserable prison, and then to perish by the hand of the
+  public executioner. No language can do justice to the indignant and
+  soul-sickening loathing that these ideas excited. My resentment was not
+  restricted to my prosecutor, but extended itself to the whole machine of
+  society. I could never believe that all this was the fair result of
+  institutions inseparable from the general good. I regarded the whole human
+  species as so many hangmen and torturers; I considered them as confederated
+  to tear me to pieces; and this wide scene of inexorable persecution
+  inflicted upon me inexpressible agony. I looked on this side and on that: I
+  was innocent; I had a right to expect assistance; but every heart was
+  steeled against me; every hand was ready to lend its force to make my ruin
+  secure. No man that has not felt, in his own most momentous concerns,
+  justice, eternal truth, unalterable equity engaged in his behalf, and on the
+  other side brute force, impenetrable obstinacy, and unfeeling insolence, can
+  imagine the sensations that then passed through my mind. I saw treachery
+  triumphant and enthroned; I saw the sinews of innocence crumbled into dust
+  by the gripe of almighty guilt.</p>
+
+  <p>What relief had I from these sensations? Was it relief, that I spent the
+  day in the midst of profligacy and execrations&mdash;that I saw reflected
+  from every countenance agonies only inferior to my own? He that would form a
+  lively idea of the regions of the damned, need only to witness, for six
+  hours, a scene to which I was confined for many months. Not for one hour
+  could I withdraw myself from this complexity of horrors, or take refuge in
+  the calmness of meditation. Air, exercise, series, contrast, those grand
+  enliveners of the human frame, I was for ever debarred from, by the
+  inexorable tyranny under which I was fallen. Nor did I find the solitude of
+  my nightly dungeon less insupportable. Its only furniture was the straw that
+  served me for my repose. It was narrow, damp, and unwholesome. The slumbers
+  of a mind, wearied, like mine, with the most detestable uniformity, to whom
+  neither amusement nor occupation ever offered themselves to beguile the
+  painful hours, were short, disturbed, and unrefreshing. My sleeping, still
+  more than my waking thoughts, were full of perplexity, deformity, and
+  disorder. To these slumbers succeeded the hours which, by the regulations of
+  our prison, I was obliged, though awake, to spend in solitary and cheerless
+  darkness. Here I had neither books nor pens, nor any thing upon which to
+  engage my attention; all was a sightless blank. How was a mind, active and
+  indefatigable like mine, to endure this misery? I could not sink it in
+  lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with unintermitted and
+  demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human affairs, that condemns a
+  man to torture like this; that sanctions it, and knows not what is done
+  under its sanction; that is too supine and unfeeling to enquire into these
+  petty details; that calls this the ordeal of innocence, and the protector of
+  freedom! A thousand times I could have dashed my brains against the walls of
+  my dungeon; a thousand times I longed for death, and wished, with
+  inexpressible ardour, for an end to what I suffered; a thousand times I
+  meditated suicide, and ruminated, in the bitterness of my soul, upon the
+  different means of escaping from the load of existence. What had I to do
+  with life? I had seen enough to make me regard it with detestation. Why
+  should I wait the lingering process of legal despotism, and not dare so much
+  as to die, but when and how its instruments decreed? Still some inexplicable
+  suggestion withheld my hand. I clung with desperate fondness to this shadow
+  of existence, its mysterious attractions, and its hopeless prospects.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CXII" id="V2_CXII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Such were the reflections that haunted the first days of my imprisonment,
+  in consequence of which they were spent in perpetual anguish. But, after a
+  time, nature, wearied with distress, would no longer stoop to the burthen;
+  thought, which is incessantly varying, introduced a series of reflections
+  totally different.</p>
+
+  <p>My fortitude revived. I had always been accustomed to cheerfulness, good
+  humour, and serenity; and this habit now returned to visit me at the bottom
+  of my dungeon. No sooner did my contemplations take this turn, than I saw
+  the reasonableness and possibility of tranquillity and peace; and my mind
+  whispered to me the propriety of showing, in this forlorn condition, that I
+  was superior to all my persecutors. Blessed state of innocence and
+  self-approbation! The sunshine of conscious integrity pierced through all
+  the barriers of my cell, and spoke ten thousand times more joy to my heart,
+  than the accumulated splendours of nature and art can communicate to the
+  slaves of vice.</p>
+
+  <p>I found out the secret of employing my mind. I said, "I am shut up for
+  half the day in total darkness, without any external source of amusement;
+  the other half I spend in the midst of noise, turbulence, and, confusion.
+  What then? Can I not draw amusement from the stores of my own mind? Is it
+  not freighted with various knowledge? Have I not been employed from my
+  infancy in gratifying an insatiable curiosity? When should I derive benefit
+  from these superior advantages, if not at present?" Accordingly I tasked the
+  stores of my memory, and my powers of invention. I amused myself with
+  recollecting the history of my life. By degrees I called to mind a number of
+  minute circumstances, which, but for this exercise, would have been for ever
+  forgotten. I repassed in my thoughts whole conversations, I recollected
+  their subjects, their arrangement, their incidents, frequently their very
+  words. I mused upon these ideas, till I was totally absorbed in thought. I
+  repeated them, till my mind glowed with enthusiasm. I had my different
+  employments, fitted for the solitude of the night, in which I could give
+  full scope to the impulses of my mind; and for the uproar of the day, in
+  which my chief object was, to be insensible to the disorder with which I was
+  surrounded.</p>
+
+  <p>By degrees I quitted my own story, and employed myself in imaginary
+  adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be placed,
+  and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of insult and
+  danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me. In fancy I
+  often passed the awful hour of dissolving nature. In some of my reveries I
+  boiled with impetuous indignation, and in others patiently collected the
+  whole force of my mind for some fearful encounter. I cultivated the powers
+  of oratory suited to these different states, and improved more in eloquence
+  in the solitude of my dungeon, than perhaps I should have done in the
+  busiest and most crowded scenes.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I proceeded to as regular a disposition of my time, as the man
+  in his study, who passes from mathematics to poetry, and from poetry to the
+  law of nations, in the different parts of each single day; and I as seldom
+  infringed upon my plan. Nor were my subjects of disquisition less numerous
+  than his. I went over, by the assistance of memory only, a considerable part
+  of Euclid during my confinement, and revived, day after day, the series of
+  facts and incidents in some of the most celebrated historians. I became
+  myself a poet; and, while I described the sentiments cherished by the view
+  of natural objects, recorded the characters and passions of men, and partook
+  with a burning zeal in the generosity of their determinations, I eluded the
+  squalid solitude of my dungeon, and wandered in idea through all the
+  varieties of human society. I easily found expedients, such as the mind
+  seems always to require, and which books and pens supply to the man at
+  large, to record from time to time the progress that had been made.</p>
+
+  <p>While I was thus employed, I reflected with exultation upon the degree in
+  which man is independent of the smiles and frowns of fortune. I was beyond
+  her reach, for I could fall no lower. To an ordinary eye I might seem
+  destitute and miserable, but in reality I wanted for nothing. My fare was
+  coarse; but I was in health. My dungeon was noisome; but I felt no
+  inconvenience. I was shut up from the usual means of exercise and air; but I
+  found the method of exercising myself even to perspiration in my dungeon. I
+  had no power of withdrawing my person from a disgustful society, in the most
+  cheerful and valuable part of the day; but I soon brought to perfection the
+  art of withdrawing my thoughts, and saw and heard the people about me, for
+  just as short a time, and as seldom, as I pleased.</p>
+
+  <p>Such is man in himself considered; so simple his nature; so few his
+  wants. How different from the man of artificial society! Palaces are built
+  for his reception, a thousand vehicles provided for his exercise, provinces
+  are ransacked for the gratification of his appetite, and the whole world
+  traversed to supply him with apparel and furniture. Thus vast is his
+  expenditure, and the purchase slavery. He is dependent on a thousand
+  accidents for tranquillity and health, and his body and soul are at the
+  devotion of whoever will satisfy his imperious cravings.</p>
+
+  <p>In addition to the disadvantages of my present situation, I was reserved
+  for an ignominious death. What then? Every man must die. No man knows how
+  soon. It surely is not worse to encounter the king of terrors, in health,
+  and with every advantage for the collection of fortitude, than to encounter
+  him, already half subdued by sickness and suffering. I was resolved at least
+  fully to possess the days I had to live; and this is peculiarly in the power
+  of the man who preserves his health to the last moment of his existence. Why
+  should I suffer my mind to be invaded by unavailing regrets? Every sentiment
+  of vanity, or rather of independence and justice within me, instigated me to
+  say to my persecutor, "You may cut off my existence, but you cannot disturb
+  my serenity."</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CXIII" id="V2_CXIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+  <p>In the midst of these reflections, another thought, which had not before
+  struck me, occurred to my mind. "I exult," said I, "and reasonably, over the
+  impotence of my persecutor. Is not that impotence greater than I have yet
+  imagined? I say, he may cut off my existence, but cannot disturb my
+  serenity. It is true: my mind, the clearness of my spirit, the firmness of
+  my temper, are beyond his reach; is not my life equally so, if I please?
+  What are the material obstacles, that man never subdued? What is the
+  undertaking so arduous, that by some has not been accomplished? And if by
+  others, why not by me? Had they stronger motives than I? Was existence more
+  variously endeared to them? or had they more numerous methods by which to
+  animate and adorn it? Many of those who have exerted most perseverance and
+  intrepidity, were obviously my inferiors in that respect. Why should not I
+  be as daring as they? Adamant and steel have a ductility like water, to a
+  mind sufficiently bold and contemplative. The mind is master of itself; and
+  is endowed with powers that might enable it to laugh at the tyrant's
+  vigilance." I passed and repassed these ideas in my mind; and, heated with
+  the contemplation, I said, "No, I will not die!"</p>
+
+  <p>My reading, in early youth, had been extremely miscellaneous. I had read
+  of housebreakers, to whom locks and bolts were a jest, and who, vain of
+  their art, exhibited the experiment of entering a house the most strongly
+  barricaded, with as little noise, and almost as little trouble, as other men
+  would lift up a latch. There is nothing so interesting to the juvenile mind,
+  as the wonderful; there is no power that it so eagerly covets, as that of
+  astonishing spectators by its miraculous exertions. Mind appeared, to my
+  untutored reflections, vague, airy, and unfettered, the susceptible
+  perceiver of reasons, but never intended by nature to be the slave of force.
+  Why should it be in the power of man to overtake and hold me by violence?
+  Why, when I choose to withdraw myself, should I not be capable of eluding
+  the most vigilant search? These limbs, and this trunk, are a cumbrous and
+  unfortunate load for the power of thinking to drag along with it; but why
+  should not the power of thinking be able to lighten the load, till it shall
+  be no longer felt?&mdash;These early modes of reflection were by no means
+  indifferent to my present enquiries.</p>
+
+  <p>Our next-door neighbour at my father's house had been a carpenter. Fresh
+  from the sort of reading I have mentioned, I was eager to examine his tools,
+  their powers and their uses. This carpenter was a man of strong and vigorous
+  mind; and, his faculties having been chiefly confined to the range of his
+  profession, he was fertile in experiments, and ingenious in reasoning upon
+  these particular topics. I therefore obtained from him considerable
+  satisfaction; and, my mind being set in action, I sometimes even improved
+  upon the hints he furnished. His conversation was particularly agreeable to
+  me; I at first worked with him sometimes for my amusement, and afterwards
+  occasionally for a short time as his journeyman. I was constitutionally
+  vigorous; and, by the experience thus attained, I added to the abstract
+  possession of power, the skill of applying it, when I pleased, in such a
+  manner as that no part should be inefficient.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a strange, but no uncommon feature in the human mind, that the very
+  resource of which we stand in greatest need in a critical situation, though
+  already accumulated, it may be, by preceding industry, fails to present
+  itself at the time when it should be called into action. Thus my mind had
+  passed through two very different stages since my imprisonment, before this
+  means of liberation suggested itself. My faculties were overwhelmed in the
+  first instance, and raised to a pitch of enthusiasm in the second; while in
+  both I took it for granted in a manner, that I must passively submit to the
+  good pleasure of my persecutors.</p>
+
+  <p>During the period in which my mind had been thus undecided, and when I
+  had been little more than a month in durance, the assizes, which were held
+  twice a year in the town in which I was a prisoner, came on. Upon this
+  occasion my case was not brought forward, but was suffered to stand over six
+  months longer. It would have been just the same, if I had had as strong
+  reason to expect acquittal as I had conviction. If I had been apprehended
+  upon the most frivolous reasons upon which any justice of the peace ever
+  thought proper to commit a naked beggar for trial, I must still have waited
+  about two hundred and seventeen days before my innocence could be cleared.
+  So imperfect are the effects of the boasted laws of a country, whose
+  legislators hold their assembly from four to six months in every year! I
+  could never discover with certainty, whether this delay were owing to any
+  interference on the part of my prosecutor, or whether it fell out in the
+  regular administration of justice, which is too solemn and dignified to
+  accommodate itself to the rights or benefit of an insignificant
+  individual.</p>
+
+  <p>But this was not the only incident that occurred to me during my
+  confinement, for which I could find no satisfactory solution. It was nearly
+  at the same time, that the keeper began to alter his behaviour to me. He
+  sent for me one morning into the part of the building which was appropriated
+  for his own use, and, after some hesitation, told me he was sorry my
+  accommodations had been so indifferent, and asked whether I should like to
+  have a chamber in his family? I was struck with the unexpectedness of this
+  question, and desired to know whether any body had employed him to ask it.
+  No, he replied; but, now the assizes were over, he had fewer felons on his
+  hands, and more time to look about him. He believed I was a good kind of a
+  young man, and he had taken a sort of a liking to me. I fixed my eye upon
+  his countenance as he said this. I could discover none of the usual symptoms
+  of kindness; he appeared to me to be acting a part, unnatural, and that sat
+  with awkwardness upon him. He went on however to offer me the liberty of
+  eating at his table; which, if I chose it, he said, would make no difference
+  to him, and he should not think of charging me any thing for it. He had
+  always indeed as much upon his hands as one person could see to; but his
+  wife and his daughter Peggy would be woundily pleased to hear a person of
+  learning talk, as he understood I was; and perhaps I might not feel myself
+  unpleasantly circumstanced in their company.</p>
+
+  <p>I reflected on this proposal, and had little doubt, notwithstanding what
+  the keeper had affirmed to the contrary, that it did not proceed from any
+  spontaneous humanity in him, but that he had, to speak the language of
+  persons of his cast, good reasons for what he did. I busied myself in
+  conjectures as to who could be the author of this sort of indulgence and
+  attention. The two most likely persons were Mr. Falkland and Mr. Forester.
+  The latter I knew to be a man austere and inexorable towards those whom he
+  deemed vicious. He piqued himself upon being insensible to those softer
+  emotions, which, he believed, answered no other purpose than to seduce us
+  from our duty. Mr. Falkland, on the contrary, was a man of the acutest
+  sensibility; hence arose his pleasures and his pains, his virtues and his
+  vices. Though he were the bitterest enemy to whom I could possibly be
+  exposed, and though no sentiments of humanity could divert or control the
+  bent of his mind, I yet persuaded myself, that he was more likely than his
+  kinsman, to visit in idea the scene of my dungeon, and to feel impelled to
+  alleviate my sufferings.</p>
+
+  <p>This conjecture was by no means calculated to serve as balm to my mind.
+  My thoughts were full of irritation against my persecutor. How could I think
+  kindly of a man, in competition with the gratification of whose ruling
+  passion my good name or my life was deemed of no consideration? I saw him
+  crushing the one, and bringing the other into jeopardy, with a quietness and
+  composure on his part that I could not recollect without horror. I knew not
+  what were his plans respecting me. I knew not whether he troubled himself so
+  much as to form a barren wish for the preservation of one whose future
+  prospects he had so iniquitously tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to
+  my principal topic of recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I
+  should consent to go out of the world in silence, the victim of this man's
+  obduracy and art. In every view I felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of
+  his injustice; and my very soul spurned these pitiful indulgences, at a time
+  that he was grinding me into dust with the inexorableness of his
+  vengeance.</p>
+
+  <p>I was influenced by these sentiments in my reply to the jailor; and I
+  found a secret pleasure in pronouncing them in all their bitterness. I
+  viewed him with a sarcastic smile, and said, I was glad to find him of a
+  sudden become so humane: I was not however without some penetration as to
+  the humanity of a jailor, and could guess at the circumstances by which it
+  was produced. But he might tell his employer, that his cares were fruitless:
+  I would accept no favours from a man that held a halter about my neck; and
+  had courage enough to endure the worst both in time to come and
+  now.&mdash;The jailor looked at me with astonishment, and turning upon his
+  heel, exclaimed, "Well done, my cock! You have not had your learning for
+  nothing, I see. You are set upon not dying dunghill. But that is to come,
+  lad; you had better by half keep your courage till you shall find it
+  wanted."</p>
+
+  <p>The assizes, which passed over without influence to me, produced a great
+  revolution among my fellow-prisoners. I lived long enough in the jail to
+  witness a general mutation of its inhabitants. One of the housebreakers (the
+  rival of the Duke of Bedford), and the coiner, were hanged. Two more were
+  cast for transportation, and the rest acquitted. The transports remained
+  with us; and, though the prison was thus lightened of nine of its
+  inhabitants, there were, at the next half-yearly period of assizes, as many
+  persons on the felons' side, within three, as I had found on my first
+  arrival.</p>
+
+  <p>The soldier, whose story I have already recorded, died on the evening of
+  the very day on which the judges arrived, of a disease the consequence of
+  his confinement. Such was the justice, that resulted from the laws of his
+  country to an individual who would have been the ornament of any age; one
+  who, of all the men I ever knew, was perhaps the kindest, of the most
+  feeling heart, of the most engaging and unaffected manners, and the most
+  unblemished life. The name of this man was Brightwel. Were it possible for
+  my pen to consecrate him to never-dying fame, I could undertake no task more
+  grateful to my heart. His judgment was penetrating and manly, totally
+  unmixed with imbecility and confusion, while at the same time there was such
+  an uncontending frankness in his countenance, that a superficial observer
+  would have supposed he must have been the prey of the first plausible
+  knavery that was practised against him. Great reason have I to remember him
+  with affection! He was the most ardent, I had almost said the last, of my
+  friends. Nor did I remain in this respect in his debt. There was indeed a
+  great congeniality, if I may presume to say so, in our characters, except
+  that I cannot pretend to rival the originality and self-created vigour of
+  his mind, or to compare with, what the world has scarcely surpassed, the
+  correctness and untainted purity of his conduct. He heard my story, as far
+  as I thought proper to disclose it, with interest; he examined it with
+  sincere impartiality; and if, at first, any doubt remained upon his mind, a
+  frequent observation of me in my most unguarded moments taught him in no
+  long time to place an unreserved confidence in my innocence.</p>
+
+  <p>He talked of the injustice of which we were mutual victims, without
+  bitterness; and delighted to believe that the time would come, when the
+  possibility of such intolerable oppression would be extirpated. But this, he
+  said, was a happiness reserved for posterity; it was too late for us to reap
+  the benefit of it. It was some consolation to him, that he could not tell
+  the period in his past life, which the best judgment of which he was capable
+  would teach him to spend better. He could say, with as much reason as most
+  men, he had discharged his duty. But he foresaw that he should not survive
+  his present calamity. This was his prediction, while yet in health. He might
+  be said, in a certain sense, to have a broken heart. But, if that phrase
+  were in any way applicable to him, sure never was despair more calm, more
+  full of resignation and serenity.</p>
+
+  <p>At no time in the whole course of my adventures was I exposed to a shock
+  more severe, than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of his
+  fate presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of iniquity.
+  From him, and the execrations with which I loaded the government that could
+  be the instrument of his tragedy, I turned to myself. I beheld the
+  catastrophe of Brightwel with envy. A thousand times I longed that my corse
+  had lain in death, instead of his. I was only reserved, as I persuaded
+  myself, for unutterable woe. In a few days he would have been acquitted; his
+  liberty, his reputation restored; mankind perhaps, struck with the injustice
+  he had suffered, would have shown themselves eager to balance his
+  misfortunes, and obliterate his disgrace. But this man died; and I remained
+  alive! I, who, though not less wrongfully treated than he, had no hope of
+  reparation, must be marked as long as I lived for a villain, and in my death
+  probably held up to the scorn and detestation of my species!</p>
+
+  <p>Such were some of the immediate reflections which the fate of this
+  unfortunate martyr produced in my mind. Yet my intercourse with Brightwel
+  was not, in the review, without its portion of comfort. I said, "This man
+  has seen through the veil of calumny that overshades me: he has understood,
+  and has loved me. Why should I despair? May I not meet hereafter with men
+  ingenuous like him, who shall do me justice, and sympathise with my
+  calamity? With that consolation I will be satisfied. I will rest in the arms
+  of friendship, and forget the malignity of the world. Henceforth I will be
+  contented with tranquil obscurity, with the cultivation of sentiment and
+  wisdom, and the exercise of benevolence within a narrow circle." It was thus
+  that my mind became excited to the project I was about to undertake.</p>
+
+  <p>I had no sooner meditated the idea of an escape, than I determined upon
+  the following method of facilitating the preparations for it. I undertook to
+  ingratiate myself with my keeper. In the world I have generally found such
+  persons as had been acquainted with the outline of my story, regarding me
+  with a sort of loathing and abhorrence, which made them avoid me with as
+  much care as if I had been spotted with the plague. The idea of my having
+  first robbed my patron, and then endeavouring to clear myself by charging
+  him with subornation against me, placed me in a class distinct from, and
+  infinitely more guilty than that of common felons. But this man was too good
+  a master of his profession, to entertain aversion against a fellow-creature
+  upon that score. He considered the persons committed to his custody, merely
+  as so many human bodies, for whom he was responsible that they should be
+  forthcoming in time and place; and the difference of innocence and guilt he
+  looked down upon as an affair beneath his attention. I had not therefore the
+  prejudices to encounter in recommending myself to him, that I have found so
+  peculiarly obstinate in other cases. Add to which, the same motive, whatever
+  it was, that had made him so profuse in his offers a little before, had
+  probably its influence on the present occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>I informed him of my skill in the profession of a joiner, and offered to
+  make him half a dozen handsome chairs, if he would facilitate my obtaining
+  the tools necessary for carrying on my profession in my present confinement;
+  for, without his consent previously obtained, it would have been in vain for
+  me to expect that I could quietly exert an industry of this kind, even if my
+  existence had depended upon it. He looked at me first, as asking himself
+  what he was to understand by this novel proposal; and then, his countenance
+  most graciously relaxing, said, he was glad I was come off a little of my
+  high notions and my buckram, and he would see what he could do. Two days
+  after, he signified his compliance. He said that, as to the matter of the
+  present I had offered him, he thought nothing of that; I might do as I
+  pleased in it; but I might depend upon every civility from him that he could
+  show with safety to himself, if so be as, when he was civil, I did not offer
+  a second time for to snap and take him up short.</p>
+
+  <p>Having thus gained my preliminary, I gradually accumulated tools of
+  various sorts&mdash;gimlets, piercers, chisels, <i>et cetera</i>. I
+  immediately set myself to work. The nights were long, and the sordid
+  eagerness of my keeper, notwithstanding his ostentatious generosity, was
+  great; I therefore petitioned for, and was indulged with, a bit of candle,
+  that I might amuse myself for an hour or two with my work after I was locked
+  up in my dungeon. I did not however by any means apply constantly to the
+  work I had undertaken, and my jailor betrayed various tokens of impatience.
+  Perhaps he was afraid I should not have finished it, before I was hanged. I
+  however insisted upon working at my leisure as I pleased; and this he did
+  not venture expressly to dispute. In addition to the advantages thus
+  obtained, I procured secretly from Miss Peggy, who now and then came into
+  the jail to make her observations of the prisoners, and who seemed to have
+  conceived some partiality for my person, the implement of an iron crow.</p>
+
+  <p>In these proceedings it is easy to trace the vice and duplicity that must
+  be expected to grow out of injustice. I know not whether my readers will
+  pardon the sinister advantage I extracted from the mysterious concessions of
+  my keeper. But I must acknowledge my weakness in that respect; I am writing
+  my adventures, and not my apology; and I was not prepared to maintain the
+  unvaried sincerity of my manners, at the expense of a speedy close of my
+  existence.</p>
+
+  <p>My plan was now digested. I believed that, by means of the crow, I could
+  easily, and without much noise, force the door of my dungeon from its
+  hinges, or if not, that I could, in case of necessity, cut away the lock.
+  This door led into a narrow passage, bounded on one side by the range of
+  dungeons, and on the other by the jailor's and turnkeys' apartments, through
+  which was the usual entrance from the street. This outlet I dared not
+  attempt, for fear of disturbing the persons close to whose very door I
+  should in that case have found it necessary to pass. I determined therefore
+  upon another door at the further end of the passage, which was well
+  barricaded, and which led to a sort of garden in the occupation of the
+  keeper. This garden I had never entered, but I had had an opportunity of
+  observing it from the window of the felons' day-room, which looked that way,
+  the room itself being immediately over the range of dungeons. I perceived
+  that it was bounded by a wall of considerable height, which I was told by my
+  fellow-prisoners was the extremity of the jail on that side, and beyond
+  which was a back-lane of some length, that terminated in the skirts of the
+  town. Upon an accurate observation, and much reflection upon the subject, I
+  found I should be able, if once I got into the garden, with my gimlets and
+  piercers inserted at proper distances to make a sort of ladder, by means of
+  which I could clear the wall, and once more take possession of the sweets of
+  liberty. I preferred this wall to that which immediately skirted my dungeon,
+  on the other side of which was a populous street.</p>
+
+  <p>I suffered about two days to elapse from the period at which I had
+  thoroughly digested my project, and then in the very middle of the night
+  began to set about its execution. The first door was attended with
+  considerable difficulty; but at length this obstacle was happily removed.
+  The second door was fastened on the inside. I was therefore able with
+  perfect ease to push back the bolts. But the lock, which of course was
+  depended upon for the principal security, and was therefore strong, was
+  double-shot, and the key taken away. I endeavoured with my chisel to force
+  back the bolt of the lock, but to no purpose. I then unscrewed the box of
+  the lock; and, that being taken away, the door was no longer opposed to my
+  wishes.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus far I had proceeded with the happiest success; but close on the
+  other side of the door there was a kennel with a large mastiff dog, of which
+  I had not the smallest previous knowledge. Though I stepped along in the
+  most careful manner, this animal was disturbed, and began to bark. I was
+  extremely disconcerted, but immediately applied myself to soothe the animal,
+  in which I presently succeeded. I then returned along the passage to listen
+  whether any body had been disturbed by the noise of the dog; resolved, if
+  that had been the case, that I would return to my dungeon, and endeavour to
+  replace every thing in its former state. But the whole appeared perfectly
+  quiet, and I was encouraged to proceed in my operation.</p>
+
+  <p>I now got to the wall, and had nearly gained half the ascent, when I
+  heard a voice at the garden-door, crying, "Holloa! who is there? who opened
+  the door?" The man received no answer, and the night was too dark for him to
+  distinguish objects at any distance. He therefore returned, as I judged,
+  into the house for a light. Meantime the dog, understanding the key in which
+  these interrogations were uttered, began barking again more violently than
+  ever. I had now no possibility of retreat, and I was not without hopes that
+  I might yet accomplish my object, and clear the wall. Meanwhile a second man
+  came out, while the other was getting his lantern, and by the time I had got
+  to the top of the wall was able to perceive me. He immediately set up a
+  shout, and threw a large stone, which grazed me in its flight. Alarmed at my
+  situation, I was obliged to descend on the other side without taking the
+  necessary precautions, and in my fall nearly dislocated my ankle.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a door in the wall, of which I was not previously apprised;
+  and, this being opened, the two men with the lantern were on the other side
+  in an instant. They had then nothing to do but to run along the lane to the
+  place from which I had descended. I endeavoured to rise after my fall; but
+  the pain was so intense, that I was scarcely able to stand, and, after
+  having limped a few paces, I twisted my foot under me, and fell down again.
+  I had now no remedy, and quietly suffered myself to be retaken.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V2_CXIV" id="V2_CXIV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+  <p>I was conducted to the keeper's room for that night, and the two men sat
+  up with me. I was accosted with many interrogatories, to which I gave little
+  answer, but complained of the hurt in my leg. To this I could obtain no
+  reply, except "Curse you, my lad! if that be all, we will give you some
+  ointment for that; we will anoint it with a little cold iron." They were
+  indeed excessively sulky with me, for having broken their night's rest, and
+  given them all this trouble. In the morning they were as good as their word,
+  fixing a pair of fetters upon both my legs, regardless of the ankle which
+  was now swelled to a considerable size, and then fastening me, with a
+  padlock, to a staple in the floor of my dungeon. I expostulated with warmth
+  upon this treatment, and told them, that I was a man upon whom the law as
+  yet had passed no censure, and who therefore, in the eye of the law, was
+  innocent. But they bid me keep such fudge for people who knew no better;
+  they knew what they did, and would answer it to any court in England.</p>
+
+  <p>The pain of the fetter was intolerable. I endeavoured in various ways to
+  relieve it, and even privily to free my leg; but the more it was swelled,
+  the more was this rendered impossible. I then resolved to bear it with
+  patience: still, the longer it continued, the worse it grew. After two days
+  and two nights, I entreated the turnkey to go and ask the surgeon, who
+  usually attended the prison, to look at it, for, if it continued longer as
+  it was, I was convinced it would mortify. But he glared surlily at me, and
+  said, "Damn my blood! I should like to see that day. To die of a
+  mortification is too good an end for such a rascal!" At the time that he
+  thus addressed me, the whole mass of my blood was already fevered by the
+  anguish I had undergone, my patience was wholly exhausted, and I was silly
+  enough to be irritated beyond bearing, by his impertinence and vulgarity:
+  "Look, you, Mr. Turnkey," said I, "there is one thing that such fellows as
+  you are set over us for, and another thing that you are not. You are to take
+  care we do not escape; but it is no part of your office to call us names and
+  abuse us. If I were not chained to the floor, you dare as well eat your
+  fingers as use such language; and, take my word for it, you shall yet live
+  to repent of your insolence."</p>
+
+  <p>While I thus spoke, the man stared at me with astonishment. He was so
+  little accustomed to such retorts, that, at first, he could scarcely believe
+  his ears; and such was the firmness of my manner, that he seemed to forget
+  for a moment that I was not at large. But, as soon as he had time to
+  recollect himself, he did not deign to be angry. His face relaxed into a
+  smile of contempt; he snapped his fingers at me; and, turning upon his heel,
+  exclaimed, "Well said, my cock! crow away! Have a care you do not burst!"
+  and, as he shut the door upon me, mimicked the voice of the animal he
+  mentioned.</p>
+
+  <p>This rejoinder brought me to myself in a moment, and showed me the
+  impotence of the resentment I was expressing. But, though he thus put an end
+  to the violence of my speech, the torture of my body continued as great as
+  ever. I was determined to change my mode of attack. The same turnkey
+  returned in a few minutes; and, as he approached me, to put down some food
+  he had brought, I slipped a shilling into his hand, saying at the same time,
+  "My good fellow, for God's sake, go to the surgeon; I am sure you do not
+  wish me to perish for want of assistance." The fellow put the shilling into
+  his pocket, looked hard at me, and then with one nod of his head, and
+  without uttering a single word, went away. The surgeon presently after made
+  his appearance; and, finding the part in a high state of inflammation,
+  ordered certain applications, and gave peremptory directions that the fetter
+  should not be replaced upon that leg, till a cure had been effected. It was
+  a full month before the leg was perfectly healed, and made equally strong
+  and flexible with the other.</p>
+
+  <p>The condition in which I was now placed, was totally different from that
+  which had preceded this attempt. I was chained all day in my dungeon, with
+  no other mitigation, except that the door was regularly opened for a few
+  hours in an afternoon, at which time some of the prisoners occasionally came
+  and spoke to me, particularly one, who, though he could ill replace my
+  benevolent Brightwel, was not deficient in excellent qualities. This was no
+  other than the individual whom Mr. Falkland had, some months before,
+  dismissed upon an accusation of murder. His courage was gone, his garb was
+  squalid, and the comeliness and clearness of his countenance was utterly
+  obliterated. He also was innocent, worthy, brave, and benevolent. He was, I
+  believe, afterwards acquitted, and turned loose, to wander a desolate and
+  perturbed spectre through the world. My manual labours were now at an end;
+  my dungeon was searched every night, and every kind of tool carefully kept
+  from me. The straw, which had been hitherto allowed me, was removed, under
+  pretence that it was adapted for concealment; and the only conveniences with
+  which I was indulged, were a chair and a blanket.</p>
+
+  <p>A prospect of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this
+  my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his
+  appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity. He
+  pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He reprehended
+  in strong terms my attempt to escape, and observed, that there must be an
+  end of civility from people in his situation, if gentlemen, after all, would
+  not know when they were well. It was necessary, in cases the like of this,
+  to let the law take its course; and it would be ridiculous in me to
+  complain, if, after a regular trial, things should go hard with me. He was
+  desirous of being in every respect my friend, if I would let him. In the
+  midst of this circumlocution and preamble, he was called away from me, for
+  something relating to the business of his office. In the mean time I
+  ruminated upon his overtures; and, detesting as I did the source from which
+  I conceived them to flow, I could not help reflecting how far it would be
+  possible to extract from them the means of escape. But my meditations in
+  this case were vain. The keeper returned no more during the remainder of
+  that day, and, on the next, an incident occurred which put an end to all
+  expectations from his kindness.</p>
+
+  <p>An active mind, which has once been forced into any particular train, can
+  scarcely be persuaded to desert it as hopeless. I had studied my chains,
+  during the extreme anguish that I endured from the pressure of the fetter
+  upon the ankle which had been sprained; and though, from the swelling and
+  acute sensibility of the part, I had found all attempts at relief, in that
+  instance, impracticable, I obtained, from the coolness of my investigation,
+  another and apparently superior advantage. During the night, my dungeon was
+  in a complete state of darkness; but, when the door was open, the case was
+  somewhat different. The passage indeed into which it opened, was so narrow,
+  and the opposite dead wall so near, that it was but a glimmering and
+  melancholy light that entered my apartment, even at full noon, and when the
+  door was at its widest extent. But my eyes, after a practice of two or three
+  weeks, accommodated themselves to this circumstance, and I learned to
+  distinguish the minutest object. One day, as I was alternately meditating
+  and examining the objects around me, I chanced to observe a nail trodden
+  into the mud-floor at no great distance from me. I immediately conceived the
+  desire of possessing myself of this implement; but, for fear of surprise,
+  people passing perpetually to and fro, I contented myself, for the present,
+  with remarking its situation so accurately, that I might easily find it
+  again in the dark. Accordingly, as soon as my door was shut, I seized upon
+  this new treasure, and, having contrived to fashion it to my purpose, found
+  that I could unlock with it the padlock that fastened me to the staple in
+  the floor. This I regarded as no inconsiderable advantage, separately from
+  the use I might derive from it in relation to my principal object. My chain
+  permitted me to move only about eighteen inches to the right or left; and,
+  having borne this confinement for several weeks, my very heart leaped at the
+  pitiful consolation of being able to range, without constraint, the
+  miserable coop in which I was immured. This incident had occurred several
+  days previously to the last visit of my keeper.</p>
+
+  <p>From this time it had been my constant practice to liberate myself every
+  night, and not to replace things in their former situation till I awoke in
+  the morning, and expected shortly to perceive the entrance of the turnkey.
+  Security breeds negligence. On the morning succeeding my conference with the
+  jailor, it so happened, whether I overslept myself, or the turnkey went his
+  round earlier than usual, that I was roused from my sleep by the noise he
+  made in opening the cell next to my own; and though I exerted the utmost
+  diligence, yet having to grope for my materials in the dark, I was unable to
+  fasten the chain to the staple, before he entered, as usual, with his
+  lantern. He was extremely surprised to find me disengaged, and immediately
+  summoned the principal keeper. I was questioned respecting my method of
+  proceeding; and, as I believed concealment could lead to nothing but a
+  severer search, and a more accurate watch, I readily acquainted them with
+  the exact truth. The illustrious personage, whose functions it was to
+  control the inhabitants of these walls, was, by this last instance,
+  completely exasperated against me. Artifice and fair speaking were at an
+  end. His eyes sparkled with fury; he exclaimed, that he was now convinced of
+  the folly of showing kindness to rascals, the scum of the earth, such as I
+  was; and, damn him, if any body should catch him at that again towards any
+  one. I had cured him effectually! He was astonished that the laws had not
+  provided some terrible retaliation for thieves that attempted to deceive
+  their jailors. Hanging was a thousand times too good for me!</p>
+
+  <p>Having vented his indignation, he proceeded to give such orders as the
+  united instigations of anger and alarm suggested to his mind. My apartment
+  was changed. I was conducted to a room called the strong room, the door of
+  which opened into the middle cell of the range of dungeons. It was
+  under-ground, as they were, and had also the day-room for felons, already
+  described, immediately over it. It was spacious and dreary. The door had not
+  been opened for years; the air was putrid; and the walls hung round with
+  damps and mildew. The fetters, the padlock, and the staple, were employed,
+  as in the former case, in addition to which they put on me a pair of
+  handcuffs. For my first provision, the keeper sent me nothing but a bit of
+  bread, mouldy and black, and some dirty and stinking water. I know not
+  indeed whether this is to be regarded as gratuitous tyranny on the part of
+  the jailor; the law having providently directed, in certain cases, that the
+  water to be administered to the prisoners shall be taken from "the next sink
+  or puddle nearest to the jail."<a name="footnotetag5" id=
+  "footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> It was further
+  ordered, that one of the turnkeys should sleep in the cell that formed a
+  sort of anti-chamber to my apartment. Though every convenience was provided,
+  to render this chamber fit for the reception of a personage of a dignity so
+  superior to the felon he was appointed to guard, he expressed much
+  dissatisfaction at the mandate: but there was no alternative.</p>
+
+  <p>The situation to which I was thus removed was, apparently, the most
+  undesirable that could be imagined but I was not discouraged; I had for some
+  time learned not to judge by appearances. The apartment was dark and
+  unwholesome; but I had acquired the secret of counteracting these
+  influences. My door was kept continually shut, and the other prisoners were
+  debarred access to me; but if the intercourse of our fellow-men has its
+  pleasure, solitude, on the other hand, is not without its advantages. In
+  solitude we can pursue our own thoughts undisturbed; and I was able to call
+  up at will the most pleasing avocations. Besides which, to one who meditated
+  such designs as now filled my mind, solitude had peculiar recommendations. I
+  was scarcely left to myself, before I tried an experiment, the idea of which
+  I conceived, while they were fixing my handcuffs; and, with my teeth only,
+  disengaged myself from this restraint. The hours at which I was visited by
+  the keepers were regular, and I took care to be provided for them. Add to
+  which, I had a narrow grated window near the ceiling, about nine inches in
+  perpendicular, and a foot and a half horizontally, which, though small,
+  admitted a much stronger light than that to which I had been accustomed for
+  several weeks. Thus circumstanced, I scarcely ever found myself in total
+  darkness, and was better provided against surprises than I had been in my
+  preceding situation. Such were the sentiments which this change of abode
+  immediately suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>I had been a very little time removed, when I received an unexpected
+  visit from Thomas, Mr. Falkland's footman, whom I have already mentioned in
+  the course of my narrative. A servant of Mr. Forester happened to come to
+  the town where I was imprisoned, a few weeks before, while I was confined
+  with the hurt in my ankle, and had called in to see me. The account he gave
+  of what he observed had been the source of many an uneasy sensation to
+  Thomas. The former visit was a matter of mere curiosity; but Thomas was of
+  the better order of servants. He was considerably struck at the sight of me.
+  Though my mind was now serene, and my health sufficiently good, yet the
+  floridness of my complexion was gone, and there was a rudeness in my
+  physiognomy, the consequence of hardship and fortitude, extremely unlike the
+  sleekness of my better days. Thomas looked alternately in my face, at my
+  hands, and my feet; and then fetched a deep sigh. After a pause,</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord bless us!" said he, in a voice in which commiseration was
+  sufficiently perceptible, "is this you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why not, Thomas? You knew I was sent to prison, did not you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Prison! and must people in prison be shackled and bound of that
+  fashion?&mdash;and where do you lay of nights?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Here."</p>
+
+  <p>"Here? Why there is no bed!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Thomas, I am not allowed a bed. I had straw formerly, but that is
+  taken away."</p>
+
+  <p>"And do they take off them there things of nights?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No; I am expected to sleep just as you see."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleep! Why I thought this was a Christian country; but this usage is too
+  bad for a dog."</p>
+
+  <p>"You must not say so, Thomas; it is what the wisdom of government has
+  thought fit to provide."</p>
+
+  <p>"Zounds, how I have been deceived! They told me what a fine thing it was
+  to be an Englishman, and about liberty and property, and all that there; and
+  I find it is all a flam. Lord, what fools we be! Things are done under our
+  very noses, and we know nothing of the matter; and a parcel of fellows with
+  grave faces swear to us, that such things never happen but in France, and
+  other countries the like of that. Why, you ha'n't been tried, ha' you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>"And what signifies being tried, when they do worse than hang a man, and
+  all beforehand? Well, master Williams, you have been very wicked to be sure,
+  and I thought it would have done me good to see you hanged. But, I do not
+  know how it is, one's heart melts, and pity comes over one, if we take time
+  to cool. I know that ought not to be; but, damn it, when I talked of your
+  being hanged, I did not think of your suffering all this into the
+  bargain."</p>
+
+  <p>Soon after this conversation Thomas left me. The idea of the long
+  connection of our families rushed upon his memory, and he felt more for my
+  sufferings, at the moment, than I did for myself. In the afternoon I was
+  surprised to see him again. He said that he could not get the thought of me
+  out of his mind, and therefore he hoped I would not be displeased at his
+  coming once more to take leave of me. I could perceive that he had something
+  upon his mind, which he did not know how to discharge. One of the turnkeys
+  had each time come into the room with him, and continued as long as he
+  staid. Upon some avocation however&mdash;a noise, I believe, in the
+  passage&mdash;the turnkey went as far as the door to satisfy his curiosity;
+  and Thomas, watching the opportunity, slipped into my hand a chisel, a file,
+  and a saw, exclaiming at the same time with a sorrowful tone, "I know I am
+  doing wrong; but, if they hang me too, I cannot help it; I cannot do no
+  other. For Christ's sake, get out of this place; I cannot bear the thoughts
+  of it!" I received the implements with great joy, and thrust them into my
+  bosom; and, as soon as he was gone, concealed them in the rushes of my
+  chair. For himself he had accomplished the object for which he came, and
+  presently after bade me farewell.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, the keepers, I know not for what reason, were more than
+  usually industrious in their search, saying, though without assigning any
+  ground for their suspicion, that they were sure I had some tool in my
+  possession that I ought not; but the depository I had chosen escaped
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>I waited from this time the greater part of a week, that I might have the
+  benefit of a bright moonlight. It was necessary that I should work in the
+  night; it was necessary that my operations should be performed between the
+  last visit of the keepers at night and their first in the morning, that is,
+  between nine in the evening and seven. In my dungeon, as I have already
+  said, I passed fourteen or sixteen hours of the four-and-twenty undisturbed;
+  but since I had acquired a character for mechanical ingenuity, a particular
+  exception with respect to me was made from the general rules of the
+  prison.</p>
+
+  <p>It was ten o'clock when I entered on my undertaking. The room in which I
+  was confined was secured with a double door. This was totally superfluous
+  for the purpose of my detention, since there was a sentinel planted on the
+  outside. But it was very fortunate for my plan; because these doors
+  prevented the easy communication of sound, and afforded me tolerable
+  satisfaction that, with a little care in my mode of proceeding, I might be
+  secure against the danger of being overheard. I first took off my handcuffs.
+  I then filed through my fetters; and next performed the same service to
+  three of the iron bars that secured my window, to which I climbed, partly by
+  the assistance of my chair, and partly by means of certain irregularities in
+  the wall. All this was the work of more than two hours. When the bars were
+  filed through, I easily forced them a little from the perpendicular, and
+  then drew them, one by one, out of the wall, into which they were sunk about
+  three inches perfectly straight, and without any precaution to prevent their
+  being removed. But the space thus obtained was by no means wide enough to
+  admit the passing of my body. I therefore applied myself, partly with my
+  chisel, and partly with one of the iron bars, to the loosening the
+  brick-work; and when I had thus disengaged four or five bricks, I got down
+  and piled them upon the floor. This operation I repeated three or four times
+  The space was now sufficient for my purpose: and, having crept through the
+  opening, I stepped upon a shed on the outside.</p>
+
+  <p>I was now in a kind of rude area between two dead walls, that south of
+  the felons' day-room (the windows of which were at the east end) and the
+  wall of the prison. But I had not, as formerly, any instruments to assist me
+  in scaling the wall, which was of considerable height. There was, of
+  consequence, no resource for me but that of effecting a practicable breach
+  in the lower part of the wall, which was of no contemptible strength, being
+  of stone on the outside, with a facing of brick within. The rooms for the
+  debtors were at right angles with the building from which I had just
+  escaped; and, as the night was extremely bright, I was in momentary danger,
+  particularly in case of the least noise, of being discovered by them,
+  several of their windows commanding this area. Thus circumstanced, I
+  determined to make the shed answer the purpose of concealment. It was
+  locked; but, with the broken link of my fetters, which I had had the
+  precaution to bring with me, I found no great difficulty in opening the
+  lock. I had now got a sufficient means of hiding my person while I proceeded
+  in my work, attended with no other disadvantage than that of being obliged
+  to leave the door, through which I had thus broken, a little open for the
+  sake of light. After some time, I had removed a considerable part of the
+  brick-work of the outer wall; but, when I came to the stone, I found the
+  undertaking infinitely more difficult. The mortar which bound together the
+  building was, by length of time, nearly petrified, and appeared to my first
+  efforts one solid rock of the hardest adamant. I had now been six hours
+  incessantly engaged in incredible labour: my chisel broke in the first
+  attempt upon this new obstacle; and between fatigue already endured, and the
+  seemingly invincible difficulty before me, I concluded that I must remain
+  where I was, and gave up the idea of further effort as useless. At the same
+  time the moon, whose light had till now been of the greatest use to me, set,
+  and I was left in total darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>After a respite of ten minutes however, I returned to the attack with new
+  vigour. It could not be less than two hours before the first stone was
+  loosened from the edifice. In one hour more, the space was sufficient to
+  admit of my escape. The pile of bricks I had left in the strong room was
+  considerable. But it was a mole-hill compared with the ruins I had forced
+  from the outer wall. I am fully assured that the work I had thus performed
+  would have been to a common labourer, with every advantage of tools, the
+  business of two or three days. But my difficulties, instead of being ended,
+  seemed to be only begun. The day broke, before I had completed the opening,
+  and in ten minutes more the keepers would probably enter my apartment, and
+  perceive the devastation I had left. The lane, which connected the side of
+  the prison through which I had escaped with the adjacent country, was formed
+  chiefly by two dead walls, with here and there a stable, a few warehouses,
+  and some mean habitations, tenanted by the lower order of people. My best
+  security lay in clearing the town as soon as possible, and depending upon
+  the open country for protection. My arms were intolerably swelled and
+  bruised with my labour, and my strength seemed wholly exhausted with
+  fatigue. Speed I was nearly unable to exert for any continuance; and, if I
+  could, with the enemy so close at my heels, speed would too probably have
+  been useless. It appeared as if I were now in almost the same situation as
+  that in which I had been placed five or six weeks before, in which, after
+  having completed my escape, I was obliged to yield myself up, without
+  resistance, to my pursuers. I was not however disabled as then; I was
+  capable of exertion, to what precise extent I could not ascertain; and I was
+  well aware, that every instance in which I should fail of my purpose would
+  contribute to enhance the difficulty of any future attempt. Such were the
+  considerations that presented themselves in relation to my escape; and, even
+  if that were effected, I had to reckon among my difficulties, that, at the
+  time I quitted my prison, I was destitute of every resource, and had not a
+  shilling remaining in the world.</p>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <a name="VOLUME_THE_THIRD" id="VOLUME_THE_THIRD"></a>
+
+  <h2>VOLUME THE THIRD.</h2>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CI" id="V3_CI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+  <p>I passed along the lane I have described, without perceiving or being
+  observed by a human being. The doors were shut, the window-shutters closed,
+  and all was still as night. I reached the extremity of the lane unmolested.
+  My pursuers, if they immediately followed, would know that the likelihood
+  was small, of my having in the interval found shelter in this place; and
+  would proceed without hesitation, as I on my part was obliged to do, from
+  the end nearest to the prison to its furthest termination.</p>
+
+  <p>The face of the country, in the spot to which I had thus opened myself a
+  passage, was rude and uncultivated. It was overgrown with brushwood and
+  furze; the soil was for the most part of a loose sand; and the surface
+  extremely irregular. I climbed a small eminence, and could perceive, not
+  very remote in the distance, a few cottages thinly scattered. This prospect
+  did not altogether please me; I conceived that my safety would, for the
+  present, be extremely assisted, by keeping myself from the view of any human
+  being.</p>
+
+  <p>I therefore came down again into the valley, and upon a careful
+  examination perceived that it was interspersed with cavities, some deeper
+  than others, but all of them so shallow, as neither to be capable of hiding
+  a man, nor of exciting suspicion as places of possible concealment.
+  Meanwhile the day had but just begun to dawn; the morning was lowering and
+  drizzly; and, though the depth of these caverns was of course well known to
+  the neighbouring inhabitants, the shadows they cast were so black and
+  impenetrable, as might well have produced wider expectations in the mind of
+  a stranger. Poor therefore as was the protection they were able to afford, I
+  thought it right to have recourse to it for the moment, as the best the
+  emergency would supply. It was for my life; and, the greater was the
+  jeopardy to which it was exposed, the more dear did that life seem to become
+  to my affections. The recess I chose, as most secure, was within little more
+  than a hundred yards of the end of the lane, and the extreme buildings of
+  the town.</p>
+
+  <p>I had not stood up in this manner two minutes, before I heard the sound
+  of feet, and presently saw the ordinary turnkey and another pass the place
+  of my retreat. They were so close to me that, if I had stretched out my
+  hand, I believe I could have caught hold of their clothes, without so much
+  as changing my posture. As no part of the overhanging earth intervened
+  between me and them, I could see them entire, though the deepness of the
+  shade rendered me almost completely invisible. I heard them say to each
+  other, in tones of vehement asperity, "Curse the rascal! which way can he be
+  gone?" The reply was, "Damn him! I wish we had him but safe once
+  again!"&mdash;"Never fear!" rejoined the first; "he cannot have above half a
+  mile the start of us." They were presently out of hearing; for, as to sight,
+  I dared not advance my body, so much as an inch, to look after them, lest I
+  should be discovered by my pursuers in some other direction. From the very
+  short time that elapsed, between my escape and the appearance of these men,
+  I concluded that they had made their way through the same outlet as I had
+  done, it being impossible that they could have had time to come, from the
+  gate of the prison, and so round a considerable part of the town, as they
+  must otherwise have done.</p>
+
+  <p>I was so alarmed at this instance of diligence on the part of the enemy,
+  that, for some time, I scarcely ventured to proceed an inch from my place of
+  concealment, or almost to change my posture. The morning, which had been
+  bleak and drizzly, was succeeded by a day of heavy and incessant rain; and
+  the gloomy state of the air and surrounding objects, together with the
+  extreme nearness of my prison, and a total want of food, caused me to pass
+  the hours in no very agreeable sensations. This inclemency of the weather
+  however, which generated a feeling of stillness and solitude, encouraged me
+  by degrees to change my retreat, for another of the same nature, out of
+  somewhat greater security. I hovered with little variation about a single
+  spot, as long as the sun continued above the horizon.</p>
+
+  <p>Towards evening, the clouds began to disperse, and the moon shone, as on
+  the preceding night, in full brightness. I had perceived no human creature
+  during the whole day, except in the instance already mentioned. This had
+  perhaps been owing to the nature of the day; at all events I considered it
+  as too hazardous an experiment, to venture from my hiding-place in so clear
+  and fine a night. I was therefore obliged to wait for the setting of this
+  luminary, which was not till near five o'clock in the morning. My only
+  relief during this interval was to allow myself to sink to the bottom of my
+  cavern, it being scarcely possible for me to continue any longer on my feet.
+  Here I fell into an interrupted and unrefreshing doze, the consequence of a
+  laborious night, and a tedious, melancholy day; though I rather sought to
+  avoid sleep, which, cooperating with the coldness of the season, would tend
+  more to injury than advantage.</p>
+
+  <p>The period of darkness, which I had determined to use for the purpose of
+  removing to a greater distance from my prison, was, in its whole duration,
+  something less than three hours. When I rose from my seat, I was weak with
+  hunger and fatigue, and, which was worse, I seemed, between the dampness of
+  the preceding day and the sharp, clear frost of the night, to have lost the
+  command of my limbs. I stood up and shook myself; I leaned against the side
+  of the hill, impelling in different directions the muscles of the
+  extremities; and at length recovered in some degree the sense of feeling.
+  This operation was attended with an incredible aching pain, and required no
+  common share of resolution to encounter and prosecute it. Having quitted my
+  retreat, I at first advanced with weak and tottering steps; but, as I
+  proceeded, increased my pace. The barren heath, which reached to the edge of
+  the town, was, at least on this side, without a path; but the stars shone,
+  and, guiding myself by them, I determined to steer as far as possible from
+  the hateful scene where I had been so long confined. The line I pursued was
+  of irregular surface, sometimes obliging me to climb a steep ascent, and at
+  others to go down into a dark and impenetrable dell. I was often compelled,
+  by the dangerousness of the way, to deviate considerably from the direction
+  I wished to pursue. In the mean time I advanced with as much rapidity as
+  these and similar obstacles would permit me to do. The swiftness of the
+  motion, and the thinness of the air, restored to me my alacrity. I forgot
+  the inconveniences under which I laboured, and my mind became lively,
+  spirited, and enthusiastic.</p>
+
+  <p>I had now reached the border of the heath, and entered upon what is
+  usually termed the forest. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true,
+  that, in this conjuncture, exhausted with hunger, destitute of all provision
+  for the future, and surrounded with the most alarming dangers, my mind
+  suddenly became glowing, animated, and cheerful. I thought that, by this
+  time, the most formidable difficulties of my undertaking were surmounted;
+  and I could not believe that, after having effected so much, I should find
+  any thing invincible in what remained to be done. I recollected the
+  confinement I had undergone, and the fate that had impended over me, with
+  horror. Never did man feel more vividly, than I felt at that moment, the
+  sweets of liberty. Never did man more strenuously prefer poverty with
+  independence, to the artificial allurements of a life of slavery. I
+  stretched forth my arms with rapture; I clapped my hands one upon the other,
+  and exclaimed, "Ah, this is indeed to be a man! These wrists were lately
+  galled with fetters; all my motions, whether I rose up or sat down, were
+  echoed to with the clanking of chains; I was tied down like a wild beast,
+  and could not move but in a circle of a few feet in circumference. Now I can
+  run fleet as a greyhound, and leap like a young roe upon the mountains. Oh,
+  God! (if God there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of an
+  anxious heart) thou only canst tell with what delight a prisoner, just broke
+  forth from his dungeon, hugs the blessings of new-found liberty! Sacred and
+  indescribable moment, when man regains his rights! But lately I held my life
+  in jeopardy, because one man was unprincipled enough to assert what he knew
+  to be false; I was destined to suffer an early and inexorable death from the
+  hands of others, because none of them had penetration enough to distinguish
+  from falsehood, what I uttered with the entire conviction of a full-fraught
+  heart! Strange, that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their
+  lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a
+  power of acting the tyrant according to law! Oh, God! give me poverty!
+  shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive
+  them all with thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert,
+  so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of
+  authority! Suffer me at least to call life, and the pursuits of life, my
+  own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of beasts,
+  or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of
+  monopolists and kings!"&mdash;How enviable was the enthusiasm which could
+  thus furnish me with energy, in the midst of hunger, poverty, and universal
+  desertion!</p>
+
+  <p>I had now walked at least six miles. At first I carefully avoided the
+  habitations that lay in my way, and feared to be seen by any of the persons
+  to whom they belonged, lest it should in any degree furnish a clue to the
+  researches of my pursuers. As I went forward, I conceived it might be proper
+  to relax a part of my precaution. At this time I perceived several persons
+  coming out of a thicket close to me. I immediately considered this
+  circumstance as rather favourable than the contrary. It was necessary for me
+  to avoid entering any of the towns and villages in the vicinity. It was
+  however full time that I should procure for myself some species of
+  refreshment, and by no means improbable that these men might be in some way
+  assisting to me in that respect. In my situation it appeared to me
+  indifferent what might be their employment or profession. I had little to
+  apprehend from thieves, and I believed that they, as well as honest men,
+  could not fail to have some compassion for a person under my circumstances.
+  I therefore rather threw myself in their way than avoided them.</p>
+
+  <p>They were thieves. One of the company cried out, "Who goes there? stand!"
+  I accosted them; "Gentlemen," said I, "I am a poor traveller,
+  almost"&mdash;While I spoke, they came round me; and he that had first
+  hailed me, said, "Damn me, tip us none of your palaver; we have heard that
+  story of a poor traveller any time these five years. Come, down with your
+  dust! let us see what you have got!"&mdash;"Sir," I replied, "I have not a
+  shilling in the world, and am more than half starved beside."&mdash;"Not a
+  shilling!" answered my assailant, "what, I suppose you are as poor as a
+  thief? But, if you have not money, you have clothes, and those you must
+  resign."</p>
+
+  <p>"My clothes!" rejoined I with indignation, "you cannot desire such a
+  thing. Is it not enough that I am pennyless? I have been all night upon the
+  open heath. It is now the second day that I have not eaten a morsel of
+  bread. Would you strip me naked to the weather in the midst of this
+  depopulated forest? No, no, you are men! The same hatred of oppression, that
+  arms you against the insolence of wealth, will teach you to relieve those
+  who are perishing like me. For God's sake, give me food! do not strip me of
+  the comforts I still possess!"</p>
+
+  <p>While I uttered this apostrophe, the unpremeditated eloquence of
+  sentiment, I could perceive by their gestures, though the day had not yet
+  begun to dawn, that the feelings of one or two of the company appeared to
+  take my part. The man, who had already undertaken to be their spokesman,
+  perceived the same thing; and, excited either by the brutality of his temper
+  or the love of command, hastened to anticipate the disgrace of a defeat. He
+  brushed suddenly up to me, and by main force pushed me several feet from the
+  place where I stood. The shock I received drove me upon a second of the
+  gang, not one of those who had listened to my expostulation; and he repeated
+  the brutality. My indignation was strongly excited by this treatment; and,
+  after being thrust backward and forward two or three times in this manner, I
+  broke through my assailants, and turned round to defend myself. The first
+  that advanced within my reach, was my original enemy. In the present moment
+  I listened to nothing but the dictates of passion, and I laid him at his
+  length on the earth. I was immediately assailed with sticks and bludgeons on
+  all sides, and presently received a blow that almost deprived me of my
+  senses. The man I had knocked down was now upon his feet again, and aimed a
+  stroke at me with a cutlass as I fell, which took place in a deep wound upon
+  my neck and shoulder. He was going to repeat his blow. The two who had
+  seemed to waver at first in their animosity, afterwards appeared to me to
+  join in the attack, urged either by animal sympathy or the spirit of
+  imitation. One of them however, as I afterwards, understood seized the arm
+  of the man who was going to strike me a second time with his cutlass, and
+  who would otherwise probably have put an end to my existence. I could hear
+  the words, "Damn it, enough, enough! that is too bad, Gines!"&mdash;"How
+  so?" replied a second voice; "he will but pine here upon the forest, and die
+  by inches: it will be an act of charity to put him out of his
+  pain."&mdash;It will be imagined that I was not uninterested in this sort of
+  debate. I made an effort to speak; my voice failed me. I stretched out one
+  hand with a gesture of entreaty. "You shall not strike, by God!" said one of
+  the voices; "why should we be murderers?"&mdash;The side of forbearance at
+  length prevailed. They therefore contented themselves with stripping me of
+  my coat and waistcoat, and rolling me into a dry ditch. They then left me
+  totally regardless of my distressed condition, and the plentiful effusion of
+  blood, which streamed from my wound.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CII" id="V3_CII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+  <p>In this woeful situation, though extremely weak, I was not deprived of
+  sense. I tore my shirt from my naked body, and endeavoured, with some
+  success, to make of it a bandage to staunch the flowing of the blood. I then
+  exerted myself to crawl up the side of the ditch. I had scarcely effected
+  the latter, when, with equal surprise and joy, I perceived a man advancing
+  at no great distance. I called for help as well as I could. The man came
+  towards me with evident signs of compassion, and the appearance I exhibited
+  was indeed sufficiently calculated to excite it. I had no hat. My hair was
+  dishevelled, and the ends of the locks clotted with blood. My shirt was
+  wrapped about my neck and shoulders, and was plentifully stained with red.
+  My body, which was naked to my middle, was variegated with streams of blood;
+  nor had my lower garments, which were white, by any means escaped.</p>
+
+  <p>"For God's sake, my good fellow!" said he, with a tone of the greatest
+  imaginable kindness, "how came you thus?" and, saying this, he lifted me up,
+  and set me on my feet. "Can you stand?" added he, doubtfully. "Oh, yes, very
+  well," I replied. Having received this answer, he quitted me, and began to
+  take off his own coat, that he might cover me from the cold. I had however
+  over-rated my strength, and was no sooner left to myself than I reeled, and
+  fell almost at my length upon the ground. But I broke my fall by stretching
+  out my sound arm, and again raised myself upon my knees. My benefactor now
+  covered me, raised me, and, bidding me lean upon him, told me he would
+  presently conduct me to a place where I should be taken care of. Courage is
+  a capricious property; and, though while I had no one to depend upon but
+  myself, I possessed a mine of seemingly inexhaustible fortitude, yet no
+  sooner did I find this unexpected sympathy on the part of another, than my
+  resolution appeared to give way, and I felt ready to faint. My charitable
+  conductor perceived this, and every now and then encouraged me, in a manner
+  so cheerful, so good humoured and benevolent, equally free from the torture
+  of droning expostulation, and the weakness of indulgence, that I thought
+  myself under the conduct of an angel rather than a man. I could perceive
+  that his behaviour had in it nothing of boorishness, and that he was
+  thoroughly imbued with the principles of affectionate civility.</p>
+
+  <p>We walked about three quarters of a mile, and that not towards the open,
+  but the most uncouth and unfrequented part of the forest. We crossed a place
+  which had once been a moat, but which was now in some parts dry, and in
+  others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of
+  this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the
+  upper part of which seemed to overhang their foundations, and to totter to
+  their ruin. After having entered however with my conductor through an
+  archway, and passed along a winding passage that was perfectly dark, we came
+  to a stand.</p>
+
+  <p>At the upper end of this passage was a door, which I was unable to
+  perceive. My conductor knocked at the door, and was answered by a voice from
+  within, which, for body and force, might have been the voice of a man, but
+  with a sort of female sharpness and acidity, enquiring, "Who is there?"
+  Satisfaction was no sooner given on this point, than I heard two bolts
+  pushed back, and the door unlocked. The apartment opened, and we entered.
+  The interior of this habitation by no means corresponded with the appearance
+  of my protector, but, on the contrary, wore the face of discomfort,
+  carelessness, and dirt. The only person I saw within was a woman, rather
+  advanced in life, and whose person had I know not what of extraordinary and
+  loathsome. Her eyes were red and blood-shot; her hair was pendent in matted
+  and shaggy tresses about her shoulders; her complexion swarthy, and of the
+  consistency of parchment; her form spare, and her whole body, her arms in
+  particular, uncommonly vigorous and muscular. Not the milk of human
+  kindness, but the feverous blood of savage ferocity, seemed to flow from her
+  heart; and her whole figure suggested an idea of unmitigable energy, and an
+  appetite gorged in malevolence. This infernal Thalestris had no sooner cast
+  her eyes upon us as we entered, than she exclaimed in a discordant and
+  discontented voice, "What have we got here? this is not one of our people!"
+  My conductor, without answering this apostrophe, bade her push an easy chair
+  which stood in one corner, and set it directly before the fire. This she did
+  with apparent reluctance, murmuring, "Ah! you are at your old tricks; I
+  wonder what such folks as we have to do with charity! It will be the ruin of
+  us at last, I can see that!"&mdash;"Hold your tongue, beldam!" said he, with
+  a stern significance of manner, "and fetch one of my best shirts, a
+  waistcoat, and some dressings." Saying this, he at the same time put into
+  her hand a small bunch of keys. In a word, he treated me with as much
+  kindness as if he had been my father. He examined my wound, washed and
+  dressed it; at the same time that the old woman, by his express order,
+  prepared for me such nourishment as he thought most suitable to my weak and
+  languid condition.</p>
+
+  <p>These operations were no sooner completed than my benefactor recommended
+  to me to retire to rest, and preparations were making for that purpose, when
+  suddenly a trampling of feet was heard, succeeded by a knock at the door.
+  The old woman opened the door with the same precautions as had been employed
+  upon our arrival, and immediately six or seven persons tumultuously entered
+  the apartment. Their appearance was different, some having the air of mere
+  rustics, and others that of a tarnished sort of gentry. All had a feature of
+  boldness, inquietude, and disorder, extremely unlike any thing I had before
+  observed in such a group. But my astonishment was still increased, when upon
+  a second glance I perceived something in the general air of several of them,
+  and of one in particular, that persuaded me they were the gang from which I
+  had just escaped, and this one the antagonist by whose animosity I was so
+  near having been finally destroyed. I imagined they had entered the hovel
+  with a hostile intention, that my benefactor was upon the point of being
+  robbed, and I probably murdered.</p>
+
+  <p>This suspicion however was soon removed. They addressed my conductor with
+  respect, under the appellation of captain. They were boisterous and noisy in
+  their remarks and exclamations, but their turbulence was tempered by a
+  certain deference to his opinion and authority. I could observe in the
+  person who had been my active opponent some awkwardness and irresolution as
+  he first perceived me, which he dismissed with a sort of effort, exclaiming,
+  "Who the devil is here?" There was something in the tone of this apostrophe
+  that roused the attention of my protector. He looked at the speaker with a
+  fixed and penetrating glance, and then said, "Nay, Gines, do you know? Did
+  you ever see the person before?"&mdash;"Curse it, Gines!" interrupted a
+  third, "you are damnably out of luck. They say dead men walk, and you see
+  there is some truth in it."&mdash;"Truce with your impertinence, Jeckols!"
+  replied my protector: "this is no proper occasion for a joke. Answer me,
+  Gines, were you the cause of this young man being left naked and wounded
+  this bitter morning upon the forest?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mayhap I was. What then?"</p>
+
+  <p>"What provocation could induce you to so cruel a treatment?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Provocation enough. He had no money."</p>
+
+  <p>"What, did you use him thus, without so much as being irritated by any
+  resistance on his part?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, he did resist. I only hustled him, and he had the impudence to
+  strike me."</p>
+
+  <p>"Gines! you are an incorrigible fellow."</p>
+
+  <p>"Pooh, what signifies what I am? You, with your compassion, and your fine
+  feelings, will bring us all to the gallows."</p>
+
+  <p>"I have nothing to say to you; I have no hopes of you! Comrades, it is
+  for you to decide upon the conduct of this man as you think proper. You know
+  how repeated his offences have been; you know what pains I have taken to
+  mend him. Our profession is the profession of justice." [It is thus that the
+  prejudices of men universally teach them to colour the most desperate cause
+  to which they have determined to adhere.] "We, who are thieves without a
+  licence, are at open war with another set of men who are thieves according
+  to law. With such a cause then to bear us out, shall we stain it with
+  cruelty, malice, and revenge? A thief is, of course, a man living among his
+  equals; I do not pretend therefore to assume any authority among you; act as
+  you think proper; but, so far as relates to myself, I vote that Gines be
+  expelled from among us as a disgrace to our society."</p>
+
+  <p>This proposition seemed to meet the general sense. It was easy to
+  perceive that the opinion of the rest coincided with that of their leader;
+  notwithstanding which a few of them hesitated as to the conduct to be
+  pursued. In the mean time Gines muttered something in a surly and irresolute
+  way, about taking care how they provoked him. This insinuation instantly
+  roused the courage of my protector, and his eyes flashed with contempt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Rascal!" said he, "do you menace us? Do you think we will be your
+  slaves? No, no, do your worst! Go to the next justice of the peace, and
+  impeach us; I can easily believe you are capable of it. Sir, when we entered
+  into this gang, we were not such fools as not to know that we entered upon a
+  service of danger. One of its dangers consists in the treachery of fellows
+  like you. But we did not enter at first to flinch now. Did you believe that
+  we would live in hourly fear of you, tremble at your threats, and
+  compromise, whenever you should so please, with your insolence? That would
+  be a blessed life indeed! I would rather see my flesh torn piecemeal from my
+  bones! Go, sir! I defy you! You dare not do it! You dare not sacrifice these
+  gallant fellows to your rage, and publish yourself to all the world a
+  traitor and a scoundrel! If you do, you will punish yourself, not us!
+  Begone!"</p>
+
+  <p>The intrepidity of the leader communicated itself to the rest of the
+  company. Gines easily saw that there was no hope of bringing them over to a
+  contrary sentiment. After a short pause, he answered, "I did not
+  mean&mdash;No, damn it! I will not snivel neither. I was always true to my
+  principles, and a friend to you all. But since you are resolved to turn me
+  out, why&mdash;good bye to you!"</p>
+
+  <p>The expulsion of this man produced a remarkable improvement in the whole
+  gang. Those who were before inclined to humanity, assumed new energy in
+  proportion as they saw such sentiments likely to prevail. They had before
+  suffered themselves to be overborne by the boisterous insolence of their
+  antagonist; but now they adopted, and with success, a different conduct.
+  Those who envied the ascendancy of their comrade, and therefore imitated his
+  conduct, began to hesitate in their career. Stories were brought forward of
+  the cruelty and brutality of Gines both to men and animals, which had never
+  before reached the ear of the leader. The stories I shall not repeat. They
+  could excite only emotions of abhorrence and disgust; and some of them
+  argued a mind of such a stretch of depravity, as to many readers would
+  appear utterly incredible; and yet this man had his virtues. He was
+  enterprising, persevering, and faithful.</p>
+
+  <p>His removal was a considerable benefit to me. It would have been no small
+  hardship to have been turned adrift immediately under my unfavourable
+  circumstances, with the additional disadvantage of the wound I had received;
+  and yet I could scarcely have ventured to remain under the same roof with a
+  man, to whom my appearance was as a guilty conscience, perpetually reminding
+  him of his own offence, and the displeasure of his leader. His profession
+  accustomed him to a certain degree of indifference to consequences, and
+  indulgence to the sallies of passion; and he might easily have found his
+  opportunity to insult or injure me, when I should have had nothing but my
+  own debilitated exertions to protect me.</p>
+
+  <p>Freed from this danger, I found my situation sufficiently fortunate for a
+  man under my circumstances. It was attended with all the advantages for
+  concealment my fondest imagination could have hoped; and it was by no means
+  destitute of the benefits which arise from kindness and humanity. Nothing
+  could be more unlike than the thieves I had seen in ---- jail, and the
+  thieves of my new residence. The latter were generally full of cheerfulness
+  and merriment. They could expatiate freely wherever they thought proper.
+  They could form plans and execute them. They consulted their inclinations.
+  They did not impose upon themselves the task, as is too often the case in
+  human society, of seeming tacitly to approve that from which they suffered
+  most; or, which is worst, of persuading themselves that all the wrongs they
+  suffered were right; but were at open war with their oppressors. On the
+  contrary, the imprisoned felons I had lately seen were shut up like wild
+  beasts in a cage, deprived of activity, and palsied with indolence. The
+  occasional demonstrations that still remained of their former enterprising
+  life were the starts and convulsions of disease, not the meditated and
+  consistent exertions of a mind in health. They had no more of hope, of
+  project, of golden and animated dreams, but were reserved to the most dismal
+  prospects, and forbidden to think upon any other topic. It is true, that
+  these two scenes were parts of one whole, the one the consummation, the
+  hourly to be expected successor of the other. But the men I now saw were
+  wholly inattentive to this, and in that respect appeared to hold no commerce
+  with reflection or reason.</p>
+
+  <p>I might in one view, as I have said, congratulate myself upon my present
+  residence; it answered completely the purposes of concealment. It was the
+  seat of merriment and hilarity; but the hilarity that characterised it
+  produced no correspondent feelings in my bosom. The persons who composed
+  this society had each of them cast off all control from established
+  principle; their trade was terror, and their constant object to elude the
+  vigilance of the community. The influence of these circumstances was visible
+  in their character. I found among them benevolence and kindness: they were
+  strongly susceptible of emotions of generosity. But, as their situation was
+  precarious, their dispositions were proportionably fluctuating. Inured to
+  the animosity of their species, they were irritable and passionate.
+  Accustomed to exercise harshness towards the subject of their depredations,
+  they did not always confine their brutality within that scope. They were
+  habituated to consider wounds and bludgeons and stabbing as the obvious mode
+  of surmounting every difficulty. Uninvolved in the debilitating routine of
+  human affairs, they frequently displayed an energy which, from every
+  impartial observer, would have extorted veneration. Energy is perhaps of all
+  qualities the most valuable; and a just political system would possess the
+  means of extracting from it, thus circumstanced, its beneficial qualities,
+  instead of consigning it, as now, to indiscriminate destruction. We act like
+  the chemist, who should reject the finest ore, and employ none but what was
+  sufficiently debased to fit it immediately for the vilest uses. But the
+  energy of these men, such as I beheld it, was in the highest degree
+  misapplied, unassisted by liberal and enlightened views, and directed only
+  to the most narrow and contemptible purposes.</p>
+
+  <p>The residence I have been describing might to many persons have appeared
+  attended with intolerable inconveniences. But, exclusively of its advantages
+  as a field for speculation, it was Elysium, compared with that from which I
+  had just escaped. Displeasing company, incommodious apartments, filthiness,
+  and riot, lost the circumstance by which they could most effectually
+  disgust, when I was not compelled to remain with them. All hardships I could
+  patiently endure, in comparison with the menace of a violent and untimely
+  death. There was no suffering that I could not persuade myself to consider
+  as trivial, except that which flowed from the tyranny, the frigid
+  precaution, or the inhuman revenge of my own species.</p>
+
+  <p>My recovery advanced in the most favourable manner. The attention and
+  kindness of my protector were incessant, and the rest caught the spirit from
+  his example. The old woman who superintended the household still retained
+  her animosity. She considered me as the cause of the expulsion of Gines from
+  the fraternity. Gines had been the object of her particular partiality; and,
+  zealous as she was for the public concern, she thought an old and
+  experienced sinner for a raw probationer but an ill exchange. Add to which,
+  that her habits inclined her to moroseness and discontent, and that persons
+  of her complexion seem unable to exist without some object upon which to
+  pour out the superfluity of their gall. She lost no opportunity, upon the
+  most trifling occasion, of displaying her animosity; and ever and anon eyed
+  me with a furious glance of canine hunger for my destruction. Nothing was
+  more evidently mortifying to her, than the procrastination of her malice;
+  nor could she bear to think that a fierceness so gigantic and uncontrollable
+  should show itself in nothing more terrific than the pigmy spite of a
+  chambermaid. For myself, I had been accustomed to the warfare of formidable
+  adversaries, and the encounter of alarming dangers; and what I saw of her
+  spleen had not power sufficient to disturb my tranquillity.</p>
+
+  <p>As I recovered, I told my story, except so far as related to the
+  detection of Mr. Falkland's eventful secret, to my protector. That
+  particular I could not, as yet, prevail upon myself to disclose, even in a
+  situation like this, which seemed to preclude the possibility of its being
+  made use of to the disadvantage of my persecutor. My present auditor
+  however, whose habits of thinking were extremely opposite to those of Mr.
+  Forester, did not, from the obscurity which flowed from this reserve, deduce
+  any unfavourable conclusion. His penetration was such, as to afford little
+  room for an impostor to hope to mislead him by a fictitious statement, and
+  he confided in that penetration. So confiding, the simplicity and integrity
+  of my manner carried conviction to his mind, and insured his good opinion
+  and friendship.</p>
+
+  <p>He listened to my story with eagerness, and commented on the several
+  parts as I related them. He said, that this was only one fresh instance of
+  the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of the
+  community, against those who were less privileged than themselves. Nothing
+  could be more clear, than their readiness to sacrifice the human species at
+  large to their meanest interest, or wildest caprice. Who that saw the
+  situation in its true light would wait till their oppressors thought fit to
+  decree their destruction, and not take arms in their defence while it was
+  yet in their power? Which was most meritorious, the unresisting and
+  dastardly submission of a slave, or the enterprise and gallantry of the man
+  who dared to assert his claims? Since, by the partial administration of our
+  laws, innocence, when power was armed against it, had nothing better to hope
+  for than guilt, what man of true courage would fail to set these laws at
+  defiance, and, if he must suffer by their injustice, at least take care that
+  he had first shown his contempt of their yoke? For himself, he should
+  certainly never have embraced his present calling, had he not been
+  stimulated to it by these cogent and irresistible reasons; and he hoped, as
+  experience had so forcibly brought a conviction of this sort to my mind,
+  that he should for the future have the happiness to associate me to his
+  pursuits.&mdash;It will presently be seen with what event these hopes were
+  attended.</p>
+
+  <p>Numerous were the precautions exercised by the gang of thieves with whom
+  I now resided, to elude the vigilance of the satellites of justice. It was
+  one of their rules to commit no depredations but at a considerable distance
+  from the place of their residence; and Gines had transgressed this
+  regulation in the attack to which I was indebted for my present asylum.
+  After having possessed themselves of any booty, they took care, in the sight
+  of the persons whom they had robbed, to pursue a route as nearly as possible
+  opposite to that which led to their true haunts. The appearance of their
+  place of residence, together with its environs, was peculiarly desolate and
+  forlorn, and it had the reputation of being haunted. The old woman I have
+  described had long been its inhabitant, and was commonly supposed to be its
+  only inhabitant; and her person well accorded with the rural ideas of a
+  witch. Her lodgers never went out or came in but with the utmost
+  circumspection, and generally by night. The lights which were occasionally
+  seen from various parts of her habitation, were, by the country people,
+  regarded with horror as supernatural; and if the noise of revelry at any
+  time saluted their ears, it was imagined to proceed from a carnival of
+  devils. With all these advantages, the thieves did not venture to reside
+  here but by intervals: they frequently absented themselves for months, and
+  removed to a different part of the country. The old woman sometimes attended
+  them in these transportations, and sometimes remained; but in all cases her
+  decampment took place either sooner or later than theirs, so that the nicest
+  observer could scarcely have traced any connection between her reappearance,
+  and the alarms of depredation that were frequently given; and the festival
+  of demons seemed, to the terrified rustics, indifferently to take place
+  whether she were present or absent.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CIII" id="V3_CIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+  <p>One day, while I continued in this situation, a circumstance occurred
+  which involuntarily attracted my attention. Two of our people had been sent
+  to a town at some distance, for the purpose of procuring us the things of
+  which we were in want. After having delivered these to our landlady, they
+  retired to one corner of the room; and, one of them pulling a printed paper
+  from his pocket, they mutually occupied themselves in examining its
+  contents. I was sitting in an easy chair by the fire, being considerably
+  better than I had been, though still in a weak and languid state. Having
+  read for a considerable time, they looked at me, and then at the paper, and
+  then at me again. They then went out of the room together, as if to consult
+  without interruption upon something which that paper suggested to them. Some
+  time after they returned; and my protector, who had been absent upon the
+  former occasion, entered the room at the same instant.</p>
+
+  <p>"Captain!" said one of them with an air of pleasure, "look here! we have
+  found a prize! I believe it is as good as a bank-note of a hundred
+  guineas."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Raymond (that was his name) took the paper, and read. He paused for a
+  moment. He then crushed the paper in his hand; and, turning to the person
+  from whom he had received it, said, with the tone of a man confident in the
+  success of his reasons,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"What use have you for these hundred guineas? Are you in want? Are you in
+  distress? Can you be contented to purchase them at the price of
+  treachery&mdash;of violating the laws of hospitality?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Faith, captain, I do not very well know. After having violated other
+  laws, I do not see why we should be frightened at an old saw. We pretend to
+  judge for ourselves, and ought to be above shrinking from a bugbear of a
+  proverb. Beside, this is a good deed, and I should think no more harm of
+  being the ruin of such a thief than of getting my dinner."</p>
+
+  <p>"A thief! You talk of thieves!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not so fast, captain. God defend that I should say a word against
+  thieving as a general occupation! But one man steals in one way, and another
+  in another. For my part, I go upon the highway, and take from any stranger I
+  meet what, it is a hundred to one, he can very well spare. I see nothing to
+  be found fault with in that. But I have as much conscience as another man.
+  Because I laugh at assizes, and great wigs, and the gallows, and because I
+  will not be frightened from an innocent action when the lawyers say me nay,
+  does it follow that I am to have a fellow-feeling for pilferers, and
+  rascally servants, and people that have neither justice nor principle? No; I
+  have too much respect for the trade not to be a foe to interlopers, and
+  people that so much the more deserve my hatred, because the world calls them
+  by my name."</p>
+
+  <p>"You are wrong, Larkins! You certainly ought not to employ against people
+  that you hate, supposing your hatred to be reasonable, the instrumentality
+  of that law which in your practice you defy. Be consistent. Either be the
+  friend of the law, or its adversary. Depend upon it that, wherever there are
+  laws at all, there will be laws against such people as you and me. Either
+  therefore we all of us deserve the vengeance of the law, or law is not the
+  proper instrument for correcting the misdeeds of mankind. I tell you this,
+  because I would fain have you aware, that an informer or a king's evidence,
+  a man who takes advantage of the confidence of another in order to betray
+  him, who sells the life of his neighbour for money, or, coward-like, upon
+  any pretence calls in the law to do that for him which he cannot or dares
+  not do for himself, is the vilest of rascals. But in the present case, if
+  your reasons were the best in the world, they do not apply."</p>
+
+  <p>While Mr. Raymond was speaking, the rest of the gang came into the room.
+  He immediately turned to them, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"My friends, here is a piece of intelligence that Larkins has just
+  brought in which, with his leave, I will lay before you."</p>
+
+  <p>Then unfolding the paper he had received, he continued: "This is the
+  description of a felon, with the offer of a hundred guineas for his
+  apprehension. Larking picked it up at ----. By the time and other
+  circumstances, but particularly by the minute description of his person,
+  there can be no doubt but the object of it is our young friend, whose life I
+  was a while ago the instrument of saving. He is charged here with having
+  taken advantage of the confidence of his patron and benefactor to rob him of
+  property to a large amount. Upon this charge he was committed to the county
+  jail, from whence he made his escape about a fortnight ago, without
+  venturing to stand his trial; a circumstance which is stated by the
+  advertiser as tantamount to a confession of his guilt.</p>
+
+  <p>"My friends, I was acquainted with the particulars of this story some
+  time before. This lad let me into his history, at a time that he could not
+  possibly foresee that he should stand in need of that precaution as an
+  antidote against danger. He is not guilty of what is laid to his charge.
+  Which of you is so ignorant as to suppose, that his escape is any
+  confirmation of his guilt? Who ever thinks, when he is apprehended for
+  trial, of his innocence or guilt as being at all material to the issue? Who
+  ever was fool enough to volunteer a trial, where those who are to decide
+  think more of the horror of the thing of which he is accused, than whether
+  he were the person that did it; and where the nature of our motives is to be
+  collected from a set of ignorant witnesses, that no wise man would trust for
+  a fair representation of the most indifferent action of his life?</p>
+
+  <p>"The poor lad's story is a long one, and I will not trouble you with it
+  now. But from that story it is as clear as the day, that, because he wished
+  to leave the service of his master, because he had been perhaps a little too
+  inquisitive in his master's concerns, and because, as I suspect, he had been
+  trusted with some important secrets, his master conceived an antipathy
+  against him. The antipathy gradually proceeded to such a length, as to
+  induce the master to forge this vile accusation. He seemed willing to hang
+  the lad out of the way, rather than suffer him to go where he pleased, or
+  get beyond the reach of his power. Williams has told me the story with such
+  ingenuousness, that I am as sure that he is guiltless of what they lay to
+  his charge, as that I am so myself. Nevertheless the man's servants who were
+  called in to hear the accusation, and his relation, who as justice of the
+  peace made out the mittimus, and who had the folly to think he could be
+  impartial, gave it on his side with one voice, and thus afforded Williams a
+  sample of what he had to expect in the sequel.</p>
+
+  <p>"Larkins, who when he received this paper had no previous knowledge of
+  particulars, was for taking advantage of it for the purpose of earning the
+  hundred guineas. Are you of that mind now you have heard them? Will you for
+  so paltry a consideration deliver up the lamb into the jaws of the wolf?
+  Will you abet the purposes of this sanguinary rascal, who, not contented
+  with driving his late dependent from house and home, depriving him of
+  character and all the ordinary means of subsistence, and leaving him almost
+  without a refuge, still thirsts for his blood? If no other person have the
+  courage to set limits to the tyranny of courts of justice, shall not we?
+  Shall we, who earn our livelihood by generous daring, be indebted for a
+  penny to the vile artifices of the informer? Shall we, against whom the
+  whole species is in arms, refuse our protection to an individual, more
+  exposed to, but still less deserving of, their persecution than
+  ourselves?"</p>
+
+  <p>The representation of the captain produced an instant effect upon the
+  whole company. They all exclaimed, "Betray him! No, not for worlds! He is
+  safe. We will protect him at the hazard of our lives. If fidelity and honour
+  be banished from thieves, where shall they find refuge upon the face of the
+  earth?"<a name="footnotetag6" id="footnotetag6"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> Larkins in particular thanked the captain for
+  his interference, and swore that he would rather part with his right hand
+  than injure so worthy a lad or assist such an unheard-of villainy. Saying
+  this, he took me by the hand and bade me fear nothing. Under their roof no
+  harm should ever befal me; and, even if the understrappers of the law should
+  discover my retreat, they would to a man die in my defence, sooner than a
+  hair of my head should be hurt. I thanked him most sincerely for his
+  good-will; but I was principally struck with the fervent benevolence of my
+  benefactor. I told them, I found that my enemies were inexorable, and would
+  never be appeased but with my blood; and I assured them with the most solemn
+  and earnest veracity, that I had done nothing to deserve the persecution
+  which was exercised against me.</p>
+
+  <p>The spirit and energy of Mr. Raymond had been such as to leave no part
+  for me to perform in repelling this unlooked-for danger. Nevertheless, it
+  left a very serious impression upon my mind. I had always placed some
+  confidence in the returning equity of Mr. Falkland. Though he persecuted me
+  with bitterness, I could not help believing that he did it unwillingly, and
+  I was persuaded it would not be for ever. A man, whose original principles
+  had been so full of rectitude and honour, could not fail at some time to
+  recollect the injustice of his conduct, and to remit his asperity. This idea
+  had been always present to me, and had in no small degree conspired to
+  instigate my exertions. I said, "I will convince my persecutor that I am of
+  more value than that I should be sacrificed purely by way of precaution."
+  These expectations on my part had been encouraged by Mr. Falkland's
+  behaviour upon the question of my imprisonment, and by various particulars
+  which had occurred since.</p>
+
+  <p>But this new incident gave the subject a totally different appearance. I
+  saw him, not contented with blasting my reputation, confining me for a
+  period in jail, and reducing me to the situation of a houseless vagabond,
+  still continuing his pursuit under these forlorn circumstances with
+  unmitigable cruelty. Indignation and resentment seemed now for the first
+  time to penetrate my mind. I knew his misery so well, I was so fully
+  acquainted with its cause, and strongly impressed with the idea of its being
+  unmerited, that, while I suffered deeply, I still continued to pity, rather
+  than hate my persecutor. But this incident introduced some change into my
+  feelings. I said, "Surely he might now believe that he had sufficiently
+  disarmed me, and might at length suffer me to be at peace. At least, ought
+  he not to be contented to leave me to my fate, the perilous and uncertain
+  condition of an escaped felon, instead of thus whetting the animosity and
+  vigilance of my countrymen against me? Were his interference on my behalf in
+  opposition to the stern severity of Mr. Forester, and his various acts of
+  kindness since, a mere part that he played in order to lull me into
+  patience? Was he perpetually haunted with the fear of an ample retaliation,
+  and for that purpose did he personate remorse, at the very moment that he
+  was secretly keeping every engine at play that could secure my destruction?"
+  The very suspicion of such a fact filled me with inexpressible horror, and
+  struck a sudden chill through every fibre of my frame.</p>
+
+  <p>My wound was by this time completely healed, and it became absolutely
+  necessary that I should form some determination respecting the future. My
+  habits of thinking were such as gave me an uncontrollable repugnance to the
+  vocation of my hosts. I did not indeed feel that aversion and abhorrence to
+  the men which are commonly entertained. I saw and respected their good
+  qualities and their virtues. I was by no means inclined to believe them
+  worse men, or more hostile in their dispositions to the welfare of their
+  species, than the generality of those that look down upon them with most
+  censure. But, though I did not cease to love them as individuals, my eyes
+  were perfectly open to their mistakes. If I should otherwise have been in
+  danger of being misled, it was my fortune to have studied felons in a jail
+  before I studied them in their state of comparative prosperity; and this was
+  an infallible antidote to the poison. I saw that in this profession were
+  exerted uncommon energy, ingenuity, and fortitude, and I could not help
+  recollecting how admirably beneficial such qualities might be made in the
+  great theatre of human affairs; while, in their present direction, they were
+  thrown away upon purposes diametrically at war with the first interests of
+  human society. Nor were their proceedings less injurious to their own
+  interest than incompatible with the general welfare. The man who risks or
+  sacrifices his life for the public cause, is rewarded with the testimony of
+  an approving conscience; but persons who wantonly defy the necessary, though
+  atrociously exaggerated, precautions of government in the matter of
+  property, at the same time that they commit an alarming hostility against
+  the whole, are, as to their own concerns, scarcely less absurd and
+  self-neglectful than the man who should set himself up as a mark for a file
+  of musqueteers to shoot at.</p>
+
+  <p>Viewing the subject in this light, I not only determined that I would
+  have no share in their occupation myself, but thought I could not do less,
+  in return for the benefits I had received from them, than endeavour to
+  dissuade them from an employment in which they must themselves be the
+  greatest sufferers. My expostulation met with a various reception. All the
+  persons to whom it was addressed had been tolerably successful in persuading
+  themselves of the innocence of their calling; and what remained of doubt in
+  their mind was smothered, and, so to speak, laboriously forgotten. Some of
+  them laughed at my arguments, as a ridiculous piece of missionary quixotism.
+  Others, and particularly our captain, repelled them with the boldness of a
+  man that knows he has got the strongest side. But this sentiment of ease and
+  self-satisfaction did not long remain. They had been used to arguments
+  derived from religion and the sacredness of law. They had long ago shaken
+  these from them as so many prejudices. But my view of the subject appealed
+  to principles which they could not contest, and had by no means the air of
+  that customary reproof which is for ever dinned in our ears without finding
+  one responsive chord in our hearts. Urged, as they now were, with objections
+  unexpected and cogent, some of those to whom I addressed them began to grow
+  peevish and impatient of the intrusive remonstrance. But this was by no
+  means the case with Mr. Raymond. He was possessed of a candour that I have
+  seldom seen equalled. He was surprised to hear objections so powerful to
+  that which, as a matter of speculation, he believed he had examined on all
+  sides. He revolved them with impartiality and care. He admitted them slowly,
+  but he at length fully admitted them. He had now but one rejoinder in
+  reserve.</p>
+
+  <p>"Alas! Williams," said he, "it would have been fortunate for me if these
+  views had been presented to me, previously to my embracing my present
+  profession. It is now too late. Those very laws which, by a perception of
+  their iniquity, drove me to what I am, preclude my return. God, we are told,
+  judges of men by what they are at the period of arraignment, and whatever be
+  their crimes, if they have seen and abjured the folly of those crimes,
+  receives them to favour. But the institutions of countries that profess to
+  worship this God admit no such distinctions. They leave no room for
+  amendment, and seem to have a brutal delight in confounding the demerits of
+  offenders. It signifies not what is the character of the individual at the
+  hour of trial. How changed, how spotless, and how useful, avails him
+  nothing. If they discover at the distance of fourteen<a name="footnotetag7"
+  id="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> or of forty
+  years<a name="footnotetag8" id="footnotetag8"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> an action for which the law ordains that his
+  life shall be the forfeit, though the interval should have been spent with
+  the purity of a saint and the devotedness of a patriot, they disdain to
+  enquire into it. What then can I do? Am I not compelled to go on in folly,
+  having once begun?"</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CIV" id="V3_CIV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+  <p>I Was extremely affected by this plea. I could only answer, that Mr.
+  Raymond must himself be the best judge of the course it became him to hold;
+  I trusted the case was not so desperate as he imagined.</p>
+
+  <p>This subject was pursued no further, and was in some degree driven from
+  my thoughts by an incident of a very extraordinary nature.</p>
+
+  <p>I have already mentioned the animosity that was entertained against me by
+  the infernal portress of this solitary mansion. Gines, the expelled member
+  of the gang, had been her particular favourite. She submitted to his exile
+  indeed, because her genius felt subdued by the energy and inherent
+  superiority of Mr. Raymond; but she submitted with murmuring and discontent.
+  Not daring to resent the conduct of the principal in this affair, she
+  collected all the bitterness of her spirit against me.</p>
+
+  <p>To the unpardonable offence I had thus committed in the first instance,
+  were added the reasonings I had lately offered against the profession of
+  robbery. Robbery was a fundamental article in the creed of this hoary
+  veteran, and she listened to my objections with the same unaffected
+  astonishment and horror that an old woman of other habits would listen to
+  one who objected to the agonies and dissolution of the Creator of the world,
+  or to the garment of imputed righteousness prepared to envelope the souls of
+  the elect. Like the religious bigot, she was sufficiently disposed to avenge
+  a hostility against her opinions with the weapons of sublunary warfare.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile I had smiled at the impotence of her malice, as an object of
+  contempt rather than alarm. She perceived, as I imagine, the slight
+  estimation in which I held her, and this did not a little increase the
+  perturbation of her thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>One day I was left alone, with no other person in the house than this
+  swarthy sybil. The thieves had set out upon an expedition about two hours
+  after sunset on the preceding evening, and had not returned, as they were
+  accustomed to do, before day-break the next morning. This was a circumstance
+  that sometimes occurred, and therefore did not produce any extraordinary
+  alarm. At one time the scent of prey would lead them beyond the bounds they
+  had prescribed themselves, and at another the fear of pursuit: the life of a
+  thief is always uncertain. The old woman had been preparing during the night
+  for the meal to which they would expect to sit down as soon as might be
+  after their return.</p>
+
+  <p>For myself, I had learned from their habits to be indifferent to the
+  regular return of the different parts of the day, and in some degree to turn
+  day into night, and night into day. I had been now several weeks in this
+  residence, and the season was considerably advanced. I had passed some hours
+  during the night in ruminating on my situation. The character and manners of
+  the men among whom I lived were disgusting to me. Their brutal ignorance,
+  their ferocious habits, and their coarse behaviour, instead of becoming more
+  tolerable by custom, hourly added force to my original aversion. The
+  uncommon vigour of their minds, and acuteness of their invention in the
+  business they pursued, compared with the odiousness of that business and
+  their habitual depravity, awakened in me sensations too painful to be
+  endured. Moral disapprobation, at least in a mind unsubdued by philosophy, I
+  found to be one of the most fertile sources of disquiet and uneasiness. From
+  this pain the society of Mr. Raymond by no means relieved me. He was indeed
+  eminently superior to the vices of the rest; but I did not less exquisitely
+  feel how much he was out of his place, how disproportionably associated, or
+  how contemptibly employed. I had attempted to counteract the errors under
+  which he and his companions laboured; but I had found the obstacles that
+  presented themselves greater than I had imagined.</p>
+
+  <p>What was I to do? Was I to wait the issue of this my missionary
+  undertaking, or was I to withdraw myself immediately? When I withdrew, ought
+  that to be done privately, or with an open avowal of my design, and an
+  endeavour to supply by the force of example what was deficient in my
+  arguments? It was certainly improper, as I declined all participation in the
+  pursuits of these men, did not pay my contribution of hazard to the means by
+  which they subsisted, and had no congeniality with their habits, that I
+  should continue to reside with them longer than was absolutely necessary.
+  There was one circumstance that rendered this deliberation particularly
+  pressing. They intended in a few days removing from their present
+  habitation, to a haunt to which they were accustomed, in a distant county.
+  If I did not propose to continue with them, it would perhaps be wrong to
+  accompany them in this removal. The state of calamity to which my inexorable
+  prosecutor had reduced me, had made the encounter even of a den of robbers a
+  fortunate adventure. But the time that had since elapsed, had probably been
+  sufficient to relax the keenness of the quest that was made after me. I
+  sighed for that solitude and obscurity, that retreat from the vexations of
+  the world and the voice even of common fame, which I had proposed to myself
+  when I broke my prison.</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the meditations which now occupied my mind. At length I grew
+  fatigued with continual contemplation, and to relieve myself pulled out a
+  pocket Horace, the legacy of my beloved Brightwel! I read with avidity the
+  epistle in which he so beautifully describes to Fuscus, the grammarian, the
+  pleasures of rural tranquillity and independence. By this time the sun rose
+  from behind the eastern hills, and I opened my casement to contemplate it.
+  The day commenced with peculiar brilliancy, and was accompanied with all
+  those charms which the poets of nature, as they have been styled, have so
+  much delighted to describe. There was something in this scene, particularly
+  as succeeding to the active exertions of intellect, that soothed the mind to
+  composure. Insensibly a confused reverie invaded my faculties; I withdrew
+  from the window, threw myself upon the bed, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>I do not recollect the precise images which in this situation passed
+  through my thoughts, but I know that they concluded with the idea of some
+  person, the agent of Mr. Falkland, approaching to assassinate me. This
+  thought had probably been suggested by the project I meditated of entering
+  once again into the world, and throwing myself within the sphere of his
+  possible vengeance. I imagined that the design of the murderer was to come
+  upon me by surprise, that I was aware of his design, and yet, by some
+  fascination, had no thought of evading it. I heard the steps of the murderer
+  as he cautiously approached. I seemed to listen to his constrained yet
+  audible breathings. He came up to the corner where I was placed, and then
+  stopped.</p>
+
+  <p>The idea became too terrible; I started, opened my eyes, and beheld the
+  execrable hag before mentioned standing over me with a butcher's cleaver. I
+  shifted my situation with a speed that seemed too swift for volition, and
+  the blow already aimed at my skull sunk impotent upon the bed. Before she
+  could wholly recover her posture, I sprung upon her, seized hold of the
+  weapon, and had nearly wrested it from her. But in a moment she resumed her
+  strength and her desperate purpose, and we had a furious struggle&mdash;she
+  impelled by inveterate malice, and I resisting for my life. Her vigour was
+  truly Amazonian, and at no time had I ever occasion to contend with a more
+  formidable opponent. Her glance was rapid and exact, and the shock with
+  which from time to time she impelled her whole frame inconceivably vehement.
+  At length I was victorious, took from her the instrument of death, and threw
+  her upon the ground. Till now the earnestness of her exertions had curbed
+  her rage; but now she gnashed with her teeth, her eyes seemed as if starting
+  from their sockets, and her body heaved with uncontrollable insanity.</p>
+
+  <p>"Rascal! devil!" she exclaimed, "what do you mean to do to me?"</p>
+
+  <p>Till now the scene had passed uninterrupted by a single word.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing," I replied: "begone, infernal witch! and leave me to
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>"Leave you! No: I will thrust my fingers through your ribs, and drink
+  your blood!--You conquer me?&mdash;Ha, ha!--Yes, yes; you shall!--I will sit
+  upon you, and press you to hell! I will roast you with brimstone, and dash
+  your entrails into your eyes! Ha, ha!--ha!"</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this, she sprung up, and prepared to attack me with redoubled
+  fury. I seized her hands, and compelled her to sit upon the bed. Thus
+  restrained, she continued to express the tumult of her thoughts by grinning,
+  by certain furious motions of her head, and by occasional vehement efforts
+  to disengage herself from my grasp. These contortions and starts were of the
+  nature of those fits in which the patients are commonly supposed to need
+  three or four persons to hold them. But I found by experience that, under
+  the circumstances in which I was placed, my single strength was sufficient.
+  The spectacle of her emotions was inconceivably frightful. Her violence at
+  length however began to abate, and she became convinced of the hopelessness
+  of the contest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let me go!" said she. "Why do you hold me? I will not be held."</p>
+
+  <p>"I wanted you gone from the first," replied I.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you contented to go now?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I tell you, misbegotten villain! Yes, rascal!"</p>
+
+  <p>I immediately loosed my hold. She flew to the door, and, holding it in
+  her hand, said, "I will be the death of you yet: you shall not be your own
+  man twenty-four hours longer!" With these words she shut the door, and
+  locked it upon me. An action so totally unexpected startled me. Whither was
+  she gone? What was it she intended? To perish by the machinations of such a
+  hag as this was a thought not to be endured. Death in any form brought upon
+  us by surprise, and for which the mind has had no time to prepare, is
+  inexpressibly terrible. My thoughts wandered in breathless horror and
+  confusion, and all within was uproar. I endeavoured to break the door, but
+  in vain. I went round the room in search of some tool to assist me. At
+  length I rushed against it with a desperate effort, to which it yielded, and
+  had nearly thrown me from the top of the stairs to the bottom.</p>
+
+  <p>I descended with all possible caution and vigilance, I entered the room
+  which served us for a kitchen, but it was deserted. I searched every other
+  apartment in vain. I went out among the ruins; still I discovered nothing of
+  my late assailant. It was extraordinary: what could be become of her? what
+  was I to conclude from her disappearance! I reflected on her parting
+  menace,&mdash;"I should not be my own man twenty-four hours longer." It was
+  mysterious! it did not seem to be the menace of assassination. Suddenly the
+  recollection of the hand-bill brought to us by Larkins rushed upon my
+  memory. Was it possible that she alluded to that in her parting words? Would
+  she set out upon such an expedition by herself? Was it not dangerous to the
+  whole fraternity if, without the smallest precaution, she should bring the
+  officers of justice in the midst of them? It was perhaps improbable she
+  would engage in an undertaking thus desperate. It was not however easy to
+  answer for the conduct of a person in her state of mind. Should I wait, and
+  risk the preservation of my liberty upon the issue?</p>
+
+  <p>To this question I returned an immediate negative. I had resolved in a
+  short time to quit my present situation, and the difference of a little
+  sooner or a little later could not be very material. It promised to be
+  neither agreeable nor prudent for me to remain under the same roof with a
+  person who had manifested such a fierce and inexpiable hostility. But the
+  consideration which had inexpressibly the most weight with me, belonged to
+  the ideas of imprisonment, trial, and death. The longer they had formed the
+  subject of my contemplation, the more forcibly was I impelled to avoid them.
+  I had entered upon a system of action for that purpose; I had already made
+  many sacrifices; and I believed that I would never miscarry in this project
+  through any neglect of mine. The thought of what was reserved for me by my
+  persecutors sickened my very soul; and the more intimately I was acquainted
+  with oppression and injustice, the more deeply was I penetrated with the
+  abhorrence to which they are entitled.</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the reasons that determined me instantly, abruptly, without
+  leave-taking, or acknowledgment for the peculiar and repeated favours I had
+  received, to quit a habitation to which, for six weeks, I had apparently
+  been indebted for protection from trial, conviction, and an ignominious
+  death. I had come hither pennyless; I quitted my abode with the sum of a few
+  guineas in my possession, Mr. Raymond having insisted upon my taking a share
+  at the time that each man received his dividend from the common stock.
+  Though I had reason to suppose that the heat of the pursuit against me would
+  be somewhat remitted by the time that had elapsed, the magnitude of the
+  mischief that, in an unfavourable event, might fall on me, determined me to
+  neglect no imaginable precaution. I recollected the hand-bill which was the
+  source of my present alarm, and conceived that one of the principal dangers
+  which threatened me was the recognition of my person, either by such as had
+  previously known me, or even by strangers. It seemed prudent therefore to
+  disguise it as effectually as I could. For this purpose I had recourse to a
+  parcel of tattered garments, that lay in a neglected corner of our
+  habitation. The disguise I chose was that of a beggar. Upon this plan, I
+  threw off my shirt; I tied a handkerchief about my head, with which I took
+  care to cover one of my eyes; over this I drew a piece of an old woollen
+  nightcap. I selected the worst apparel I could find; and this I reduced to a
+  still more deplorable condition, by rents that I purposely made in various
+  places. Thus equipped, I surveyed myself in a looking-glass. I had rendered
+  my appearance complete; nor would any one have suspected that I was not one
+  of the fraternity to which I assumed to belong. I said, "This is the form in
+  which tyranny and injustice oblige me to seek for refuge: but better, a
+  thousand times better is it, thus to incur contempt with the dregs of
+  mankind, than trust to the tender mercies of our superiors!"</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CV" id="V3_CV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+  <p>The only rule that I laid down to myself in traversing the forest, was to
+  take a direction as opposite as possible to that which led to the scene of
+  my late imprisonment. After about two hours walking I arrived at the
+  termination of this ruder scene, and reached that part of the country which
+  is inclosed and cultivated. Here I sat down by the side of a brook, and,
+  pulling out a crust of bread which I had brought away with me, rested and
+  refreshed myself. While I continued in this place, I began to ruminate upon
+  the plan I should lay down for my future proceedings; and my propensity now
+  led me, as it had done in a former instance, to fix upon the capital, which
+  I believed, besides its other recommendations, would prove the safest place
+  for concealment. During these thoughts I saw a couple of peasants passing at
+  a small distance, and enquired of them respecting the London road. By their
+  description I understood that the most immediate way would be to repass a
+  part of the forest, and that it would be necessary to approach considerably
+  nearer to the county-town than I was at the spot which I had at present
+  reached. I did not imagine that this could be a circumstance of considerable
+  importance. My disguise appeared to be a sufficient security against
+  momentary danger; and I therefore took a path, though not the most direct
+  one, which led towards the point they suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>Some of the occurrences of the day are deserving to be mentioned. As I
+  passed along a road which lay in my way for a few miles, I saw a carriage
+  advancing in the opposite direction. I debated with myself for a moment,
+  whether I should pass it without notice, or should take this occasion, by
+  voice or gesture, of making an essay of my trade. This idle disquisition was
+  however speedily driven from my mind when I perceived that the carriage was
+  Mr. Falkland's. The suddenness of the encounter struck me with terror,
+  though perhaps it would have been difficult for calm reflection to have
+  discovered any considerable danger. I withdrew from the road, and skulked
+  behind a hedge till it should have completely gone by. I was too much
+  occupied with my own feelings, to venture to examine whether or no the
+  terrible adversary of my peace were in the carriage. I persuaded myself that
+  he was. I looked after the equipage, and exclaimed, "There you may see the
+  luxurious accommodations and appendages of guilt, and here the forlornness
+  that awaits upon innocence!"&mdash;I was to blame to imagine that my case
+  was singular in that respect. I only mention it to show how the most
+  trivial circumstance contributes to embitter the cup to the man of
+  adversity. The thought however was a transient one. I had learned this
+  lesson from my sufferings, not to indulge in the luxury of discontent. As my
+  mind recovered its tranquillity, I began to enquire whether the phenomenon I
+  had just seen could have any relation to myself. But though my mind was
+  extremely inquisitive and versatile in this respect, I could discover no
+  sufficient ground upon which to build a judgment.</p>
+
+  <p>At night I entered a little public-house at the extremity of a village,
+  and, seating myself in a corner of the kitchen, asked for some bread and
+  cheese. While I was sitting at my repast, three or four labourers came in
+  for a little refreshment after their work. Ideas respecting the inequality
+  of rank pervade every order in society; and, as my appearance was meaner and
+  more contemptible than theirs, I found it expedient to give way to these
+  gentry of a village alehouse, and remove to an obscurer station. I was
+  surprised, and not a little startled, to find them fall almost immediately
+  into conversation about my history, whom, with a slight variation of
+  circumstances, they styled the notorious housebreaker, Kit Williams.</p>
+
+  <p>"Damn the fellow," said one of them, "one never hears of any thing else.
+  O' my life, I think he makes talk for the whole country."</p>
+
+  <p>"That is very true," replied another. "I was at the market-town to-day to
+  sell some oats for my master, and there was a hue and cry, some of them
+  thought they had got him, but it was a false alarm."</p>
+
+  <p>"That hundred guineas is a fine thing," rejoined the first. "I should be
+  glad if so be as how it fell in my way."</p>
+
+  <p>"For the matter of that," said his companion, "I should like a hundred
+  guineas as well as another. But I cannot be of your mind for all that. I
+  should never think money would do me any good that had been the means of
+  bringing a Christian creature to the gallows."</p>
+
+  <p>"Poh, that is all my granny! Some folks must be hanged, to keep the
+  wheels of our state-folks a-going. Besides, I could forgive the fellow all
+  his other robberies, but that he should have been so hardened as to break
+  the house of his own master at last, that is too bad."</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord! lord!" replied the other, "I see you know nothing of the matter! I
+  will tell you how it was, as I learned it at the town. I question whether he
+  ever robbed his master at all. But, hark you! you must know as how that
+  squire Falkland was once tried for murder"&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, yes, we know that."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, he was as innocent as the child unborn. But I supposes as how he
+  is a little soft or so. And so Kit Williams&mdash;Kit is a devilish cunning
+  fellow, you may judge that from his breaking prison no less than five
+  times,&mdash;so, I say, he threatened to bring his master to trial at 'size
+  all over again, and so frightened him, and got money from him at divers
+  times. Till at last one squire Forester, a relation of t'other, found it all
+  out. And he made the hell of a rumpus, and sent away Kit to prison in a
+  twinky; and I believe he would have been hanged: for when two squires lay
+  their heads together, they do not much matter law, you know; or else they
+  twist the law to their own ends, I cannot exactly say which; but it is much
+  at one when the poor fellow's breath is out of his body."</p>
+
+  <p>Though this story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient
+  detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned. Each man maintained the
+  justness of his own statement, and the dispute was long and obstinately
+  pursued. Historians and commentators at length withdrew together. The
+  terrors with which I was seized when this conversation began, were extreme.
+  I stole a sidelong glance to one quarter and another, to observe if any
+  man's attention was turned upon me. I trembled as if in an ague-fit; and, at
+  first, felt continual impulses to quit the house, and take to my heels. I
+  drew closer to my corner, held aside my head, and seemed from time to time
+  to undergo a total revolution of the animal economy.</p>
+
+  <p>At length the tide of ideas turned. Perceiving they paid no attention to
+  me, the recollection of the full security my disguise afforded recurred
+  strongly to my thoughts; and I began inwardly to exult, though I did not
+  venture to obtrude myself to examination. By degrees I began to be amused at
+  the absurdity of their tales, and the variety of the falsehoods I heard
+  asserted around me. My soul seemed to expand; I felt a pride in the
+  self-possession and lightness of heart with which I could listen to the
+  scene; and I determined to prolong and heighten the enjoyment. Accordingly,
+  when they were withdrawn, I addressed myself to our hostess, a buxom, bluff,
+  good-humoured widow, and asked what sort of a man this Kit Williams might
+  be? She replied that, as she was informed, he was as handsome, likely a lad,
+  as any in four counties round; and that she loved him for his cleverness, by
+  which he outwitted all the keepers they could set over him, and made his way
+  through stone walls as if they were so many cobwebs. I observed, that the
+  country was so thoroughly alarmed, that I did not think it possible he
+  should escape the pursuit that was set up after him. This idea excited her
+  immediate indignation: she said, she hoped he was far enough away by this
+  time; but if not, she wished the curse of God might light on them that
+  betrayed so noble a fellow to an ignominious end!--Though she little thought
+  that the person of whom she spoke was so near her, yet the sincere and
+  generous warmth with which She interested herself in my behalf gave me
+  considerable pleasure. With this sensation to sweeten the fatigues of the
+  day and the calamities of my situation, I retired from the kitchen to a
+  neighbouring barn, laid myself down upon some straw, and fell into a
+  profound sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day about noon, as I was pursuing my journey, I was overtaken by
+  two men on horseback, who stopped me, to enquire respecting a person that
+  they supposed might have passed along that road. As they proceeded in their
+  description, I perceived, with astonishment and terror, that I was myself
+  the person to whom their questions related. They entered into a tolerably
+  accurate detail of the various characteristics by which my person might best
+  be distinguished. They said, they had good reason to believe that I had been
+  seen at a place in that county the very day before. While they were speaking
+  a third person, who had fallen behind, came up; and my alarm was greatly
+  increased upon seeing that this person was the servant of Mr. Forester, who
+  had visited me in prison about a fortnight before my escape. My best
+  resource in this crisis was composure and apparent indifference. It was
+  fortunate for me that my disguise was so complete, that the eye of Mr.
+  Falkland itself could scarcely have penetrated it. I had been aware for some
+  time before that this was a refuge which events might make necessary, and
+  had endeavoured to arrange and methodise my ideas upon the subject. From my
+  youth I had possessed a considerable facility in the art of imitation; and
+  when I quitted my retreat in the habitation of Mr. Raymond, I adopted, along
+  with my beggar's attire, a peculiar slouching and clownish gait, to be used
+  whenever there should appear the least chance of my being observed, together
+  with an Irish brogue which I had had an opportunity of studying in my
+  prison. Such are the miserable expedients, and so great the studied
+  artifice, which man, who never deserves the name of manhood but in
+  proportion as he is erect and independent, may find it necessary to employ,
+  for the purpose of eluding the inexorable animosity and unfeeling tyranny of
+  his fellow man! I had made use of this brogue, though I have not thought it
+  necessary to write it down in my narrative, in the conversation of the
+  village alehouse. Mr. Forester's servant, as he came up, observed that his
+  companions were engaged in conversation with me; and, guessing at the
+  subject, asked whether they had gained any intelligence. He added to the
+  information at which they had already hinted, that a resolution was taken to
+  spare neither diligence nor expense for my discovery and apprehension, and
+  that they were satisfied, if I were above ground and in the kingdom, it
+  would be impossible for me to escape them.</p>
+
+  <p>Every new incident that had occurred to me tended to impress upon my mind
+  the extreme danger to which I was exposed. I could almost have imagined that
+  I was the sole subject of general attention, and that the whole world was in
+  arms to exterminate me. The very idea tingled through every fibre of my
+  frame. But, terrible as it appeared to my imagination, it did but give new
+  energy to my purpose; and I determined that I would not voluntarily resign
+  the field, that is, literally speaking, my neck to the cord of the
+  executioner, notwithstanding the greatest superiority in my assailants. But
+  the incidents which had befallen me, though they did not change my purpose,
+  induced me to examine over again the means by which it might be effected.
+  The consequence of this revisal was, to determine me to bend my course to
+  the nearest sea-port on the west side of the island, and transport myself to
+  Ireland. I cannot now tell what it was that inclined me to prefer this
+  scheme to that which I had originally formed. Perhaps the latter, which had
+  been for some time present to my imagination, for that reason appeared the
+  more obvious of the two; and I found an appearance of complexity, which the
+  mind did not stay to explain, in substituting the other in its stead.</p>
+
+  <p>I arrived without further impediment at the place from which I intended
+  to sail, enquired for a vessel, which I found ready to put to sea in a few
+  hours, and agreed with the captain for my passage. Ireland had to me the
+  disadvantage of being a dependency of the British government, and therefore
+  a place of less security than most other countries which are divided from it
+  by the ocean. To judge from the diligence with which I seemed to be pursued
+  in England, it was not improbable that the zeal of my persecutors might
+  follow me to the other side of the channel. It was however sufficiently
+  agreeable to my mind, that I was upon the point of being removed one step
+  further from the danger which was so grievous to my imagination.</p>
+
+  <p>Could there be any peril in the short interval that was to elapse, before
+  the vessel was to weigh anchor and quit the English shore? Probably not. A
+  very short time had intervened between my determination for the sea and my
+  arrival at this place; and if any new alarm had been given to my
+  prosecutors, it proceeded from the old woman a very few days before. I hoped
+  I had anticipated their diligence. Meanwhile, that I might neglect no
+  reasonable precaution, I went instantly on board, resolved that I would not
+  unnecessarily, by walking the streets of the town, expose myself to any
+  untoward accident. This was the first time I had, upon any occasion, taken
+  leave of my native country.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CVI" id="V3_CVI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+  <p>The time was now nearly elapsed that was prescribed for our stay, and
+  orders for weighing anchor were every moment expected, when we were hailed
+  by a boat from the shore, with two other men in it besides those that rowed.
+  They entered our vessel in an instant. They were officers of justice. The
+  passengers, five persons besides myself, were ordered upon deck for
+  examination. I was inexpressibly disturbed at the occurrence of such a
+  circumstance in so unseasonable a moment. I took it for granted that it was
+  of me they were in search. Was it possible that, by any unaccountable
+  accident, they should have got an intimation of my disguise? It was
+  infinitely more distressing to encounter them upon this narrow stage, and
+  under these pointed circumstances, than, as I had before encountered my
+  pursuers, under the appearance of an indifferent person. My recollection
+  however did not forsake me. I confided in my conscious disguise and my Irish
+  brogue, as a rock of dependence against all accidents.</p>
+
+  <p>No sooner did we appear upon deck than, to my great consternation, I
+  could observe the attention of our guests principally turned upon me. They
+  asked a few frivolous questions of such of my fellow passengers as happened
+  to be nearest to them; and then, turning to me, enquired my name, who I was,
+  whence I came, and what had brought me there? I had scarcely opened my mouth
+  to reply, when, with one consent, they laid hold of me, said I was their
+  prisoner, and declared that my accent, together with the correspondence of
+  my person, would be sufficient to convict me before any court in England. I
+  was hurried out of the vessel into the boat in which they came, and seated
+  between them, as if by way of precaution, lest I should spring overboard,
+  and by any means escape them.</p>
+
+  <p>I now took it for granted that I was once more in the power of Mr.
+  Falkland; and the idea was insupportably mortifying and oppressive to my
+  imagination. Escape from his pursuit, freedom from his tyranny, were objects
+  upon which my whole soul was bent. Could no human ingenuity and exertion
+  effect them? Did his power reach through all space, and his eye penetrate
+  every concealment? Was he like that mysterious being, to protect us from
+  whose fierce revenge mountains and hills, we are told, might fall on us in
+  vain? No idea is more heart-sickening and tremendous than this. But, in my
+  case, it was not a subject of reasoning or of faith; I could derive no
+  comfort, either directly from the unbelief which, upon religious subjects,
+  some men avow to their own minds; or secretly from the remoteness and
+  incomprehensibility of the conception: it was an affair of sense; I felt the
+  fangs of the tiger striking deep into my heart.</p>
+
+  <p>But though this impression was at first exceedingly strong, and
+  accompanied with its usual attendants of dejection and pusillanimity, my
+  mind soon began, as it were mechanically, to turn upon the consideration of
+  the distance between this sea-port and my county prison, and the various
+  opportunities of escape that might offer themselves in the interval. My
+  first duty was to avoid betraying myself, more than it might afterwards
+  appear I was betrayed already. It was possible that, though apprehended, my
+  apprehension might have been determined on upon some slight score, and that,
+  by my dexterity, I might render my dismission as sudden as my arrest had
+  been. It was even possible that I had been seized through a mistake, and
+  that the present measure might have no connection with Mr. Falkland's
+  affair. Upon every supposition, it was my business to gain information. In
+  my passage from the ship to the town I did not utter a word. My conductors
+  commented on my sulkiness; but remarked that it would avail me
+  nothing&mdash;I should infallibly swing, as it was never known that any body
+  got off who was tried for robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to
+  conceive the lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words:
+  I persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their
+  conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail from
+  Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two Irishmen,
+  that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up upon suspicion
+  of being the other. They had a description of his person, which, though, as
+  I afterwards found, it disagreed from mine in several material articles,
+  appeared to them to tally to the minutest tittle. The intelligence that the
+  whole proceeding against me was founded in a mistake, took an oppressive
+  load from my mind. I believed that I should immediately be able to establish
+  my innocence, to the satisfaction of any magistrate in the kingdom; and
+  though crossed in my plans, and thwarted in my design of quitting the
+  island, even after I was already at sea, this was but a trifling
+  inconvenience compared with what I had had but too much reason to fear.</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as we came ashore, I was conducted to the house of a justice of
+  peace, a man who had formerly been the captain of a collier, but who, having
+  been successful in the world, had quitted this wandering life, and for some
+  years had had the honour to represent his majesty's person. We were detained
+  for some time in a sort of anti-room, waiting his reverence's leisure. The
+  persons by whom I had been taken up were experienced in their trade, and
+  insisted upon employing this interval in searching me, in presence of two of
+  his worship's servants. They found upon me fifteen guineas and some silver.
+  They required me to strip myself perfectly naked, that they might examine
+  whether I had bank-notes concealed any where about my person. They took up
+  the detached parcels of my miserable attire as I threw it from me, and felt
+  them one by one, to discover whether the articles of which they were in
+  search might by any device be sewn up in them. To all this I submitted
+  without murmuring. It might probably come to the same thing at last; and
+  summary justice was sufficiently coincident with my views, my principal
+  object being to get as soon as possible out of the clutches of the
+  respectable persons who now had me in custody.</p>
+
+  <p>This operation was scarcely completed, before we were directed to be
+  ushered into his worship's apartment. My accusers opened the charge, and
+  told him they had been ordered to this town, upon an intimation that one of
+  the persons who robbed the Edinburgh mail was to be found here; and that
+  they had taken me on board a vessel which was by this time under sail for
+  Ireland. "Well," says his worship, "that is your story; now let us hear what
+  account the gentleman gives of himself. What is your name&mdash;ha, sirrah?
+  and from what part of Tipperary are you pleased to come?" I had already
+  taken my determination upon this article; and the moment I learned the
+  particulars of the charge against me, resolved, for the present at least, to
+  lay aside my Irish accent, and speak my native tongue. This I had done in
+  the very few words I had spoken to my conductors in the anti-room: they
+  started at the metamorphosis; but they had gone too far for it to be
+  possible they should retract, in consistence with their honour. I now told
+  the justice that I was no Irishman, nor had ever been in that country: I was
+  a native of England. This occasioned a consulting of the deposition in which
+  my person was supposed to be described, and which my conductors had brought
+  with them for their direction. To be sure, that required that the offender
+  should be an Irishman.</p>
+
+  <p>Observing his worship hesitate, I thought this was the time to push the
+  matter a little further. I referred to the paper, and showed that the
+  description neither tallied as to height nor complexion. But then it did as
+  to years and the colour of the hair; and it was not this gentleman's habit,
+  as he informed me, to squabble about trifles, or to let a man's neck out of
+  the halter for a pretended flaw of a few inches in his stature. "If a man
+  were too short," he said, "there was no remedy like a little stretching."
+  The miscalculation in my case happened to be the opposite way, but his
+  reverence did not think proper to lose his jest. Upon the whole, he was
+  somewhat at a loss how to proceed.</p>
+
+  <p>My conductors observed this, and began to tremble for the reward, which,
+  two hours ago, they thought as good as in their own pocket. To retain me in
+  custody they judged to be a safe speculation; if it turned out a mistake at
+  last, they felt little apprehension of a suit for false imprisonment from a
+  poor man, accoutred as I was, in rags. They therefore urged his worship to
+  comply with their views. They told him that to be sure the evidence against
+  me did not prove so strong as for their part they heartily wished it had,
+  but that there were a number of suspicious circumstances respecting me. When
+  I was brought up to them upon the deck of the vessel, I spoke as fine an
+  Irish brogue as one shall hear in a summer's day; and now, all at once,
+  there was not the least particle of it left. In searching me they had found
+  upon me fifteen guineas, how should a poor beggar lad, such as I appeared,
+  come honestly by fifteen guineas? Besides, when they had stripped me naked,
+  though my dress was so shabby my skin had all the sleekness of a gentleman.
+  In fine, for what purpose could a poor beggar, who had never been in Ireland
+  in his life, want to transport himself to that country? It was as clear as
+  the sun that I was no better than I should be. This reasoning, together with
+  some significant winks and gestures between the justice and the plaintiffs,
+  brought him over to their way of thinking. He said, I must go to Warwick,
+  where it seems the other robber was at present in custody, and be confronted
+  with him; and if then every thing appeared fair and satisfactory, I should
+  be discharged.</p>
+
+  <p>No intelligence could be more terrible than that which was contained in
+  these words. That I, who had found the whole country in arms against me, who
+  was exposed to a pursuit so peculiarly vigilant and penetrating, should now
+  be dragged to the very centre of the kingdom, without power of accommodating
+  myself to circumstances, and under the immediate custody of the officers of
+  justice, seemed to my ears almost the same thing as if he had pronounced
+  upon me a sentence of death! I strenuously urged the injustice of this
+  proceeding. I observed to the magistrate, that it was impossible I should be
+  the person at whom the description pointed. It required an Irishman; I was
+  no Irishman. It described a person shorter than I; a circumstance of all
+  others the least capable of being counterfeited. There was not the slightest
+  reason for detaining me in custody. I had been already disappointed of my
+  voyage, and lost the money I had paid, down, through the officiousness of
+  these gentlemen in apprehending me. I assured his worship, that every delay,
+  under my circumstances, was of the utmost importance to me. It was
+  impossible to devise a greater injury to be inflicted on me, than the
+  proposal that, instead of being permitted to proceed upon my voyage, I
+  should be sent, under arrest, into the heart of the kingdom.</p>
+
+  <p>My remonstrances were vain. The justice was by no means inclined to
+  digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the
+  habiliments of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have silenced
+  me for my impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness with which he
+  was wholly unable to contend. When I had finished, he told me it was all to
+  no purpose, and that it might have been better for me, if I had shown myself
+  less insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond and a suspicious person.
+  The more earnest I showed myself to get off, the more reason there was he
+  should keep me fast. Perhaps, after all, I should turn out to be the felon
+  in question. But, if I was not that, he had no doubt I was worse; a poacher,
+  or, for what he knew, a murderer. He had a kind of a notion that he had seen
+  my face before about some such affair; out of all doubt I was an old
+  offender. He had it in his choice to send me to hard labour as a vagrant,
+  upon the strength of my appearance and the contradictions in my story, or to
+  order me to Warwick; and, out of the spontaneous goodness of his
+  disposition, he chose the milder side of the alternative. He could assure me
+  I should not slip through his fingers. It was of more benefit to his
+  majesty's government to hang one such fellow as he suspected me to be, than,
+  out of mistaken tenderness, to concern one's self for the good of all the
+  beggars in the nation.</p>
+
+  <p>Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man so
+  fully impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter
+  insignificance, I claimed that, at least, the money taken from my person
+  should be restored to me. This was granted. His worship perhaps suspected
+  that he had stretched a point in what he had already done, and was therefore
+  the less unwilling to relax in this incidental circumstance. My conductors
+  did not oppose themselves to this indulgence, for a reason that will appear
+  in the sequel. The justice however enlarged upon his clemency in this
+  proceeding. He did not know whether he was not exceeding the spirit of his
+  commission in complying with my demand. So much money in my possession could
+  not be honestly come by. But it was his temper to soften, as far as could be
+  done with propriety, the strict letter of the law.</p>
+
+  <p>There were cogent reasons why the gentlemen who had originally taken me
+  into custody, chose that I should continue in their custody when my
+  examination was over. Every man is, in his different mode, susceptible to a
+  sense of honour; and they did not choose to encounter the disgrace that
+  would accrue to them, if justice had been done. Every man is in some degree
+  influenced by the love of power; and they were willing I should owe any
+  benefit I received, to their sovereign grace and benignity, and not to the
+  mere reason of the case. It was not however an unsubstantial honour and
+  barren power that formed the objects of their pursuit: no, their views were
+  deeper than that. In a word, though they chose that I should retire from the
+  seat of justice, as I had come before it, a prisoner, yet the tenor of my
+  examination had obliged them, in spite of themselves, to suspect that I was
+  innocent of the charge alleged against me. Apprehensive therefore that the
+  hundred guineas which had been offered as a reward for taking the robber was
+  completely out of the question in the present business, they were contented
+  to strike at smaller game. Having conducted me to an inn, and given
+  directions respecting a vehicle for the journey, they took me aside, while
+  one of them addressed me in the following manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"You see, my lad, how the case stands: hey for Warwick is the word I and
+  when we are got there, what may happen then I will not pretend for to say.
+  Whether you are innocent or no is no business of mine; but you are not such
+  a chicken as to suppose, if so be as you are innocent, that that will make
+  your game altogether sure. You say your business calls you another way, and
+  as how you are in haste: I scorns to cross any man in his concerns, if I can
+  help it. If therefore you will give us them there fifteen shiners, why snug
+  is the word. They are of no use to you; a beggar, you know, is always at
+  home. For the matter of that, we could have had them in the way of business,
+  as you saw, at the justice's. But I am a man of principle; I loves to do
+  things above board, and scorns to extort a shilling from any man."</p>
+
+  <p>He who is tinctured with principles of moral discrimination is apt upon
+  occasion to be run away with by his feelings in that respect, and to forget
+  the immediate interest of the moment. I confess, that the first sentiment
+  excited in my mind by this overture was that of indignation. I was
+  irresistibly impelled to give utterance to this feeling, and postpone for a
+  moment the consideration of the future. I replied with the severity which so
+  base a proceeding appeared to deserve. My bear-leaders were considerably
+  surprised with my firmness, but seemed to think it beneath them to contest
+  with me the principles I delivered. He who had made the overture contented
+  himself with replying, "Well, well, my lad, do as you will; you are not the
+  first man that has been hanged rather than part with a few guineas." His
+  words did not pass unheeded by me. They were strikingly applicable to my
+  situation, and I was determined not to suffer the occasion to escape me
+  unimproved.</p>
+
+  <p>The pride of these gentlemen however was too great to admit of further
+  parley for the present. They left me abruptly; having first ordered an old
+  man, the father of the landlady, to stay in the room with me while they were
+  absent. The old man they ordered, for security, to lock the door, and put
+  the key in his pocket; at the same time mentioning below stairs the station
+  in which they had left me, that the people of the house might have an eye
+  upon what went forward, and not suffer me to escape. What was the intention
+  of this manoeuvre I am unable certainly to pronounce. Probably it was a sort
+  of compromise between their pride and their avarice; being desirous, for
+  some reason or other, to drop me as soon as convenient, and therefore
+  determining to wait the result of my private meditations on the proposal
+  they had made.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CVII" id="V3_CVII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+  <p>They were no sooner withdrawn than I cast my eye upon the old man, and
+  found something extremely venerable and interesting in his appearance. His
+  form was above the middle size. It indicated that his strength had been once
+  considerable; nor was it at this time by any means annihilated. His hair was
+  in considerable quantity, and was as white as the drifted snow. His
+  complexion was healthful and ruddy, at the same time that his face was
+  furrowed with wrinkles. In his eye there was remarkable vivacity, and his
+  whole countenance was strongly expressive of good-nature. The boorishness of
+  his rank in society was lost in the cultivation his mind had derived from
+  habits of sensibility and benevolence.</p>
+
+  <p>The view of his figure immediately introduced a train of ideas into my
+  mind, respecting the advantage to be drawn from the presence of such a
+  person. The attempt to take any step without his consent was hopeless; for,
+  though I should succeed with regard to him, he could easily give the alarm
+  to other persons, who would, no doubt, be within call. Add to which, I could
+  scarcely have prevailed on myself to offer any offence to a person whose
+  first appearance so strongly engaged my affection and esteem. In reality my
+  thoughts were turned into a different channel. I was impressed with an
+  ardent wish to be able to call this man my benefactor. Pursued by a train of
+  ill fortune, I could no longer consider myself as a member of society. I was
+  a solitary being, cut off from the expectation of sympathy, kindness, and
+  the good-will of mankind. I was strongly impelled, by the situation in which
+  the present moment placed me, to indulge in a luxury which my destiny seemed
+  to have denied. I could not conceive the smallest comparison between the
+  idea of deriving my liberty from the spontaneous kindness of a worthy and
+  excellent mind, and that of being indebted for it to the selfishness and
+  baseness of the worst members of society. It was thus that I allowed myself
+  in the wantonness of refinement, even in the midst of destruction.</p>
+
+  <p>Guided by these sentiments, I requested his attention to the
+  circumstances by which I had been brought into my present situation. He
+  immediately signified his assent, and said he would cheerfully listen to any
+  thing I thought proper to communicate. I told him, the persons who had just
+  left me in charge with him had come to this town for the purpose of
+  apprehending some person who had been guilty of robbing the mail; that they
+  had chosen to take me up under this warrant, and had conducted me before a
+  justice of the peace; that they had soon detected their mistake, the person
+  in question being an Irishman, and differing from me both in country and
+  stature; but that, by collusion between them and the justice, they were
+  permitted to retain me in custody, and pretended to undertake to conduct me
+  to Warwick to confront me with my accomplice; that, in searching me at the
+  justice's, they had found a sum of money in my possession which excited
+  their cupidity, and that they had just been proposing to me to give me my
+  liberty upon condition of my surrendering this sum into their hands. Under
+  these circumstances, I requested him to consider, whether he would wish to
+  render himself the instrument of their extortion. I put myself into his
+  hands, and solemnly averred the truth of the facts I had just stated. If he
+  would assist me in my escape, it could have no other effect than to
+  disappoint the base passions of my conductors. I would upon no account
+  expose him to any real inconvenience; but I was well assured that the same
+  generosity that should prompt him to a good deed, would enable him
+  effectually to vindicate it when done; and that those who detained me, when
+  they had lost sight of their prey, would feel covered with confusion, and
+  not dare to take another step in the affair.</p>
+
+  <p>The old man listened to what I related with curiosity and interest. He
+  said that he had always felt an abhorrence to the sort of people who had me
+  in their hands; that he had an aversion to the task they had just imposed
+  upon him, but that he could not refuse some little disagreeable offices to
+  oblige his daughter and son-in-law. He had no doubt, from my countenance and
+  manner, of the truth of what I had asserted to him. It was an extraordinary
+  request I had made, and he did not know what had induced me to think him the
+  sort of person to whom, with any prospect of success, it might be made. In
+  reality however his habits of thinking were uncommon, and he felt more than
+  half inclined to act as I desired. One thing at least he would ask of me in
+  return, which was to be faithfully informed in some degree respecting the
+  person he was desired to oblige. What was my name?</p>
+
+  <p>The question came upon me unprepared. But, whatever might be the
+  consequence, I could not bear to deceive the person by whom it was put, and
+  in the circumstances under which it was put. The practice of perpetual
+  falsehood is too painful a task. I replied, that my name was Williams.</p>
+
+  <p>He paused. His eye was fixed upon me. I saw his complexion alter at the
+  repetition of that word. He proceeded with visible anxiety.</p>
+
+  <p>My Christian name?</p>
+
+  <p>Caleb.</p>
+
+  <p>Good God! it could not be ----? He conjured me by every thing that was
+  sacred to answer him faithfully to one question more. I was not&mdash;no, it
+  was impossible&mdash;the person who had formerly lived servant with Mr.
+  Falkland, of ----?</p>
+
+  <p>I told him that, whatever might be the meaning of his question, I would
+  answer him truly. I was the individual he mentioned.</p>
+
+  <p>As I uttered these words the old man rose from his seat. He was sorry
+  that fortune had been so unpropitious to him, as for him ever to have set
+  eyes upon me! I was a monster with whom the very earth groaned!</p>
+
+  <p>I entreated that he would suffer me to explain this new misapprehension,
+  as he had done in the former instance. I had no doubt that I should do it
+  equally to his satisfaction.</p>
+
+  <p>No! no! no! he would upon no consideration admit, that his ears should
+  suffer such contamination. This case and the other were very different.
+  There was no criminal upon the face of the earth, no murderer, half so
+  detestable as the person who could prevail upon himself to utter the charges
+  I had done, by way of recrimination, against so generous a master.&mdash;The
+  old man was in a perfect agony with the recollection.</p>
+
+  <p>At length he calmed himself enough to say, he should never cease to
+  grieve that he had held a moment's parley with me. He did not know what was
+  the conduct severe justice required of him; but, since he had come into the
+  knowledge of who I was only by my own confession, it was irreconcilably
+  repugnant to his feelings to make use of that knowledge to my injury. Here
+  therefore all relation between us ceased; as indeed it would be an abuse of
+  words to consider me in the light of a human creature. He would do me no
+  mischief; but, on the other hand, he would not, for the world, be in any way
+  assisting and abetting me.</p>
+
+  <p>I was inexpressibly affected at the abhorrence this good and benevolent
+  creature expressed against me. I could not be silent; I endeavoured once and
+  again to prevail upon him to hear me. But his determination was unalterable.
+  Our contest lasted for some time, and he at length terminated it by ringing
+  the bell, and calling up the waiter. A very little while after, my
+  conductors entered, and the other persons withdrew.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a part of the singularity of my fate that it hurried me from one
+  species of anxiety and distress to another, too rapidly to suffer any one of
+  them to sink deeply into my mind. I am apt to believe, in the retrospect,
+  that half the calamities I was destined to endure would infallibly have
+  overwhelmed and destroyed me. But, as it was, I had no leisure to chew the
+  cud upon misfortunes as they befel me, but was under the necessity of
+  forgetting them, to guard against peril that the next moment seemed ready to
+  crush me.</p>
+
+  <p>The behaviour of this incomparable and amiable old man cut me to the
+  heart. It was a dreadful prognostic for all my future life. But, as I have
+  just observed, my conductors entered, and another subject called imperiously
+  upon my attention. I could have been content, mortified as I was at this
+  instant, to have been shut up in some impenetrable solitude, and to have
+  wrapped myself in inconsolable misery. But the grief I endured had not such
+  power over me as that I could be content to risk the being led to the
+  gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred against oppression,
+  steeled my heart against that species of inertness. In the scene that had
+  just passed I had indulged, as I have said, in a wantonness and luxury of
+  refinement. It was time that indulgence should be brought to a period. It
+  was dangerous to trifle any more upon the brink of fate; and, penetrated as
+  I was with sadness by the result of my last attempt, I was little disposed
+  to unnecessary circumambulation.</p>
+
+  <p>I was exactly in the temper in which the gentlemen who had me in their
+  power would have desired to find me. Accordingly we entered immediately upon
+  business; and, after some chaffering, they agreed to accept eleven guineas
+  as the price of my freedom. To preserve however the chariness of their
+  reputation, they insisted upon conducting me with them for a few miles on
+  the outside of a stage-coach. They then pretended that the road they had to
+  travel lay in a cross country direction; and, having quitted the vehicle,
+  they suffered me, almost as soon as it was out of sight, to shake off this
+  troublesome association, and follow my own inclinations. It may be worth
+  remarking by the way, that these fellows outwitted themselves at their own
+  trade. They had laid hold of me at first under the idea of a prize of a
+  hundred guineas; they had since been glad to accept a composition of eleven:
+  but if they had retained me a little longer in their possession, they would
+  have found the possibility of acquiring the sum that had originally excited
+  their pursuit, upon a different score.</p>
+
+  <p>The mischances that had befallen me, in my late attempt to escape from my
+  pursuers by sea, deterred me from the thought of repeating that experiment.
+  I therefore once more returned to the suggestion of hiding myself, at least
+  for the present, amongst the crowds of the metropolis. Meanwhile, I by no
+  means thought proper to venture by the direct route, and the less so, as
+  that was the course which would be steered by my late conductors; but took
+  my road along the borders of Wales. The only incident worth relating in this
+  place occurred in an attempt to cross the Severn in a particular point. The
+  mode was by a ferry; but, by some strange inadvertence, I lost my way so
+  completely as to be wholly unable that night to reach the ferry, and arrive
+  at the town which I had destined for my repose.</p>
+
+  <p>This may seem a petty disappointment, in the midst of the overwhelming
+  considerations that might have been expected to engross every thought of my
+  mind. Yet it was borne by me with singular impatience. I was that day
+  uncommonly fatigued. Previously to the time that I mistook, or at least was
+  aware of the mistake of the road, the sky had become black and lowring, and
+  soon after the clouds burst down in sheets of rain. I was in the midst of a
+  heath, without a tree or covering of any sort to shelter me. I was
+  thoroughly drenched in a moment. I pushed on with a sort of sullen
+  determination. By and by the rain gave place to a storm of hail. The
+  hail-stones were large and frequent. I was ill defended by the miserable
+  covering I wore, and they seemed to cut me in a thousand directions. The
+  hail-storm subsided, and was again succeeded by a heavy rain. By this time
+  it was that I had perceived I was wholly out of my road. I could discover
+  neither man nor beast, nor habitation of any kind. I walked on, measuring at
+  every turn the path it would be proper to pursue, but in no instance finding
+  a sufficient reason to reject one or prefer another. My mind was bursting
+  with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I
+  passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that
+  life carries in its train. After wandering without any certain direction for
+  two hours, I was overtaken by the night. The scene was nearly pathless, and
+  it was vain to think of proceeding any farther.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I was, without comfort, without shelter, and without food. There was
+  not a particle of my covering that was not as wet as if it had been fished
+  from the bottom of the ocean. My teeth chattered. I trembled in every limb.
+  My heart burned with universal fury. At one moment I stumbled and fell over
+  some unseen obstacle; at another I was turned back by an impediment I could
+  not overcome.</p>
+
+  <p>There was no strict connection between these casual inconveniences and
+  the persecution under which I laboured. But my distempered thoughts
+  confounded them together. I cursed the whole system of human existence. I
+  said, "Here I am, an outcast, destined to perish with hunger and cold. All
+  men desert me. All men hate me. I am driven with mortal threats from the
+  sources of comfort and existence. Accursed world! that hates without a
+  cause, that overwhelms innocence with calamities which ought to be spared
+  even to guilt! Accursed world! dead to every manly sympathy; with eyes of
+  horn, and hearts of steel! Why do I consent to live any longer? Why do I
+  seek to drag on an existence, which, if protracted, must be protracted
+  amidst the lairs of these human tigers?"</p>
+
+  <p>This paroxysm at length exhausted itself. Presently after, I discovered a
+  solitary shed, which I was contented to resort to for shelter. In a corner
+  of the shed I found some clean straw. I threw off my rags, placed them in a
+  situation where they would best be dried, and buried myself amidst this
+  friendly warmth. Here I forgot by degrees the anguish that had racked me. A
+  wholesome shed and fresh straw may seem but scanty benefits; but they
+  offered themselves when least expected, and my whole heart was lightened by
+  the encounter. Through fatigue of mind and body, it happened in this
+  instance, though in general my repose was remarkably short, that I slept
+  till almost noon of the next day. When I rose, I found that I was at no
+  great distance from the ferry, which I crossed, and entered the town where I
+  intended to have rested the preceding night.</p>
+
+  <p>It was market-day. As I passed near the cross, I observed two people look
+  at me with great earnestness: after which one of them exclaimed, "I will be
+  damned if I do not think that this is the very fellow those men were
+  enquiring for who set off an hour ago by the coach for ----." I was
+  extremely alarmed at this information; and, quickening my pace, turned sharp
+  down a narrow lane. The moment I was out of sight I ran with all the speed I
+  could exert, and did not think myself safe till I was several miles distant
+  from the place where this information had reached my ears. I have always
+  believed that the men to whom it related were the very persons who had
+  apprehended me on board the ship in which I had embarked for Ireland; that,
+  by some accident, they had met with the description of my person as
+  published on the part of Mr. Falkland; and that, from putting together the
+  circumstances, they had been led to believe that this was the very
+  individual who had lately been in their custody. Indeed it was a piece of
+  infatuation in me, for which I am now unable to account, that, after the
+  various indications which had occurred in that affair, proving to them that
+  I was a man in critical and peculiar circumstances, I should have persisted
+  in wearing the same disguise without the smallest alteration. My escape in
+  the present case was eminently fortunate. If I had not lost my way in
+  consequence of the hail-storm on the preceding night, or if I had not so
+  greatly overslept myself this very morning, I must almost infallibly have
+  fallen into the hands of these infernal blood-hunters.</p>
+
+  <p>The town they had chosen for their next stage, the name of which I had
+  thus caught in the market-place, was the town to which, but for this
+  intimation, I should have immediately proceeded. As it was, I determined to
+  take a road as wide of it as possible. In the first place to which I came,
+  in which it was practicable to do so, I bought a great coat, which I drew
+  over my beggar's weeds, and a better hat. The hat I slouched over my face,
+  and covered one of my eyes with a green-silk shade. The handkerchief, which
+  I had hitherto worn about my head, I now tied about the lower part of my
+  visage, so as to cover my mouth. By degrees I discarded every part of my
+  former dress, and wore for my upper garment a kind of carman's frock, which,
+  being of the better sort, made me look like the son of a reputable farmer of
+  the lower class. Thus equipped, I proceeded on my journey, and, after a
+  thousand alarms, precautions, and circuitous deviations from the direct
+  path, arrived safely in London.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CVIII" id="V3_CVIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Here then was the termination of an immense series of labours, upon which
+  no man could have looked back without astonishment, or forward without a
+  sentiment bordering on despair. It was at a price which defies estimation
+  that I had purchased this resting-place; whether we consider the efforts it
+  had cost me to escape from the walls of my prison, or the dangers and
+  anxieties to which I had been a prey, from that hour to the present.</p>
+
+  <p>But why do I call the point at which I was now arrived at a
+  resting-place? Alas, it was diametrically the reverse! It was my first and
+  immediate business to review all the projects of disguise I had hitherto
+  conceived, to derive every improvement I could invent from the practice to
+  which I had been subjected, and to manufacture a veil of concealment more
+  impenetrable than ever. This was an effort to which I could see no end. In
+  ordinary cases the hue and cry after a supposed offender is a matter of
+  temporary operation; but ordinary cases formed no standard for the colossal
+  intelligence of Mr. Falkland. For the same reason, London, which appears an
+  inexhaustible reservoir of concealment to the majority of mankind, brought
+  no such consolatory sentiment to my mind. Whether life were worth accepting
+  on such terms I cannot pronounce. I only know that I persisted in this
+  exertion of my faculties, through a sort of parental love that men are
+  accustomed to entertain for their intellectual offspring; the more thought I
+  had expended in rearing it to its present perfection, the less did I find
+  myself disposed to abandon it. Another motive, not less strenuously exciting
+  me to perseverance, was the ever-growing repugnance I felt to injustice and
+  arbitrary power.</p>
+
+  <p>The first evening of my arrival in town I slept at an obscure inn in the
+  borough of Southwark, choosing that side of the metropolis, on account of
+  its lying entirely wide of the part of England from which I came. I entered
+  the inn in the evening in my countryman's frock; and, having paid for my
+  lodging before I went to bed, equipped myself next morning as differently as
+  my wardrobe would allow, and left the house before day. The frock I made up
+  into a small packet, and, having carried it to a distance as great as I
+  thought necessary, I dropped it in the corner of an alley through which I
+  passed. My next care was to furnish myself with another suit of apparel,
+  totally different from any to which I had hitherto had recourse. The
+  exterior which I was now induced to assume was that of a Jew. One of the
+  gang of thieves upon ---- forest, had been of that race; and by the talent
+  of mimicry, which I have already stated myself to possess, I could copy
+  their pronunciation of the English language, sufficiently to answer such
+  occasions as were likely to present themselves. One of the preliminaries I
+  adopted, was to repair to a quarter of the town in which great numbers of
+  this people reside, and study their complexion and countenance. Having made
+  such provision as my prudence suggested to me, I retired for that night to
+  an inn in the midway between Mile-end and Wapping. Here I accoutred myself
+  in my new habiliments; and, having employed the same precautions as before,
+  retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is
+  unnecessary to describe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to
+  say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the
+  dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to
+  which I assumed to belong; and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I
+  could not, upon the strictest examination, conceive that any one could have
+  traced out the person of Caleb Williams in this new disguise.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus far advanced in the execution of my project. I deemed it advisable
+  to procure a lodging, and change my late wandering life for a stationary
+  one. In this lodging I constantly secluded myself from the rising to the
+  setting of the sun; the periods I allowed for exercise and air were few, and
+  those few by night. I was even cautious of so much as approaching the window
+  of my apartment, though upon the attic story; a principle I laid down to
+  myself was, not wantonly and unnecessarily to expose myself to risk, however
+  slight that risk might appear.</p>
+
+  <p>Here let me pause for a moment, to bring before the reader, in the way in
+  which it was impressed upon my mind, the nature of my situation. I was born
+  free: I was born healthy, vigorous, and active, complete in all the
+  lineaments and members of a human body. I was not born indeed to the
+  possession of hereditary wealth; but I had a better inheritance, an
+  enterprising mind, an inquisitive spirit, a liberal ambition. In a word, I
+  accepted my lot with willingness and content; I did not fear but I should
+  make my cause good in the lists of existence. I was satisfied to aim at
+  small things; I was pleased to play at first for a slender stake; I was more
+  willing to grow than to descend in my individual significance.</p>
+
+  <p>The free spirit and the firm heart with which I commenced, one
+  circumstance was sufficient to blast. I was ignorant of the power which the
+  institutions of society give to one man over others; I had fallen unwarily
+  into the hands of a person who held it as his fondest wish to oppress and
+  destroy me.</p>
+
+  <p>I found myself subjected, undeservedly on my part, to all the
+  disadvantages which mankind, if they reflected upon them, would hesitate to
+  impose on acknowledged guilt. In every human countenance I feared to find
+  the countenance of an enemy. I shrunk from the vigilance of every human eye.
+  I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our nature. I was shut
+  up, a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst of my species. I dared not
+  look for the consolations of friendship; but, instead of seeking to identify
+  myself with the joys and sorrows of others, and exchanging the delicious
+  gifts of confidence and sympathy, was compelled to centre my thoughts and my
+  vigilance in myself. My life was all a lie. I had a counterfeit character to
+  support. I had counterfeit manners to assume. My gait, my gestures, my
+  accents, were all of them to be studied. I was not free to indulge, no not
+  one, honest sally of the soul. Attended with these disadvantages, I was to
+  procure myself a subsistence, a subsistence to be acquired with infinite
+  precautions, and to be consumed without the hope of enjoyment.</p>
+
+  <p>This, even this, I was determined to endure; to put my shoulder to the
+  burthen, and support it with unshrinking firmness. Let it not however be
+  supposed that I endured it without repining and abhorrence. My time was
+  divided between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers, the
+  obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that from time
+  to time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If at some
+  moments I fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others, and those
+  of frequent recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence. I looked forward
+  without hope through the series of my existence, tears of anguish rushed
+  from my eyes, my courage became extinct, and I cursed the conscious life
+  that was reproduced with every returning day.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why," upon such occasions I was accustomed to exclaim, "why am I
+  overwhelmed with the load of existence? Why are all these engines at work to
+  torment me? I am no murderer; yet, if I were, what worse could I be fated to
+  suffer? How vile, squalid, and disgraceful is the state to which I am
+  condemned! This is not my place in the roll of existence, the place for
+  which either my temper or my understanding has prepared me! To what purpose
+  serve the restless aspirations of my soul, but to make me, like a frighted
+  bird, beat myself in vain against the enclosure of my cage? Nature,
+  barbarous nature! to me thou hast proved indeed the worst of step-mothers;
+  endowed me with wishes insatiate, and sunk me in never-ending
+  degradation!"</p>
+
+  <p>I might have thought myself more secure if I had been in possession of
+  money upon which to subsist. The necessity of earning for myself the means
+  of existence, evidently tended to thwart the plan of secrecy to which I was
+  condemned. Whatever labour I adopted, or deemed myself qualified to
+  discharge, it was first to be considered how I was to be provided with
+  employment, and where I was to find an employer or purchaser for my
+  commodities. In the mean time I had no alternative. The little money with
+  which I had escaped from the blood-hunters was almost expended.</p>
+
+  <p>After the minutest consideration I was able to bestow upon this question.
+  I determined that literature should be the field of my first experiment. I
+  had read of money being acquired in this way, and of prices given by the
+  speculators in this sort of ware to its proper manufacturers. My
+  qualifications I esteemed at a slender valuation. I was not without a
+  conviction that experience and practice must pave the way to excellent
+  production. But, though of these I was utterly destitute, my propensities
+  had always led me in this direction; and my early thirst of knowledge had
+  conducted me to a more intimate acquaintance with books, than could perhaps
+  have been expected under my circumstances. If my literary pretensions were
+  slight, the demand I intended to make upon them was not great. All I asked
+  was a subsistence; and I was persuaded few persons could subsist upon
+  slenderer means than myself. I also considered this as a temporary
+  expedient, and hoped that accident or time might hereafter place me in a
+  less precarious situation. The reasons that principally determined my choice
+  were, that this employment called upon me for the least preparation, and
+  could, as I thought, be exercised with least observation.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a solitary woman, of middle age, who tenanted a chamber in this
+  house, upon the same floor with my own. I had no sooner determined upon the
+  destination of my industry than I cast my eye upon her as the possible
+  instrument for disposing of my productions. Excluded as I was from all
+  intercourse with my species in general, I found pleasure in the occasional
+  exchange of a few words with this inoffensive and good-humoured creature,
+  who was already of an age to preclude scandal. She lived upon a very small
+  annuity, allowed her by a distant relation, a woman of quality, who,
+  possessed of thousands herself, had no other anxiety with respect to this
+  person than that she should not contaminate her alliance by the exertion of
+  honest industry. This humble creature was of a uniformly cheerful and active
+  disposition, unacquainted alike with the cares of wealth and the pressure of
+  misfortune. Though her pretensions were small, and her information slender,
+  she was by no means deficient in penetration. She remarked the faults and
+  follies of mankind with no contemptible discernment; but her temper was of
+  so mild and forgiving a cast, as would have induced most persons to believe
+  that she perceived nothing of the matter. Her heart overflowed with the milk
+  of kindness. She was sincere and ardent in her attachments, and never did
+  she omit a service which she perceived herself able to render to a human
+  being.</p>
+
+  <p>Had it not been for these qualifications of temper, I should probably
+  have found that my appearance, that of a deserted, solitary lad, of Jewish
+  extraction, effectually precluded my demands upon her kindness. But I
+  speedily perceived, from her manner of receiving and returning civilities of
+  an indifferent sort, that her heart was too noble to have its effusions
+  checked by any base and unworthy considerations. Encouraged by these
+  preliminaries, I determined to select her as my agent. I found her willing
+  and alert in the business I proposed to her. That I might anticipate
+  occasions of suspicion, I frankly told her that, for reasons which I wished
+  to be excused from relating, but which, if related, I was sure would not
+  deprive me of her good opinion, I found it necessary, for the present, to
+  keep myself private. With this statement she readily acquiesced, and told me
+  that she had no desire for any further information than I found it expedient
+  to give.</p>
+
+  <p>My first productions were of the poetical kind. After having finished two
+  or three, I directed this generous creature to take them to the office of a
+  newspaper; but they were rejected with contempt by the Aristarchus of that
+  place, who, having bestowed on them a superficial glance, told her that such
+  matters were not in his way. I cannot help mentioning in this place, that
+  the countenance of Mrs. Marney (this was the name of my ambassadress) was in
+  all cases a perfect indication of her success, and rendered explanation by
+  words wholly unnecessary. She interested herself so unreservedly in what she
+  undertook, that she felt either miscarriage or good fortune much more
+  exquisitely than I did. I had an unhesitating confidence in my own
+  resources, and, occupied as I was in meditations more interesting and more
+  painful, I regarded these matters as altogether trivial.</p>
+
+  <p>I quietly took the pieces back, and laid them upon my table. Upon
+  revisal, I altered and transcribed one of them, and, joining it with two
+  others, despatched them together to the editor of a magazine. He desired
+  they might be left with him till the day after to-morrow. When that day came
+  he told my friend they should be inserted; but, Mrs. Marney asking
+  respecting the price, he replied, it was their constant rule to give nothing
+  for poetical compositions, the letter-box being always full of writings of
+  that sort; but if the gentleman would try his hand in prose, a short essay
+  or a tale, he would see what he could do for him.</p>
+
+  <p>With the requisition of my literary dictator I immediately complied. I
+  attempted a paper in the style of Addison's Spectators, which was accepted.
+  In a short time I was upon an established footing in this quarter. I however
+  distrusted my resources in the way of moral disquisition, and soon turned my
+  thoughts to his other suggestion, a tale. His demands upon me were now
+  frequent, and, to facilitate my labours, I bethought myself of the resource
+  of translation. I had scarcely any convenience with respect to the procuring
+  of books; but, as my memory was retentive, I frequently translated or
+  modelled my narrative upon a reading of some years before. By a fatality,
+  for which I did not exactly know how to account, my thoughts frequently led
+  me to the histories of celebrated robbers; and I related, from time to time,
+  incidents and anecdotes of Cartouche, Gusman d'Alfarache, and other
+  memorable worthies, whose career was terminated upon the gallows or the
+  scaffold.</p>
+
+  <p>In the mean time a retrospect to my own situation rendered a perseverance
+  even in this industry difficult to be maintained. I often threw down my pen
+  in an ecstasy of despair. Sometimes for whole days together I was incapable
+  of action, and sunk into a sort of partial stupor, too wretched to be
+  described. Youth and health however enabled me, from time to time, to get
+  the better of my dejection, and to rouse myself to something like a gaiety,
+  which, if it had been permanent, might have made this interval of my story
+  tolerable to my reflections.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CIX" id="V3_CIX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+  <p>While I was thus endeavouring to occupy and provide for the intermediate
+  period, till the violence of the pursuit after me might be abated, a new
+  source of danger opened upon me of which I had no previous suspicion.</p>
+
+  <p>Gines, the thief who had been expelled from Captain Raymond's gang, had
+  fluctuated, during the last years of his life, between the two professions
+  of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their administration. He had
+  originally devoted himself to the first; and probably his initiation in the
+  mysteries of thieving qualified him to be peculiarly expert in the
+  profession of a thief-taker&mdash;a profession he had adopted, not from
+  choice, but necessity. In this employment his reputation was great, though
+  perhaps not equal to his merits; for it happens here as in other departments
+  of human society, that, however the subalterns may furnish wisdom and skill,
+  the principals exclusively possess the <i>éclat</i>. He was exercising this
+  art in a very prosperous manner, when it happened, by some accident, that
+  one or two of his achievements previous to his having shaken off the dregs
+  of unlicensed depredation were in danger of becoming subjects of public
+  attention. Having had repeated intimations of this, he thought it prudent to
+  decamp; and it was during this period of his retreat that he entered into
+  the ---- gang.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the history of this man antecedently to his being placed in the
+  situation in which I had first encountered him. At the time of that
+  encounter he was a veteran of Captain Raymond's gang; for thieves being a
+  short-lived race, the character of veteran costs the less time in acquiring.
+  Upon his expulsion from this community he returned once more to his lawful
+  profession, and by his old comrades was received with congratulation as a
+  lost sheep. In the vulgar classes of society no length of time is sufficient
+  to expiate a crime; but among the honourable fraternity of thief-takers it
+  is a rule never to bring one of their own brethren to a reckoning when it
+  can with any decency be avoided. They are probably reluctant to fix an
+  unnecessary stain upon the ermine of their profession. Another rule observed
+  by those who have passed through the same gradation as Gines had done, and
+  which was adopted by Gines himself, is always to reserve such as have been
+  the accomplices of their depredations to the last, and on no account to
+  assail them without great necessity or powerful temptation. For this reason,
+  according to Gines's system of tactics, Captain Raymond and his confederates
+  were, as he would have termed it, safe from his retaliation.</p>
+
+  <p>But, though Gines was, in this sense of the term, a man of strict honour,
+  my case unfortunately did not fall within the laws of honour he
+  acknowledged. Misfortune had overtaken me, and I was on all sides without
+  protection or shelter. The persecution to which I was exposed was founded
+  upon the supposition of my having committed felony to an immense amount. But
+  in this Gines had had no participation; he was careless whether the
+  supposition were true or false, and hated me as much as if my innocence had
+  been established beyond the reach of suspicion.</p>
+
+  <p>The blood-hunters who had taken me into custody at ----, related, as
+  usual among their fraternity, a part of their adventure, and told of the
+  reason which inclined them to suppose, that the individual who had passed
+  through their custody, was the very Caleb Williams for whose apprehension a
+  reward had been offered of a hundred guineas. Gines, whose acuteness was
+  eminent in the way of his profession, by comparing facts and dates, was
+  induced to suspect in his own mind, that Caleb Williams was the person he
+  had hustled and wounded upon ---- forest. Against that person he entertained
+  the bitterest aversion. I had been the innocent occasion of his being
+  expelled with disgrace from Captain Raymond's gang; and Gines, as I
+  afterwards understood, was intimately persuaded that there was no comparison
+  between the liberal and manly profession of a robber from which I had driven
+  him, and the sordid and mechanical occupation of a blood-hunter, to which he
+  was obliged to return. He no sooner received the information I have
+  mentioned than he vowed revenge. He determined to leave all other objects,
+  and consecrate every faculty of his mind to the unkennelling me from my
+  hiding-place. The offered reward, which his vanity made him consider as
+  assuredly his own, appeared as the complete indemnification of his labour
+  and expense. Thus I had to encounter the sagacity he possessed in the way of
+  his profession, whetted and stimulated by a sentiment of vengeance, in a
+  mind that knew no restraint from conscience or humanity.</p>
+
+  <p>When I drew to myself a picture of my situation soon after having fixed
+  on my present abode, I foolishly thought, as the unhappy are accustomed to
+  do, that my calamity would admit of no aggravation. The aggravation which,
+  unknown to me, at this time occurred was the most fearful that any
+  imagination could have devised. Nothing could have happened more critically
+  hostile to my future peace, than my fatal encounter with Gines upon ----
+  forest. By this means, as it now appears, I had fastened upon myself a
+  second enemy, of that singular and dreadful sort that is determined never to
+  dismiss its animosity as long as life shall endure. While Falkland was the
+  hungry lion whose roarings astonished and appalled me, Gines was a noxious
+  insect, scarcely less formidable and tremendous, that hovered about my
+  goings, and perpetually menaced me with the poison of his sting.</p>
+
+  <p>The first step pursued by him in execution of his project, was to set out
+  for the sea-port town where I had formerly been apprehended. From thence he
+  traced me to the banks of the Severn, and from the banks of the Severn to
+  London. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this is always practicable,
+  provided the pursuer have motives strong enough to excite him to
+  perseverance, unless the precautions of the fugitive be, in the highest
+  degree, both judicious in the conception, and fortunate in the execution.
+  Gines indeed, in the course of his pursuit, was often obliged to double his
+  steps; and, like the harrier, whenever he was at a fault, return to the
+  place where he had last perceived the scent of the animal whose death he had
+  decreed. He spared neither pains nor time in the gratification of the
+  passion, which choice had made his ruling one.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my arrival in town he for a moment lost all trace of me, London
+  being a place in which, on account of the magnitude of its dimensions, it
+  might well be supposed that an individual could remain hidden and unknown.
+  But no difficulty could discourage this new adversary. He went from inn to
+  inn (reasonably supposing that there was no private house to which I could
+  immediately repair), till he found, by the description he gave, and the
+  recollections he excited, that I had slept for one night in the borough of
+  Southwark. But he could get no further information. The people of the inn
+  had no knowledge what had become of me the next morning.</p>
+
+  <p>This however did but render him more eager in the pursuit. The describing
+  me was now more difficult, on account of the partial change of dress I had
+  made the second day of my being in town. But Gines at length overcame the
+  obstacle from that quarter.</p>
+
+  <p>Having traced me to my second inn, he was here furnished with a more
+  copious information. I had been a subject of speculation for the leisure
+  hours of some of the persons belonging to this inn. An old woman, of a most
+  curious and loquacious disposition, who lived opposite to it, and who that
+  morning rose early to her washing, had espied me from her window, by the
+  light of a large lamp which hung over the inn, as I issued from the gate.
+  She had but a very imperfect view of me, but she thought there was something
+  Jewish in my appearance. She was accustomed to hold a conference every
+  morning with the landlady of the inn, some of the waiters and chambermaids
+  occasionally assisting at it. In the course of the dialogue of this morning,
+  she asked some questions about the Jew who had slept there the night before.
+  No Jew had slept there. The curiosity of the landlady was excited in her
+  turn. By the time of the morning it could be no other but me. It was very
+  strange! They compared notes respecting my appearance and dress. No two
+  things could be more dissimilar. The Jew Christian, upon any dearth of
+  subjects of intelligence, repeatedly furnished matter for their
+  discourse.</p>
+
+  <p>The information thus afforded to Gines appeared exceedingly material. But
+  the performance did not for some time keep pace with the promise. He could
+  not enter every private house into which lodgers were ever admitted, in the
+  same manner that he had treated the inns. He walked the streets, and
+  examined with a curious and inquisitive eye the countenance of every Jew
+  about my stature; but in vain. He repaired to Duke's Place and the
+  synagogues. It was not here that in reality he could calculate upon finding
+  me; but he resorted to those means in despair, and as a last hope. He was
+  more than once upon the point of giving up the pursuit; but he was recalled
+  to it by an insatiable and restless appetite for revenge.</p>
+
+  <p>It was during this perturbed and fluctuating state of his mind, that he
+  chanced to pay a visit to a brother of his, who was the head-workman of a
+  printing-office. There was little intercourse between these two persons,
+  their dispositions and habits of life being extremely dissimilar. The
+  printer was industrious, sober, inclined to methodism, and of a propensity
+  to accumulation. He was extremely dissatisfied with the character and
+  pursuits of his brother, and had made some ineffectual attempts to reclaim
+  him. But, though they by no means agreed in their habits of thinking, they
+  sometimes saw each other. Gines loved to boast of as many of his
+  achievements as he dared venture to mention; and his brother was one more
+  hearer, in addition to the set of his usual associates. The printer was
+  amused with the blunt sagacity of remark and novelty of incident that
+  characterised Gines's conversation. He was secretly pleased, in spite of all
+  his sober and church-going prejudices, that he was brother to a man of so
+  much ingenuity and fortitude.</p>
+
+  <p>After having listened for some time upon this occasion to the wonderful
+  stories which Gines, in his rugged way, condescended to tell, the printer
+  felt an ambition to entertain his brother in his turn. He began to retail
+  some of my stories of Cartouche and Gusman d'Alfarache. The attention of
+  Gines was excited. His first emotion was wonder; his second was envy and
+  aversion. Where did the printer get these stories? This question was
+  answered. "I will tell you what," said the printer, "we none of us know what
+  to make of the writer of these articles. He writes poetry, and morality, and
+  history: I am a printer, and corrector of the press, and may pretend without
+  vanity to be a tolerably good judge of these matters: he writes them all to
+  my mind extremely fine; and yet he is no more than a Jew." [To my honest
+  printer this seemed as strange, as if they had been written by a Cherokee
+  chieftain at the falls of the Mississippi.]</p>
+
+  <p>"A Jew! How do you know? Did you ever see him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No; the matter is always brought to us by a woman. But my master hates
+  mysteries; he likes to see his authors himself. So he plagues and plagues
+  the old woman; but he can never get any thing out of her, except that one
+  day she happened to drop that the young gentleman was a Jew."</p>
+
+  <p>A Jew! a young gentleman! a person who did every thing by proxy, and made
+  a secret of all his motions! Here was abundant matter for the speculations
+  and suspicions of Gines. He was confirmed in them, without adverting to the
+  process of his own mind, by the subject of my lucubrations,&mdash;men who
+  died by the hand of the executioner. He said little more to his brother,
+  except asking, as if casually, what sort of an old woman this was? of what
+  age she might be? and whether she often brought him materials of this kind?
+  and soon after took occasion to leave him. It was with vast pleasure that
+  Gines had listened to this unhoped-for information. Having collected from
+  his brother sufficient hints relative to the person and appearance of Mrs.
+  Marney, and understanding that he expected to receive something from me the
+  next day, Gines took his stand in the street early, that he might not risk
+  miscarriage by negligence. He waited several hours, but not without success.
+  Mrs. Marney came; he watched her into the house; and after about twenty
+  minutes delay, saw her return. He dogged her from street to street; observed
+  her finally enter the door of a private house; and congratulated himself
+  upon having at length arrived at the consummation of his labours.</p>
+
+  <p>The house she entered was not her own habitation. By a sort of miraculous
+  accident she had observed Gines following her in the street. As she went
+  home she saw a woman who had fallen down in a fainting fit. Moved by the
+  compassion that was ever alive in her, she approached her, in order to
+  render her assistance. Presently a crowd collected round them. Mrs. Marney,
+  having done what she was able, once more proceeded homewards. Observing the
+  crowd round her, the idea of pickpockets occurred to her mind; she put her
+  hands to her sides, and at the same time looked round upon the populace. She
+  had left the circle somewhat abruptly; and Gines, who had been obliged to
+  come nearer, lest he should lose her in the confusion, was at that moment
+  standing exactly opposite to her. His visage was of the most extraordinary
+  kind; habit had written the characters of malignant cunning and dauntless
+  effrontery in every line of his face; and Mrs. Marney, who was neither
+  philosopher nor physiognomist, was nevertheless struck. This good woman,
+  like most persons of her notable character, had a peculiar way of going
+  home, not through the open streets, but by narrow lanes and alleys, with
+  intricate insertions and sudden turnings. In one of these, by some accident,
+  she once again caught a glance of her pursuer. This circumstance, together
+  with the singularity of his appearance, awakened her conjectures. Could he
+  be following her? It was the middle of the day, and she could have no fears
+  for herself. But could this circumstance have any reference to me? She
+  recollected the precautions and secrecy I practised, and had no doubt that I
+  had reasons for what I did. She recollected that she had always been upon
+  her guard respecting me; but had she been sufficiently so? She thought that,
+  if she should be the means of any mischief to me, she should be miserable
+  for ever. She determined therefore, by way of precaution in case of the
+  worst, to call at a friend's house, and send me word of what had occurred.
+  Having instructed her friend, she went out immediately upon a visit to a
+  person in the exactly opposite direction, and desired her friend to proceed
+  upon the errand to me, five minutes after she left the house. By this
+  prudence she completely extricated me from the present danger.</p>
+
+  <p>Meantime the intelligence that was brought me by no means ascertained the
+  greatness of the peril. For any thing I could discover in it the
+  circumstance might be perfectly innocent, and the fear solely proceed from
+  the over-caution and kindness of this benevolent and excellent woman. Yet,
+  such was the misery of my situation, I had no choice. For this menace or no
+  menace, I was obliged to desert my habitation at a minute's warning, taking
+  with me nothing but what I could carry in my hand; to see my generous
+  benefactress no more; to quit my little arrangements and provision; and to
+  seek once again, in some forlorn retreat, new projects, and, if of that I
+  could have any rational hope, a new friend. I descended into the street with
+  a heavy, not an irresolute heart. It was broad day. I said, persons are at
+  this moment supposed to be roaming the street in search of me: I must not
+  trust to the chance of their pursuing one direction, and I another. I
+  traversed half a dozen streets, and then dropped into an obscure house of
+  entertainment for persons of small expense. In this house I took some
+  refreshment, passed several hours of active but melancholy thinking, and at
+  last procured a bed. As soon however as it was dark I went out (for this was
+  indispensable) to purchase the materials of a new disguise. Having adjusted
+  it as well as I could during the night, I left this asylum, with the same
+  precautions that I had employed in former instances.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CX" id="V3_CX"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+  <p>I procured a new lodging. By some bias of the mind, it may be, gratifying
+  itself with images of peril, I inclined to believe that Mrs. Marney's alarm
+  had not been without foundation. I was however unable to conjecture through
+  what means danger had approached me; and had therefore only the
+  unsatisfactory remedy of redoubling my watch upon all my actions. Still I
+  had the joint considerations pressing upon me of security and subsistence. I
+  had some small remains of the produce of my former industry; but this was
+  but small, for my employer was in arrear with me, and I did not choose in
+  any method to apply to him for payment. The anxieties of my mind, in spite
+  of all my struggles, preyed upon my health. I did not consider myself as in
+  safety for an instant. My appearance was wasted to a shadow; and I started
+  at every sound that was unexpected. Sometimes I was half tempted to resign
+  myself into the hands of the law, and brave its worst; but resentment and
+  indignation at those times speedily flowed back upon my mind, and
+  re-animated my perseverance.</p>
+
+  <p>I knew no better resource with respect to subsistence than that I had
+  employed in the former instance, of seeking some third person to stand
+  between me and the disposal of my industry. I might find an individual ready
+  to undertake this office in my behalf; but where should I find the
+  benevolent soul of Mrs. Marney? The person I fixed upon was a Mr. Spurrel, a
+  man who took in work from the watchmakers, and had an apartment upon our
+  second floor. I examined him two or three times with irresolute glances, as
+  we passed upon the stairs, before I would venture to accost him. He observed
+  this, and at length kindly invited me into his apartment.</p>
+
+  <p>Being seated, he condoled with me upon my seeming bad health, and the
+  solitary mode of my living, and wished to know whether he could be of any
+  service to me. "From the first moment he saw me, he had conceived an
+  affection for me." In my present disguise I appeared twisted and deformed,
+  and in other respects by no means an object of attraction. But it seemed Mr.
+  Spurrel had lost an only son about six months before, and I was "the very
+  picture of him." If I had put off my counterfeited ugliness, I should
+  probably have lost all hold upon his affections. "He was now an old man," as
+  he observed, "just dropping into the grave, and his son had been his only
+  consolation. The poor lad was always ailing, but he had been a nurse to him;
+  and the more tending he required while he was alive, the more he missed him
+  now he was dead. Now he had not a friend, nor any body that cared for him,
+  in the whole world. If I pleased, I should be instead of that son to him,
+  and he would treat me in all respects with the same attention and
+  kindness."</p>
+
+  <p>I expressed my sense of these benevolent offers, but told him that I
+  should be sorry to be in any way burthensome to him. "My ideas at present
+  led me to a private and solitary life, and my chief difficulty was to
+  reconcile this with some mode of earning necessary subsistence. If he would
+  condescend to lend me his assistance in smoothing this difficulty, it would
+  be the greatest benefit he could confer on me." I added, that "my mind had
+  always had a mechanical and industrious turn, and that I did not doubt of
+  soon mastering any craft to which I seriously applied myself. I had not been
+  brought up to any trade; but, if he would favour me with his instructions, I
+  would work with him as long as he pleased for a bare subsistence. I knew
+  that I was asking of him an extraordinary kindness; but I was urged on the
+  one hand by the most extreme necessity, and encouraged on the other by the
+  persuasiveness of his friendly professions."</p>
+
+  <p>The old man dropped some tears over my apparent distress, and readily
+  consented to every thing I proposed. Our agreement was soon made, and I
+  entered upon my functions accordingly. My new friend was a man of a singular
+  turn of mind. Love of money, and a charitable officiousness of demeanour,
+  were his leading characteristics. He lived in the most penurious manner, and
+  denied himself every indulgence. I entitled myself almost immediately, as he
+  frankly acknowledged, to some remuneration for my labours, and accordingly
+  he insisted upon my being paid. He did not however, as some persons would
+  have done under the circumstance, pay me the whole amount of my earnings,
+  but professed to subtract from them twenty per cent, as an equitable
+  consideration for instruction, and commission-money in procuring me a
+  channel for my industry. Yet he frequently shed tears over me, was uneasy in
+  every moment of our indispensable separation, and exhibited perpetual tokens
+  of attachment and fondness. I found him a man of excellent mechanical
+  contrivance, and received considerable pleasure from his communications. My
+  own sources of information were various; and he frequently expressed his
+  wonder and delight in the contemplation of my powers, as well of amusement
+  as exertion.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus I appeared to have attained a situation not less eligible than in my
+  connection with Mrs. Marney. I was however still more unhappy. My fits of
+  despondence were deeper, and of more frequent recurrence. My health every
+  day grew worse; and Mr. Spurrel was not without apprehensions that he should
+  lose me, as he before lost his only son.</p>
+
+  <p>I had not been long however in this new situation, before an incident
+  occurred which filled me with greater alarm and apprehension than ever. I
+  was walking out one evening, after a long visitation of languor, for an
+  hour's exercise and air, when my ears were struck with two or three casual
+  sounds from the mouth of a hawker who was bawling his wares. I stood still
+  to inform myself more exactly, when, to my utter astonishment and confusion,
+  I heard him deliver himself nearly in these words: "<i>Here you have the</i>
+  MOST WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY AND MIRACULOUS ADVENTURES OF CALEB
+  WILLIAMS: <i>you are informed how he first robbed, and then brought false
+  accusations against his master; as also of his attempting divers times to
+  break out of prison, till at last he effected his escape in the most
+  wonderful and uncredible manner; as also of his travelling the kingdom in
+  various disguises, and the robberies he committed with a most desperate and
+  daring gang of thieves; and of his coming up to London, where it is supposed
+  he now lies concealed; with a true and faithful copy of the hue and cry
+  printed and published by one of his Majesty's most principal secretaries of
+  state, offering a reward of one hundred guineas for apprehending him. All
+  for the price of one halfpenny</i>."</p>
+
+  <p>Petrified as I was at these amazing and dreadful sounds, I had the
+  temerity to go up to the man and purchase one of his papers. I was
+  desperately resolved to know the exact state of the fact, and what I had to
+  depend upon. I carried it with me a little way, till, no longer able to
+  endure the tumult of my impatience, I contrived to make out the chief part
+  of its contents, by the help of a lamp, at the upper end of a narrow
+  passage. I found it contain a greater number of circumstances than could
+  have been expected in this species of publication, I was equalled to the
+  most notorious housebreaker in the art of penetrating through walls and
+  doors, and to the most accomplished swindler in plausibleness, duplicity,
+  and disguise. The hand-bill which Larkins had first brought to us upon the
+  forest was printed at length. All my disguises, previously to the last alarm
+  that had been given me by the providence of Mrs. Marney, were faithfully
+  enumerated; and the public were warned to be upon their watch against a
+  person of an uncouth and extraordinary appearance, and who lived in a
+  recluse and solitary manner. I also learned from this paper that my former
+  lodgings had been searched on the very evening of my escape, and that Mrs.
+  Marney had been sent to Newgate, upon a charge of misprision of
+  felony.&mdash;This last circumstance affected me deeply. In the midst of my
+  own sufferings my sympathies flowed undiminished. It was a most cruel and
+  intolerable idea, if I were not only myself to be an object of unrelenting
+  persecution, but my very touch were to be infectious, and every one that
+  succoured me was to be involved in the common ruin. My instant feeling was
+  that of a willingness to undergo the utmost malice of my enemies, could I by
+  that means have saved this excellent woman from alarm and peril.&mdash;I
+  afterwards learned that Mrs. Marney was delivered from confinement, by the
+  interposition of her noble relation.</p>
+
+  <p>My sympathy for Mrs. Marney however was at this moment a transient one. A
+  more imperious and irresistible consideration demanded to be heard.</p>
+
+  <p>With what sensations did I ruminate upon this paper? Every word of it
+  carried despair to my heart. The actual apprehension that I dreaded would
+  perhaps have been less horrible. It would have put an end to that lingering
+  terror to which I was a prey. Disguise was no longer of use. A numerous
+  class of individuals, through every department, almost every house of the
+  metropolis, would be induced to look with a suspicious eye upon every
+  stranger, especially every solitary stranger, that fell under their
+  observation. The prize of one hundred guineas was held out to excite their
+  avarice and sharpen their penetration. It was no longer Bow-street, it was a
+  million of men in arms against me. Neither had I the refuge, which few men
+  have been so miserable as to want, of one single individual with whom to
+  repose my alarms, and who might shelter me from the gaze of indiscriminate
+  curiosity.</p>
+
+  <p>What could exceed the horrors of this situation? My heart knocked against
+  my ribs, my bosom heaved, I gasped and panted for breath. "There is no end
+  then," said I, "to my persecutors! My unwearied and long-continued labours
+  lead to no termination! Termination! No; the lapse of time, that cures all
+  other things, makes my case more desperate! Why then," exclaimed I, a new
+  train of thought suddenly rushing into my mind, "why should I sustain the
+  contest any longer? I can at least elude my persecutors in death. I can bury
+  myself and the traces of my existence together in friendly oblivion; and
+  thus bequeath eternal doubt, and ever new alarm, to those who have no peace
+  but in pursuing me!"</p>
+
+  <p>In the midst of the horrors with which I was now impressed, this idea
+  gave me pleasure; and I hastened to the Thames to put it in instant
+  execution. Such was the paroxysm of my mind that my powers of vision became
+  partially suspended. I was no longer conscious to the feebleness of disease,
+  but rushed along with fervent impetuosity. I passed from street to street
+  without observing what direction I pursued. After wandering I know not how
+  long, I arrived at London Bridge. I hastened to the stairs, and saw the
+  river covered with vessels.</p>
+
+  <p>"No human being must see me," said I, "at the instant that I vanish for
+  ever." This thought required some consideration. A portion of time had
+  elapsed since my first desperate purpose. My understanding began to return.
+  The sight of the vessels suggested to me the idea of once more attempting to
+  leave my native country.</p>
+
+  <p>I enquired, and speedily found that the cheapest passage I could procure
+  was in a vessel moored near the Tower, and which was to sail in a few days
+  for Middleburgh in Holland. I would have gone instantly on board, and have
+  endeavoured to prevail with the captain to let me remain there till he
+  sailed; but unfortunately I had not money enough in my pocket to defray my
+  passage.</p>
+
+  <p>It was worse than this. I had not money enough in the world. I however
+  paid the captain half his demand, and promised to return with the rest. I
+  knew not in what manner it was to be procured, but I believed that I should
+  not fail in it. I had some idea of applying to Mr. Spurrel. Surely he would
+  not refuse me? He appeared to love me with parental affection, and I thought
+  I might trust myself for a moment in his hands.</p>
+
+  <p>I approached my place of residence with a heavy and foreboding heart. Mr.
+  Spurrel was not at home; and I was obliged to wait for his return. Worn out
+  with fatigue, disappointment, and the ill state of my health, I sunk upon a
+  chair. Speedily however I recollected myself. I had work of Mr. Spurrel's in
+  my trunk, which had been delivered out to me that very morning, to five
+  times the amount I wanted. I canvassed for a moment whether I should make
+  use of this property as if it were my own; but I rejected the idea with
+  disdain. I had never in the smallest degree merited the reproaches that were
+  east upon me; and I determined I never would merit them. I sat gasping,
+  anxious, full of the blackest forebodings. My terrors appeared, even to my
+  own mind, greater and more importunate than the circumstances
+  authorised.</p>
+
+  <p>It was extraordinary that Mr. Spurrel should be abroad at this hour; I
+  had never known it happen before. His bed-time was between nine and ten. Ten
+  o'clock came, eleven o'clock, but not Mr. Spurrel. At midnight I heard his
+  knock at the door. Every soul in the house was in bed. Mr. Spurrel, on
+  account of his regular hours, was unprovided with a key to open for himself.
+  A gleam, a sickly gleam, of the social spirit came over my heart. I flew
+  nimbly down stairs, and opened the door.</p>
+
+  <p>I could perceive, by the little taper in my hand, something extraordinary
+  in his countenance. I had not time to speak, before I saw two other men
+  follow him. At the first glance I was sufficiently assured what sort of
+  persons they were. At the second, I perceived that one of them was no other
+  than Gines himself. I had understood formerly that he had been of this
+  profession, and I was not surprised to find him in it again. Though I had
+  for three hours endeavoured, as it were, to prepare myself for the
+  unavoidable necessity of falling once again into the hands of the officers
+  of law, the sensation I felt at their entrance was indescribably agonising.
+  I was besides not a little astonished at the time and manner of their
+  entrance; and I felt anxious to know whether Mr. Spurrel could be base
+  enough to have been their introducer.</p>
+
+  <p>I was not long held in perplexity. He no sooner saw his followers within
+  the door, than he exclaimed, with convulsive eagerness, "There, there, that
+  is your man! thank God! thank God!" Gines looked eagerly in my face, with a
+  countenance expressive alternately of hope and doubt, and answered, "By God,
+  and I do not know whether it be or no! I am afraid we are in the wrong box!"
+  Then recollecting himself, "We will go into the house, and examine further
+  however." We all went up stairs into Mr. Spurrel's room; I set down the
+  candle upon the table. I had hitherto been silent; but I determined not to
+  desert myself, and was a little encouraged to exertion by the scepticism of
+  Gines. With a calm and deliberate manner therefore, in my feigned voice, one
+  of the characteristics of which was lisping, I asked, "Pray, gentlemen, what
+  may be your pleasure with me?"&mdash;"Why," said Gines, "our errand is with
+  one Caleb Williams, and a precious rascal he is! I ought to know the chap
+  well enough; but they say he has as many faces as there are days in the
+  year. So you please to pull off your face; or, if you cannot do that, at
+  least you can pull off your clothes, and let us see what your hump is made
+  of."</p>
+
+  <p>I remonstrated, but in vain. I stood detected in part of my artifice; and
+  Gines, though still uncertain, was every moment more and more confirmed in
+  his suspicions. Mr. Spurrel perfectly gloated, with eyes that seemed ready
+  to devour every thing that passed. As my imposture gradually appeared more
+  palpable, he repeated his exclamation, "Thank God! thank God!" At last,
+  tired with this scene of mummery, and disgusted beyond measure with the base
+  and hypocritical figure I seemed to exhibit, I exclaimed, "Well, I am Caleb
+  Williams; conduct me wherever you please! And now, Mr. Spurrel!"&mdash;He
+  gave a violent start. The instant I declared myself his transport had been
+  at the highest, and was, to any power he was able to exert, absolutely
+  uncontrollable. But the unexpectedness of my address, and the tone in which
+  I spoke, electrified him.&mdash;"Is it possible," continued I, "that you
+  should have been the wretch to betray me? What have I done to deserve this
+  treatment? Is this the kindness you professed? the affection that was
+  perpetually in your mouth? to be the death of me!"</p>
+
+  <p>"My poor boy! my dear creature!" cried Spurrel, whimpering, and in a tone
+  of the humblest expostulation, "indeed I could not help it! I would have
+  helped it, if I could! I hope they will not hurt my darling! I am sure I
+  shall die if they do!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Miserable driveller!" interrupted I, with a stern voice, "do you betray
+  me into the remorseless fangs of the law, and then talk of my not being
+  hurt? I know my sentence, and am prepared to meet it! You have fixed the
+  halter upon my neck, and at the same price would have done so to your only
+  son! Go, count your accursed guineas! My life would have been safer in the
+  hands of one I had never seen than in yours, whose mouth and whose eyes for
+  ever ran over with crocodile affection!"</p>
+
+  <p>I have always believed that my sickness, and, as he apprehended,
+  approaching death, contributed its part to the treachery of Mr. Spurrel. He
+  predicted to his own mind the time when I should no longer be able to work.
+  He recollected with agony the expense that attended his son's illness and
+  death. He determined to afford me no assistance of a similar kind. He feared
+  however the reproach of deserting me. He feared the tenderness of his
+  nature. He felt, that I was growing upon his affections, and that in a short
+  time he could not have deserted me. He was driven by a sort of implicit
+  impulse, for the sake of avoiding one ungenerous action, to take refuge in
+  another, the basest and most diabolical. This motive, conjoining with the
+  prospect of the proffered reward, was an incitement too powerful for him to
+  resist.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CXI" id="V3_CXI"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+  <p>Having given vent to my resentment, I left Mr. Spurrel motionless, and
+  unable to utter a word. Gines and his companion attended me. It is
+  unnecessary to repeat all the insolence of this man. He alternately
+  triumphed in the completion of his revenge, and regretted the loss of the
+  reward to the shrivelled old curmudgeon we had just quitted, whom however he
+  swore he would cheat of it by one means or another. He claimed to himself
+  the ingenuity of having devised the halfpenny legend, the thought of which
+  was all his own, and was an expedient that was impossible to fail. There was
+  neither law nor justice, he said, to be had, if Hunks who had done nothing
+  were permitted to pocket the cash, and his merit were left undistinguished
+  and pennyless.</p>
+
+  <p>I paid but little attention to his story. It struck upon my sense, and I
+  was able to recollect it at my nearest leisure, though I thought not of it
+  at the time. For the present I was busily employed, reflecting on my new
+  situation, and the conduct to be observed in it. The thought of suicide had
+  twice, in moments of uncommon despair, suggested itself to my mind; but it
+  was far from my habitual meditations. At present, and in all cases where
+  death was immediately threatened me from the injustice of others, I felt
+  myself disposed to contend to the last.</p>
+
+  <p>My prospects were indeed sufficiently gloomy and discouraging. How much
+  labour had I exerted, first to extricate myself from prison, and next to
+  evade the diligence of my pursuers; and the result of all, to be brought
+  back to the point from which I began! I had gained fame indeed, the
+  miserable fame to have my story bawled forth by hawkers and ballad-mongers,
+  to have my praises as an active and enterprising villain celebrated among
+  footmen and chambermaids; but I was neither an Erostratus nor an Alexander,
+  to die contented with that species of eulogium. With respect to all that was
+  solid, what chance could I find in new exertions of a similar nature? Never
+  was a human creature pursued by enemies more inventive or envenomed. I could
+  have small hope that they would ever cease their persecution, or that my
+  future attempts would be crowned with a more desirable issue.</p>
+
+  <p>They were considerations like these that dictated my resolution. My mind
+  had been gradually weaning from Mr. Falkland, till its feeling rose to
+  something like abhorrence. I had long cherished a reverence for him, which
+  not even animosity and subornation on his part could utterly destroy. But I
+  now ascribed a character so inhumanly sanguinary to his mind; I saw
+  something so fiend-like in the thus hunting me round the world, and
+  determining to be satisfied with nothing less than my blood, while at the
+  same time he knew my innocence, my indisposition to mischief, nay, I might
+  add, my virtues; that henceforth I trampled reverence and the recollection
+  of former esteem under my feet. I lost all regard to his intellectual
+  greatness, and all pity for the agonies of his soul. I also would abjure
+  forbearance. I would show myself bitter and inflexible as he had done. Was
+  it wise in him to drive me into extremity and madness? Had he no fears for
+  his own secret and atrocious offences?</p>
+
+  <p>I had been obliged to spend the remainder of the night upon which I had
+  been apprehended, in prison. During the interval I had thrown off every
+  vestige of disguise, and appeared the next morning in my own person. I was
+  of course easily identified; and, this being the whole with which the
+  magistrates before whom I now stood thought themselves concerned, they were
+  proceeding to make out an order for my being conducted back to my own
+  county. I suspended the despatch of this measure by observing that I had
+  something to disclose. This is an overture to which men appointed for the
+  administration of criminal justice never fail to attend.</p>
+
+  <p>I went before the magistrates, to whose office Gines and his comrade
+  conducted me, fully determined to publish those astonishing secrets of which
+  I had hitherto been the faithful depository; and, once for all, to turn the
+  tables upon my accuser. It was time that the real criminal should be the
+  sufferer, and not that innocence should for ever labour under the oppression
+  of guilt.</p>
+
+  <p>I said that "I had always protested my innocence, and must now repeat the
+  protest."</p>
+
+  <p>"In that case," retorted the senior magistrate abruptly, "what can you
+  have to disclose? If you are innocent, that is no business of ours! We act
+  officially."</p>
+
+  <p>"I always declared," continued I, "that I was the perpetrator of no
+  guilt, but that the guilt wholly belonged to my accuser. He privately
+  conveyed these effects among my property, and then charged me with the
+  robbery. I now declare more than that, that this man is a murderer, that I
+  detected his criminality, and that, for that reason, he is determined to
+  deprive me of life. I presume, gentlemen, that you do consider it as your
+  business to take this declaration. I am persuaded you will be by no means
+  disposed, actively or passively, to contribute to the atrocious injustice
+  under which I suffer, to the imprisonment and condemnation of an innocent
+  man, in order that a murderer may go free. I suppressed this story as long
+  as I could. I was extremely averse to be the author of the unhappiness or
+  the death of a human being. But all patience and submission have their
+  limits."</p>
+
+  <p>"Give me leave, sir," rejoined the magistrate, with an air of affected
+  moderation, "to ask you two questions. Were you any way aiding, abetting, or
+  contributing to this murder?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>"And pray, sir, who is this Mr. Falkland? and what may have been the
+  nature of your connection with him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland is a gentleman of six thousand per annum. I lived with him
+  as his secretary."</p>
+
+  <p>"In other words, you were his servant?"</p>
+
+  <p>"As you please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Very well, sir; that is quite enough for me. First, I have to tell you,
+  as a magistrate, that I can have nothing to do with your declaration. If you
+  had been concerned in the murder you talk of, that would alter the case. But
+  it is out of all reasonable rule for a magistrate to take an information
+  from a felon, except against his accomplices. Next, I think it right to
+  observe to you, in my own proper person, that you appear to me to be the
+  most impudent rascal I ever saw. Why, are you such an ass as to suppose,
+  that the sort of story you have been telling, can be of any service to you,
+  either here or at the assizes, or any where else? A fine time of it indeed
+  it would be, if, when gentlemen of six thousand a year take up their
+  servants for robbing them, those servants could trump up such accusations as
+  these, and could get any magistrate or court of justice to listen to them!
+  Whether or no the felony with which you stand charged would have brought you
+  to the gallows, I will not pretend to say: but I am sure this story will.
+  There would be a speedy end to all order and good government, if fellows
+  that trample upon ranks and distinctions in this atrocious sort were upon
+  any consideration suffered to get off."</p>
+
+  <p>"And do you refuse, sir, to attend to the particulars of the charge I
+  allege?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir, I do.&mdash;But, if I did not, pray what witnesses have you of
+  the murder?"</p>
+
+  <p>This question staggered me.</p>
+
+  <p>"None. But I believe I can make out a circumstantial proof, of a nature
+  to force attention from the most indifferent hearer."</p>
+
+  <p>"So I thought.&mdash;Officers, take him from the bar!"</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the success of this ultimate resort on my part, upon which I had
+  built with such undoubting confidence. Till now, I had conceived that the
+  unfavourable situation in which I was placed was prolonged by my own
+  forbearance; and I had determined to endure all that human nature could
+  support, rather than have recourse to this extreme recrimination. That idea
+  secretly consoled me under all my calamities: it was a voluntary sacrifice,
+  and was cheerfully made. I thought myself allied to the army of martyrs and
+  confessors; I applauded my fortitude and self-denial; and I pleased myself
+  with the idea, that I had the power, though I hoped never to employ it, by
+  an unrelenting display of my resources, to put an end at once to my
+  sufferings and persecutions.</p>
+
+  <p>And this at last was the justice of mankind! A man, under certain
+  circumstances, shall not be heard in the detection of a crime, because he
+  has not been a participator of it! The story of a flagitious murder shall be
+  listened to with indifference, while an innocent man is hunted, like a wild
+  beast, to the furthest corners of the earth! Six thousand a year shall
+  protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an impeachment shall be
+  superseded, because the author of it is a servant!</p>
+
+  <p>I was conducted back to the very prison from which a few months before I
+  had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls, compelled
+  to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my own torture,
+  and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had acquired some
+  knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter experience, by how many
+  links society had a hold upon me, and how closely the snares of despotism
+  beset me. I no longer beheld the world, as my youthful fancy had once
+  induced me to do, as a scene in which to hide or to appear, and to exhibit
+  the freaks of a wanton vivacity. I saw my whole species as ready, in one
+  mode or other, to be made the instruments of the tyrant. Hope died away in
+  the bottom of my heart. Shut up for the first night in my dungeon, I was
+  seized at intervals with temporary frenzy. From time to time, I rent the
+  universal silence with the roarings of unsupportable despair. But this was a
+  transient distraction. I soon returned to the sober recollection of myself
+  and my miseries.</p>
+
+  <p>My prospects were more gloomy, and my situation apparently more
+  irremediable, than ever. I was exposed again, if that were of any account,
+  to the insolence and tyranny that are uniformly exercised within those
+  walls. Why should I repeat the loathsome tale of all that was endured by me,
+  and is endured by every man who is unhappy enough to fall under the
+  government of these consecrated ministers of national jurisprudence? The
+  sufferings I had already experienced, my anxieties, my flight, the perpetual
+  expectation of being discovered, worse than the discovery itself, would
+  perhaps have been enough to satisfy the most insensible individual, in the
+  court of his own conscience, if I had even been the felon I was pretended to
+  be. But the law has neither eyes, nor ears, nor bowels of humanity; and it
+  turns into marble the hearts of all those that are nursed in its
+  principles.</p>
+
+  <p>I however once more recovered my spirit of determination. I resolved
+  that, while I had life, I would never be deserted by this spirit. Oppressed,
+  annihilated I might be; but, if I died, I would die resisting. What use,
+  what advantage, what pleasurable sentiment, could arise from a tame
+  surrender? There is no man that is ignorant, that to humble yourself at the
+  feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts there is no room for
+  amendment and reformation.</p>
+
+  <p>My fortitude may to some persons appear above the standard of human
+  nature. But if I draw back the veil from my heart they will readily confess
+  their mistake. My heart bled at every pore. My resolution was not the calm
+  sentiment of philosophy and reason. It was a gloomy and desperate purpose:
+  the creature, not of hope, but of a mind austerely held to its design, that
+  felt, as it were, satisfied with the naked effort, and prepared to give
+  success or miscarriage to the winds. It was to this miserable condition,
+  which might awaken sympathy in the most hardened bosom, that Mr. Falkland
+  had reduced me.</p>
+
+  <p>In the mean time, strange as it may seem, here, in prison, subject to
+  innumerable hardships, and in the assured expectation of a sentence of
+  death, I recovered my health. I ascribe this to the state of my mind, which
+  was now changed, from perpetual anxiety, terror, and alarm, the too frequent
+  inmates of a prison, but which I upon this occasion did not seem to bring
+  along with me, to a desperate firmness.</p>
+
+  <p>I anticipated the event of my trial. I determined once more to escape
+  from my prison; nor did I doubt of my ability to effect at least this first
+  step towards my future preservation. The assizes however were near, and
+  there were certain considerations, unnecessary to be detailed, that
+  persuaded me there might be benefit in waiting till my trial should actually
+  be terminated, before I made my attempt.</p>
+
+  <p>It stood upon the list as one of the latest to be brought forward. I was
+  therefore extremely surprised to find it called out of its order, early on
+  the morning of the second day. But, if this were unexpected, how much
+  greater was my astonishment, when my prosecutor was called, to find neither
+  Mr. Falkland, nor Mr. Forester, nor a single individual of any description,
+  appear against me! The recognizances into which my prosecutors had entered
+  were declared to be forfeited; and I was dismissed without further
+  impediment from the bar.</p>
+
+  <p>The effect which this incredible reverse produced upon my mind it is
+  impossible to express. I, who had come to that bar with the sentence of
+  death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to
+  transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had broken
+  through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my prison; that
+  I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless, spectre-haunted nights;
+  that I had racked my invention for expedients of evasion and concealment;
+  that my mind had been roused to an energy of which I could scarcely have
+  believed it capable; that my existence had been enthralled to an ever-living
+  torment, such as I could scarcely have supposed it in man to endure? Great
+  God! what is man? Is he thus blind to the future, thus totally unsuspecting
+  of what is to occur in the next moment of his existence? I have somewhere
+  read, that heaven in mercy hides from us the future incidents of our life.
+  My own experience does not well accord with this assertion. In this instance
+  at least I should have been saved from insupportable labour and
+  undescribable anguish, could I have foreseen the catastrophe of this most
+  interesting transaction.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CXII" id="V3_CXII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+  <p>It was not long before I took my everlasting leave of this detested and
+  miserable scene. My heart was for the present too full of astonishment and
+  exultation in my unexpected deliverance, to admit of anxiety about the
+  future. I withdrew from the town; I rambled with a slow and thoughtful pace,
+  now bursting with exclamation, and now buried in profound and undefinable
+  reverie. Accident led me towards the very heath which had first sheltered
+  me, when, upon a former occasion, I broke out of my prison. I wandered among
+  its cavities and its valleys. It was a forlorn and desolate solitude. I
+  continued here I know not how long. Night at length overtook me unperceived,
+  and I prepared to return for the present to the town I had quitted.</p>
+
+  <p>It was now perfectly dark, when two men, whom I had not previously
+  observed, sprung upon me from behind. They seized me by the arms, and threw
+  me upon the ground. I had no time for resistance or recollection. I could
+  however perceive that one of them was the diabolical Gines. They
+  blindfolded, gagged me, and hurried me I knew not whither. As we passed
+  along in silence, I endeavoured to conjecture what could be the meaning of
+  this extraordinary violence. I was strongly impressed with the idea, that,
+  after the event of this morning, the most severe and painful part of my
+  history was past; and, strange as it may seem, I could not persuade myself
+  to regard with alarm this unexpected attack. It might however be some new
+  project, suggested by the brutal temper and unrelenting animosity of
+  Gines.</p>
+
+  <p>I presently found that we were returned into the town I had just quitted.
+  They led me into a house, and, as soon as they had taken possession of a
+  room freed me from the restraints they had before imposed Here Gines
+  informed me with a malicious grin that no harm was intended me, and
+  therefore I should show most sense in keeping myself quiet. I perceived that
+  we were in an inn; I overheard company in a room at no great distance from
+  us, and therefore was now as thoroughly aware as he could be, that there was
+  at present little reason to stand in fear of any species of violence, and
+  that it would be time enough to resist, when they attempted to conduct me
+  from the inn in the same manner that they had brought me into it. I was not
+  without some curiosity to see the conclusion that was to follow upon so
+  extraordinary a commencement.</p>
+
+  <p>The preliminaries I have described were scarcely completed, before Mr.
+  Falkland entered the room. I remember Collins, when he first communicated to
+  me the particulars of our patron's history, observed that he was totally
+  unlike the man he had once been. I had no means of ascertaining the truth of
+  that observation. But it was strikingly applicable to the spectacle which
+  now presented itself to my eyes, though, when I last beheld this unhappy
+  man, he had been a victim to the same passions, a prey to the same undying
+  remorse, as now. Misery was at that time inscribed in legible characters
+  upon his countenance. But now he appeared like nothing that had ever been
+  visible in human shape. His visage was haggard, emaciated, and fleshless.
+  His complexion was a dun and tarnished red, the colour uniform through every
+  region of the face, and suggested the idea of its being burnt and parched by
+  the eternal fire that burned within him. His eyes were red, quick,
+  wandering, full of suspicion and rage. His hair was neglected, ragged, and
+  floating. His whole figure was thin, to a degree that suggested the idea
+  rather of a skeleton than a person actually alive. Life seemed hardly to be
+  the capable inhabitant of so woe-begone and ghost-like a figure. The taper
+  of wholesome life was expired; but passion, and fierceness, and frenzy, were
+  able for the present to supply its place.</p>
+
+  <p>I was to the utmost degree astonished and shocked at the sight of
+  him.&mdash;He sternly commanded my conductors to leave the room.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, sir, I have this day successfully exerted myself to save your life
+  from the gallows. A fortnight ago you did what you were able to bring my
+  life to that ignominious close.</p>
+
+  <p>"Were you so stupid and undistinguishing as not to know that the
+  preservation of your life was the uniform object of my exertions? Did not I
+  maintain you in prison? Did not I endeavour to prevent your being sent
+  thither? Could you mistake the bigoted and obstinate conduct of Forester, in
+  offering a hundred guineas for your apprehension, for mine?</p>
+
+  <p>"I had my eye upon you in all your wanderings. You have taken no material
+  step through their whole course with which I have not been acquainted. I
+  meditated to do you good. I have spilt no blood but that of Tyrrel: that was
+  in the moment of passion; and it has been the subject of my uninterrupted
+  and hourly remorse. I have connived at no man's fate but that of the
+  Hawkinses: they could no otherwise have been saved, than by my acknowledging
+  myself a murderer. The rest of my life has been spent in acts of
+  benevolence.</p>
+
+  <p>"I meditated to do you good. For that reason I was willing to prove you.
+  You pretended to act towards me with consideration and forbearance. If you
+  had persisted in that to the end, I would yet have found a way to reward
+  you. I left you to your own discretion. You might show the impotent
+  malignity of your own heart; but, in the circumstances in which you were
+  then placed, I knew you could not hurt me. Your forbearance has proved, as I
+  all along suspected, empty and treacherous. You have attempted to blast my
+  reputation. You have sought to disclose the select and eternal secret of my
+  soul. Because you have done that, I will never forgive you. I will remember
+  it to my latest breath. The memory shall survive me, when my existence is no
+  more. Do you think you are out of the reach of my power, because a court of
+  justice has acquitted you?"</p>
+
+  <p>While Mr. Falkland was speaking a sudden distemper came over his
+  countenance, his whole frame was shaken by an instantaneous convulsion, and
+  he staggered to a chair. In about three minutes he recovered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," said he, "I am still alive. I shall live for days, and months, and
+  years; the power that made me, of whatever kind it be, can only determine
+  how long. I live the guardian of my reputation. That, and to endure a misery
+  such as man never endured, are the only ends to which I live. But, when I am
+  no more, my fame shall still survive. My character shall be revered as
+  spotless and unimpeachable by all posterity, as long as the name of Falkland
+  shall be repeated in the most distant regions of the many-peopled
+  globe."</p>
+
+  <p>Having said this, he returned to the discourse which more immediately
+  related to my future condition and happiness.</p>
+
+  <p>"There is one condition," said he, "upon which you may obtain some
+  mitigation of your future calamity. It is for that purpose that I have sent
+  for you. Listen to my proposal with deliberation and sobriety. Remember,
+  that the insanity is not less to trifle with the resolved determination of
+  my soul, than it would be to pull a mountain upon your head that hung
+  trembling upon the edge of the mighty Apennine!</p>
+
+  <p>"I insist then upon your signing a paper, declaring, in the most solemn
+  manner, that I am innocent of murder, and that the charge you alleged at the
+  office in Bow-street is false, malicious, and groundless. Perhaps you may
+  scruple out of a regard to truth. Is truth then entitled to adoration for
+  its own sake, and not for the sake of the happiness it is calculated to
+  produce? Will a reasonable man sacrifice to barren truth, when benevolence,
+  humanity, and every consideration that is dear to the human heart, require
+  that it should be superseded? It is probable that I may never make use of
+  this paper, but I require it, as the only practicable reparation to the
+  honour you have assailed. This is what I had to propose. I expect your
+  answer."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir," answered I, "I have heard you to an end, and I stand in need of no
+  deliberation to enable me to answer you in the negative. You took me up a
+  raw and inexperienced boy, capable of being moulded to any form you pleased.
+  But you have communicated to me volumes of experience in a very short
+  period. I am no longer irresolute and pliable. What is the power you retain
+  over my fate I am unable to discover. You may destroy me; but you cannot
+  make me tremble. I am not concerned to enquire, whether what I have suffered
+  flowed from you by design or otherwise; whether you were the author of my
+  miseries, or only connived at them. This I know, that I have suffered too
+  exquisitely on your account, for me to feel the least remaining claim on
+  your part to my making any voluntary sacrifice.</p>
+
+  <p>"You say that benevolence and humanity require this sacrifice of me. No;
+  it would only be a sacrifice to your mad and misguided love of
+  fame,&mdash;to that passion which has been the source of all your miseries,
+  of the most tragical calamities to others, and of every misfortune that has
+  happened to me. I have no forbearance to exercise towards that passion. If
+  you be not yet cured of this tremendous and sanguinary folly, at least I
+  will do nothing to cherish it. I know not whether from my youth I was
+  destined for a hero; but I may thank you for having taught me a lesson of
+  insurmountable fortitude.</p>
+
+  <p>"What is it that you require of me? that I should sign away my own
+  reputation for the better maintaining of yours. Where is the equality of
+  that? What is it that casts me at such an immense distance below you, as to
+  make every thing that relates to me wholly unworthy of consideration? You
+  have been educated in the prejudice of birth. I abhor that prejudice. You
+  have made me desperate, and I utter what that desperation suggests.</p>
+
+  <p>"You will tell me perhaps that I have no reputation to lose; that, while
+  you are esteemed faultless and unblemished, I am universally reputed a
+  thief, a suborner, and a calumniator. Be it so. I will never do any thing to
+  countenance those imputations. The more I am destitute of the esteem of
+  mankind, the more careful I will be to preserve my own. I will never from
+  fear, or any other mistaken motive, do any thing of which I ought to be
+  ashamed.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are determined to be for ever my enemy. I have in no degree deserved
+  this eternal abhorrence. I have always esteemed and pitied you. For a
+  considerable time I rather chose to expose myself to every kind of
+  misfortune, than disclose the secret that was so dear to you. I was not
+  deterred by your menaces&mdash;(what could you make me suffer more than I
+  actually suffered?)&mdash;but by the humanity of my own heart; in which, and
+  not in means of violence, you ought to have reposed your confidence. What is
+  the mysterious vengeance that you can yet execute against me? You menaced me
+  before; you can menace no worse now. You are wearing out the springs of
+  terror. Do with me as you please; you teach me to hear you with an
+  unshrinking and desperate firmness. Recollect yourself! I did not proceed to
+  the step with which you reproach me, till I was apparently urged to the very
+  last extremity. I had suffered as much as human nature can suffer; I had
+  lived in the midst of eternal alarm and unintermitted watchfulness; I had
+  twice been driven to purposes of suicide. I am now sorry however, that the
+  step of which you complain was ever adopted. But, urged to exasperation by
+  an unintermitted rigour, I had no time to cool or to deliberate. Even at
+  present I cherish no vengeance against you. All that is reasonable, all that
+  can really contribute to your security, I will readily concede; but I will
+  not be driven to an act repugnant to all reason, integrity, and
+  justice."</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Falkland listened to me with astonishment and impatience. He had
+  entertained no previous conception of the firmness I displayed. Several
+  times he was convulsed with the fury that laboured in his breast. Once and
+  again he betrayed an intention to interrupt; but he was restrained by the
+  collectedness of my manner, and perhaps by a desire to be acquainted with
+  the entire state of my mind. Finding that I had concluded, he paused for a
+  moment; his passion seemed gradually to enlarge, till it was no longer
+  capable of control.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is well!" said he, gnashing his teeth, and stamping upon the ground.
+  "You refuse the composition I offer! I have no power to persuade you to
+  compliance! You defy me! At least I have a power respecting you, and that
+  power I will exercise; a power that shall grind you into atoms. I condescend
+  to no more expostulation. I know what I am, and what I can be. I know what
+  you are, and what fate is reserved for you!"</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this he quitted the room.</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the particulars of this memorable scene. The impression it has
+  left upon my understanding is indelible. The figure and appearance of Mr.
+  Falkland, his death-like weakness and decay, his more than mortal energy and
+  rage, the words that he spoke, the motives that animated him, produced one
+  compounded effect upon my mind that nothing of the same nature could ever
+  parallel. The idea of his misery thrilled through my frame. How weak in
+  comparison of it is the imaginary hell, which the great enemy of mankind is
+  represented as carrying every where about with him!</p>
+
+  <p>From this consideration, my mind presently turned to the menaces he had
+  vented against myself. They were all mysterious and undefined. He had talked
+  of power, but had given no hint from which I could collect in what he
+  imagined it to consist. He had talked of misery, but had not dropped a
+  syllable respecting the nature of the misery to be inflicted.</p>
+
+  <p>I sat still for some time, ruminating on these thoughts. Neither Mr.
+  Falkland nor any other person appeared to disturb my meditations. I rose,
+  went out of the room, and from the inn into the street. No one offered to
+  molest me. It was strange! What was the nature of this power, from which I
+  was to apprehend so much, yet which seemed to leave me at perfect liberty? I
+  began to imagine that all I had heard from this dreadful adversary was mere
+  madness and extravagance, and that he was at length deprived of the use of
+  reason, which had long served him only as a medium of torment. Yet was it
+  likely in that case that he should be able to employ Gines and his
+  associate, who had just been his instruments of violence upon my person?</p>
+
+  <p>I proceeded along the streets with considerable caution. I looked before
+  me and behind me, as well as the darkness would allow me to do, that I might
+  not again be hunted in sight by some men of stratagem and violence without
+  my perceiving it. I went not, as before, beyond the limits of the town, but
+  considered the streets, the houses, and the inhabitants, as affording some
+  degree of security. I was still walking with my mind thus full of suspicion
+  and forecast, when I discovered Thomas, that servant of Mr. Falkland whom I
+  have already more than once had occasion to mention. He advanced towards me
+  with an air so blunt and direct, as instantly to remove from me the idea of
+  any thing insidious in his purpose; besides that I had always felt the
+  character of Thomas, rustic and uncultivated as it was, to be entitled to a
+  more than common portion of esteem.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thomas," said I, as he advanced, "I hope you are willing to give me joy,
+  that I am at length delivered from the dreadful danger which for many months
+  haunted me so unmercifully."</p>
+
+  <p>"No," rejoined Thomas, roughly; "I be not at all willing. I do not know
+  what to make of myself in this affair. While you were in prison in that
+  miserable fashion, I felt all at one almost as if I loved you: and now that
+  that is over, and you are turned out loose in the world to do your worst, my
+  blood rises at the very sight of you. To look at you, you are almost that
+  very lad Williams for whom I could with pleasure, as it were, have laid down
+  my life; and yet, behind that smiling face there lie robbery, and lying, and
+  every thing that is ungrateful and murderous. Your last action was worse
+  than all the rest. How could you find in your heart to revive that cruel
+  story about Mr. Tyrrel, which every body had agreed, out of regard to the
+  squire, never to mention again, and of which I know, and you know, he is as
+  innocent as the child unborn? There are causes and reasons, or else I could
+  have wished from the bottom of my soul never to have set eyes on you
+  again."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you still persist in your hard thoughts of me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Worse! I think worse of you than ever! Before, I thought you as bad as
+  man could be. I wonder from my soul what you are to do next. But you make
+  good the old saying, 'Needs must go, that the devil drives.'"</p>
+
+  <p>"And so there is never to be an end of my misfortunes! What can Mr.
+  Falkland contrive for me worse than the ill opinion and enmity of all
+  mankind?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland contrive! He is the best friend you have in the world,
+  though you are the basest traitor to him. Poor man! it makes one's heart
+  ache to look at him; he is the very image of grief. And it is not clear to
+  me that it is not all owing to you. At least you have given the finishing
+  lift to the misfortune that was already destroying him. There have been the
+  devil and all to pay between him and squire Forester. The squire is right
+  raving mad with my master, for having outwitted him in the matter of the
+  trial, and saved your life. He swears that you shall be taken up and tried
+  all over again at the next assizes; but my master is resolute, and I believe
+  will carry it his own way. He says indeed that the law will not allow squire
+  Forester to have his will in this. To see him ordering every thing for your
+  benefit, and taking all your maliciousness as mild and innocent as a lamb,
+  and to think of your vile proceedings against him, is a sight one shall not
+  see again, go all the world over. For God's sake, repent of your reprobate
+  doings, and make what little reparation is in your power! Think of your poor
+  soul, before you awake, as to be sure one of these days you will, in fire
+  and brimstone everlasting!"</p>
+
+  <p>Saying this, he held out his hand and took hold of mine. The action
+  seemed strange; but I at first thought it the unpremeditated result of his
+  solemn and well-intended adjuration. I felt however that he put something
+  into my hand. The next moment he quitted his hold, and hastened from me with
+  the swiftness of an arrow. What he had thus given me was a bank-note of
+  twenty pounds. I had no doubt that he had been charged to deliver it to me
+  from Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>What was I to infer? what light did it throw upon the intentions of my
+  inexorable persecutor? his animosity against me was as great as ever; that I
+  had just had confirmed to me from his own mouth. Yet his animosity appeared
+  to be still tempered with the remains of humanity. He prescribed to it a
+  line, wide enough to embrace the gratification of his views, and within the
+  boundaries of that line it stopped. But this discovery carried no
+  consolation to my mind. I knew not what portion of calamity I was fated to
+  endure, before his jealousy of dishonour, and inordinate thirst of fame
+  would deem themselves satisfied.</p>
+
+  <p>Another question offered itself. Was I to receive the money which had
+  just been put into my hands? the money of a man who had inflicted upon me
+  injuries, less than those which he had entailed upon himself, but the
+  greatest that one man can inflict upon another? who had blasted my youth,
+  who had destroyed my peace, who had held me up to the abhorrence of mankind,
+  and rendered me an outcast upon the face of the earth? who had forced the
+  basest and most atrocious falsehoods, and urged them with a seriousness and
+  perseverance which produced universal belief? who, an hour before, had vowed
+  against me inexorable enmity, and sworn to entail upon me misery without
+  end? Would not this conduct on my part betray a base and abject spirit, that
+  crouched under tyranny, and kissed the hands that were imbrued in my
+  blood?</p>
+
+  <p>If these reasons appeared strong, neither was the other side without
+  reasons in reply. I wanted the money: not for any purpose of vice or
+  superfluity, but for those purposes without which life cannot subsist. Man
+  ought to be able, wherever placed, to find for himself the means of
+  existence; but I was to open a new scene of life, to remove to some distant
+  spot, to be prepared against all the ill-will of mankind, and the unexplored
+  projects of hostility of a most accomplished foe. The actual means of
+  existence are the property of all. What should hinder me from taking that of
+  which I was really in want, when, in taking it, I risked no vengeance, and
+  perpetrated no violence? The property in question will be beneficial to me,
+  and the voluntary surrender of it is accompanied with no injury to its late
+  proprietor; what other condition can be necessary to render the use of it on
+  my part a duty? He that lately possessed it has injured me; does that alter
+  its value as a medium of exchange? He will boast, perhaps of the imaginary
+  obligation he has conferred on me: surely to shrink from a thing in itself
+  right from any such apprehension, can be the result only of pusillanimity
+  and cowardice!</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CXIII" id="V3_CXIII"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+  <p>Influenced by these reasonings, I determined to retain what had thus been
+  put into my hands. My next care was in regard to the scene I should choose,
+  as the retreat of that life which I had just saved from the grasp of the
+  executioner. The danger to which I was exposed of forcible interruption in
+  my pursuits, was probably, in some respects, less now than it had been
+  previously to this crisis. Besides, that I was considerably influenced in
+  this deliberation by the strong loathing I conceived for the situations in
+  which I had lately been engaged. I knew not in what mode Mr. Falkland
+  intended to exercise his vengeance against me; but I was seized with so
+  unconquerable an aversion to disguise, and the idea of spending my life in
+  personating a fictitious character, that I could not, for the present at
+  least, reconcile my mind to any thing of that nature. The same kind of
+  disgust I had conceived for the metropolis, where I had spent so many hours
+  of artifice, sadness, and terror. I therefore decided in favour of the
+  project which had formerly proved amusing to my imagination, of withdrawing
+  to some distant, rural scene, a scene of calmness and obscurity, where for a
+  few years at least, perhaps during the life of Mr. Falkland, I might be
+  hidden from the world, recover the wounds my mind had received in this fatal
+  connection, methodise and improve the experience which had been accumulated,
+  cultivate the faculties I in any degree possessed, and employ the intervals
+  of these occupations in simple industry, and the intercourse of guileless,
+  uneducated, kind-intentioned minds. The menaces of my persecutor seemed to
+  forebode the inevitable interruption of this system. But I deemed it wise to
+  put these menaces out of my consideration I compared them to death, which
+  must infallibly overtake us we know not when; but the possibility of whose
+  arrival next year, next week, to-morrow, must be left out of the calculation
+  of him who would enter upon any important or well-concerted undertaking.</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the ideas that determined my choice. Thus did my youthful mind
+  delineate the system of distant years, even when the threats of instant
+  calamity still sounded in my ears. I was inured to the apprehension of
+  mischief, till at last the hoarse roarings of the beginning tempest had lost
+  their power of annihilating my peace. I however thought it necessary, while
+  I was most palpably within the sphere of the enemy, to exert every
+  practicable degree of vigilance. I was careful not to incur the hazards of
+  darkness and solitude. When I left the town it was with the stage-coach, an
+  obvious source of protection against glaring and enormous violence.
+  Meanwhile I found myself no more exposed to molestation in my progress, than
+  the man in the world who should have had the least reason for apprehensions
+  of this nature. As the distance increased, I relaxed something in my
+  precaution, though still awake to a sense of danger, and constantly pursued
+  with the image of my foe. I fixed upon an obscure market-town in Wales as
+  the chosen seat of my operations. This place recommended itself to my
+  observation as I was wandering in quest of an abode. It was clean, cheerful,
+  and of great simplicity of appearance. It was at a distance from any public
+  and frequented road, and had nothing which could deserve the name of trade.
+  The face of nature around it was agreeably diversified, being partly wild
+  and romantic, and partly rich and abundant in production.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I solicited employment in two professions; the first, that of a
+  watchmaker, in which though the instructions I had received were few, they
+  were eked out and assisted by a mind fruitful in mechanical invention; the
+  other, that of an instructor in mathematics and its practical application,
+  geography, astronomy, land-surveying, and navigation. Neither of these was a
+  very copious source of emolument in the obscure retreat I had chosen for
+  myself; but, if my receipts were slender, my disbursements were still fewer.
+  In this little town I became acquainted with the vicar, the apothecary, the
+  lawyer, and the rest of the persons who, time out of mind, had been regarded
+  as the top gentry of the place. Each of these centred in himself a variety
+  of occupations. There was little in the appearance of the vicar that
+  reminded you of his profession, except on the recurring Sunday. At other
+  times he condescended, with his evangelical hand to guide the plough, or to
+  drive the cows from the field to the farm-yard for the milking. The
+  apothecary occasionally officiated as a barber, and the lawyer was the
+  village schoolmaster.</p>
+
+  <p>By all these persons I was received with kindness and hospitality. Among
+  people thus remote from the bustle of human life there is an open spirit of
+  confidence, by means of which a stranger easily finds access to their
+  benevolence and good-will. My manners had never been greatly debauched from
+  the simplicity of rural life by the scenes through which I had passed; and
+  the hardships I had endured had given additional mildness to my character.
+  In the theatre upon which I was now placed I had no rival. My mechanical
+  occupation had hitherto been a non-resident; and the schoolmaster, who did
+  not aspire to the sublime heights of science I professed to communicate, was
+  willing to admit me as a partner in the task of civilising the unpolished
+  manners of the inhabitants. For the parson, civilisation was no part of his
+  trade; his business was with the things of a better life, not with the
+  carnal concerns of this material scene; in truth, his thoughts were
+  principally occupied with his oatmeal and his cows.</p>
+
+  <p>These however were not the only companions which this remote retirement
+  afforded me. There was a family of a very different description, of which I
+  gradually became the chosen intimate. The father was a shrewd, sensible,
+  rational man, but who had turned his principal attention to subjects of
+  agriculture. His wife was a truly admirable and extraordinary woman. She was
+  the daughter of a Neapolitan nobleman, who, after having visited, and made a
+  considerable figure, in every country in Europe, had at length received the
+  blow of fate in this village. He had been banished his country upon
+  suspicion of religious and political heresy, and his estates confiscated.
+  With this only child, like Prospero in the Tempest, he had withdrawn himself
+  to one of the most obscure and uncultivated regions of the world. Very soon
+  however after his arrival in Wales he had been seized with a malignant
+  fever, which carried him off in three days. He died possessed of no other
+  property than a few jewels, and a bill of credit, to no considerable amount,
+  upon an English banker.</p>
+
+  <p>Here then was the infant Laura, left in a foreign country, and without a
+  single friend. The father of her present husband was led by motives of pure
+  humanity to seek to mitigate the misfortunes of the dying Italian. Though a
+  plain uninstructed man, with no extraordinary refinement of intellect, there
+  was something in his countenance that determined the stranger in his present
+  forlorn and melancholy situation, to make him his executor, and the guardian
+  of his daughter. The Neapolitan understood enough of English to explain his
+  wishes to this friendly attendant of his death-bed. As his circumstances
+  were narrow, the servants of the stranger, two Italians, a male and a
+  female, were sent back to their own country soon after the death of their
+  master.</p>
+
+  <p>Laura was at this time eight years of age. At these tender years she had
+  been susceptible of little direct instruction; and, as she grew up, even the
+  memory of her father became, from year to year, more vague and indistinct in
+  her mind. But there was something she derived from her father, whether along
+  with the life he bestowed, or as the consequence of his instruction and
+  manners, which no time could efface. Every added year of her life
+  contributed to develop the fund of her accomplishments. She read, she
+  observed, she reflected. Without instructors, she taught herself to draw, to
+  sing, and to understand the more polite European languages. As she had no
+  society in this remote situation but that of peasants, she had no idea of
+  honour or superiority to be derived from her acquisitions; but pursued them
+  from a secret taste, and as the sources of personal enjoyment.</p>
+
+  <p>A mutual attachment gradually arose between her and the only son of her
+  guardian. His father led him, from early youth, to the labours and the
+  sports of the field, and there was little congeniality between his pursuits
+  and those of Laura. But this was a defect that she was slow to discover. She
+  had never been accustomed to society in her chosen amusements, and habit at
+  that time even made her conceive, that they were indebted to solitude for an
+  additional relish. The youthful rustic had great integrity, great kindness
+  of heart, and was a lad of excellent sense. He was florid,
+  well-proportioned, and the goodness of his disposition made his manners
+  amiable. Accomplishments greater than these she had never seen in human
+  form, since the death of her father. In fact, she is scarcely to be
+  considered as a sufferer in this instance; since, in her forlorn and
+  destitute condition, it is little probable, when we consider the habits and
+  notions that now prevail, that her accomplishments, unassisted by fortune,
+  would have procured her an equal alliance in marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>When she became a mother her heart opened to a new affection. The idea
+  now presented itself, which had never occurred before, that in her children
+  at least she might find the partners and companions of her favourite
+  employments. She was, at the time of my arrival, mother of four, the eldest
+  of which was a son. To all of them she had been a most assiduous instructor.
+  It was well for her perhaps that she obtained this sphere for the exercise
+  of her mind. It came just at the period when the charm which human life
+  derives from novelty is beginning to wear off. It gave her new activity and
+  animation. It is perhaps impossible that the refinements of which human
+  nature is capable should not, after a time, subside into sluggishness, if
+  they be not aided by the influence of society and affection.</p>
+
+  <p>The son of the Welch farmer by this admirable woman was about seventeen
+  years of age at the time of my settlement in their neighbourhood. His eldest
+  sister was one year younger than himself. The whole family composed a group,
+  with which a lover of tranquillity and virtue would have delighted to
+  associate in any situation. It is easy therefore to conceive how much I
+  rejoiced in their friendship, in this distant retirement, and suffering, as
+  I felt myself, from the maltreatment and desertion of my species. The
+  amiable Laura had a wonderful quickness of eye, and rapidity of
+  apprehension; but this feature in her countenance was subdued by a sweetness
+  of disposition, such as I never in any other instance saw expressed in the
+  looks of a human being. She soon distinguished me by her kindness and
+  friendship; for, living as she had done, though familiar with the written
+  productions of a cultivated intellect, she had never seen the thing itself
+  realised in a living being, except in the person of her father. She
+  delighted to converse with me upon subjects of literature and taste, and she
+  eagerly invited my assistance in the education of her children. The son,
+  though young, had been so happily improved and instructed by his mother,
+  that I found in him nearly all the most essential qualities we require in a
+  friend. Engagement and inclination equally led me to pass a considerable
+  part of every day in this agreeable society. Laura treated me as if I had
+  been one of the family; and I sometimes flattered myself that I might one
+  day become such in reality. What an enviable resting-place for me, who had
+  known nothing but calamity, and had scarcely dared to look for sympathy and
+  kindness in the countenance of a human being!</p>
+
+  <p>The sentiments of friendship which early disclosed themselves between me
+  and the member of this amiable family daily became stronger. At every
+  interview, the confidence reposed in me by the mother increased. While our
+  familiarity gained in duration, it equally gained in that subtlety of
+  communication by which it seemed to shoot forth its roots in every
+  direction. There are a thousand little evanescent touches in the development
+  of a growing friendship, that are neither thought of, nor would be
+  understood, between common acquaintances. I honoured and esteemed the
+  respectable Laura like a mother; for, though the difference of our ages was
+  by no means sufficient to authorise the sentiment, it was irresistibly
+  suggested to me by the fact of her always being presented to my observation
+  under the maternal character. Her son was a lad of great understanding,
+  generosity, and feeling, and of no contemptible acquirements; while his
+  tender years, and the uncommon excellence of his mother, subtracted
+  something from the independence of his judgment, and impressed him with a
+  sort of religious deference for her will. In the eldest daughter I beheld
+  the image of Laura; for that I felt attached to her for the present; and I
+  sometimes conceived it probable that hereafter I might learn to love her for
+  her own sake.&mdash;Alas, it was thus that I amused myself with the visions
+  of distant years, while I stood in reality on the brink of the
+  precipice!</p>
+
+  <p>It will perhaps be thought strange that I never once communicated the
+  particulars of my story to this amiable matron, or to my young friend, for
+  such I may also venture to call him, her son. But in truth I abhorred the
+  memory of this story; I placed all my hopes of happiness in the prospect of
+  its being consigned to oblivion. I fondly flattered myself that such would
+  be the event: in the midst of my unlooked-for happiness, I scarcely
+  recollected, or, recollecting, was disposed to yield but a small degree of
+  credit to, the menaces of Mr. Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>One day, that I was sitting alone with the accomplished Laura, she
+  repeated his all-dreadful name. I started with astonishment, amazed that a
+  woman like this, who knew nobody, who lived as it were alone in a corner of
+  the universe, who had never in a single instance entered into any
+  fashionable circle, this admirable and fascinating hermit, should, by some
+  unaccountable accident, have become acquainted with this fatal and
+  tremendous name. Astonishment however was not my only sensation. I became
+  pale with terror; I rose from my seat; I attempted to sit down again; I
+  reeled out of the room, and hastened to bury myself in solitude. The
+  unexpectedness of the incident took from me all precaution, and overwhelmed
+  my faculties. The penetrating Laura observed my behaviour; but nothing
+  further occurred to excite her attention to it at that time; and, concluding
+  from my manner that enquiry would be painful to me, she humanely suppressed
+  her curiosity.</p>
+
+  <p>I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of
+  Laura; that he had been acquainted with the story of Count Malvesi, and with
+  a number of other transactions redounding in the highest degree to the
+  credit of the gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in which
+  these transactions were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland in the
+  highest terms of panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every little relic
+  of her father with a sort of religious veneration; and, by this accident,
+  the name of Mr. Falkland was connected in her mind with the sentiments of
+  unbounded esteem.</p>
+
+  <p>The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me, than
+  it would have been to most other persons with my degree of intellectual
+  cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and bleeding at almost
+  every vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as rest and tranquillity. It
+  seemed as if my faculties were, at least for the time, exhausted by the late
+  preternatural intensity of their exertions, and that they stood
+  indispensably in need of a period of comparative suspension.</p>
+
+  <p>This was however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been active,
+  and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and the
+  exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new energies. I
+  soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous pursuit. In this state
+  of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner of the house of one of my
+  neighbours, with a general dictionary of four of the northern languages.
+  This incident gave a direction to my thoughts. In my youth I had not been
+  inattentive to languages. I determined to attempt, at least for my own use,
+  an etymological analysis of the English language. I easily perceived, that
+  this pursuit had one advantage to a person in my situation, and that a small
+  number of books, consulted with this view, would afford employment for a
+  considerable time. I procured other dictionaries. In my incidental reading,
+  I noted the manner in which words were used, and applied these remarks to
+  the illustration of my general enquiry. I was unintermitted in my assiduity,
+  and my collections promised to accumulate. Thus I was provided with sources
+  both of industry and recreation, the more completely to divert my thoughts
+  from the recollection of my past misfortunes.</p>
+
+  <p>In this state, so grateful to my feelings, week after week glided away
+  without interruption and alarm. The situation in which I was now placed had
+  some resemblance to that in which I had spent my earlier years, with the
+  advantage of a more attractive society, and a riper judgment. I began to
+  look back upon the intervening period as upon a distempered and tormenting
+  dream; or rather perhaps my feelings were like those of a man recovered from
+  an interval of raging delirium, from ideas of horror, confusion, flight,
+  persecution, agony, and despair! When I recollected what I had undergone, it
+  was not without satisfaction, as the recollection of a thing that was past;
+  every day augmented my hope that it was never to return. Surely the dark and
+  terrific menaces of Mr. Falkland were rather the perturbed suggestions of
+  his angry mind, than the final result of a deliberate and digested system!
+  How happy should I feel, beyond the ordinary lot of man, if, after the
+  terrors I had undergone, I should now find myself unexpectedly restored to
+  the immunities of a human being!</p>
+
+  <p>While I was thus soothing my mind with fond imaginations, it happened
+  that a few bricklayers and their labourers came over from a distance of five
+  or six miles, to work upon some additions to one of the better sort of
+  houses in the town, which had changed its tenant. No incident could be more
+  trivial than this, had it not been for a strange coincidence of time between
+  this circumstance, and a change which introduced itself into my situation.
+  This first manifested itself in a sort of shyness with which I was treated,
+  first by one person, and then another, of my new-formed acquaintance. They
+  were backward to enter into conversation with me, and answered my enquiries
+  with an awkward and embarrassed air. When they met me in the street or the
+  field, their countenances contracted a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun
+  me. My scholars quitted me one after another; and I had no longer any
+  employment in my mechanical profession. It is impossible to describe the
+  sensations, which the gradual but uninterrupted progress of this revolution
+  produced in my mind. It seemed as if I had some contagious disease, from
+  which every man shrunk with alarm, and left me to perish unassisted and
+  alone. I asked one man and another to explain to me the meaning of these
+  appearances; but every one avoided the task, and answered in an evasive and
+  ambiguous manner. I sometimes supposed that it was all a delusion of the
+  imagination; till the repetition of the sensation brought the reality too
+  painfully home to my apprehension. There are few things that give a greater
+  shock to the mind, than a phenomenon in the conduct of our fellow men, of
+  great importance to our concerns, and for which we are unable to assign any
+  plausible reason. At times I was half inclined to believe that the change
+  was not in other men, but that some alienation of my own understanding
+  generated the horrid vision. I endeavoured to awaken from my dream, and
+  return to my former state of enjoyment and happiness; but in vain. To the
+  same consideration it may be ascribed, that, unacquainted with the source of
+  the evil, observing its perpetual increase, and finding it, so far as I
+  could perceive, entirely arbitrary in its nature, I was unable to ascertain
+  its limits, or the degree in which it would finally overwhelm me.</p>
+
+  <p>In the midst however of the wonderful and seemingly inexplicable nature
+  of this scene, there was one idea that instantly obtruded itself, and that I
+  could never after banish from my mind. It is Falkland! In vain I struggled
+  against the seeming improbability of the supposition. In vain I said, "Mr.
+  Falkland, wise as he is, and pregnant in resources, acts by human, not by
+  supernatural means. He may overtake me by surprise, and in a manner of which
+  I had no previous expectation; but he cannot produce a great and notorious
+  effect without some visible agency, however difficult it may be to trace
+  that agency to its absolute author. He cannot, like those invisible
+  personages who are supposed from time to time to interfere in human affairs,
+  ride in the whirlwind, shroud himself in clouds and impenetrable darkness,
+  and scatter destruction upon the earth from his secret habitation." Thus it
+  was that I bribed my imagination, and endeavoured to persuade myself that my
+  present unhappiness originated in a different source from my former. All
+  evils appeared trivial to me, in comparison with the recollection and
+  perpetuation of my parent misfortune. I felt like a man distracted, by the
+  incoherence of my ideas to my present situation, excluding from it the
+  machinations of Mr. Falkland, on the one hand; and on the other, by the
+  horror I conceived at the bare possibility of again encountering his
+  animosity, after a suspension of many weeks, a suspension as I had hoped for
+  ever. An interval like this was an age to a person in the calamitous
+  situation I had so long experienced. But, in spite of my efforts, I could
+  not banish from my mind the dreadful idea. My original conceptions of the
+  genius and perseverance of Mr. Falkland had been such, that I could with
+  difficulty think any thing impossible to him. I knew not how to set up my
+  own opinions of material causes and the powers of the human mind, as the
+  limits of existence. Mr. Falkland had always been to my imagination an
+  object of wonder, and that which excites our wonder we scarcely suppose
+  ourselves competent to analyse.</p>
+
+  <p>It may well be conceived, that one of the first persons to whom I thought
+  of applying for an explanation of this dreadful mystery was the accomplished
+  Laura. My disappointment here cut me to the heart. I was not prepared for
+  it. I recollected the ingenuousness of her nature, the frankness of her
+  manners, the partiality with which she had honoured me. If I were mortified
+  with the coldness, the ruggedness, and the cruel mistake of principles with
+  which the village inhabitants repelled my enquiries, the mortification I
+  suffered, only drove me more impetuously to seek the cure of my griefs from
+  this object of my admiration. "In Laura," said I, "I am secure from these
+  vulgar prejudices. I confide in her justice. I am sure she will not cast me
+  off unheard, nor without strictly examining a question on all sides, in
+  which every thing that is valuable to a person she once esteemed, may be
+  involved."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus encouraging myself, I turned my steps to the place of her residence.
+  As I passed along I called up all my recollection, I summoned my faculties.
+  "I may be made miserable," said I, "but it shall not be for want of any
+  exertion of mine, that promises to lead to happiness. I will be clear,
+  collected, simple in narrative, ingenuous in communication. I will leave
+  nothing unsaid that the case may require. I will not volunteer any thing
+  that relates to my former transactions with Mr. Falkland; but, if I find
+  that my present calamity is connected with those transactions, I will not
+  fear but that by an honest explanation I shall remove it."</p>
+
+  <p>I knocked at the door. A servant appeared, and told me that her mistress
+  hoped I would excuse her; she must really beg to dispense with my visit.</p>
+
+  <p>I was thunderstruck. I was rooted to the spot. I had been carefully
+  preparing my mind for every thing that I supposed likely to happen, but this
+  event had not entered into my calculations. I roused myself in a partial
+  degree, and walked away without uttering a word.</p>
+
+  <p>I had not gone far before I perceived one of the workmen following me,
+  who put into my hands a billet. The contents were these:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"MR. WILLIAMS,</p>
+
+  <p>"Let me see you no more. I have a right at least to expect your
+  compliance with this requisition; and, upon that condition, I pardon the
+  enormous impropriety and guilt with which you have conducted yourself to me
+  and my family.</p>
+
+  <p>"LAURA DENISON."</p>
+
+  <p>The sensations with which I read these few lines are indescribable. I
+  found in them a dreadful confirmation of the calamity that on all sides
+  invaded me. But what I felt most was the unmoved coldness with which they
+  appeared to be written. This coldness from Laura, my comforter, my friend,
+  my mother! To dismiss, to cast me off for ever, without one thought of
+  compunction!</p>
+
+  <p>I determined however, in spite of her requisition, and in spite of her
+  coldness, to have an explanation with her. I did not despair of conquering
+  the antipathy she harboured. I did not fear that I should rouse her from the
+  vulgar and unworthy conception, of condemning a man, in points the most
+  material to his happiness, without stating the accusations that are urged
+  against him, and without hearing him in reply.</p>
+
+  <p>Though I had no doubt, by means of resolution, of gaining access to her
+  in her house, yet I preferred taking her unprepared, and not warmed against
+  me by any previous contention. Accordingly, the next morning, at the time
+  she usually devoted to half an hour's air and exercise, I hastened to her
+  garden, leaped the paling, and concealed myself in an arbour. Presently I
+  saw, from my retreat, the younger part of the family strolling through the
+  garden, and from thence into the fields; but it was not my business to be
+  seen by them. I looked after them however with earnestness, unobserved; and
+  I could not help asking myself, with a deep and heartfelt sigh, whether it
+  were possible that I saw them now for the last time?</p>
+
+  <p>They had not advanced far into the fields, before their mother made her
+  appearance. I observed in her her usual serenity and sweetness of
+  countenance. I could feel my heart knocking against my ribs. My whole frame
+  was in a tumult. I stole out of the arbour; and, as I advanced nearer, my
+  pace became quickened.</p>
+
+  <p>"For God's sake, madam," exclaimed I, "give me a hearing! Do not avoid
+  me!"</p>
+
+  <p>She stood still. "No, sir," she replied, "I shall not avoid you. I wished
+  you to dispense with this meeting; but since I cannot obtain that&mdash;I am
+  conscious of no wrong; and therefore, though the meeting gives me pain, it
+  inspires me with no fear."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, madam," answered I, "my friend! the object of all my reverence! whom
+  I once ventured to call my mother! can you wish not to hear me? Can you have
+  no anxiety for my justification, whatever may be the unfavourable impression
+  you may have received against me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not an atom. I have neither wish nor inclination to hear you. That tale
+  which, in its plain and unadorned state, is destructive of the character of
+  him to whom it relates, no colouring can make an honest one."</p>
+
+  <p>"Good God! Can you think of condemning a man when you have heard only one
+  side of his story?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Indeed I can," replied she with dignity. "The maxim of hearing both
+  sides may be very well in some cases; but it would be ridiculous to suppose
+  that there are not cases, that, at the first mention, are too clear to admit
+  the shadow of a doubt. By a well-concerted defence you may give me new
+  reasons to admire your abilities; but I am acquainted with them already. I
+  can admire your abilities, without tolerating your character."</p>
+
+  <p>"Madam! Amiable, exemplary Laura! whom, in the midst of all your
+  harshness and inflexibility, I honour! I conjure you, by every thing that is
+  sacred, to tell me what it is that has filled you with this sudden aversion
+  to me."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, sir; that you shall never obtain from me. I have nothing to say to
+  you. I stand still and hear you; because virtue disdains to appear abashed
+  and confounded in the presence of vice. Your conduct even at this moment, in
+  my opinion, condemns you. True virtue refuses the drudgery of explanation
+  and apology. True virtue shines by its own light, and needs no art to set it
+  off. You have the first principles of morality as yet to learn."</p>
+
+  <p>"And can you imagine, that the most upright conduct is always superior to
+  the danger of ambiguity?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Exactly so. Virtue, sir, consists in actions, and not in words. The good
+  man and the bad are characters precisely opposite, not characters
+  distinguished from each other by imperceptible shades. The Providence that
+  rules us all, has not permitted us to be left without a clew in the most
+  important of all questions. Eloquence may seek to confound it; but it shall
+  be my care to avoid its deceptive influence. I do not wish to have my
+  understanding perverted, and all the differences of things concealed from my
+  apprehension."</p>
+
+  <p>"Madam, madam! it would be impossible for you to hold this language, if
+  you had not always lived in this obscure retreat, if you had ever been
+  conversant with the passions and institutions of men."</p>
+
+  <p>"It may be so. And, if that be the case, I have great reason to be
+  thankful to my God, who has thus enabled me to preserve the innocence of my
+  heart, and the integrity of my understanding."</p>
+
+  <p>"Can you believe then that ignorance is the only, or the safest,
+  preservative of integrity?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sir, I told you at first, and I repeat to you again, that all your
+  declamation is in vain. I wish you would have saved me and yourself that
+  pain which is the only thing that can possibly result from it. But let us
+  suppose that virtue could ever be the equivocal thing you would have me
+  believe. Is it possible, if you had been honest, that you would not have
+  acquainted me with your story? Is it possible, that you would have left me
+  to have been informed of it by a mere accident, and with all the shocking
+  aggravations you well knew that accident would give it? Is it possible you
+  should have violated the most sacred of all trusts, and have led me
+  unknowingly to admit to the intercourse of my children a character, which
+  if, as you pretend, it is substantially honest, you cannot deny to be
+  blasted and branded in the face of the whole world? Go, sir; I despise you.
+  You are a monster and not a man. I cannot tell whether my personal situation
+  misleads me; but, to my thinking, this last action of yours is worse than
+  all the rest. Nature has constituted me the protector of my children. I
+  shall always remember and resent the indelible injury you have done them.
+  You have wounded me to the very heart, and have taught me to what a pitch
+  the villainy of man can extend."</p>
+
+  <p>"Madam, I can be silent no longer. I see that you have by some means come
+  to a hearing of the story of Mr. Falkland."</p>
+
+  <p>"I have. I am astonished you have the effrontery to pronounce his name.
+  That name has been a denomination, as far back as my memory can reach, for
+  the most exalted of mortals, the wisest and most generous of men."</p>
+
+  <p>"Madam, I owe it to myself to set you right on this subject. Mr.
+  Falkland&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Williams, I see my children returning from the fields, and coming
+  this way. The basest action you ever did was the obtruding yourself upon
+  them as an instructor. I insist that you see them no more. I command you to
+  be silent. I command you to withdraw. If you persist in your absurd
+  resolution of expostulating with me, you must take some other time."</p>
+
+  <p>I could continue no longer. I was in a manner heart-broken through the
+  whole of this dialogue. I could not think of protracting the pain of this
+  admirable woman, upon whom, though I was innocent of the crimes she imputed
+  to me, I had inflicted so much pain already. I yielded to the imperiousness
+  of her commands, and withdrew.</p>
+
+  <p>I hastened, without knowing why, from the presence of Laura to my own
+  habitation. Upon entering the house, an apartment of which I occupied, I
+  found it totally deserted of its usual inhabitants. The woman and her
+  children were gone to enjoy the freshness of the breeze. The husband was
+  engaged in his usual out-door occupations. The doors of persons of the lower
+  order in this part of the country are secured, in the day-time, only with a
+  latch. I entered, and went into the kitchen of the family. Here, as I looked
+  round, my eyes accidentally glanced upon a paper lying in one corner, which,
+  by some association I was unable to explain, roused in me a strong sensation
+  of suspicion and curiosity. I eagerly went towards it, caught it up, and
+  found it to be the very paper of the WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY OF
+  CALEB WILLIAMS, the discovery of which, towards the close of my residence in
+  London, had produced in me such inexpressible anguish.</p>
+
+  <p>This encounter at once cleared up all the mystery that hung upon my late
+  transactions. Abhorred and intolerable certainty succeeded to the doubts
+  which had haunted my mind. It struck me with the rapidity of lightning. I
+  felt a sudden torpor and sickness that pervaded every fibre of my frame.</p>
+
+  <p>Was there no hope that remained for me? Was acquittal useless? Was there
+  no period, past or in prospect, that could give relief to my sufferings? Was
+  the odious and atrocious falsehood that had been invented against me, to
+  follow me wherever I went, to strip me of character, to deprive me of the
+  sympathy and good-will of mankind, to wrest from me the very bread by which
+  life must be sustained?</p>
+
+  <p>For the space perhaps of half an hour the agony I felt from this
+  termination to my tranquillity, and the expectation it excited of the enmity
+  which would follow me through every retreat, was such as to bereave me of
+  all consistent thinking, much more of the power of coming to any resolution.
+  As soon as this giddiness and horror of the mind subsided, and the deadly
+  calm that invaded my faculties was no more, one stiff and master gale gained
+  the ascendancy, and drove me to an instant desertion of this late cherished
+  retreat. I had no patience to enter into further remonstrance and
+  explanation with the inhabitants of my present residence. I believed that it
+  was in vain to hope to recover the favourable prepossession and tranquillity
+  I had lately enjoyed. In encountering the prejudices that were thus armed
+  against me, I should have to deal with a variety of dispositions, and,
+  though I might succeed with some, I could not expect to succeed with all. I
+  had seen too much of the reign of triumphant falsehood, to have that
+  sanguine confidence in the effects of my innocence, which would have
+  suggested itself to the mind of any other person of my propensities and my
+  age. The recent instance which had occurred in my conversation with Laura
+  might well contribute to discourage me. I could not endure the thought of
+  opposing the venom that was thus scattered against me, in detail and through
+  its minuter particles. If ever it should be necessary to encounter it, if I
+  were pursued like a wild beast, till I could no longer avoid turning upon my
+  hunters, I would then turn upon the true author of this unprincipled attack;
+  I would encounter the calumny in its strong hold; I would rouse myself to an
+  exertion hitherto unessayed; and, by the firmness, intrepidity, and
+  unalterable constancy I should display, would yet compel mankind to believe
+  Mr. Falkland a suborner and a murderer!</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CXIV" id="V3_CXIV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+  <p>I hasten to the conclusion of my melancholy story. I began to write soon
+  after the period to which I have now conducted it. This was another resource
+  that my mind, ever eager in inventing means to escape from my misery,
+  suggested. In my haste to withdraw myself from the retreat in Wales, where
+  first the certainty of Mr. Falkland's menaces was confirmed to me, I left
+  behind me the apparatus of my etymological enquiries, and the papers I had
+  written upon the subject. I have never been able to persuade myself to
+  resume this pursuit. It is always discouraging, to begin over again a
+  laborious task, and exert one's self to recover a position we had already
+  occupied. I knew not how soon or how abruptly I might be driven from any new
+  situation; the appendages of the study in which I had engaged were too
+  cumbrous for this state of dependence and uncertainty; they only served to
+  give new sharpness to the enmity of my foe, and new poignancy to my
+  hourly-renewing distress.</p>
+
+  <p>But what was of greatest importance, and made the deepest impression upon
+  my mind, was my separation from the family of Laura. Fool that I was, to
+  imagine that there was any room for me in the abodes of friendship and
+  tranquillity! It was now first, that I felt, with the most intolerable
+  acuteness, how completely I was cut off from the whole human species. Other
+  connections I had gained, comparatively without interest; and I saw them
+  dissolved without the consummation of agony. I had never experienced the
+  purest refinements of friendship, but in two instances, that of Collins, and
+  this of the family of Laura. Solitude, separation, banishment! These are
+  words often in the mouths of human beings; but few men except myself have
+  felt the full latitude of their meaning. The pride of philosophy has taught
+  us to treat man as an individual. He is no such thing. He holds necessarily,
+  indispensably, to his species. He is like those twin-births, that have two
+  heads indeed, and four hands; but, if you attempt to detach them from each
+  other, they are inevitably subjected to miserable and lingering
+  destruction.</p>
+
+  <p>It was this circumstance, more than all the rest, that gradually gorged
+  my heart with abhorrence of Mr. Falkland. I could not think of his name but
+  with a sickness and a loathing that seemed more than human. It was by his
+  means that I suffered the loss of one consolation after another, of every
+  thing that was happiness, or that had the resemblance of happiness.</p>
+
+  <p>The writing of these memoirs served me as a source of avocation for
+  several years. For some time I had a melancholy satisfaction in it. I was
+  better pleased to retrace the particulars of calamities that had formerly
+  afflicted me, than to look forward, as at other times I was too apt to do,
+  to those by which I might hereafter be overtaken. I conceived that my story,
+  faithfully digested, would carry in it an impression of truth that few men
+  would be able to resist; or, at worst, that, by leaving it behind me when I
+  should no longer continue to exist, posterity might be induced to do me
+  justice; and, seeing in my example what sort of evils are entailed upon
+  mankind by society as it is at present constituted, might be inclined to
+  turn their attention upon the fountain from which such bitter waters have
+  been accustomed to flow. But these motives have diminished in their
+  influence. I have contracted a disgust for life and all its appendages.
+  Writing, which was at first a pleasure, is changed into a burthen. I shall
+  compress into a small compass what remains to be told.</p>
+
+  <p>I discovered, not long after the period of which I am speaking, the
+  precise cause of the reverse I had experienced in my residence in Wales,
+  and, included in that cause, what it was I had to look for in my future
+  adventures. Mr. Falkland had taken the infernal Gines into his pay, a man
+  critically qualified for the service in which he was now engaged, by the
+  unfeeling brutality of his temper, by his habits of mind at once audacious
+  and artful, and by the peculiar animosity and vengeance he had conceived
+  against me. The employment to which this man was hired, was that of
+  following me from place to place, blasting my reputation, and preventing me
+  from the chance, by continuing long in one residence, of acquiring a
+  character for integrity, that should give new weight to any accusation I
+  might at a future time be induced to prefer. He had come to the seat of my
+  residence with the bricklayers and labourers I have mentioned; and, while he
+  took care to keep out of sight so far as related to me, was industrious in
+  disseminating that which, in the eye of the world, seemed to amount to a
+  demonstration of the profligacy and detestableness of my character. It was
+  no doubt from him that the detested scroll had been procured, which I had
+  found in my habitation immediately prior to my quitting it. In all this Mr.
+  Falkland, reasoning upon his principles, was only employing a necessary
+  precaution. There was something in the temper of his mind, that impressed
+  him with aversion to the idea of violently putting an end to my existence;
+  at the same time that unfortunately he could never deem himself sufficiently
+  secured against my recrimination, so long as I remained alive. As to the
+  fact of Gines being retained by him for this tremendous purpose, he by no
+  means desired that it should become generally known; but neither did he look
+  upon the possibility of its being known with terror. It was already too
+  notorious for his wishes, that I had advanced the most odious charges
+  against him. If he regarded me with abhorrence as the adversary of his fame,
+  those persons who had had occasion to be in any degree acquainted with our
+  history, did not entertain less abhorrence against me for my own sake. If
+  they should at any time know the pains he exerted in causing my evil
+  reputation to follow me, they would consider it as an act of impartial
+  justice, perhaps as a generous anxiety to prevent other men from being
+  imposed upon and injured, as he had been.</p>
+
+  <p>What expedient was I to employ for the purpose of counteracting the
+  meditated and barbarous prudence, which was thus destined, in all changes of
+  scene, to deprive me of the benefits and consolations of human society?
+  There was one expedient against which I was absolutely
+  determined&mdash;disguise. I had experienced so many mortifications, and
+  such intolerable restraint, when I formerly had recourse to it; it was
+  associated in my memory with sensations of such acute anguish, that my mind
+  was thus far entirely convinced: life was not worth purchasing at so high a
+  price! But, though in this respect I was wholly resolved, there was another
+  point that did not appear so material, and in which therefore I was willing
+  to accommodate myself to circumstances. I was contented, if that would
+  insure my peace, to submit to the otherwise unmanly expedient of passing by
+  a different name.</p>
+
+  <p>But the change of my name, the abruptness with which I removed from place
+  to place, the remoteness and the obscurity which I proposed to myself in the
+  choice of my abode, were all insufficient to elude the sagacity of Gines, or
+  the unrelenting constancy with which Mr. Falkland incited my tormentor to
+  pursue me. Whithersoever I removed myself it was not long before I had
+  occasion to perceive this detested adversary in my rear. No words can enable
+  me to do justice to the sensations which this circumstance produced in me.
+  It was like what has been described of the eye of Omniscience, pursuing the
+  guilty sinner, and darting a ray that awakens him to new sensibility, at the
+  very moment that, otherwise, exhausted nature would lull him into a
+  temporary oblivion of the reproaches of his conscience. Sleep fled from my
+  eyes. No walls could hide me from the discernment of this hated foe. Every
+  where his industry was unwearied to create for me new distress. Rest I had
+  none; relief I had none: never could I count upon an instant's security;
+  never could I wrap myself in the shroud of oblivion. The minutes in which I
+  did not actually perceive him, were contaminated and blasted with the
+  certain expectation of his speedy interference. In my first retreat I had
+  passed a few weeks of delusive tranquillity, but never after was I happy
+  enough to attain to so much as that shadowy gratification. I spent some
+  years in this dreadful vicissitude of pain. My sensations at certain periods
+  amounted to insanity.</p>
+
+  <p>I pursued in every succeeding instance the conduct I had adopted at
+  first. I determined never to enter into a contest of accusation and defence
+  with the execrable Gines. If I could have submitted to it in other respects,
+  what purpose would it answer? I should have but an imperfect and mutilated
+  story to tell. This story had succeeded with persons already prepossessed in
+  my favour by personal intercourse; but could it succeed with strangers? It
+  had succeeded so long as I was able to hide myself from my pursuers; but
+  could it succeed now, that this appeared impracticable, and that they
+  proceeded by arming against me a whole vicinity at once?</p>
+
+  <p>It is inconceivable the mischiefs that this kind of existence included.
+  Why should I insist upon such aggravations as hunger, beggary, and external
+  wretchedness? These were an inevitable consequence. It was by the desertion
+  of mankind that, in each successive instance, I was made acquainted with my
+  fate. Delay in such a moment served but to increase the evil; and when I
+  fled, meagreness and penury were the ordinary attendants of my course. But
+  this was a small consideration. Indignation at one time, and unconquerable
+  perseverance at another, sustained me, where humanity, left to itself, would
+  probably have sunk.</p>
+
+  <p>It has already appeared that I was not of a temper to endure calamity,
+  without endeavouring, by every means I could devise, to elude and disarm it.
+  Recollecting, as I was habituated to do, the various projects by which my
+  situation could be meliorated, the question occurred to me, "Why should I be
+  harassed by the pursuits of this Gines? Why, man to man, may I not, by the
+  powers of my mind, attain the ascendancy over him? At present he appears to
+  be the persecutor, and I the persecuted: is not this difference the mere
+  creature of the imagination? May I not employ my ingenuity to vex him with
+  difficulties, and laugh at the endless labour to which he will be
+  condemned?"</p>
+
+  <p>Alas, this is a speculation for a mind at ease! It is not the
+  persecution, but the catastrophe which is annexed to it, that makes the
+  difference between the tyrant and the sufferer! In mere corporal exertion
+  the hunter perhaps is upon a level with the miserable animal he pursues! But
+  could it be forgotten by either of us, that at every stage Gines was to
+  gratify his malignant passions, by disseminating charges of the most
+  infamous nature, and exciting against me the abhorrence of every honest
+  bosom, while I was to sustain the still-repeated annihilation of my peace,
+  my character, and my bread? Could I, by any refinement of reason, convert
+  this dreadful series into sport? I had no philosophy that qualified me for
+  so extraordinary an effort. If, under other circumstances, I could even have
+  entertained so strange an imagination, I was restrained in the present
+  instance by the necessity of providing for myself the means of subsistence,
+  and the fetters which, through that necessity, the forms of human society
+  imposed upon my exertions.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of those changes of residence, to which my miserable fate
+  repeatedly compelled me, I met, upon a road which I was obliged to traverse,
+  the friend of my youth, my earliest and best beloved friend, the venerable
+  Collins. It was one of those misfortunes which served to accumulate my
+  distress, that this man had quitted the island of Great Britain only a very
+  few weeks before that fatal reverse of fortune which had ever since pursued
+  me with unrelenting eagerness. Mr. Falkland, in addition to the large estate
+  he possessed in England, had a very valuable plantation in the West Indies.
+  This property had been greatly mismanaged by the person who had the
+  direction of it on the spot; and, after various promises and evasions on his
+  part, which, however they might serve to beguile the patience of Mr.
+  Falkland, had been attended with no salutary fruits, it was resolved that
+  Mr. Collins should go over in person, to rectify the abuses which had so
+  long prevailed. There had even been some idea of his residing several years,
+  if not settling finally, upon the plantation. From that hour to the present
+  I had never received the smallest intelligence respecting him.</p>
+
+  <p>I had always considered the circumstance of his critical absence as one
+  of my severest misfortunes. Mr. Collins had been one of the first persons,
+  even in the period of my infancy, to conceive hopes of me, as of something
+  above the common standard; and had contributed more than any other to
+  encourage and assist my juvenile studies. He had been the executor of the
+  little property of my father, who had fixed upon him for that purpose in
+  consideration of the mutual affection that existed between us; and I seemed,
+  on every account, to have more claim upon his protection than upon that of
+  any other human being. I had always believed that, had he been present in
+  the crisis of my fortune, he would have felt a conviction of my innocence;
+  and, convinced himself, would, by means of the venerableness and energy of
+  his character, have interposed so effectually, as to have saved me the
+  greater part of my subsequent misfortunes.</p>
+
+  <p>There was yet another idea in my mind relative to this subject, which had
+  more weight with me, than even the substantial exertions of friendship I
+  should have expected from him. The greatest aggravation of my present lot
+  was, that I was cut off from the friendship of mankind. I can safely affirm,
+  that poverty and hunger, that endless wanderings, that a blasted character
+  and the curses that clung to my name, were all of them slight misfortunes
+  compared to this. I endeavoured to sustain myself by the sense of my
+  integrity, but the voice of no man upon earth echoed to the voice of my
+  conscience. "I called aloud; but there was none to answer; there was none
+  that regarded." To me the whole world was unhearing as the tempest, and as
+  cold as the torpedo. Sympathy, the magnetic virtue, the hidden essence of
+  our life, was extinct. Nor was this the sum of my misery. This food, so
+  essential to an intelligent existence, seemed perpetually renewing before me
+  in its fairest colours, only the more effectually to elude my grasp, and to
+  mock my hunger. From time to time I was prompted to unfold the affections of
+  my soul, only to be repelled with the greater anguish, and to be baffled in
+  a way the most intolerably mortifying.</p>
+
+  <p>No sight therefore could give me a purer delight than that which now
+  presented itself to my eyes. It was some time however, before either of us
+  recognised the person of the other. Ten years had elapsed since our last
+  interview. Mr. Collins looked much older than he had done at that period; in
+  addition to which, he was, in his present appearance, pale, sickly, and
+  thin. These unfavourable effects had been produced by the change of climate,
+  particularly trying to persons in an advanced period of life. Add to which,
+  I supposed him to be at that moment in the West Indies. I was probably as
+  much altered in the period that had elapsed as he had been. I was the first
+  to recollect him. He was on horseback; I on foot. I had suffered him to pass
+  me. In a moment the full idea of who he was rushed upon my mind; I ran; I
+  called with an impetuous voice; I was unable to restrain the vehemence of my
+  emotions.</p>
+
+  <p>The ardour of my feelings disguised my usual tone of speaking, which
+  otherwise Mr. Collins would infallibly have recognised. His sight was
+  already dim; he pulled up his horse till I should overtake him; and then
+  said, "Who are you? I do not know you."</p>
+
+  <p>"My father!" exclaimed I, embracing one of his knees with fervour and
+  delight, "I am your son; once your little Caleb, whom you a thousand times
+  loaded with your kindness!"</p>
+
+  <p>The unexpected repetition of my name gave a kind of shuddering emotion to
+  my friend, which was however checked by his age, and the calm and benevolent
+  philosophy that formed one of his most conspicuous habits.</p>
+
+  <p>"I did not expect to see you!" replied he: "I did not wish it!"</p>
+
+  <p>"My best, my oldest friend!" answered I, respect blending itself with my
+  impatience, "do not say so! I have not a friend any where in the whole world
+  but you! In you at least let me find sympathy and reciprocal affection! If
+  you knew how anxiously I have thought of you during the whole period of your
+  absence, you would not thus grievously disappoint me in your return!"</p>
+
+  <p>"How is it," said Mr. Collins, gravely, "that you have been reduced to
+  this forlorn condition? Was it not the inevitable consequence of your own
+  actions?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The actions of others, not mine! Does not your heart tell you that I am
+  innocent?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. My observation of your early character taught me that you would be
+  extraordinary; but, unhappily, all extraordinary men are not good men: that
+  seems to be a lottery, dependent on circumstances apparently the most
+  trivial."</p>
+
+  <p>"Will you hear my justification? I am as sure as I am of my existence,
+  that I can convince you of my purity."</p>
+
+  <p>"Certainly, if you require it, I will hear you. But that must not be just
+  now. I could have been glad to decline it wholly. At my age I am not fit for
+  the storm; and I am not so sanguine as you in my expectation of the result.
+  Of what would you convince me? That Mr. Falkland is a suborner and
+  murderer?"</p>
+
+  <p>I made no answer. My silence was an affirmative to the question.</p>
+
+  <p>"And what benefit will result from this conviction? I have known you a
+  promising boy, whose character might turn to one side or the other as events
+  should decide. I have known Mr. Falkland in his maturer years, and have
+  always admired him, as the living model of liberality and goodness. If you
+  could change all my ideas, and show me that there was no criterion by which
+  vice might be prevented from being mistaken for virtue, what benefit would
+  arise from that? I must part with all my interior consolation, and all my
+  external connections. And for what? What is it you propose? The death of Mr.
+  Falkland by the hands of the hangman."</p>
+
+  <p>"No; I will not hurt a hair of his head, unless compelled to it by a
+  principle of defence. But surely you owe me justice?"</p>
+
+  <p>"What justice? The justice of proclaiming your innocence? You know what
+  consequences are annexed to that. But I do not believe I shall find you
+  innocent. If you even succeed in perplexing my understanding, you will not
+  succeed in enlightening it. Such is the state of mankind, that innocence,
+  when involved in circumstances of suspicion, can scarcely ever make out a
+  demonstration of its purity; and guilt can often make us feel an
+  insurmountable reluctance to the pronouncing it guilt. Meanwhile, for the
+  purchase of this uncertainty, I must sacrifice all the remaining comforts of
+  my life. I believe Mr. Falkland to be virtuous; but I know him to be
+  prejudiced. He would never forgive me even this accidental parley, if by any
+  means he should come to be acquainted with it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, argue not the consequences that are possible to result!" answered I,
+  impatiently, "I have a right to your kindness; I have a right to your
+  assistance!"</p>
+
+  <p>"You have them. You have them to a certain degree; and it is not likely
+  that, by any process of examination, you can have them entire. You know my
+  habits of thinking. I regard you as vicious; but I do not consider the
+  vicious as proper objects of indignation and scorn. I consider you as a
+  machine; you are not constituted, I am afraid, to be greatly useful to your
+  fellow men: but you did not make yourself; you are just what circumstances
+  irresistibly compelled you to be. I am sorry for your ill properties; but I
+  entertain no enmity against you, nothing but benevolence. Considering you in
+  the light in which I at present consider you, I am ready to contribute every
+  thing in my power to your real advantage, and would gladly assist you, if I
+  knew how, in detecting and extirpating the errors that have misled you. You
+  have disappointed me, but I have no reproaches to utter: it is more
+  necessary for me to feel compassion for you, than that I should accumulate
+  your misfortune by my censures."</p>
+
+  <p>What could I say to such a man as this? Amiable, incomparable man! Never
+  was my mind more painfully divided than at that moment. The more he excited
+  my admiration, the more imperiously did my heart command me, whatever were
+  the price it should cost, to extort his friendship. I was persuaded that
+  severe duty required of him, that he should reject all personal
+  considerations, that he should proceed resolutely to the investigation of
+  the truth, and that, if he found the result terminating in my favour, he
+  should resign all his advantages, and, deserted as I was by the world, make
+  a common cause, and endeavour to compensate the general injustice. But was
+  it for me to force this conduct upon him, if, now in his declining years,
+  his own fortitude shrank from it? Alas, neither he nor I foresaw the
+  dreadful catastrophe that was so closely impending! Otherwise, I am well
+  assured that no tenderness for his remaining tranquillity would have
+  withheld him from a compliance with my wishes! On the other hand, could I
+  pretend to know what evils might result to him from his declaring himself my
+  advocate? Might not his integrity be browbeaten and defeated, as mine had
+  been? Did the imbecility of his grey hairs afford no advantage to my
+  terrible adversary in the contest? Might not Mr. Falkland reduce him to a
+  condition as wretched and low as mine? After all, was it not vice in me to
+  desire to involve another man in my sufferings? If I regarded them as
+  intolerable, this was still an additional reason why I should bear them
+  alone.</p>
+
+  <p>Influenced by these considerations, I assented to his views. I assented
+  to be thought hardly of by the man in the world whose esteem I most ardently
+  desired, rather than involve him in possible calamity. I assented to the
+  resigning what appeared to me at that moment as the last practicable comfort
+  of my life; a comfort, upon the thought of which, while I surrendered it, my
+  mind dwelt with undescribable longings. Mr. Collins was deeply affected with
+  the apparent ingenuousness with which I expressed my feelings. The secret
+  struggle of his mind was, "Can this be hypocrisy? The individual with whom I
+  am conferring, if virtuous, is one of the most disinterestedly virtuous
+  persons in the world." We tore ourselves from each other. Mr. Collins
+  promised, as far as he was able, to have an eye upon my vicissitudes, and to
+  assist me, in every respect that was consistent with a just recollection of
+  consequences. Thus I parted as it were with the last expiring hope of my
+  mind; and voluntarily consented, thus maimed and forlorn, to encounter all
+  the evils that were yet in store for me.</p>
+
+  <p>This is the latest event which at present I think it necessary to record.
+  I shall doubtless hereafter have further occasion to take up the pen. Great
+  and unprecedented as my sufferings have been, I feel intimately persuaded
+  that there are worse sufferings that await me. What mysterious cause is it
+  that enables me to write this, and not to perish under the horrible
+  apprehension!</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="V3_CXV" id="V3_CXV"></a>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+  <p>It is as I foreboded. The presage with which I was visited was prophetic.
+  I am now to record a new and terrible revolution of my fortune and my
+  mind.</p>
+
+  <p>Having made experiment of various situations with one uniform result, I
+  at length determined to remove myself, if possible, from the reach of my
+  persecutor, by going into voluntary banishment from my native soil. This was
+  my last resource for tranquillity, for honest fame, for those privileges to
+  which human life is indebted for the whole of its value. "In some distant
+  climate," said I, "surely I may find that security which is necessary to
+  persevering pursuit; surely I may lift my head erect, associate with men
+  upon the footing of a man, acquire connections, and preserve them!" It is
+  inconceivable with what ardent Teachings of the soul I aspired to this
+  termination.</p>
+
+  <p>This last consolation was denied me by the inexorable Falkland.</p>
+
+  <p>At the time the project was formed I was at no great distance from the
+  east coast of the island, and I resolved to take ship at Harwich, and pass
+  immediately into Holland. I accordingly repaired to that place, and went,
+  almost as soon as I arrived, to the port. But there was no vessel perfectly
+  ready to sail. I left the port, and withdrew to an inn, where, after some
+  time, I retired to a chamber. I was scarcely there before the door of the
+  room was opened, and the man whose countenance was the most hateful to my
+  eyes, Gines, entered the apartment. He shut the door as soon as he
+  entered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Youngster," said he, "I have a little private intelligence to
+  communicate to you. I come as a friend, and that I may save you a
+  labour-in-vain trouble. If you consider what I have to say in that light, it
+  will be the better for you. It is my business now, do you see, for want of a
+  better, to see that you do not break out of bounds. Not that I much matter
+  having one man for my employer, or dancing attendance after another's heels;
+  but I have special kindness for you, for some good turns that you wot of,
+  and therefore I do not stand upon ceremonies! You have led me a very pretty
+  round already; and, out of the love I bear you, you shall lead me as much
+  further, if you will. But beware the salt seas! They are out of my orders.
+  You are a prisoner at present, and I believe all your life will remain so.
+  Thanks to the milk-and-water softness of your former master! If I had the
+  ordering of these things, it should go with you in another fashion. As long
+  as you think proper, you are a prisoner within the rules; and the rules with
+  which the soft-hearted squire indulges you, are all England, Scotland, and
+  Wales. But you are not to go out of these climates. The squire is determined
+  you shall never pass the reach of his disposal. He has therefore given
+  orders that, whenever you attempt so to do, you shall be converted from a
+  prisoner at large to a prisoner in good earnest. A friend of mine followed
+  you just now to the harbour; I was within call; and, if there had been any
+  appearance of your setting your foot from land, we should have been with you
+  in a trice, and laid you fast by the heels. I would advise you, for the
+  future, to keep at a proper distance from the sea, for fear of the worst.
+  You see I tell you all this for your good. For my part, I should be better
+  satisfied if you were in limbo, with a rope about your neck, and a
+  comfortable bird's eye prospect to the gallows: but I do as I am directed;
+  and so good night to you!"</p>
+
+  <p>The intelligence thus conveyed to me occasioned an instantaneous
+  revolution in both my intellectual and animal system. I disdained to answer,
+  or take the smallest notice of the fiend by whom it was delivered. It is now
+  three days since I received it, and from that moment to the present my blood
+  has been in a perpetual ferment. My thoughts wander from one idea of horror
+  to another, with incredible rapidity. I have had no sleep. I have scarcely
+  remained in one posture for a minute together. It has been with the utmost
+  difficulty that I have been able to command myself far enough to add a few
+  pages to my story. But, uncertain as I am of the events of each succeeding
+  hour, I determined to force myself to the performance of this task. All is
+  not right within me. How it will terminate, God knows. I sometimes fear that
+  I shall be wholly deserted of my reason.</p>
+
+  <p>What&mdash;dark, mysterious, unfeeling, unrelenting tyrant!--is it come
+  to this? When Nero and Caligula swayed the Roman sceptre, it was a fearful
+  thing to offend these bloody rulers. The empire had already spread itself
+  from climate to climate, and from sea to sea. If their unhappy victim fled
+  to the rising of the sun, where the luminary of day seems to us first to
+  ascend from the waves of the ocean, the power of the tyrant was still behind
+  him. If he withdrew to the west, to Hesperian darkness, and the shores of
+  barbarian Thule, still he was not safe from his gore-drenched
+  foe.&mdash;Falkland! art thou the offspring, in whom the lineaments of these
+  tyrants are faithfully preserved? Was the world, with all its climates, made
+  in vain for thy helpless unoffending victim?</p>
+
+  <p>Tremble!</p>
+
+  <p>Tyrants have trembled, surrounded with whole armies of their Janissaries!
+  What should make thee inaccessible to my fury? No, I will use no daggers! I
+  will unfold a tale!--I will show thee to the world for what thou art; and
+  all the men that live, shall confess my truth!--Didst thou imagine that I
+  was altogether passive, a mere worm, organised to feel sensations of pain,
+  but no emotion of resentment? Didst thou imagine that there was no danger in
+  inflicting on me pains however great, miseries however dreadful? Didst thou
+  believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to
+  contrive thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it?</p>
+
+  <p>I will tell a tale&mdash;! The justice of the country shall hear me! The
+  elements of nature in universal uproar shall not interrupt me! I will speak
+  with a voice more fearful than thunder!--Why should I be supposed to speak
+  from any dishonourable motive? I am under no prosecution now! I shall not
+  now appear to be endeavouring to remove a criminal indictment from myself,
+  by throwing it back on its author!--Shall I regret the ruin that will
+  overwhelm thee? Too long have I been tender-hearted and forbearing! What
+  benefit has ever resulted from my mistaken clemency? There is no evil thou
+  hast scrupled to accumulate upon me! Neither will I be more scrupulous! Thou
+  hast shown no mercy; and thou shalt receive none!--I must be calm! bold as a
+  lion, yet collected!</p>
+
+  <p>This is a moment pregnant with fate. I know&mdash;I think I
+  know&mdash;that I will be triumphant, and crush my seemingly omnipotent foe.
+  But, should it be otherwise, at least he shall not be every way successful.
+  His fame shall not be immortal as he thinks. These papers shall preserve the
+  truth; they shall one day be published, and then the world shall do justice
+  on us both. Recollecting that, I shall not die wholly without consolation.
+  It is not to be endured that falsehood and tyranny should reign for
+  ever.</p>
+
+  <p>How impotent are the precautions of man against the eternally existing
+  laws of the intellectual world! This Falkland has invented against me every
+  species of foul accusation. He has hunted me from city to city. He has drawn
+  his lines of circumvallation round me that I may not escape. He has kept his
+  scenters of human prey for ever at my heels. He may hunt me out of the
+  world.&mdash;In vain! With this engine, this little pen, I defeat all his
+  machinations; I stab him in the very point he was most solicitous to
+  defend!</p>
+
+  <p>Collins! I now address myself to you. I have consented that you should
+  yield me no assistance in my present terrible situation. I am content to die
+  rather than do any thing injurious to your tranquillity. But remember, you
+  are my father still! I conjure you, by all the love you ever bore me, by the
+  benefits you have conferred on me, by the forbearance and kindness towards
+  you that now penetrates my soul, by my innocence&mdash;for, if these be the
+  last words I shall ever write, I die protesting my innocence!--by all these,
+  or whatever tie more sacred has influence on your soul, I conjure you,
+  listen to my last request! Preserve these papers from destruction, and
+  preserve them from Falkland! It is all I ask! I have taken care to provide a
+  safe mode of conveying them into your possession: and I have a firm
+  confidence, which I will not suffer to depart from me, that they will one
+  day find their way to the public!</p>
+
+  <p>The pen lingers in my trembling fingers! Is there any thing I have left
+  unsaid?&mdash;The contents of the fatal trunk, from which all my misfortunes
+  originated, I have never been able to ascertain. I once thought it contained
+  some murderous instrument or relic connected with the fate of the unhappy
+  Tyrrel. I am now persuaded that the secret it encloses, is a faithful
+  narrative of that and its concomitant transactions, written by Mr. Falkland,
+  and reserved in case of the worst, that, if by any unforeseen event his
+  guilt should come to be fully disclosed, it might contribute to redeem the
+  wreck of his reputation. But the truth or the falsehood of this conjecture
+  is of little moment. If Falkland shall never be detected to the satisfaction
+  of the world, such a narrative will probably never see the light. In that
+  case this story of mine may amply, severely perhaps, supply its place.</p>
+
+  <p>I know not what it is that renders me thus solemn. I have a secret
+  foreboding, as if I should never again be master of myself. If I succeed in
+  what I now meditate respecting Falkland, my precaution in the disposal of
+  these papers will have been unnecessary; I shall no longer be reduced to
+  artifice and evasion. If I fail, the precaution will appear to have been
+  wisely chosen.</p>
+  <hr />
+  <a name="POSTSCRIPT" id="POSTSCRIPT"></a>
+
+  <h2>POSTSCRIPT.</h2>
+
+  <p>All is over. I have carried into execution my meditated attempt. My
+  situation is totally changed; I now sit down to give an account of it. For
+  several weeks after the completion of this dreadful business, my mind was in
+  too tumultuous a state to permit me to write. I think I shall now be able to
+  arrange my thoughts sufficiently for that purpose. Great God! how wondrous,
+  how terrible are the events that have intervened since I was last employed
+  in a similar manner! It is no wonder that my thoughts were solemn, and my
+  mind filled with horrible forebodings!</p>
+
+  <p>Having formed my resolution, I set out from Harwich, for the metropolitan
+  town of the county in which Mr. Falkland resided. Gines, I well knew, was in
+  my rear. That was of no consequence to me. He might wonder at the direction
+  I pursued, but he could not tell with what purpose I pursued it. My design
+  was a secret, carefully locked up in my own breast. It was not without a
+  sentiment of terror that I entered a town which had been the scene of my
+  long imprisonment. I proceeded to the house of the chief magistrate the
+  instant I arrived, that I might give no time to my adversary to counterwork
+  my proceeding.</p>
+
+  <p>I told him who I was, and that I was come from a distant part of the
+  kingdom, for the purpose of rendering him the medium of a charge of murder
+  against my former patron. My name was already familiar to him. He answered,
+  that he could not take cognizance of my deposition; that I was an object of
+  universal execration in that part of the world; and he was determined upon
+  no account to be the vehicle of my depravity.</p>
+
+  <p>I warned him to consider well what he was doing. I called upon him for no
+  favour; I only applied to him in the regular exercise of his function. Would
+  he take upon him to say that he had a right, at his pleasure, to suppress a
+  charge of this complicated nature? I had to accuse Mr. Falkland of repeated
+  murders. The perpetrator knew that I was in possession of the truth upon the
+  subject; and, knowing that, I went perpetually in danger of my life from his
+  malice and revenge. I was resolved to go through with the business, if
+  justice were to be obtained from any court in England. Upon what pretence
+  did he refuse my deposition? I was in every respect a competent witness. I
+  was of age to understand the nature of an oath; I was in my perfect senses;
+  I was untarnished by the verdict of any jury, or the sentence of any judge.
+  His private opinion of my character could not alter the law of the land. I
+  demanded to be confronted with Mr. Falkland, and I was well assured I should
+  substantiate the charge to the satisfaction of the whole world. If he did
+  not think proper to apprehend him upon my single testimony, I should be
+  satisfied if he only sent him notice of the charge, and summoned him to
+  appear.</p>
+
+  <p>The magistrate, finding me thus resolute, thought proper a little to
+  lower his tone. He no longer absolutely refused to comply with my
+  requisition, but condescended to expostulate with me. He represented to me
+  Mr. Falkland's health, which had for some years been exceedingly
+  indifferent; his having been once already brought to the most solemn
+  examination upon this charge; the diabolical malice in which alone my
+  proceeding must have originated; and the ten-fold ruin it would bring down
+  upon my head. To all these representations my answer was short. "I was
+  determined to go on, and would abide the consequences." A summons was at
+  length granted, and notice sent to Mr. Falkland of the charge preferred
+  against him.</p>
+
+  <p>Three days elapsed before any further step could be taken in this
+  business. This interval in no degree contributed to tranquillise my mind.
+  The thought of preferring a capital accusation against, and hastening the
+  death of, such a man as Mr. Falkland, was by no means an opiate to
+  reflection. At one time I commended the action, either as just revenge (for
+  the benevolence of my nature was in a great degree turned to gall), or as
+  necessary self-defence, or as that which, in an impartial and
+  philanthropical estimate, included the smallest evil. At another time I was
+  haunted with doubts. But, in spite of these variations of sentiment, I
+  uniformly determined to persist! I felt as if impelled by a tide of
+  unconquerable impulse. The consequences were such as might well appal the
+  stoutest heart. Either the ignominious execution of a man whom I had once so
+  deeply venerated, and whom now I sometimes suspected not to be without his
+  claims to veneration; or a confirmation, perhaps an increase, of the
+  calamities I had so long endured. Yet these I preferred to a state of
+  uncertainty. I desired to know the worst; to put an end to the hope, however
+  faint, which had been so long my torment; and, above all, to exhaust and
+  finish the catalogue of expedients that were at my disposition. My mind was
+  worked up to a state little short of frenzy. My body was in a burning fever
+  with the agitation of my thoughts. When I laid my hand upon my bosom or my
+  head, it seemed to scorch them with the fervency of its heat. I could not
+  sit still for a moment. I panted with incessant desire that the dreadful
+  crisis I had so eagerly invoked, were come, and were over.</p>
+
+  <p>After an interval of three days, I met Mr. Falkland in the presence of
+  the magistrate to whom I had applied upon the subject. I had only two hours'
+  notice to prepare myself; Mr. Falkland seeming as eager as I to have the
+  question brought to a crisis, and laid at rest for ever. I had an
+  opportunity, before the examination, to learn that Mr. Forester was drawn by
+  some business on an excursion on the continent; and that Collins, whose
+  health when I saw him was in a very precarious state, was at this time
+  confined with an alarming illness. His constitution had been wholly broken
+  by his West Indian expedition. The audience I met at the house of the
+  magistrate consisted of several gentlemen and others selected for the
+  purpose; the plan being, in some respects, as in the former instance, to
+  find a medium between the suspicious air of a private examination, and the
+  indelicacy, as it was styled, of an examination exposed to the remark of
+  every casual spectator.</p>
+
+  <p>I can conceive of no shock greater than that I received from the sight of
+  Mr. Falkland. His appearance on the last occasion on which we met had been
+  haggard, ghost-like, and wild, energy in his gestures, and frenzy in his
+  aspect. It was now the appearance of a corpse. He was brought in in a chair,
+  unable to stand, fatigued and almost destroyed by the journey he had just
+  taken. His visage was colourless; his limbs destitute of motion, almost of
+  life. His head reclined upon his bosom, except that now and then he lifted
+  it up, and opened his eyes with a languid glance; immediately after which he
+  sunk back into his former apparent insensibility. He seemed not to have
+  three hours to live. He had kept his chamber for several weeks; but the
+  summons of the magistrate had been delivered to him at his bed-side, his
+  orders respecting letters and written papers being so peremptory that no one
+  dared to disobey them. Upon reading the paper he was seized with a very
+  dangerous fit; but, as soon as he recovered, he insisted upon being
+  conveyed, with all practicable expedition, to the place of appointment.
+  Falkland, in the most helpless state, was still Falkland, firm in command,
+  and capable to extort obedience from every one that approached him.</p>
+
+  <p>What a sight was this to me! Till the moment that Falkland was presented
+  to my view, my breast was steeled to pity. I thought that I had coolly
+  entered into the reason of the case (passion, in a state of solemn and
+  omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be coolness to him in whom it
+  domineers), and that I had determined impartially and justly. I believed
+  that, if Mr. Falkland were permitted to persist in his schemes, we must both
+  of us be completely wretched. I believed that it was in my power, by the
+  resolution I had formed, to throw my share of this wretchedness from me, and
+  that his could scarcely be increased. It appeared therefore to my mind, to
+  be a mere piece of equity and justice, such as an impartial spectator would
+  desire, that one person should be miserable in preference to two; that one
+  person rather than two should be incapacitated from acting his part, and
+  contributing his share to the general welfare. I thought that in this
+  business I had risen superior to personal considerations, and judged with a
+  total neglect of the suggestions of self-regard. It is true, Mr. Falkland
+  was mortal, but, notwithstanding his apparent decay, he might live long.
+  Ought I to submit to waste the best years of my life in my present wretched
+  situation? He had declared that his reputation should be for ever inviolate;
+  this was his ruling passion, the thought that worked his soul to madness. He
+  would probably therefore leave a legacy of persecution to be received by me
+  from the hands of Gines, or some other villain equally atrocious, when he
+  should himself be no more. Now or never was the time for me to redeem my
+  future life from endless woe.</p>
+
+  <p>But all these fine-spun reasonings vanished before the object that was
+  now presented to me. "Shall I trample upon a man thus dreadfully reduced?
+  Shall I point my animosity against one, whom the system of nature has
+  brought down to the grave? Shall I poison, with sounds the most intolerable
+  to his ears, the last moments of a man like Falkland? It is impossible.
+  There must have been some dreadful mistake in the train of argument that
+  persuaded me to be the author of this hateful scene. There must have been a
+  better and more magnanimous remedy to the evils under which I groaned."</p>
+
+  <p>It was too late: the mistake I had committed was now gone past all power
+  of recall. Here was Falkland, solemnly brought before a magistrate to answer
+  to a charge of murder. Here I stood, having already declared myself the
+  author of the charge, gravely and sacredly pledged to support it. This was
+  my situation; and, thus situated, I was called upon immediately to act. My
+  whole frame shook. I would eagerly have consented that that moment should
+  have been the last of my existence. I however believed, that the conduct now
+  most indispensably incumbent on me was to lay the emotions of my soul naked
+  before my hearers. I looked first at Mr. Falkland, and then at the
+  magistrate and attendants, and then at Mr. Falkland again. My voice was
+  suffocated with agony. I began:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Why cannot I recall the last four days of my life? How was it possible
+  for me to be so eager, so obstinate, in a purpose so diabolical? Oh, that I
+  had listened to the expostulations of the magistrate that hears me, or
+  submitted to the well-meant despotism of his authority! Hitherto I have been
+  only miserable; henceforth I shall account myself base! Hitherto, though
+  hardly treated by mankind, I stood acquitted at the bar of my own
+  conscience. I had not filled up the measure of my wretchedness!</p>
+
+  <p>"Would to God it were possible for me to retire from this scene without
+  uttering another word! I would brave the consequences&mdash;I would submit
+  to any imputation of cowardice, falsehood, and profligacy, rather than add
+  to the weight of misfortune with which Mr. Falkland is overwhelmed. But the
+  situation, and the demands of Mr. Falkland himself, forbid me. He, in
+  compassion for whose fallen state I would willingly forget every interest of
+  my own, would compel me to accuse, that he might enter upon his
+  justification. I will confess every sentiment of my heart.</p>
+
+  <p>"No penitence, no anguish, can expiate the folly and the cruelty of this
+  last act I have perpetrated. But Mr. Falkland well knows&mdash;I affirm it
+  in his presence&mdash;how unwillingly I have proceeded to this extremity. I
+  have reverenced him; he was worthy of reverence: I have loved him; he was
+  endowed with qualities that partook of divine.</p>
+
+  <p>"From the first moment I saw him, I conceived the most ardent admiration.
+  He condescended to encourage me; I attached myself to him with the fulness
+  of my affection. He was unhappy; I exerted myself with youthful curiosity to
+  discover the secret of his woe. This was the beginning of misfortune.</p>
+
+  <p>"What shall I say?&mdash;He was indeed the murderer of Tyrrel; he
+  suffered the Hawkinses to be executed, knowing that they were innocent, and
+  that he alone was guilty. After successive surmises, after various
+  indiscretions on my part, and indications on his, he at length confided to
+  me at full the fatal tale!</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland! I most solemnly conjure you to recollect yourself! Did I
+  ever prove myself unworthy of your confidence? The secret was a most painful
+  burthen to me; it was the extremest folly that led me unthinkingly to gain
+  possession of it; but I would have died a thousand deaths rather than betray
+  it. It was the jealousy of your own thoughts, and the weight that hung upon
+  your mind, that led you to watch my motions, and to conceive alarm from
+  every particle of my conduct.</p>
+
+  <p>"You began in confidence; why did you not continue in confidence? The
+  evil that resulted from my original imprudence would then have been
+  comparatively little. You threatened me: did I then betray you? A word from
+  my lips at that time would have freed me from your threats for ever. I bore
+  them for a considerable period, and at last quitted your service, and threw
+  myself a fugitive upon the world, in silence. Why did you not suffer me to
+  depart? You brought me back by stratagem and violence, and wantonly accused
+  me of an enormous felony! Did I then mention a syllable of the murder, the
+  secret of which was in my possession?</p>
+
+  <p>"Where is the man that has suffered more from the injustice of society
+  than I have done? I was accused of a villainy that my heart abhorred. I was
+  sent to jail. I will not enumerate the horrors of my prison, the lightest of
+  which would make the heart of humanity shudder. I looked forward to the
+  gallows! Young, ambitious, fond of life, innocent as the child unborn, I
+  looked forward to the gallows! I believed that one word of resolute
+  accusation against my patron would deliver me; yet I was silent, I armed
+  myself with patience, uncertain whether it were better to accuse or to die.
+  Did this show me a man unworthy to be trusted?</p>
+
+  <p>"I determined to break out of prison. With infinite difficulty, and
+  repeated miscarriages, I at length effected my purpose. Instantly a
+  proclamation, with a hundred guineas reward, was issued for apprehending me.
+  I was obliged to take shelter among the refuse of mankind, in the midst of a
+  gang of thieves. I encountered the most imminent peril of my life when I
+  entered this retreat, and when I quitted it. Immediately after, I travelled
+  almost the whole length of the kingdom, in poverty and distress, in hourly
+  danger of being retaken and manacled like a felon. I would have fled my
+  country; I was prevented. I had recourse to various disguises; I was
+  innocent, and yet was compelled to as many arts and subterfuges as could
+  have been entailed on the worst of villains. In London I was as much
+  harassed and as repeatedly alarmed as I had been in my flight through the
+  country. Did all these persecutions persuade me to put an end to my silence?
+  No: I suffered them with patience and submission; I did not make one attempt
+  to retort them upon their author.</p>
+
+  <p>"I fell at last into the hands of the miscreants that are nourished with
+  human blood. In this terrible situation I, for the first time, attempted, by
+  turning informer, to throw the weight from myself. Happily for me, the
+  London magistrate listened to my tale with insolent contempt.</p>
+
+  <p>"I soon, and long, repented of my rashness, and rejoiced in my
+  miscarriage.</p>
+
+  <p>"I acknowledge that, in various ways, Mr. Falkland showed humanity
+  towards me during this period. He would have prevented my going to prison at
+  first; he contributed towards my subsistence during my detention; he had no
+  share in the pursuit that had been set on foot against me; he at length
+  procured my discharge, when brought forward for trial. But a great part of
+  his forbearance was unknown to me; I supposed him to be my unrelenting
+  pursuer. I could not forget that, whoever heaped calamities on me in the
+  sequel, they all originated in his forged accusation.</p>
+
+  <p>"The prosecution against me for felony was now at an end. Why were not my
+  sufferings permitted to terminate then, and I allowed to hide my weary head
+  in some obscure yet tranquil retreat? Had I not sufficiently proved my
+  constancy and fidelity? Would not a compromise in this situation have been
+  most wise and most secure? But the restless and jealous anxiety of Mr.
+  Falkland would not permit him to repose the least atom of confidence. The
+  only compromise that he proposed was that, with my own hand, I should sign
+  myself a villain. I refused this proposal, and have ever since been driven
+  from place to place, deprived of peace, of honest fame, even of bread. For a
+  long time I persisted in the resolution that no emergency should convert me
+  into the assailant. In an evil hour I at last listened to my resentment and
+  impatience, and the hateful mistake into which I fell has produced the
+  present scene.</p>
+
+  <p>"I now see that mistake in all its enormity. I am sure that if I had
+  opened my heart to Mr. Falkland, if I had told to him privately the tale
+  that I have now been telling, he could not have resisted my reasonable
+  demand. After all his precautions, he must ultimately have depended upon my
+  forbearance. Could he be sure that, if I were at last worked up to disclose
+  every thing I knew, and to enforce it with all the energy I could exert, I
+  should obtain no credit? If he must in every case be at my mercy, in which
+  mode ought he to have sought his safety, in conciliation, or in inexorable
+  cruelty?</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature. Yes; in spite of the catastrophe of
+  Tyrrel, of the miserable end of the Hawkinses, and of all that I have myself
+  suffered, I affirm that he has qualities of the most admirable kind. It is
+  therefore impossible that he could have resisted a frank and fervent
+  expostulation, the frankness and the fervour in which the whole soul is
+  poured out. I despaired, while it was yet time to have made the just
+  experiment; but my despair was criminal, was treason against the sovereignty
+  of truth.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have told a plain and unadulterated tale. I came hither to curse, but
+  I remain to bless. I came to accuse, but am compelled to applaud. I proclaim
+  to all the world, that Mr. Falkland is a man worthy of affection and
+  kindness, and that I am myself the basest and most odious of mankind! Never
+  will I forgive myself the iniquity of this day. The memory will always haunt
+  me, and embitter every hour of my existence. In thus acting I have been a
+  murderer&mdash;a cool, deliberate, unfeeling murderer.&mdash;I have said
+  what my accursed precipitation has obliged me to say. Do with me as you
+  please! I ask no favour. Death would be a kindness, compared to what I
+  feel!"</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the accents dictated by my remorse. I poured them out with
+  uncontrollable impetuosity; for my heart was pierced, and I was compelled to
+  give vent to its anguish. Every one that heard me, was petrified with
+  astonishment. Every one that heard me, was melted into tears. They could not
+  resist the ardour with which I praised the great qualities of Falkland; they
+  manifested their sympathy in the tokens of my penitence.</p>
+
+  <p>How shall I describe the feelings of this unfortunate man? Before I
+  began, he seemed sunk and debilitated, incapable of any strenuous
+  impression. When I mentioned the murder, I could perceive in him an
+  involuntary shuddering, though it was counteracted partly by the feebleness
+  of his frame, and partly by the energy of his mind. This was an allegation
+  he expected, and he had endeavoured to prepare himself for it. But there was
+  much of what I said, of which he had had no previous conception. When I
+  expressed the anguish of my mind, he seemed at first startled and alarmed,
+  lest this should be a new expedient to gain credit to my tale. His
+  indignation against me was great for having retained all my resentment
+  towards him, thus, as it might be, to the last hour of his existence. It was
+  increased when he discovered me, as he supposed, using a pretence of
+  liberality and sentiment to give new edge to my hostility. But as I went on
+  he could no longer resist. He saw my sincerity; he was penetrated with my
+  grief and compunction. He rose from his seat, supported by the attendants,
+  and&mdash;to my infinite astonishment&mdash;threw himself into my arms!</p>
+
+  <p>"Williams," said he, "you have conquered! I see too late the greatness
+  and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault and not yours,
+  that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my bosom, that
+  I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious accusation you
+  might have brought against me. But I see that the artless and manly story
+  you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer. All my prospects are
+  concluded. All that I most ardently desired, is for ever frustrated. I have
+  spent a life of the basest cruelty, to cover one act of momentary vice, and
+  to protect myself against the prejudices of my species. I stand now
+  completely detected. My name will be consecrated to infamy, while your
+  heroism, your patience, and your virtues will be for ever admired. You have
+  inflicted on me the most fatal of all mischiefs; but I bless the hand that
+  wounds me. And now,"&mdash;turning to the magistrate&mdash;"and now, do with
+  me as you please. I am prepared to suffer all the vengeance of the law. You
+  cannot inflict on me more than I deserve. You cannot hate me, more than I
+  hate myself. I am the most execrable of all villains. I have for many years
+  (I know not how long) dragged on a miserable existence in insupportable
+  pain. I am at last, in recompense for all my labours and my crimes,
+  dismissed from it with the disappointment of my only remaining hope, the
+  destruction of that for the sake of which alone I consented to exist. It was
+  worthy of such a life, that it should continue just long enough to witness
+  this final overthrow. If however you wish to punish me, you must be speedy
+  in your justice; for, as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I
+  feel that death and infamy must seize me together."</p>
+
+  <p>I record the praises bestowed on me by Falkland, not because I deserved
+  them, but because they serve to aggravate the baseness of my cruelty. He
+  survived this dreadful scene but three days. I have been his murderer. It
+  was fit that he should praise my patience, who has fallen a victim, life and
+  fame, to my precipitation! It would have been merciful in comparison, if I
+  had planted a dagger in his heart. He would have thanked me for my kindness.
+  But, atrocious, execrable wretch that I have been! I wantonly inflicted on
+  him an anguish a thousand times worse than death. Meanwhile I endure the
+  penalty of my crime. His figure is ever in imagination before me. Waking or
+  sleeping, I still behold him. He seems mildly to expostulate with me for my
+  unfeeling behaviour. I live the devoted victim of conscious reproach. Alas!
+  I am the same Caleb Williams that, so short a time ago, boasted that,
+  however great were the calamities I endured, I was still innocent.</p>
+
+  <p>Such has been the result of a project I formed, for delivering myself
+  from the evil that had so long attended me. I thought that, if Falkland were
+  dead, I should return once again to all that makes life worth possessing. I
+  thought that, if the guilt of Falkland were established, fortune and the
+  world would smile upon my efforts. Both these events are accomplished; and
+  it is now only that I am truly miserable.</p>
+
+  <p>Why should my reflections perpetually centre upon myself?&mdash;self, an
+  overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland, I
+  will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh
+  nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear I will
+  consecrate to thy ashes! A nobler spirit lived not among the sons of men.
+  Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a
+  god-like ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the corrupt
+  wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every
+  finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a happier field and a
+  purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate into usefulness, is thus
+  concerted into henbane and deadly nightshade.</p>
+
+  <p>Falkland! thou enteredst upon thy career with the purest and most
+  laudable intentions. But thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy
+  earliest youth; and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return
+  to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into madness.
+  Soon, too soon, by this fatal coincidence, were the blooming hopes of thy
+  youth blasted for ever. From that moment thou only continuedst to live to
+  the phantom of departed honour. From that moment thy benevolence was, in a
+  great part, turned into rankling jealousy and inexorable precaution. Year
+  after year didst thou spend in this miserable project of imposture; and only
+  at last continuedst to live, long enough to see, by my misjudging and
+  abhorred intervention, thy closing hope disappointed, and thy death
+  accompanied with the foulest disgrace!</p>
+
+  <p>I began these memoirs with the idea of vindicating my character. I have
+  now no character that I wish to vindicate: but I will finish them that thy
+  story may be fully understood; and that, if those errors of thy life be
+  known which thou so ardently desiredst to conceal, the world may at least
+  not hear and repeat a half-told and mangled tale.</p>
+
+  <h3>THE END.</h3>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a> <b>Footnote 1</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a catastrophe, such
+    as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I have here said,
+    therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the concluding sheets
+    of my work.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> <b>Footnote 2</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag2">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>An incident exactly similar to this was witnessed by a friend of the
+    author, a few years since, in a visit to the prison of Newgate.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a> <b>Footnote 3</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag3">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>A story extremely similar to this is to be found in the Newgate
+    Calendar, vol. i. p. 382.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a> <b>Footnote 4</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag4">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>See Howard on Prisons.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a> <b>Footnote 5</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag5">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>In the case of the <i>peine forte et dure</i>. See State Trials, Vol.
+    I. <i>anno</i> 1615.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a> <b>Footnote 6</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag6">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>This seems to be the parody of a celebrated saying of John King of
+    France, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the battle of
+    Poitiers.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a> <b>Footnote 7</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag7">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>Eugene Aram. See Annual Register for 1759.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a> <b>Footnote 8</b>: <a href=
+    "#footnotetag8">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>William Andrew Home. Ibid.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
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diff --git a/old/11323.txt b/old/11323.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/11323.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14285 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Caleb Williams
+       Things As They Are
+
+Author: William Godwin
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2004 [EBook #11323]
+[This File last updated: October 19, 2010]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB WILLIAMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+CALEB WILLIAMS
+
+OR THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+BY WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST A. BAKER, M.A.
+
+
+LONDON
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+
+MR. FERDINANDO FALKLAND, a high-spirited and highly cultured gentleman,
+a country squire in "a remote county of England."
+
+CALEB WILLIAMS, a youth, his secretary, the discoverer of his secret,
+and the supposed narrator of the consequent events.
+
+MR. COLLINS, Falkland's steward and Caleb's friend.
+
+THOMAS, a servant of Falkland's.
+
+MR. FORESTER, Falkland's brother-in-law.
+
+MR. BARNABAS TYRREL, a brutal and tyrannical squire.
+
+MISS EMILY MELVILLE, his cousin and dependent, whom he cruelly maltreats
+and does to death.
+
+GRIMES, a brutal rustic, suborned by Tyrrel to abduct Miss Melville.
+
+DR. WILSON; MRS. HAMMOND, friends of Miss Melville. MR. HAWKINS, farmer;
+YOUNG HAWKINS, his son, Victims of Tyrrel's brutality, and wrongfully
+hanged as his murderers.
+
+GINES, a robber and thief-taker, instrument of Falkland's vengeance upon
+Caleb.
+
+MR. RAYMOND, an "Arcadian" captain of robbers.
+
+LARKINS, one of his band.
+
+AN OLD HAG, housekeeper to the robbers.
+
+A GAOLER.
+
+MISS PEGGY, the gaoler's daughter.
+
+MRS. MARNEY, a poor gentlewoman, Caleb's friend in distress.
+
+MR. SPURREL, a friend who informs on Caleb.
+
+MRS. DENISON, a cultivated lady with whom Caleb is for a while on
+friendly terms.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The reputation of WILLIAM GODWIN as a social philosopher, and the merits
+of his famous novel, "Caleb Williams," have been for more than a century
+the subject of extreme divergencies of judgment among critics. "The
+first systematic anarchist," as he is called by Professor Saintsbury,
+aroused bitter contention with his writings during his own lifetime, and
+his opponents have remained so prejudiced that even the staid
+bibliographer Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a
+place where one would think the most flagitious author safe from
+animosity, speaks of Godwin's private life in terms that are little less
+than scurrilous. Over against this persistent acrimony may be put the
+fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, his biographer, to represent the
+favourable judgment of our own time, whilst I will venture to quote one
+remarkable passage that voices the opinions of many among Godwin's most
+eminent contemporaries.
+
+In "The Letters of Charles Lamb," Sir T.N. Talfourd says:
+
+    "Indifferent altogether to the politics of the age, Lamb could
+    not help being struck with productions of its newborn energies
+    so remarkable as the works and the character of Godwin. He
+    seemed to realise in himself what Wordsworth long afterwards
+    described, 'the central calm at the heart of all agitation.'
+    Through the medium of his mind the stormy convulsions of society
+    were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring
+    wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He
+    foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the
+    inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless
+    voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once
+    to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots
+    than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on
+    the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his species.
+    No one would have suspected the author of those wild theories
+    which startled the wise and shocked the prudent in the calm,
+    gentlemanly person who rarely said anything above the most
+    gentle commonplace, and took interest in little beyond the
+    whist-table."
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) was son and grandson of Dissenting ministers,
+and was destined for the same profession. In theology he began as a
+Calvinist, and for a while was tinctured with the austere doctrines of
+the Sandemanians. But his religious views soon took an unorthodox turn,
+and in 1782, falling out with his congregation at Stowmarket, he came up
+to London to earn his bread henceforward as a man of letters. In 1793
+Godwin became one of the most famous men in England by the publication
+of his "Political Justice," a work that his biographer would place side
+by side with the "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," the "Essay on
+Education," and "Emile," as one of "the unseen levers which have moved
+the changes of the times." Although the book came out at what we should
+call a "prohibitive price," it had an enormous circulation, and brought
+its author in something like 1,000 guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb
+Williams," which was published the next year, he illustrated in scenes
+from real life many of the principles enunciated in his philosophical
+work. "Caleb Williams" went through a number of editions, and was
+dramatized by Colman the younger under the title of "The Iron Chest." It
+has now been out of print for many years. Godwin wrote several other
+novels, but one alone is readable now, "St. Leon," which is
+philosophical in idea and purpose, and contains some passages of
+singular eloquence and beauty.
+
+Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
+Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was
+the gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly
+fond of whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many
+celebrated men and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran were
+among his closest male friends, while the story of his friendships with
+Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia Opie, with the lady immortalized by Shelley as
+Maria Gisborne, and with those literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee,
+authors of the "Canterbury Tales," has a certain sentimental interest.
+Afterwards he became known to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. He
+married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His later years were clouded by great
+embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he put out of reach of the worst
+privations by the gift of a small sinecure, that of yeoman usher of the
+Exchequer. He died in 1836.
+
+Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by Godwin's
+contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir T. N.
+Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey and Allan
+Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity. Hazlitt's
+opinion is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":
+
+    "A masterpiece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic
+    and chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is
+    embodied in the finest possible manner in the character of
+    Falkland; as in Caleb Williams (who is not the first, but the
+    second character in the piece), we see the very demon of
+    curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which these two
+    characters are contrived to relieve and set off each other has
+    never been surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception
+    of the immortal satire of Cervantes."
+
+Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:
+
+    "It has lived--though in comparative obscurity--for over a
+    century, and high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged
+    for that period raises a presumption that a book deserves the
+    title of classic."--_National Review, February_, 1902.
+
+To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
+advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more
+particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
+think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed
+to illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes
+him." He says:
+
+    "I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that
+    should in some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest.
+    Pursuing this idea, I invented first the third volume of my
+    tale, then the second, and, last of all, the first. I bent
+    myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and
+    pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being
+    overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
+    ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the
+    most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume."
+
+He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
+situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
+pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined
+in the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought.
+Falkland is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by
+the social system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of
+that system. The reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the
+extraordinary contest between Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the
+tragic situations that it involves. Compared with these the denunciation
+of the social system is a matter of secondary interest; but it was
+natural that the author of the "Political Justice," with his mind
+preoccupied by the defects of the English social system, should make
+those defects the, evil agencies of his plot. As the essential
+conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which everything
+is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to the
+story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their
+immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of
+the law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and
+ruins his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the
+occasion of Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the
+abandonment of the innocent Hawkinses to the gallows, is the consequence
+of what Godwin expressly denounces, punishment for murder. "I conceived
+it to be in the highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man
+qualified for the most essential and extensive utility, merely out of
+retrospect to an act which, whatever were its merits, could not be
+retrieved." Then a new element is imported into the train of causation,
+Caleb's insatiable curiosity, and the strife begins between these
+well-matched antagonists, the man of wealth and station utilizing all
+the advantages granted him by the state of society to crush his enemy.
+Godwin, then, was justified in declaring that his book comprehended "a
+general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which
+man becomes the destroyer of man." Such were the words of the original
+preface, which was suppressed for a short time owing to the fears caused
+by the trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft and other revolutionists,
+with whom Godwin was in profound sympathy. Had he intended "Caleb
+Williams," however, from its first inception, to be an imaginative
+version of the "Political Justice," he would have had to invent a
+different plan and different characters. The arguments of a sociological
+novel lack cogency unless the characters are fairly representative of
+average mankind. Godwin's principal actors are both, to say the least,
+exceptional. They are lofty idealizations of certain virtues and powers
+of mind. Falkland is like Jean Valjean, a superhuman creature; and,
+indeed, "Caleb Williams" may well be compared on one side with "Les
+Miserables," for Victor Hugo's avowed purpose, likewise, was the
+denunciation of social tyranny. But the characteristics that would have
+weakened the implied theorem, had such been the main object, are the
+very things that make the novel more powerful as drama of a grandiose,
+spiritual kind. The high and concentrated imagination that created such
+a being as Falkland, and the intensity of passion with which Caleb's
+fatal energy of mind is sustained through that long, despairing
+struggle, are of greater artistic value than the mechanical symmetry by
+which morals are illustrated.
+
+E. A. B.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+The following narrative is intended to answer a purpose more general and
+important than immediately appears upon the face of it. The question now
+afloat in the world respecting THINGS AS THEY ARE is the most
+interesting that can be presented to the human mind. While one party
+pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms
+the existing constitution of society. It seemed as if something would be
+gained for the decision of this question if that constitution were
+faithfully developed in its practical effects. What is now presented to
+the public is no refined and abstract speculation; it is a study and
+delineation of things passing in the moral world. It is but of late that
+the inestimable importance of political principles has been adequately
+apprehended. It is now known to philosophers that the spirit and
+character of the Government intrudes itself into every rank of society.
+But this is a truth highly worthy to be communicated to persons whom
+books of philosophy and science are never likely to reach. Accordingly,
+it was proposed, in the invention of the following work, to comprehend,
+as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a
+general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by
+which man becomes the destroyer of man. If the author shall have taught
+a valuable lesson, without subtracting from the interest and passion by
+which a performance of this sort ought to be characterised, he will have
+reason to congratulate himself upon the vehicle he has chosen.
+
+_May_ 12, 1794.
+
+This preface was withdrawn in the original edition, in compliance with
+the alarms of booksellers. "Caleb Williams" made his first appearance in
+the world in the same month in which the sanguinary plot broke out
+against the liberties of Englishmen, which was happily terminated by the
+acquittal of its first intended victims in the close of that year.
+Terror was the order of the day; and it was feared that even the humble
+novelist might be shown to be constructively a traitor.
+
+_October_ 29, 1795.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S LATEST PREFACE.
+
+
+LONDON,
+
+_November_ 20, 1832.
+
+"CALEB WILLIAMS" has always been regarded by the public with an unusual
+degree of favour. The proprietor of "THE STANDARD NOVELS" has therefore
+imagined that even an account of the concoction and mode of writing of
+the work would be viewed with some interest.
+
+I finished the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice," the first work
+which may be considered as written by me in a certain degree in the
+maturity of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in
+January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book was
+published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my
+pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By the
+liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I
+was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these
+expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of
+which, though innocent and in some degree useful, I am rather inclined
+to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my favourite work, and from
+that time gave up every other occupation that might interfere with it.
+My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my wants at a
+specified rate while the book was in the train of composition. Finally,
+I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its
+publication, and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to
+what species of industry I should next devote myself.
+
+I had always felt in myself some vocation towards the composition of a
+narrative of fictitious adventure; and among the things of obscure note
+which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature.
+It is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should
+have suggested itself on the present occasion.
+
+But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had
+been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from
+boyhood, I was perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley:
+
+  "What shall I do to be for ever known,
+  And make the age to come my own?"
+
+But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching my
+object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very
+often I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I felt
+ever and anon impelled to repeat my effort.
+
+At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced
+that my object of building to myself a name would never be attained by
+merely repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said,
+even though I should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a
+more than usual point and elegance. The world, I believed, would accept
+nothing from me with distinguishing favour that did not bear upon the
+face of it the undoubted stamp of originality. Having long ruminated
+upon the principles of Political Justice, I persuaded myself that I
+could offer to the public, in a treatise on this subject, things at once
+new, true, and important. In the progress of the work I became more
+sanguine and confident. I talked over my ideas with a few familiar
+friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous
+encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some
+inconsiderable degree, got before its publication, and a certain number
+of persons were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false
+modesty in me to say that its acceptance, when published, did not nearly
+come up to everything that could soberly have been expected by me. In
+consequence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the period in
+which I was engaged in the work and afterwards, acquired a certain
+elevation, and made me now unwilling to stoop to what was insignificant.
+
+I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
+some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this
+idea, I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and
+last of all the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension
+of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
+ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most
+fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next
+called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to
+account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to
+alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never
+to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I
+apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the
+investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a
+sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might
+deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in
+his power. This constituted the outline of my second volume.
+
+The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account
+for the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer
+should be invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution
+that nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of
+intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my
+tale be answered without his appearing to have been originally endowed
+with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his
+being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
+deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of
+his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him, so to speak, the
+tenant of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel
+prompted almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were ample
+materials for a first volume.
+
+I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention
+from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of
+adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of
+plot would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and
+interest in a tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the
+reader, which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other
+way.
+
+I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down
+hints for my story before I engaged seriously and methodically in its
+composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded
+to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or
+three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these
+memorandums. They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly
+enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the
+time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of
+two, three, four, five, or six lines each.
+
+I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the
+most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the
+afflatus was upon me. I held it for a maxim that any portion that was
+written when I was not fully in the vein told for considerably worse
+than nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than
+industry against the grain. Idleness was only time lost; and the next
+day, it may be, was as promising as ever. It was merely a day perished
+from the calendar. But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong
+spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to
+correct and set right again. I wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for
+a week or ten days not a line. Yet all came to the same thing in the
+sequel. On an average, a volume of "Caleb Williams" cost me four months,
+neither less nor more.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that during the whole period, bating a few
+intervals, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself a
+thousand times, "I will write a tale that shall constitute an epoch in
+the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be
+exactly the same man that he was before."--I put these things down just
+as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it
+will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such
+perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his
+best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vainglorious impulse for
+nearly forty years.
+
+When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume, I was
+prevailed upon by the extreme importunity of an old and intimate friend
+to allow him the perusal of my manuscript. On the second day he returned
+it with a note to this purpose: "I return you your manuscript, because I
+promised to do so. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should
+have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly
+prove the grave of your literary fame."
+
+I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly
+critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety before I
+recovered the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I
+felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But
+it was all I had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed
+decision. It stood in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and
+I did not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I
+tell that the second and third judgment would be more favourable than
+the first? Then what would have been the result? No; I had nothing for
+it but to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint of resolution I
+became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to the end, trusting as I could
+to my own anticipations of the whole, and bidding the world wait its
+time before it should be admitted to the consult.
+
+I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But
+I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making
+the hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted
+in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the
+best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in
+which my imagination revelled the most freely was the analysis of the
+private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical
+dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive,
+and recording the gradually accumulating impulses which led the
+personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of
+proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.
+
+When I had determined on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my
+method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to
+bear on my subject. I never entertained the fear that in this way of
+proceeding I should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors. I
+imagined that I had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which
+would always preserve me from plagiarism. I read other authors, that I
+might see what they had done, or, more properly, that I might forcibly
+hold my mind and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my
+predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time
+that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding the
+direction they pursued, and disdaining to inquire whether by any chance
+it for a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine.
+
+Thus, in the instance of "Caleb Williams," I read over a little old
+book, entitled "The Adventures of Mademoiselle de St. Phale," a French
+Protestant in the times of the fiercest persecution of the Huguenots,
+who fled through France in the utmost terror, in the midst of eternal
+alarms and hair-breadth escapes, having her quarters perpetually beaten
+up, and by scarcely any chance finding a moment's interval of security.
+I turned over the pages of a tremendous compilation, entitled "God's
+Revenge against Murder," where the beam of the eye of Omniscience was
+represented as perpetually pursuing the guilty, and laying open his most
+hidden retreats to the light of day. I was extremely conversant with the
+"Newgate Calendar" and the "Lives of the Pirates." In the meantime no
+works of fiction came amiss to me, provided they were written with
+energy. The authors were still employed upon the same mine as myself,
+however different was the vein they pursued: we were all of us engaged
+in exploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing the various
+rencontres and clashes that may occur between man and man in the
+diversified scene of human life.
+
+I rather amused myself with tracing a certain similitude between the
+story of Caleb Williams and the tale of Bluebeard, than derived any
+hints from that admirable specimen of the terrific. Falkland was my
+Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which, if discovered,
+he might expect to have all the world roused to revenge against him.
+Caleb Williams was the wife who, in spite of warning, persisted in his
+attempts to discover the forbidden secret; and, when he had succeeded,
+struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the wife of
+Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often
+as she cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it showing
+itself with frightful distinctness on the other.
+
+When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of my third volume, I
+found myself completely at a stand. I rested on my arms from the 2nd of
+January, 1794, to the 1st of April following, without getting forward in
+the smallest degree. It has ever been thus with me in works of any
+continuance. The bow will not be for ever bent:
+
+  "Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum."
+
+I endeavoured, however, to take my repose to myself in security, and not
+to inflict a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the
+meantime, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of
+that month carried on my work with unabated speed to the end.
+
+Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and
+mode of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became
+sensible that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and insipid
+parts does the book contain! How terribly unequal does it appear to me!
+From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken
+man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse
+boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up
+by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without
+chewing and digestion. I was in this respect greatly impressed with the
+confession of one of the most accomplished readers and excellent critics
+that any author could have fallen in with (the unfortunate Joseph
+Gerald). He told me that he had received my book late one evening, and
+had read through the three volumes before he closed his eyes. Thus, what
+had cost me twelve months' labour, ceaseless heartaches and industry,
+now sinking in despair, and now roused and sustained in unusual energy,
+he went over in a few hours, shut the book, laid himself on his pillow,
+slept, and was refreshed, and cried,
+
+  "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
+
+I had thought to have said something here respecting the concoction of
+"St. Leon" and "Fleetwood." But all that occurs to me on the subject
+seems to be anticipated in the following
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+_February 14, 1805._
+
+Yet another novel from the same pen, which has twice before claimed the
+patience of the public in this form. The unequivocal indulgence which
+has been extended to my two former attempts, renders me doubly
+solicitous not to forfeit the kindness I have experienced.
+
+One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: "not to repeat
+myself." Caleb Williams was a story of very surprising and uncommon
+events, but which were supposed to be entirely within the laws and
+established course of nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit.
+The story of St. Leon is of the miraculous class; and its design, to
+"mix human feelings and passions with incredible situations, and thus
+render them impressive and interesting."
+
+Some of those fastidious readers--they may be classed among the best
+friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously
+considered--who are willing to discover those faults which do not offer
+themselves to every eye, have remarked that both these tales are in a
+vicious style of writing; that Horace has long ago decided that the
+story we cannot believe we are by all the laws of criticism called upon
+to hate; and that even the adventures of the honest secretary, who was
+first heard of ten years ago, are so much out of the usual road that not
+one reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himself.
+
+Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I have served you
+with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, though I cannot say with any
+sanguine hope of obtaining your approbation.
+
+The following story consists of such adventures as for the most part
+have occurred to at least one half of the Englishmen now existing who
+are of the same rank of life as my hero. Most of them have been at
+college, and shared in college excesses; most of them have afterward run
+a certain gauntlet of dissipation; most have married, and, I am afraid,
+there are few of the married tribe who have not at some time or other
+had certain small misunderstandings with their wives.[A] To be sure,
+they have not all of them felt and acted under these trite adventures as
+my hero does. In this little work the reader will scarcely find anything
+to "elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must consist in
+the liveliness with which it brings things home to the imagination, and
+the reality it gives to the scenes it pourtrays.
+
+[Footnote A: I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a
+catastrophe, such as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I
+have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the
+concluding sheets of my work.]
+
+Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
+novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
+well-known line of Pope; it relates:
+
+  "Things often done, but never yet described."
+
+In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to
+avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
+Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents
+I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If
+I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books
+which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of
+what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much,
+by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It
+is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty
+authors have done before! If I had foreseen from the first all the
+difficulty of my project, my courage would have failed me to undertake
+the execution of it.
+
+Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the
+favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation
+on the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was
+not always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is
+treated in the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of
+their assertion. The answer to this remark is exceedingly simple. The
+production referred to in it, the first foundation of its author's claim
+to public distinction and favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain
+what new institutions in political society might be found more
+conducive to general happiness than those which at present prevail. In
+the course of this disquisition it was enquired whether marriage, as it
+stands described and supported in the laws of England, might not with
+advantage admit of certain modifications. Can anything be more distinct
+than such a proposition on the one hand and a recommendation on the
+other that each man for himself should supersede and trample upon the
+institutions of the country in which he lives? A thousand things might
+be found excellent and salutary, if brought into general practice, which
+would in some cases appear ridiculous, and in others be attended with
+tragical consequences, if prematurely acted upon by a solitary
+individual. The author of "Political Justice," as appears again and
+again in the pages of that work, is the last man in the world to
+recommend a pitiful attempt, by scattered examples, to renovate the face
+of society, instead of endeavouring, by discussion and reasoning, to
+effect a grand and comprehensive improvement in the sentiments of its
+members.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+My life has for several years been a theatre of calamity. I have been a
+mark for the vigilance of tyranny, and I could not escape. My fairest
+prospects have been blasted. My enemy has shown himself inaccessible to
+entreaties, and untired in persecution. My fame, as well as my
+happiness, has become his victim. Every one, as far as my story has been
+known, has refused to assist me in my distress, and has execrated my
+name. I have not deserved this treatment. My own conscience witnesses in
+behalf of that innocence, my pretensions to which are regarded in the
+world as incredible. There is now, however, little hope that I shall
+escape from the toils that universally beset me. I am incited to the
+penning of these memoirs only by a desire to divert my mind from the
+deplorableness of my situation, and a faint idea that posterity may by
+their means be induced to render me a justice which my contemporaries
+refuse. My story will, at least, appear to have that consistency which
+is seldom attendant but upon truth.
+
+I was born of humble parents, in a remote county of England. Their
+occupations were such as usually fall to the lot of peasants, and they
+had no portion to give me, but an education free from the usual sources
+of depravity, and the inheritance, long since lost by their unfortunate
+progeny! of an honest fame. I was taught the rudiments of no science,
+except reading, writing, and arithmetic. But I had an inquisitive mind,
+and neglected no means of information from conversation or books. My
+improvement was greater than my condition in life afforded room to
+expect.
+
+There are other circumstances deserving to be mentioned as having
+influenced the history of my future life. I was somewhat above the
+middle stature. Without being particularly athletic in appearance, or
+large in my dimensions, I was uncommonly vigorous and active. My joints
+were supple, and I was formed to excel in youthful sports. The habits of
+my mind, however, were to a certain degree at war with the dictates of
+boyish vanity. I had considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of
+the village gallants, and contrived to satisfy my love of praise with an
+unfrequent apparition at their amusements. My excellence in these
+respects, however, gave a turn to my meditations. I delighted to read of
+feats of activity, and was particularly interested by tales in which
+corporeal ingenuity or strength are the means resorted to for supplying
+resources and conquering difficulties. I inured myself to mechanical
+pursuits, and devoted much of my time to an endeavour after mechanical
+invention.
+
+The spring of action which, perhaps more than any other, characterised
+the whole train of my life, was curiosity. It was this that gave me my
+mechanical turn; I was desirous of tracing the variety of effects which
+might be produced from given causes. It was this that made me a sort of
+natural philosopher; I could not rest till I had acquainted myself with
+the solutions that had been invented for the phenomena of the universe.
+In fine, this produced in me an invincible attachment to books of
+narrative and romance. I panted for the unravelling of an adventure with
+an anxiety, perhaps almost equal to that of the man whose future
+happiness or misery depended on its issue. I read, I devoured
+compositions of this sort. They took possession of my soul; and the
+effects they produced were frequently discernible in my external
+appearance and my health. My curiosity, however, was not entirely
+ignoble: village anecdotes and scandal had no charms for me: my
+imagination must be excited; and when that was not done, my curiosity
+was dormant.
+
+The residence of my parents was within the manor of Ferdinando Falkland,
+a country squire of considerable opulence. At an early age I attracted
+the favourable notice of Mr. Collins, this gentleman's steward, who used
+to call in occasionally at my father's. He observed the particulars of
+my progress with approbation, and made a favourable report to his master
+of my industry and genius.
+
+In the summer of the year ----, Mr. Falkland visited his estate in our
+county after an absence of several months. This was a period of
+misfortune to me. I was then eighteen years of age. My father lay dead
+in our cottage. I had lost my mother some years before. In this forlorn
+situation I was surprised with a message from the squire, ordering me to
+repair to the mansion-house the morning after my father's funeral.
+
+Though I was not a stranger to books, I had no practical acquaintance
+with men. I had never had occasion to address a person of this elevated
+rank, and I felt no small uneasiness and awe on the present occasion. I
+found Mr. Falkland a man of small stature, with an extreme delicacy of
+form and appearance. In place of the hard-favoured and inflexible
+visages I had been accustomed to observe, every muscle and petty line of
+his countenance seemed to be in an inconceivable degree pregnant with
+meaning. His manner was kind, attentive, and humane. His eye was full of
+animation; but there was a grave and sad solemnity in his air, which,
+for want of experience, I imagined was the inheritance of the great, and
+the instrument by which the distance between them and their inferiors
+was maintained. His look bespoke the unquietness of his mind, and
+frequently wandered with an expression of disconsolateness and anxiety.
+
+My reception was as gracious and encouraging as I could possibly desire.
+Mr. Falkland questioned me respecting my learning, and my conceptions of
+men and things, and listened to my answers with condescension and
+approbation. This kindness soon restored to me a considerable part of my
+self-possession, though I still felt restrained by the graceful, but
+unaltered dignity of his carriage. When Mr. Falkland had satisfied his
+curiosity, he proceeded to inform me that he was in want of a secretary,
+that I appeared to him sufficiently qualified for that office, and that,
+if, in my present change of situation, occasioned by the death of my
+father, I approved of the employment, he would take me into his family.
+
+I felt highly flattered by the proposal, and was warm in the expression
+of my acknowledgments. I set eagerly about the disposal of the little
+property my father had left, in which I was assisted by Mr. Collins. I
+had not now a relation in the world, upon whose kindness and
+interposition I had any direct claim. But, far from regarding this
+deserted situation with terror, I formed golden visions of the station
+I was about to occupy. I little suspected that the gaiety and lightness
+of heart I had hitherto enjoyed were upon the point of leaving me for
+ever, and that the rest of my days were devoted to misery and alarm.
+
+My employment was easy and agreeable. It consisted partly in the
+transcribing and arranging certain papers, and partly in writing from my
+master's dictation letters of business, as well as sketches of literary
+composition. Many of these latter consisted of an analytical survey of
+the plans of different authors and conjectural speculations upon hints
+they afforded, tending either to the detection of their errors, or the
+carrying forward their discoveries. All of them bore powerful marks of a
+profound and elegant mind, well stored with literature, and possessed of
+an uncommon share of activity and discrimination.
+
+My station was in that part of the house which was appropriated for the
+reception of books, it being my duty to perform the functions of
+librarian as well as secretary. Here my hours would have glided in
+tranquillity and peace, had not my situation included in it
+circumstances totally different from those which attended me in my
+father's cottage. In early life my mind had been much engrossed by
+reading and reflection: my intercourse with my fellow mortals was
+occasional and short. But, in my new residence, I was excited by every
+motive of interest and novelty to study my master's character; and I
+found in it an ample field for speculation and conjecture.
+
+His mode of living was in the utmost degree recluse and solitary. He had
+no inclination to scenes of revelry and mirth. He avoided the busy
+haunts of men; nor did he seem desirous to compensate for this privation
+by the confidence of friendship. He appeared a total stranger to every
+thing which usually bears the appellation of pleasure. His features were
+scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, nor did that air which spoke the
+unhappiness of his mind at any time forsake them: yet his manners were
+by no means such as denoted moroseness and misanthropy. He was
+compassionate and considerate for others, though the stateliness of his
+carriage and the reserve of his temper were at no time interrupted. His
+appearance and general behaviour might have strongly interested all
+persons in his favour; but the coldness of his address, and the
+impenetrableness of his sentiments, seemed to forbid those
+demonstrations of kindness to which one might otherwise have been
+prompted.
+
+Such was the general appearance of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was
+extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant
+gloom had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and
+tyrannical; but this proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than
+an unfeeling disposition; and when reflection recurred, he appeared
+willing that the weight of his misfortune should fall wholly upon
+himself. Sometimes he entirely lost his self-possession, and his
+behaviour was changed into frenzy: he would strike his forehead, his
+brows became knit, his features distorted, and his teeth ground one
+against the other. When he felt the approach of these symptoms, he would
+suddenly rise, and, leaving the occupation, whatever it was, in which he
+was engaged, hasten into a solitude upon which no person dared to
+intrude.
+
+It must not be supposed that the whole of what I am describing was
+visible to the persons about him; nor, indeed, was I acquainted with it
+in the extent here stated but after a considerable time, and in gradual
+succession. With respect to the domestics in general, they saw but
+little of their master. None of them, except myself, from the nature of
+my functions, and Mr. Collins, from the antiquity of his service and the
+respectableness of his character, approached Mr. Falkland, but at stated
+seasons and for a very short interval. They knew him only by the
+benevolence of his actions, and the principles of inflexible integrity
+by which he was ordinarily guided; and though they would sometimes
+indulge their conjectures respecting his singularities, they regarded
+him upon the whole with veneration, as a being of a superior order.
+
+One day, when I had been about three months in the service of my patron,
+I went to a closet, or small apartment, which was separated from the
+library by a narrow gallery that was lighted by a small window near the
+roof. I had conceived that there was no person in the room, and intended
+only to put any thing in order that I might find out of its place. As I
+opened the door, I heard at the same instant a deep groan, expressive of
+intolerable anguish. The sound of the door in opening seemed to alarm
+the person within; I heard the lid of a trunk hastily shut, and the
+noise as of fastening a lock. I conceived that Mr. Falkland was there,
+and was going instantly to retire; but at that moment a voice, that
+seemed supernaturally tremendous, exclaimed, Who is there? The voice was
+Mr. Falkland's. The sound of it thrilled my very vitals. I endeavoured
+to answer, but my speech failed, and being incapable of any other reply,
+I instinctively advanced within the door into the room. Mr. Falkland was
+just risen from the floor upon which he had been sitting or kneeling.
+His face betrayed strong symptoms of confusion. With a violent effort,
+however, these symptoms vanished, and instantaneously gave place to a
+countenance sparkling with rage.
+
+"Villain!" cried he, "what has brought you here?" I hesitated a
+confused and irresolute answer. "Wretch!" interrupted Mr. Falkland, with
+uncontrollable impatience, "you want to ruin me. You set yourself as a
+spy upon my actions; but bitterly shall you repent your insolence. Do
+you think you shall watch my privacies with impunity?" I attempted to
+defend myself. "Begone, devil!" rejoined he. "Quit the room, or I will
+trample you into atoms." Saying this, he advanced towards me. But I was
+already sufficiently terrified, and vanished in a moment. I heard the
+door shut after me with violence; and thus ended this extraordinary
+scene.
+
+I saw him again in the evening, and he was then tolerably composed. His
+behaviour, which was always kind, was now doubly attentive and soothing.
+He seemed to have something of which he wished to disburthen his mind,
+but to want words in which to convey it. I looked at him with anxiety
+and affection. He made two unsuccessful efforts, shook his head, and
+then putting five guineas into my hand, pressed it in a manner that I
+could feel proceeded from a mind pregnant with various emotions, though
+I could not interpret them. Having done this, he seemed immediately to
+recollect himself, and to take refuge in the usual distance and
+solemnity of his manner.
+
+I easily understood that secrecy was one of the things expected from me;
+and, indeed, my mind was too much disposed to meditate upon what I had
+heard and seen, to make it a topic of indiscriminate communication. Mr.
+Collins, however, and myself happened to sup together that evening,
+which was but seldom the case, his avocations obliging him to be much
+abroad. He could not help observing an uncommon dejection and anxiety in
+my countenance, and affectionately enquired into the reason. I
+endeavoured to evade his questions, but my youth and ignorance of the
+world gave me little advantage for that purpose. Beside this, I had been
+accustomed to view Mr. Collins with considerable attachment, and I
+conceived from the nature of his situation that there could be small
+impropriety in making him my confident in the present instance. I
+repeated to him minutely every thing that had passed, and concluded with
+a solemn declaration that, though treated with caprice, I was not
+anxious for myself; no inconvenience or danger should ever lead me to a
+pusillanimous behaviour; and I felt only for my patron, who, with every
+advantage for happiness, and being in the highest degree worthy of it,
+seemed destined to undergo unmerited distress.
+
+In answer to my communication, Mr. Collins informed me that some
+incidents, of a nature similar to that which I related, had fallen under
+his own knowledge, and that from the whole he could not help concluding
+that our unfortunate patron, was at times disordered in his intellects.
+"Alas!" continued he, "it was not always thus! Ferdinando Falkland was
+once the gayest of the gay. Not indeed of that frothy sort, who excite
+contempt instead of admiration, and whose levity argues thoughtlessness
+rather than felicity. His gaiety was always accompanied with dignity. It
+was the gaiety of the hero and the scholar. It was chastened with
+reflection and sensibility, and never lost sight either of good taste or
+humanity. Such as it was however, it denoted a genuine hilarity of
+heart, imparted an inconceivable brilliancy to his company and
+conversation, and rendered him the perpetual delight of the diversified
+circles he then willingly frequented. You see nothing of him, my dear
+Williams, but the ruin of that Falkland who was courted by sages, and
+adored by the fair. His youth, distinguished in its outset by the most
+unusual promise, is tarnished. His sensibility is shrunk up and withered
+by events the most disgustful to his feelings. His mind was fraught with
+all the rhapsodies of visionary honour; and, in his sense, nothing but
+the grosser part, the mere shell of Falkland, was capable of surviving
+the wound that his pride has sustained."
+
+These reflections of my friend Collins strongly tended to inflame my
+curiosity, and I requested him to enter into a more copious explanation.
+With this request he readily complied; as conceiving that whatever
+delicacy it became him to exercise in ordinary cases, it would be out of
+place in my situation; and thinking it not improbable that Mr. Falkland,
+but for the disturbance and inflammation of his mind, would be disposed
+to a similar communication. I shall interweave with Mr. Collins's story
+various information which I afterwards received from other quarters,
+that I may give all possible perspicuity to the series of events. To
+avoid confusion in my narrative, I shall drop the person of Collins, and
+assume to be myself the historian of our patron. To the reader it may
+appear at first sight as if this detail of the preceding life of Mr.
+Falkland were foreign to my history. Alas! I know from bitter experience
+that it is otherwise. My heart bleeds at the recollection of his
+misfortunes, as if they were my own. How can it fail to do so? To his
+story the whole fortune of my life was linked: because he was miserable,
+my happiness, my name, and my existence have been irretrievably blasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Among the favourite authors of his early years were the heroic poets of
+Italy. From them he imbibed the love of chivalry and romance. He had too
+much good sense to regret the times of Charlemagne and Arthur. But,
+while his imagination was purged by a certain infusion of philosophy, he
+conceived that there was in the manners depicted by these celebrated
+poets something to imitate, as well as something to avoid. He believed
+that nothing was so well calculated to make men delicate, gallant, and
+humane, as a temper perpetually alive to the sentiments of birth and
+honour. The opinions he entertained upon these topics were illustrated
+in his conduct, which was assiduously conformed to the model of heroism
+that his fancy suggested.
+
+With these sentiments he set out upon his travels, at the age at which
+the grand tour is usually made; and they were rather confirmed than
+shaken by the adventures that befel him. By inclination he was led to
+make his longest stay in Italy; and here he fell into company with
+several young noblemen whose studies and principles were congenial to
+his own. By them he was assiduously courted, and treated with the most
+distinguished applause. They were delighted to meet with a foreigner,
+who had imbibed all the peculiarities of the most liberal and honourable
+among themselves. Nor was he less favoured and admired by the softer
+sex. Though his stature was small, his person had an air of uncommon
+dignity. His dignity was then heightened by certain additions which were
+afterwards obliterated,--an expression of frankness, ingenuity, and
+unreserve, and a spirit of the most ardent enthusiasm. Perhaps no
+Englishman was ever in an equal degree idolised by the inhabitants of
+Italy.
+
+It was not possible for him to have drunk so deeply of the fountain of
+chivalry without being engaged occasionally in affairs of honour, all of
+which were terminated in a manner that would not have disgraced the
+chevalier Bayard himself. In Italy, the young men of rank divide
+themselves into two classes,--those who adhere to the pure principles of
+ancient gallantry, and those who, being actuated by the same acute sense
+of injury and insult, accustom themselves to the employment of hired
+bravoes as their instruments of vengeance. The whole difference, indeed,
+consists in the precarious application of a generally received
+distinction. The most generous Italian conceives that there are certain
+persons whom it would be contamination for him to call into the open
+field. He nevertheless believes that an indignity cannot be expiated but
+with blood, and is persuaded that the life of a man is a trifling
+consideration, in comparison of the indemnification to be made to his
+injured honour. There is, therefore, scarcely any Italian that would
+upon some occasions scruple assassination. Men of spirit among them,
+notwithstanding the prejudices of their education, cannot fail to have a
+secret conviction of its baseness, and will be desirous of extending as
+far as possible the cartel of honour. Real or affected arrogance teaches
+others to regard almost the whole species as their inferiors, and of
+consequence incites them to gratify their vengeance without danger to
+their persons. Mr. Falkland met with some of these. But his undaunted
+spirit and resolute temper gave him a decisive advantage even in such
+perilous rencounters. One instance, among many, of his manner of
+conducting himself among this proud and high-spirited people it may be
+proper to relate. Mr. Falkland is the principal agent in my history; and
+Mr. Falkland in the autumn and decay of his vigour, such as I found him,
+cannot be completely understood without a knowledge of his previous
+character, as it was in all the gloss of youth, yet unassailed by
+adversity, and unbroken in upon by anguish or remorse.
+
+At Rome he was received with particular distinction at the house of
+marquis Pisani, who had an only daughter, the heir of his immense
+fortune, and the admiration of all the young nobility of that
+metropolis. Lady Lucretia Pisani was tall, of a dignified form, and
+uncommonly beautiful. She was not deficient in amiable qualities, but
+her soul was haughty, and her carriage not unfrequently contemptuous.
+Her pride was nourished by the consciousness of her charms, by her
+elevated rank, and the universal adoration she was accustomed to
+receive.
+
+Among her numerous lovers count Malvesi was the individual most favoured
+by her father, nor did his addresses seem indifferent to her. The count
+was a man of considerable accomplishments, and of great integrity and
+benevolence of disposition. But he was too ardent a lover, to be able
+always to preserve the affability of his temper. The admirers whose
+addresses were a source of gratification to his mistress, were a
+perpetual uneasiness to him. Placing his whole happiness in the
+possession of this imperious beauty, the most trifling circumstances
+were capable of alarming him for the security of his pretensions. But
+most of all he was jealous of the English cavalier. Marquis Pisani, who
+had spent many years in France, was by no means partial to the
+suspicious precautions of Italian fathers, and indulged his daughter in
+considerable freedoms. His house and his daughter, within certain
+judicious restraints, were open to the resort of male visitants. But,
+above all, Mr. Falkland, as a foreigner, and a person little likely to
+form pretensions to the hand of Lucretia, was received upon a footing of
+great familiarity. The lady herself, conscious of innocence, entertained
+no scruple about trifles, and acted with the confidence and frankness of
+one who is superior to suspicion.
+
+Mr. Falkland, after a residence of several weeks at Rome, proceeded to
+Naples. Meanwhile certain incidents occurred that delayed the intended
+nuptials of the heiress of Pisani. When he returned to Rome Count
+Malvesi was absent. Lady Lucretia, who had been considerably amused
+before with the conversation of Mr. Falkland, and who had an active and
+enquiring mind, had conceived, in the interval between his first and
+second residence at Rome, a desire to be acquainted with the English
+language, inspired by the lively and ardent encomiums of our best
+authors that she had heard from their countryman. She had provided
+herself with the usual materials for that purpose, and had made some
+progress during his absence. But upon his return she was forward to make
+use of the opportunity, which, if missed, might never occur again with
+equal advantage, of reading select passages of our poets with an
+Englishman of uncommon taste and capacity.
+
+This proposal necessarily led to a more frequent intercourse. When Count
+Malvesi returned, he found Mr. Falkland established almost as an inmate
+of the Pisani palace. His mind could not fail to be struck with the
+criticalness of the situation. He was perhaps secretly conscious that
+the qualifications of the Englishman were superior to his own; and he
+trembled for the progress that each party might have made in the
+affection of the other, even before they were aware of the danger. He
+believed that the match was in every respect such as to flatter the
+ambition of Mr. Falkland; and he was stung even to madness by the idea
+of being deprived of the object dearest to his heart by this tramontane
+upstart.
+
+He had, however, sufficient discretion first to demand an explanation of
+Lady Lucretia. She, in the gaiety of her heart, trifled with his
+anxiety. His patience was already exhausted, and he proceeded in his
+expostulation, in language that she was by no means prepared to endure
+with apathy. Lady Lucretia had always been accustomed to deference and
+submission; and, having got over something like terror, that was at
+first inspired by the imperious manner in which she was now catechised,
+her next feeling was that of the warmest resentment. She disdained to
+satisfy so insolent a questioner, and even indulged herself in certain
+oblique hints calculated to strengthen his suspicions. For some time she
+described his folly and presumption in terms of the most ludicrous
+sarcasm, and then, suddenly changing her style, bid him never let her
+see him more except upon the footing of the most distant acquaintance,
+as she was determined never again to subject herself to so unworthy a
+treatment. She was happy that he had at length disclosed to her his true
+character, and would know how to profit of her present experience to
+avoid a repetition of the same danger. All this passed in the full
+career of passion on both sides, and Lady Lucretia had no time to
+reflect upon what might be the consequence of thus exasperating her
+lover.
+
+Count Malvesi left her in all the torments of frenzy. He believed that
+this was a premeditated scene, to find a pretence for breaking off an
+engagement that was already all but concluded; or, rather, his mind was
+racked with a thousand conjectures: he alternately thought that the
+injustice might be hers or his own; and he quarrelled with Lady
+Lucretia, himself, and the whole world. In this temper he hastened to
+the hotel of the English cavalier. The season of expostulation was now
+over, and he found himself irresistibly impelled to justify his
+precipitation with the lady, by taking for granted that the subject of
+his suspicion was beyond the reach of doubt.
+
+Mr. Falkland was at home. The first words of the count were an abrupt
+accusation of duplicity in the affair of Lady Lucretia, and a challenge.
+The Englishman had an unaffected esteem for Malvesi, who was in reality
+a man of considerable merit, and who had been one of Mr. Falkland's
+earliest Italian acquaintance, they having originally met at Milan. But
+more than this, the possible consequence of a duel in the present
+instance burst upon his mind. He had the warmest admiration for Lady
+Lucretia, though his feelings were not those of a lover; and he knew
+that, however her haughtiness might endeavour to disguise it, she was
+impressed with a tender regard for Count Malvesi. He could not bear to
+think that any misconduct of his should interrupt the prospects of so
+deserving a pair. Guided by these sentiments, he endeavoured to
+expostulate with the Italian. But his attempts were ineffectual. His
+antagonist was drunk with choler, and would not listen to a word that
+tended to check the impetuosity of his thoughts. He traversed the room
+with perturbed steps, and even foamed with anguish and fury. Mr.
+Falkland, finding that all was to no purpose, told the count, that, if
+he would return to-morrow at the same hour, he would attend him to any
+scene of action he should think proper to select.
+
+From Count Malvesi Mr. Falkland immediately proceeded to the palace of
+Pisani. Here he found considerable difficulty in appeasing the
+indignation of Lady Lucretia. His ideas of honour would by no means
+allow him to win her to his purpose by disclosing the cartel he had
+received; otherwise that disclosure would immediately have operated as
+the strongest motive that could have been offered to this disdainful
+beauty. But, though she dreaded such an event, the vague apprehension
+was not strong enough to induce her instantly to surrender all the
+stateliness of her resentment. Mr. Falkland, however, drew so
+interesting a picture of the disturbance of Count Malvesi's mind, and
+accounted in so flattering a manner for the abruptness of his conduct,
+that this, together with the arguments he adduced, completed the
+conquest of Lady Lucretia's resentment. Having thus far accomplished his
+purpose, he proceeded to disclose to her every thing that had passed.
+
+The next day Count Malvesi appeared, punctual to his appointment, at Mr.
+Falkland's hotel. Mr. Falkland came to the door to receive him, but
+requested him to enter the house for a moment, as he had still an affair
+of three minutes to despatch. They proceeded to a parlour. Here Mr.
+Falkland left him, and presently returned leading in Lady Lucretia
+herself, adorned in all her charms, and those charms heightened upon the
+present occasion by a consciousness of the spirited and generous
+condescension she was exerting. Mr. Falkland led her up to the
+astonished count; and she, gently laying her hand upon the arm of her
+lover, exclaimed with the most attractive grace, "Will you allow me to
+retract the precipitate haughtiness into which I was betrayed?" The
+enraptured count, scarcely able to believe his senses, threw himself
+upon his knees before her, and stammered out his reply, signifying that
+the precipitation had been all his own, that he only had any forgiveness
+to demand, and, though they might pardon, he could never pardon himself
+for the sacrilege he had committed against her and this god-like
+Englishman. As soon as the first tumults of his joy had subsided, Mr.
+Falkland addressed him thus:--
+
+"Count Malvesi, I feel the utmost pleasure in having thus by peaceful
+means disarmed your resentment, and effected your happiness. But I must
+confess, you put me to a severe trial. My temper is not less impetuous
+and fiery than your own, and it is not at all times that I should have
+been thus able to subdue it. But I considered that in reality the
+original blame was mine. Though your suspicion was groundless, it was
+not absurd. We have been trifling too much in the face of danger. I
+ought not, under the present weakness of our nature and forms of
+society, to have been so assiduous in my attendance upon this enchanting
+woman. It would have been little wonder, if, having so many
+opportunities, and playing the preceptor with her as I have done, I had
+been entangled before I was aware, and harboured a wish which I might
+not afterwards have had courage to subdue. I owed you an atonement for
+this imprudence.
+
+"But the laws of honour are in the utmost degree rigid; and there was
+reason to fear that, however anxious I were to be your friend, I might
+be obliged to be your murderer. Fortunately, the reputation of my
+courage is sufficiently established, not to expose it to any impeachment
+by my declining your present defiance. It was lucky, however, that in
+our interview of yesterday you found me alone, and that accident by
+that means threw the management of the affair into my disposal. If the
+transaction should become known, the conclusion will now become known
+along with the provocation, and I am satisfied. But if the challenge had
+been public, the proofs I had formerly given of courage would not have
+excused my present moderation; and, though desirous to have avoided the
+combat, it would not have been in my power. Let us hence each of us
+learn to avoid haste and indiscretion, the consequences of which may be
+inexpiable but with blood; and may Heaven bless you in a consort of whom
+I deem you every way worthy!"
+
+I have already said that this was by no means the only instance, in the
+course of his travels, in which Mr. Falkland acquitted himself in the
+most brilliant manner as a man of gallantry and virtue. He continued
+abroad during several years, every one of which brought some fresh
+accession to the estimation in which he was held, as well as to his own
+impatience of stain or dishonour. At length he thought proper to return
+to England, with the intention of spending the rest of his days at the
+residence of his ancestors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+From the moment he entered upon the execution of this purpose, dictated
+as it probably was by an unaffected principle of duty, his misfortunes
+took their commencement. All I have further to state of his history is
+the uninterrupted persecution of a malignant destiny, a series of
+adventures that seemed to take their rise in various accidents, but
+pointing to one termination. Him they overwhelmed with an anguish he
+was of all others least qualified to bear; and these waters of
+bitterness, extending beyond him, poured their deadly venom upon others.
+I being myself the most unfortunate of their victims.
+
+The person in whom these calamities originated was Mr. Falkland's
+nearest neighbour, a man of estate equal to his own, by name Barnabas
+Tyrrel. This man one might at first have supposed of all others least
+qualified from instruction, or inclined by the habits of his life, to
+disturb the enjoyments of a mind so richly endowed as that of Mr.
+Falkland. Mr. Tyrrel might have passed for a true model of the English
+squire. He was early left under the tuition of his mother, a woman of
+narrow capacity, and who had no other child. The only remaining member
+of the family it may be necessary to notice was Miss Emily Melville, the
+orphan daughter of Mr. Tyrrel's paternal aunt; who now resided in the
+family mansion, and was wholly dependent on the benevolence of its
+proprietors.
+
+Mrs. Tyrrel appeared to think that there was nothing in the world so
+precious as her hopeful Barnabas. Every thing must give way to his
+accommodation and advantage; every one must yield the most servile
+obedience to his commands. He must not be teased or restricted by any
+forms of instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the
+arts of writing and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he
+was muscular and sturdy; and, confined to the _ruelle_ of his mother, he
+made much such a figure as the whelp-lion that a barbarian might have
+given for a lap-dog to his mistress.
+
+But he soon broke loose from these trammels, and formed an acquaintance
+with the groom and the game-keeper. Under their instruction he proved as
+ready a scholar, as he had been indocile and restive to the pedant who
+held the office of his tutor. It was now evident that his small
+proficiency in literature was by no means to be ascribed to want of
+capacity. He discovered no contemptible sagacity and quick-wittedness in
+the science of horse-flesh, and was eminently expert in the arts of
+shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor did he confine himself to these, but
+added the theory and practice of boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff.
+These exercises added ten-fold robustness and vigour to his former
+qualifications.
+
+His stature, when grown, was somewhat more than five feet ten inches in
+height, and his form might have been selected by a painter as a model
+for that hero of antiquity, whose prowess consisted in felling an ox
+with his fist, and devouring him at a meal. Conscious of his advantage
+in this respect, he was insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his
+inferiors, and insolent to his equals. The activity of his mind being
+diverted from the genuine field of utility and distinction, showed
+itself in the rude tricks of an overgrown lubber. Here, as in all his
+other qualifications, he rose above his competitors; and if it had been
+possible to overlook the callous and unrelenting disposition which they
+manifested, one could scarcely have denied his applause to the invention
+these freaks displayed, and the rough, sarcastic wit with which they
+were accompanied.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was by no means inclined to permit these extraordinary merits
+to rust in oblivion. There was a weekly assembly at the nearest
+market-town, the resort of all the rural gentry. Here he had hitherto
+figured to the greatest advantage as grand master of the _coterie_, no
+one having an equal share of opulence, and the majority, though still
+pretending to the rank of gentry, greatly his inferior in this essential
+article. The young men in this circle looked up to this insolent bashaw
+with timid respect, conscious of the comparative eminence that
+unquestionably belonged to the powers of his mind; and he well knew how
+to maintain his rank with an inflexible hand. Frequently indeed he
+relaxed his features, and assumed a temporary appearance of affableness
+and familiarity; but they found by experience, that if any one,
+encouraged by his condescension, forgot the deference which Mr. Tyrrel
+considered as his due, he was soon taught to repent his presumption. It
+was a tiger that thought proper to toy with a mouse, the little animal
+every moment in danger of being crushed by the fangs of his ferocious
+associate. As Mr. Tyrrel had considerable copiousness of speech, and a
+rich, but undisciplined imagination, he was always sure of an audience.
+His neighbours crowded round, and joined in the ready laugh, partly from
+obsequiousness, and partly from unfeigned admiration. It frequently
+happened, however; that, in the midst of his good humour, a
+characteristic refinement of tyranny would suggest itself to his mind.
+When his subjects, encouraged by his familiarity, had discarded their
+precaution, the wayward fit would seize him, a sudden cloud overspread
+his brow, his voice transform from the pleasant to the terrible, and a
+quarrel of a straw immediately ensue with the first man whose face he
+did not like. The pleasure that resulted to others from the exuberant
+sallies of his imagination was, therefore, not unalloyed with sudden
+qualms of apprehension and terror. It may be believed that this
+despotism did not gain its final ascendancy without being contested in
+the outset. But all opposition was quelled with a high hand by this
+rural Antaeus. By the ascendancy of his fortune, and his character among
+his neighbours, he always reduced his adversary to the necessity of
+encountering him at his own weapons, and did not dismiss him without
+making him feel his presumption through every joint in his frame. The
+tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently endured, had not
+his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of that authority
+which his rank and prowess originally obtained.
+
+The situation of our squire with the fair was still more enviable than
+that which he maintained among persons of his own sex. Every mother
+taught her daughter to consider the hand of Mr. Tyrrel as the highest
+object of her ambition. Every daughter regarded his athletic form and
+his acknowledged prowess with a favourable eye. A form eminently
+athletic is, perhaps, always well proportioned; and one of the
+qualifications that women are early taught to look for in the male sex,
+is that of a protector. As no man was adventurous enough to contest his
+superiority, so scarcely any woman in this provincial circle would have
+scrupled to prefer his addresses to those of any other admirer. His
+boisterous wit had peculiar charms for them; and there was no spectacle
+more flattering to their vanity, than seeing this Hercules exchange his
+club for a distaff. It was pleasing to them to consider, that the fangs
+of this wild beast, the very idea of which inspired trepidation into the
+boldest hearts, might be played with by them with the utmost security.
+
+Such was the rival that Fortune, in her caprice, had reserved for the
+accomplished Falkland. This untamed, though not undiscerning brute, was
+found capable of destroying the prospects of a man the most eminently
+qualified to enjoy and to communicate happiness. The feud that sprung up
+between them was nourished by concurring circumstances, till it attained
+a magnitude difficult to be paralleled; and, because they regarded each
+other with a deadly hatred, I have become an object of misery and
+abhorrence.
+
+The arrival of Mr. Falkland gave an alarming shock to the authority of
+Mr. Tyrrel in the village assembly and in all scenes of indiscriminate
+resort. His disposition by no means inclined him to withhold himself
+from scenes of fashionable amusement; and he and his competitor were
+like two stars fated never to appear at once above the horizon. The
+advantages Mr. Falkland possessed in the comparison are palpable; and
+had it been otherwise, the subjects of his rural neighbour were
+sufficiently disposed to revolt against his merciless dominion. They had
+hitherto submitted from fear, and not from love; and, if they had not
+rebelled, it was only for want of a leader. Even the ladies regarded Mr.
+Falkland with particular complacence. His polished manners were
+peculiarly in harmony with feminine delicacy. The sallies of his wit
+were far beyond those of Mr. Tyrrel in variety and vigour; in addition
+to which they had the advantage of having their spontaneous exuberance
+guided and restrained by the sagacity of a cultivated mind. The graces
+of his person were enhanced by the elegance of his deportment; and the
+benevolence and liberality of his temper were upon all occasions
+conspicuous. It was common indeed to Mr. Tyrrel, together with Mr.
+Falkland, to be little accessible to sentiments of awkwardness and
+confusion. But for this Mr. Tyrrel was indebted to a self-satisfied
+effrontery, and a boisterous and over-bearing elocution, by which he was
+accustomed to discomfit his assailants; while Mr. Falkland, with great
+ingenuity and candour of mind, was enabled by his extensive knowledge of
+the world, and acquaintance with his own resources, to perceive almost
+instantaneously the proceeding it most became him to adopt.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival with uneasiness and
+aversion. He often commented upon it to his particular confidents as a
+thing altogether inconceivable. Mr. Falkland he described as an animal
+that was beneath contempt. Diminutive and dwarfish in his form, he
+wanted to set up a new standard of human nature, adapted to his
+miserable condition. He wished to persuade people that the human species
+were made to be nailed to a chair, and to pore over books. He would have
+them exchange those robust exercises which make us joyous in the
+performance, and vigorous in the consequences, for the wise labour of
+scratching our heads for a rhyme and counting our fingers for a verse.
+Monkeys were as good men as these. A nation of such animals would have
+no chance with a single regiment of the old English votaries of beef and
+pudding. He never saw any thing come of learning but to make people
+foppish and impertinent; and a sensible man would not wish a worse
+calamity to the enemies of his nation, than to see them run mad after
+such pernicious absurdities. It was impossible that people could
+seriously feel any liking for such a ridiculous piece of goods as this
+outlandish foreign-made Englishman. But he knew very well how it was: it
+was a miserable piece of mummery that was played only in spite of him.
+But God for ever blast his soul, if he were not bitterly revenged upon
+them all!
+
+If such were the sentiments of Mr. Tyrrel, his patience found ample
+exercise in the language which was held by the rest of his neighbours on
+the same subject. While he saw nothing in Mr. Falkland but matter of
+contempt, they appeared to be never weary of recounting his praises.
+Such dignity, such affability, so perpetual an attention to the
+happiness of others, such delicacy of sentiment and expression! Learned
+without ostentation, refined without foppery, elegant without
+effeminacy! Perpetually anxious to prevent his superiority from being
+painfully felt, it was so much the more certainly felt to be real, and
+excited congratulation instead of envy in the spectator. It is scarcely
+necessary to remark, that the revolution of sentiment in this rural
+vicinity belongs to one of the most obvious features of the human mind.
+The rudest exhibition of art is at first admired, till a nobler is
+presented, and we are taught to wonder at the facility with which before
+we had been satisfied. Mr. Tyrrel thought there would be no end to the
+commendation; and expected when their common acquaintance would fall
+down and adore the intruder. The most inadvertent expression of applause
+inflicted upon him the torment of demons. He writhed with agony, his
+features became distorted, and his looks inspired terror. Such suffering
+would probably have soured the kindest temper; what must have been its
+effect upon Mr. Tyrrel's, always fierce, unrelenting, and abrupt?
+
+The advantages of Mr. Falkland seemed by no means to diminish with their
+novelty. Every new sufferer from Mr. Tyrrel's tyranny immediately went
+over to the standard of his adversary. The ladies, though treated by
+their rustic swain with more gentleness than the men, were occasionally
+exposed to his capriciousness and insolence. They could not help
+remarking the contrast between these two leaders in the fields of
+chivalry, the one of whom paid no attention to any one's pleasure but
+his own, while the other seemed all good-humour and benevolence. It was
+in vain that Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured to restrain the ruggedness of his
+character. His motive was impatience, his thoughts were gloomy, and his
+courtship was like the pawings of an elephant. It appeared as if his
+temper had been more human while he indulged in its free bent, than now
+that he sullenly endeavoured to put fetters upon its excesses.
+
+Among the ladies of the village-assembly already mentioned, there was
+none that seemed to engage more of the kindness of Mr. Tyrrel than Miss
+Hardingham. She was also one of the few that had not yet gone over to
+the enemy, either because she really preferred the gentleman who was her
+oldest acquaintance, or that she conceived from calculation this conduct
+best adapted to insure her success in a husband. One day, however, she
+thought proper, probably only by way of experiment, to show Mr. Tyrrel
+that she could engage in hostilities, if he should at any time give her
+sufficient provocation. She so adjusted her manoeuvres as to be engaged
+by Mr. Falkland as his partner for the dance of the evening, though
+without the smallest intention on the part of that gentleman (who was
+unpardonably deficient in the sciences of anecdote and match-making) of
+giving offence to his country neighbour. Though the manners of Mr.
+Falkland were condescending and attentive, his hours of retirement were
+principally occupied in contemplations too dignified for scandal, and
+too large for the altercations of a vestry, or the politics of an
+election-borough.
+
+A short time before the dances began, Mr. Tyrrel went up to his fair
+inamorata, and entered into some trifling conversation with her to fill
+up the time, as intending in a few minutes to lead her forward to the
+field. He had accustomed himself to neglect the ceremony of soliciting
+beforehand a promise in his favour, as not supposing it possible that
+any one would dare dispute his behests; and, had it been otherwise, he
+would have thought the formality unnecessary in this case, his general
+preference to Miss Hardingham being notorious.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Mr. Falkland came up. Mr. Tyrrel always
+regarded him with aversion and loathing. Mr. Falkland, however, slided
+in a graceful and unaffected manner into the conversation already begun;
+and the animated ingenuousness of his manner was such, as might for the
+time have disarmed the devil of his malice. Mr. Tyrrel probably
+conceived that his accosting Miss Hardingham was an accidental piece of
+general ceremony, and expected every moment when he would withdraw to
+another part of the room.
+
+The company now began to be in motion for the dance, and Mr. Falkland
+signified as much to Miss Hardingham. "Sir," interrupted Mr. Tyrrel
+abruptly, "that lady is my partner."--"I believe not, sir: that lady has
+been so obliging as to accept my invitation."--"I tell you, sir, no.
+Sir, I have an interest in that lady's affections; and I will suffer no
+man to intrude upon my claims."--"The lady's affections are not the
+subject of the present question."--"Sir, it is to no purpose to parley.
+Make room, sir!"--Mr. Falkland gently repelled his antagonist. "Mr.
+Tyrrel!" returned he, with some firmness, "let us have no altercation in
+this business: the master of the ceremonies is the proper person to
+decide in a difference of this sort, if we cannot adjust it: we can
+neither of us intend to exhibit our valour before the ladies, and shall
+therefore cheerfully submit to his verdict."--"Damn me, sir, if I
+understand--" "Softly, Mr. Tyrrel; I intended you no offence. But, sir,
+no man shall prevent my asserting that to which I have once acquired a
+claim!"
+
+Mr. Falkland uttered these words with the most unruffled temper in the
+world. The tone in which he spoke had acquired elevation, but neither
+roughness nor impatience. There was a fascination in his manner that
+made the ferociousness of his antagonist subside into impotence. Miss
+Hardingham had begun to repent of her experiment, but her alarm was
+speedily quieted by the dignified composure of her new partner. Mr.
+Tyrrel walked away without answering a word. He muttered curses as he
+went, which the laws of honour did not oblige Mr. Falkland to overhear,
+and which indeed it would have been no easy task to have overheard with
+accuracy. Mr. Tyrrel would not, perhaps, have so easily given up his
+point, had not his own good sense presently taught him, that, however
+eager he might be for revenge, this was not the ground he should desire
+to occupy. But, though he could not openly resent this rebellion against
+his authority, he brooded over it in the recesses of a malignant mind;
+and it was evident enough that he was accumulating materials for a
+bitter account, to which he trusted his adversary should one day be
+brought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+This was only one out of innumerable instances, that every day seemed to
+multiply, of petty mortifications which Mr. Tyrrel was destined to
+endure on the part of Mr. Falkland. In all of them Mr. Falkland
+conducted himself with such unaffected propriety, as perpetually to add
+to the stock of his reputation. The more Mr. Tyrrel struggled with his
+misfortune, the more conspicuous and inveterate it became. A thousand
+times he cursed his stars, which took, as he apprehended, a malicious
+pleasure in making Mr. Falkland, at every turn, the instrument of his
+humiliation. Smarting under a succession of untoward events, he
+appeared to feel, in the most exquisite manner, the distinctions paid to
+his adversary, even in those points in which he had not the slightest
+pretensions. An instance of this now occurred.
+
+Mr. Clare, a poet whose works have done immortal honour to the country
+that produced him, had lately retired, after a life spent in the
+sublimest efforts of genius, to enjoy the produce of his economy, and
+the reputation he had acquired, in this very neighbourhood. Such an
+inmate was looked up to by the country gentlemen with a degree of
+adoration. They felt a conscious pride in recollecting that the boast of
+England was a native of their vicinity; and they were by no means
+deficient in gratitude when they saw him, who had left them an
+adventurer, return into the midst of them, in the close of his days,
+crowned with honours and opulence. The reader is acquainted with his
+works: he has, probably, dwelt upon them with transport; and I need not
+remind him of their excellence: but he is, perhaps, a stranger to his
+personal qualifications; he does not know that his productions were
+scarcely more admirable than his conversation. In company he seemed to
+be the only person ignorant of the greatness of his fame. To the world
+his writings will long remain a kind of specimen of what the human mind
+is capable of performing; but no man perceived their defects so acutely
+as he, or saw so distinctly how much yet remained to be effected: he
+alone appeared to look upon his works with superiority and indifference.
+One of the features that most eminently distinguished him was a
+perpetual suavity of manners, a comprehensiveness of mind, that regarded
+the errors of others without a particle of resentment, and made it
+impossible for any one to be his enemy. He pointed out to men their
+mistakes with frankness and unreserve, his remonstrances produced
+astonishment and conviction, but without uneasiness, in the party to
+whom they were addressed: they felt the instrument that was employed to
+correct their irregularities, but it never mangled what it was intended
+to heal. Such were the moral qualities that distinguished him among his
+acquaintance. The intellectual accomplishments he exhibited were,
+principally, a tranquil and mild enthusiasm, and a richness of
+conception which dictated spontaneously to his tongue, and flowed with
+so much ease, that it was only by retrospect you could be made aware of
+the amazing variety of ideas that had been presented.
+
+Mr. Clare certainly found few men in this remote situation that were
+capable of participating in his ideas and amusements. It has been among
+the weaknesses of great men to fly to solitude, and converse with woods
+and groves, rather than with a circle of strong and comprehensive minds
+like their own. From the moment of Mr. Falkland's arrival in the
+neighbourhood, Mr. Clare distinguished him in the most flattering
+manner. To so penetrating a genius there was no need of long experience
+and patient observation to discover the merits and defects of any
+character that presented itself. The materials of his judgment had long
+since been accumulated; and, at the close of so illustrious a life, he
+might almost be said to see through nature at a glance. What wonder that
+he took some interest in a mind in a certain degree congenial with his
+own? But to Mr. Tyrrel's diseased imagination, every distinction
+bestowed on his neighbour seemed to be expressly intended as an insult
+to him. On the other hand, Mr. Clare, though gentle and benevolent in
+his remonstrances to a degree that made the taking offence impossible,
+was by no means parsimonious of praise, or slow to make use of the
+deference that was paid him, for the purpose of procuring justice to
+merit.
+
+It happened at one of those public meetings at which Mr. Falkland and
+Mr. Tyrrel were present, that the conversation, in one of the most
+numerous sets into which the company was broken, turned upon the
+poetical talents of the former. A lady, who was present, and was
+distinguished for the acuteness of her understanding, said, she had been
+favoured with a sight of a poem he had just written, entitled _An Ode to
+the Genius of Chivalry_, which appeared to her of exquisite merit. The
+curiosity of the company was immediately excited, and the lady added,
+she had a copy in her pocket, which was much at their service, provided
+its being thus produced would not be disagreeable to the author. The
+whole circle immediately entreated Mr. Falkland to comply with their
+wishes, and Mr. Clare, who was one of the company, enforced their
+petition. Nothing gave this gentleman so much pleasure as to have an
+opportunity of witnessing and doing justice to the exhibition of
+intellectual excellence. Mr. Falkland had no false modesty or
+affectation, and therefore readily yielded his consent.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel accidentally sat at the extremity of this circle. It cannot
+be supposed that the turn the conversation had taken was by any means
+agreeable to him. He appeared to wish to withdraw himself, but there
+seemed to be some unknown power that, as it were by enchantment,
+retained him in his place, and made him consent to drink to the dregs
+the bitter potion which envy had prepared for him.
+
+The poem was read to the rest of the company by Mr. Clare, whose
+elocution was scarcely inferior to his other accomplishments.
+Simplicity, discrimination, and energy constantly attended him in the
+act of reading, and it is not easy to conceive a more refined delight
+than fell to the lot of those who had the good fortune to be his
+auditors. The beauties of Mr. Falkland's poem were accordingly exhibited
+with every advantage. The successive passions of the author were
+communicated to the hearer. What was impetuous, and what was solemn,
+were delivered with a responsive feeling, and a flowing and unlaboured
+tone. The pictures conjured up by the creative fancy of the poet were
+placed full to view, at one time overwhelming the soul with
+superstitious awe, and at another transporting it with luxuriant beauty.
+
+The character of the hearers upon this occasion has already been
+described. They were, for the most part, plain, unlettered, and of
+little refinement. Poetry in general they read, when read at all, from
+the mere force of imitation, and with few sensations of pleasure; but
+this poem had a peculiar vein of glowing inspiration. This very poem
+would probably have been seen by many of them with little effect; but
+the accents of Mr. Clare carried it home to the heart. He ended: and, as
+the countenances of his auditors had before sympathised with the
+passions of the composition, so now they emulated each other in
+declaring their approbation. Their sensations were of a sort to which
+they were little accustomed. One spoke, and another followed by a sort
+of uncontrollable impulse; and the rude and broken manner of their
+commendations rendered them the more singular and remarkable. But what
+was least to be endured was the behaviour of Mr. Clare. He returned the
+manuscript to the lady from whom he had received it, and then,
+addressing Mr. Falkland, said with emphasis and animation, "Ha! this is
+as it should be. It is of the right stamp. I have seen too many hard
+essays strained from the labour of a pedant, and pastoral ditties
+distressed in lack of a meaning. They are such as you sir, that we want.
+Do not forget, however, that the Muse was not given to add refinements
+to idleness, but for the highest and most invaluable purposes. Act up to
+the magnitude of your destiny."
+
+A moment after, Mr. Clare quitted his seat, and with Mr. Falkland and
+two or three more withdrew. As soon as they were gone, Mr. Tyrrel edged
+further into the circle. He had sat silent so long that he seemed ready
+to burst with gall and indignation. "Mighty pretty verses!" said he,
+half talking to himself, and not addressing any particular person: "why,
+ay, the verses are well enough. Damnation! I should like to know what a
+ship-load of such stuff is good for."
+
+"Why, surely," said the lady who had introduced Mr. Falkland's Ode on
+the present occasion, "you must allow that poetry is an agreeable and
+elegant amusement."
+
+"Elegant, quotha!--Why, look at this Falkland! A puny bit of a thing! In
+the devil's name, madam, do you think he would write poetry if he could
+do any thing better?"
+
+The conversation did not stop here. The lady expostulated. Several other
+persons, fresh from the sensation they had felt, contributed their
+share. Mr. Tyrrel grew more violent in his invectives, and found ease in
+uttering them. The persons who were able in any degree to check his
+vehemence were withdrawn. One speaker after another shrunk back into
+silence, too timid to oppose, or too indolent to contend with, the
+fierceness of his passion. He found the appearance of his old
+ascendancy; but he felt its deceitfulness and uncertainty, and was
+gloomily dissatisfied.
+
+In his return from this assembly he was accompanied by a young man,
+whom similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents,
+and whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have
+thought that Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the
+dialogue he had just been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his
+recollection the anguish he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What
+a pitiful scoundrel is here to make all this bustle about! But women and
+fools always will be fools; there is no help for that! Those that set
+them on have most to answer for; and most of all, Mr. Clare. He is a man
+that ought to know something of the world, and past being duped by
+gewgaws and tinsel. He seemed, too, to have some notion of things: I
+should not have suspected him of hallooing to a cry of mongrels without
+honesty or reason. But the world is all alike. Those that seem better
+than their neighbours, are only more artful. They mean the same thing,
+though they take a different road. He deceived me for a while, but it is
+all out now. They are the makers of the mischief. Fools might blunder,
+but they would not persist, if people that ought to set them right did
+not encourage them to go wrong."
+
+A few days after this adventure Mr. Tyrrel was surprised to receive a
+visit from Mr. Falkland. Mr. Falkland proceeded, without ceremony, to
+explain the motive of his coming.
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, "I am come to have an amicable explanation with
+you."
+
+"Explanation! What is my offence?"
+
+"None in the world, sir; and for that reason I conceive this the fittest
+time to come to a right understanding."
+
+"You are in a devil of a hurry, sir. Are you clear that this haste will
+not mar, instead of make an understanding?"
+
+"I think I am, sir. I have great faith in the purity of my intentions,
+and I will not doubt, when you perceive the view with which I come, that
+you will willingly co-operate with it."
+
+"Mayhap, Mr. Falkland, we may not agree about that. One man thinks one
+way, and another man thinks another. Mayhap I do not think I have any
+great reason to be pleased with you already."
+
+"It may be so. I cannot, however, charge myself with having given you
+reason to be displeased."
+
+"Well, sir, you have no right to put me out of humour with myself. If
+you come to play upon me, and try what sort of a fellow you shall have
+to deal with, damn me if you shall have any reason to hug yourself upon
+the experiment."
+
+"Nothing, sir, is more easy for us than to quarrel. If you desire that,
+there is no fear that you will find opportunities."
+
+"Damn me, sir, if I do not believe you are come to bully me."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel! sir--have a care!"
+
+"Of what, sir!--Do you threaten me? Damn my soul! who are you? what do
+you come here for?"
+
+The fieriness of Mr. Tyrrel brought Mr. Falkland to his recollection.
+
+"I am wrong," said he. "I confess it. I came for purposes of peace. With
+that view I have taken the liberty to visit you. Whatever therefore
+might be my feelings upon another occasion, I am bound to suppress them
+now."
+
+"Ho!--Well, sir: and what have you further to offer?"
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," proceeded Mr. Falkland, "you will readily imagine that
+the cause that brought me was not a slight one. I would not have
+troubled you with a visit, but for important reasons. My coming is a
+pledge how deeply I am myself impressed with what I have to communicate.
+
+"We are in a critical situation. We are upon the brink of a whirlpool
+which, if once it get hold of us, will render all further deliberation
+impotent. An unfortunate jealousy seems to have insinuated itself
+between us, which I would willingly remove; and I come to ask your
+assistance. We are both of us nice of temper; we are both apt to kindle,
+and warm of resentment. Precaution in this stage can be dishonourable to
+neither; the time may come when we shall wish we had employed it, and
+find it too late. Why should we be enemies? Our tastes are different;
+our pursuits need not interfere. We both of us amply possess the means
+of happiness; We may be respected by all, and spend a long life of
+tranquillity and enjoyment. Will it be wise in us to exchange this
+prospect for the fruits of strife? A strife between persons with our
+peculiarities and our weaknesses, includes consequences that I shudder
+to think of. I fear, sir, that it is pregnant with death at least to one
+of us, and with misfortune and remorse to the survivor."
+
+"Upon my soul, you are a strange man! Why trouble me with your
+prophecies and forebodings?"
+
+"Because it is necessary to your happiness! Because it becomes me to
+tell you of our danger now, rather than wait till my character will
+allow this tranquillity no longer!
+
+"By quarrelling we shall but imitate the great mass of mankind, who
+could easily quarrel in our place. Let us do better. Let us show that we
+have the magnanimity to contemn petty misunderstandings. By thus
+judging we shall do ourselves most substantial honour. By a contrary
+conduct we shall merely present a comedy for the amusement of our
+acquaintance."
+
+"Do you think so? there may be something in that. Damn me, if I consent
+to be the jest of any man living."
+
+"You are right, Mr. Tyrrel. Let us each act in the manner best
+calculated to excite respect. We neither of us wish to change roads; let
+us each suffer the other to pursue his own track unmolested. Be this our
+compact; and by mutual forbearance let us preserve mutual peace."
+
+Saying this, Mr. Falkland offered his hand to Mr. Tyrrel in token of
+fellowship. But the gesture was too significant. The wayward rustic, who
+seemed to have been somewhat impressed by what had preceded, taken as he
+now was by surprise, shrunk back. Mr. Falkland was again ready to take
+fire upon this new slight, but he checked himself.
+
+"All this is very unaccountable," cried Mr. Tyrrel. "What the devil can
+have made you so forward, if you had not some sly purpose to answer, by
+which I am to be overreached?"
+
+"My purpose," replied Mr. Falkland, "is a manly and an honest purpose.
+Why should you refuse a proposition dictated by reason, and an equal
+regard to the interest of each?"
+
+Mr. Tyrrel had had an opportunity for pause, and fell back into his
+habitual character.
+
+"Well, sir, in all this I must own there is some frankness. Now I will
+return you like for like. It is no matter how I came by it, my temper is
+rough, and will not be controlled. Mayhap you may think it is a
+weakness, but I do not desire to see it altered. Till you came, I found
+myself very well: I liked my neighbours, and my neighbours humoured me.
+But now the case is entirely altered; and, as long as I cannot stir
+abroad without meeting with some mortification in which you are directly
+or remotely concerned, I am determined to hate you. Now, sir, if you
+will only go out of the county or the kingdom, to the devil if you
+please, so as I may never hear of you any more, I will promise never to
+quarrel with you as long as I live. Your rhymes and your rebusses, your
+quirks and your conundrums, may then be every thing that is grand for
+what I care."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, be reasonable! Might not I as well desire you to leave the
+county, as you desire me? I come to you, not as to a master, but an
+equal. In the society of men we must have something to endure, as well
+as to enjoy. No man must think that the world was made for him. Let us
+take things as we find them; and accommodate ourselves as we can to
+unavoidable circumstances."
+
+"True, sir; all this is fine talking. But I return to my text: we are as
+God made us. I am neither a philosopher nor a poet, to set out upon a
+wild-goose chase of making myself a different man from what you find me.
+As for consequences, what must be must be. As we brew we must bake. And
+so, do you see? I shall not trouble myself about what is to be, but
+stand up to it with a stout heart when it comes. Only this I can tell
+you, that as long as I find you thrust into my dish every day I shall
+hate you as bad as senna and valerian. And damn me, if I do not think I
+hate you the more for coming to-day in this pragmatical way, when nobody
+sent for you, on purpose to show how much wiser you are than all the
+world besides."
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, I have done. I foresaw consequences, and came as a friend.
+I had hoped that, by mutual explanation, we should have come to a better
+understanding. I am disappointed; but, perhaps, when you coolly reflect
+on what has passed, you will give me credit for my intentions, and think
+that my proposal was not an unreasonable one."
+
+Having said this, Mr. Falkland departed. Through the interview he, no
+doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the
+warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he
+was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that
+was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he
+suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent.
+The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it
+unquestionably served to widen the breach it was intended to heal.
+
+For Mr. Tyrrel, he had recourse to his old expedient, and unburthened
+the tumult of his thoughts to his confidential friend. "This," cried he,
+"is a new artifice of the fellow, to prove his imagined superiority. We
+knew well enough that he had the gift of the gab. To be sure, if the
+world were to be governed by words, he would be in the right box. Oh,
+yes, he had it all hollow! But what signifies prating? Business must be
+done in another guess way than that. I wonder what possessed me that I
+did not kick him! But that is all to come. This is only a new debt
+added to the score, which he shall one day richly pay. This Falkland
+haunts me like a demon. I cannot wake but I think of him. I cannot sleep
+but I see him. He poisons all my pleasures. I should be glad to see him
+torn with tenter-hooks, and to grind his heart-strings with my teeth. I
+shall know no joy till I see him ruined. There may be some things right
+about him; but he is my perpetual torment. The thought of him hangs
+like a dead weight upon my heart, and I have a right to shake it off.
+Does he think I will feel all that I endure for nothing?"
+
+In spite of the acerbity of Mr. Tyrrel's feelings, it is probable,
+however, he did some justice to his rival. He regarded him, indeed, with
+added dislike; but he no longer regarded him as a despicable foe. He
+avoided his encounter; he forbore to treat him with random hostility; he
+seemed to lie in wait for his victim, and to collect his venom for a
+mortal assault.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+It was not long after that a malignant distemper broke out in the
+neighbourhood, which proved fatal to many of the inhabitants, and was of
+unexampled rapidity in its effects. One of the first persons that was
+seized with it was Mr. Clare. It may be conceived, what grief and alarm
+this incident spread through the vicinity. Mr. Clare was considered by
+them as something more than mortal. The equanimity of his behaviour, his
+unassuming carriage, his exuberant benevolence and goodness of heart,
+joined with his talents, his inoffensive wit, and the comprehensiveness
+of his intelligence, made him the idol of all that knew him. In the
+scene of his rural retreat, at least, he had no enemy. All mourned the
+danger that now threatened him. He appeared to have had the prospect of
+long life, and of going down to his grave full of years and of honour.
+Perhaps these appearances were deceitful. Perhaps the intellectual
+efforts he had made, which were occasionally more sudden, violent, and
+unintermitted, than a strict regard to health would have dictated, had
+laid the seed of future disease. But a sanguine observer would
+infallibly have predicted, that his temperate habits, activity of mind,
+and unabated cheerfulness, would be able even to keep death at bay for a
+time, and baffle the attacks of distemper, provided their approach were
+not uncommonly rapid and violent. The general affliction, therefore, was
+doubly pungent upon the present occasion.
+
+But no one was so much affected as Mr. Falkland. Perhaps no man so well
+understood the value of the life that was now at stake. He immediately
+hastened to the spot; but he found some difficulty in gaining admission.
+Mr. Clare, aware of the infectious nature of his disease, had given
+directions that as few persons as possible should approach him. Mr.
+Falkland sent up his name. He was told that he was included in the
+general orders. He was not, however, of a temper to be easily repulsed;
+he persisted with obstinacy, and at length carried his point, being only
+reminded in the first instance to employ those precautions which
+experience has proved most effectual for counteracting infection.
+
+He found Mr. Clare in his bed-chamber, but not in bed. He was sitting in
+his night-gown at a bureau near the window. His appearance was composed
+and cheerful, but death was in his countenance. "I had a great
+inclination, Falkland," said he, "not to have suffered you to come in;
+and yet there is not a person in the world it could give me more
+pleasure to see. But, upon second thoughts, I believe there are few
+people that could run into a danger of this kind with a better prospect
+of escaping. In your case, at least, the garrison will not, I trust, be
+taken through the treachery of the commander. I cannot tell how it is
+that I, who can preach wisdom to you, have myself been caught. But do
+not be discouraged by my example. I had no notice of my danger, or I
+would have acquitted myself better."
+
+Mr. Falkland having once established himself in the apartment of his
+friend, would upon no terms consent to retire. Mr. Clare considered that
+there was perhaps less danger in this choice, than in the frequent
+change from the extremes of a pure to a tainted air, and desisted from
+expostulation. "Falkland," said he, "when you came in, I had just
+finished making my will. I was not pleased with what I had formerly
+drawn up upon that subject, and I did not choose in my present situation
+to call in an attorney. In fact, it would be strange if a man of sense,
+with pure and direct intentions, should not be able to perform such a
+function for himself."
+
+Mr. Clare continued to act in the same easy and disengaged manner as in
+perfect health. To judge from the cheerfulness of his tone and the
+firmness of his manner, the thought would never once have occurred that
+he was dying. He walked, he reasoned, he jested, in a way that argued
+the most perfect self-possession. But his appearance changed perceptibly
+for the worse every quarter of an hour. Mr. Falkland kept his eye
+perpetually fixed upon him, with mingled sentiments of anxiety and
+admiration.
+
+"Falkland," said he, after having appeared for a short period absorbed
+in thought, "I feel that I am dying. This is a strange distemper of
+mine. Yesterday I seemed in perfect health, and to-morrow I shall be an
+insensible corpse. How curious is the line that separates life and death
+to mortal men! To be at one moment active, gay, penetrating, with stores
+of knowledge at one's command, capable of delighting, instructing, and
+animating mankind, and the next, lifeless and loathsome, an incumbrance
+upon the face of the earth! Such is the history of many men, and such
+will be mine.
+
+"I feel as if I had yet much to do in the world; but it will not be. I
+must be contented with what is past. It is in vain that I muster all my
+spirits to my heart. The enemy is too mighty and too merciless for me;
+he will not give me time so much as to breathe. These things are not yet
+at least in our power: they are parts of a great series that is
+perpetually flowing. The general welfare, the great business of the
+universe, will go on, though I bear no further share in promoting it.
+That task is reserved for younger strengths, for you, Falkland, and such
+as you. We should be contemptible indeed if the prospect of human
+improvement did not yield us a pure and perfect delight, independently
+of the question of our existing to partake of it. Mankind would have
+little to envy to future ages, if they had all enjoyed a serenity as
+perfect as mine has been for the latter half of my existence."
+
+Mr. Clare sat up through the whole day, indulging himself in easy and
+cheerful exertions, which were perhaps better calculated to refresh and
+invigorate the frame, than if he had sought repose in its direct form.
+Now and then he was visited with a sudden pang; but it was no sooner
+felt, than he seemed to rise above it, and smiled at the impotence of
+these attacks. They might destroy him, but they could not disturb. Three
+or four times he was bedewed with profuse sweats; and these again were
+succeeded by an extreme dryness and burning heat of the skin. He was
+next covered with small livid spots: symptoms of shivering followed, but
+these he drove away with a determined resolution. He then became
+tranquil and composed, and, after some time, decided to go to bed, it
+being already night. "Falkland," said he, pressing his hand, "the task
+of dying is not so difficult as some imagine. When one looks back from
+the brink of it, one wonders that so total a subversion can take place
+at so easy a price."
+
+He had now been some time in bed, and, as every thing was still, Mr.
+Falkland hoped that he slept; but in that he was mistaken. Presently Mr.
+Clare threw back the curtain, and looked in the countenance of his
+friend. "I cannot sleep," said he. "No, if I could sleep, it would be
+the same thing as to recover; and I am destined to have the worst in
+this battle.
+
+"Falkland, I have been thinking about you. I do not know any one whose
+future usefulness I contemplate with greater hope. Take care of
+yourself. Do not let the world be defrauded of your virtues. I am
+acquainted with your weakness as well as your strength. You have an
+impetuosity, and an impatience of imagined dishonour, that, if once set
+wrong, may make you as eminently mischievous as you will otherwise be
+useful. Think seriously of exterminating this error!
+
+"But if I cannot, in the brief expostulation my present situation will
+allow, produce this desirable change in you, there is at least one thing
+I can do. I can put you upon your guard against a mischief I foresee to
+be imminent. Beware of Mr. Tyrrel. Do not commit the mistake of
+despising him as an unequal opponent. Petty causes may produce great
+mischiefs. Mr. Tyrrel is boisterous, rugged, and unfeeling; and you are
+too passionate, too acutely sensible of injury. It would be truly to be
+lamented, if a man so inferior, so utterly unworthy to be compared with
+you, should be capable of changing your whole history into misery and
+guilt. I have a painful presentiment upon my heart, as if something
+dreadful would reach you from that quarter. Think of this. I exact no
+promise from you. I would not shackle you with the fetters of
+superstition; I would have you governed by justice and reason."
+
+Mr. Falkland was deeply affected with this expostulation. His sense of
+the generous attention of Mr. Clare at such a moment, was so great as
+almost to deprive him of utterance. He spoke in short sentences, and
+with visible effort. "I will behave better," replied he. "Never fear me!
+Your admonitions shall not be thrown away upon me."
+
+Mr. Clare adverted to another subject. "I have made you my executor; you
+will not refuse me this last office of friendship. It is but a short
+time that I have had the happiness of knowing you; but in that short
+time I have examined you well, and seen you thoroughly. Do not
+disappoint the sanguine hope I have entertained!
+
+"I have left some legacies. My former connections, while I lived amidst
+the busy haunts of men, as many of them as were intimate, are all of
+them dear to me. I have not had time to summon them about me upon the
+present occasion, nor did I desire it. The remembrances of me will, I
+hope, answer a better purpose than such as are usually thought of on
+similar occasions."
+
+Mr. Clare, having thus unburthened his mind, spoke no more for several
+hours. Towards morning Mr. Falkland quietly withdrew the curtain, and
+looked at the dying man. His eyes were open, and were now gently turned
+towards his young friend. His countenance was sunk, and of a death-like
+appearance. "I hope you are better," said Falkland in a half whisper, as
+if afraid of disturbing him. Mr. Clare drew his hand from the
+bed-clothes, and stretched it forward; Mr. Falkland advanced, and took
+hold of it. "Much better," said Mr. Clare, in a voice inward and hardly
+articulate; "the struggle is now over; I have finished my part;
+farewell! remember!" These were his last words. He lived still a few
+hours; his lips were sometimes seen to move; he expired without a groan.
+
+Mr. Falkland had witnessed the scene with much anxiety. His hopes of a
+favourable crisis, and his fear of disturbing the last moments of his
+friend, had held him dumb. For the last half hour he had stood up, with
+his eyes intently fixed upon Mr. Clare. He witnessed the last gasp, the
+last little convulsive motion of the frame. He continued to look; he
+sometimes imagined that he saw life renewed. At length he could deceive
+himself no longer, and exclaimed with a distracted accent, "And is this
+all?" He would have thrown himself upon the body of his friend; the
+attendants withheld, and would have forced him into another apartment.
+But he struggled from them, and hung fondly over the bed. "Is this the
+end of genius, virtue, and excellence? Is the luminary of the world thus
+for ever gone? Oh, yesterday! yesterday! Clare, why could not I have
+died in your stead? Dreadful moment! Irreparable loss! Lost in the very
+maturity and vigour of his mind! Cut off from a usefulness ten thousand
+times greater than any he had already exhibited! Oh, his was a mind to
+have instructed sages, and guided the moral world! This is all we have
+left of him! The eloquence of those lips is gone! The incessant activity
+of that heart is still! The best and wisest of men is gone, and the
+world is insensible of its loss!"
+
+Mr. Tyrrel heard the intelligence of Mr. Clare's death with emotion, but
+of a different kind. He avowed that he had not forgiven him his partial
+attachment to Mr. Falkland, and therefore could not recall his
+remembrance with kindness. But if he could have overlooked his past
+injustice, sufficient care, it seems, was taken to keep alive his
+resentment. "Falkland, forsooth, attended him on his death-bed, as if
+nobody else were worthy of his confidential communications." But what
+was worst of all was this executorship. "In every thing this pragmatical
+rascal throws me behind. Contemptible wretch, that has nothing of the
+man about him! Must he perpetually trample upon his betters? Is every
+body incapable of saying what kind of stuff a man is made of? caught
+with mere outside? choosing the flimsy before the substantial? And upon
+his death-bed too? [Mr. Tyrrel with his uncultivated brutality mixed, as
+usually happens, certain rude notions of religion.] Sure the sense of
+his situation might have shamed him. Poor wretch! his soul has a great
+deal to answer for. He has made my pillow uneasy; and, whatever may be
+the consequences, it is he we have to thank for them."
+
+The death of Mr. Clare removed the person who could most effectually
+have moderated the animosities of the contending parties, and took away
+the great operative check upon the excesses of Mr. Tyrrel. This rustic
+tyrant had been held in involuntary restraint by the intellectual
+ascendancy of his celebrated neighbour: and, notwithstanding the general
+ferocity of his temper, he did not appear till lately to have
+entertained a hatred against him. In the short time that had elapsed
+from the period in which Mr. Clare had fixed his residence in the
+neighbourhood, to that of the arrival of Mr. Falkland from the
+Continent, the conduct of Mr. Tyrrel had even shown tokens of
+improvement. He would indeed have been better satisfied not to have had
+even this intruder into a circle where he had been accustomed to reign.
+But with Mr. Clare he could have no rivalship; the venerable character
+of Mr. Clare disposed him to submission: this great man seemed to have
+survived all the acrimony of contention, and all the jealous subtleties
+of a mistaken honour.
+
+The effects of Mr. Clare's suavity however, so far as related to Mr.
+Tyrrel, had been in a certain degree suspended by considerations of
+rivalship between this gentleman and Mr. Falkland. And, now that the
+influence of Mr. Clare's presence and virtues was entirely removed, Mr.
+Tyrrel's temper broke out into more criminal excesses than ever. The
+added gloom which Mr. Falkland's neighbourhood inspired, overflowed upon
+all his connections; and the new examples of his sullenness and tyranny
+which every day afforded, reflected back upon this accumulated and
+portentous feud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The consequences of all this speedily manifested themselves. The very
+next incident in the story was in some degree decisive of the
+catastrophe. Hitherto I have spoken only of preliminary matters,
+seemingly unconnected with each other, though leading to that state of
+mind in both parties which had such fatal effects. But all that remains
+is rapid and tremendous. The death-dealing mischief advances with an
+accelerated motion, appearing to defy human wisdom and strength to
+obstruct its operation.
+
+The vices of Mr. Tyrrel, in their present state of augmentation, were
+peculiarly exercised upon his domestics and dependents. But the
+principal sufferer was the young lady mentioned on a former occasion,
+the orphan daughter of his father's sister. Miss Melville's mother had
+married imprudently, or rather unfortunately, against the consent of her
+relations, all of whom had agreed to withdraw their countenance from her
+in consequence of that precipitate step. Her husband had turned out to
+be no better than an adventurer; had spent her fortune, which in
+consequence of the irreconcilableness of her family was less than he
+expected, and had broken her heart. Her infant daughter was left without
+any resource. In this situation the representations of the people with
+whom she happened to be placed, prevailed upon Mrs. Tyrrel, the mother
+of the squire, to receive her into her family. In equity, perhaps, she
+was entitled to that portion of fortune which her mother had forfeited
+by her imprudence, and which had gone to swell the property of the male
+representative. But this idea had never entered into the conceptions of
+either mother or son. Mrs. Tyrrel conceived that she performed an act of
+the most exalted benevolence in admitting Miss Emily into a sort of
+equivocal situation, which was neither precisely that of a domestic, nor
+yet marked with the treatment that might seem due to one of the family.
+
+She had not, however, at first been sensible of all the mortifications
+that might have been expected from her condition. Mrs. Tyrrel, though
+proud and imperious, was not ill-natured. The female, who lived in the
+family in the capacity of housekeeper, was a person who had seen better
+days, and whose disposition was extremely upright and amiable. She early
+contracted a friendship for the little Emily, who was indeed for the
+most part committed to her care. Emily, on her side, fully repaid the
+affection of her instructress, and learned with great docility the few
+accomplishments Mrs. Jakeman was able to communicate. But most of all
+she imbibed her cheerful and artless temper, that extracted the
+agreeable and encouraging from all events, and prompted her to
+communicate her sentiments, which were never of the cynical cast,
+without modification or disguise. Besides the advantages Emily derived
+from Mrs. Jakeman, she was permitted to take lessons from the masters
+who were employed at Tyrrel Place for the instruction of her cousin; and
+indeed, as the young gentleman was most frequently indisposed to attend
+to them, they would commonly have had nothing to do, had it not been for
+the fortunate presence of Miss Melville. Mrs. Tyrrel therefore
+encouraged the studies of Emily on that score; in addition to which she
+imagined that this living exhibition of instruction might operate as an
+indirect allurement to her darling Barnabas, the only species of motive
+she would suffer to be presented. Force she absolutely forbade; and of
+the intrinsic allurements of literature and knowledge she had no
+conception.
+
+Emily, as she grew up, displayed an uncommon degree of sensibility,
+which under her circumstances would have been a source of perpetual
+dissatisfaction, had it not been qualified with an extreme sweetness and
+easiness of temper. She was far from being entitled to the appellation
+of a beauty. Her person was _petite_ and trivial; her complexion
+savoured of the _brunette_; and her face was marked with the small-pox,
+sufficiently to destroy its evenness and polish, though not enough to
+destroy its expression. But, though her appearance was not beautiful, it
+did not fail to be in a high degree engaging. Her complexion was at once
+healthful and delicate; her long dark eye-brows adapted themselves with
+facility to the various conceptions of her mind; and her looks bore the
+united impression of an active discernment and a good-humoured
+frankness. The instruction she had received, as it was entirely of a
+casual nature, exempted her from the evils of untutored ignorance, but
+not from a sort of native wildness, arguing a mind incapable of guile
+itself, or of suspecting it in others. She amused, without seeming
+conscious of the refined sense which her observations contained; or
+rather, having never been debauched with applause, she set light by her
+own qualifications, and talked from the pure gaiety of a youthful heart
+acting upon the stores of a just understanding, and not with any
+expectation of being distinguished and admired.
+
+The death of her aunt made very little change in her situation. This
+prudent lady, who would have thought it little less than sacrilege to
+have considered Miss Melville as a branch of the stock of the Tyrrels,
+took no more notice of her in her will than barely putting her down for
+one hundred pounds in a catalogue of legacies to her servants. She had
+never been admitted into the intimacy and confidence of Mrs. Tyrrel; and
+the young squire, now that she was left under his sole protection,
+seemed inclined to treat her with even more liberality than his mother
+had done. He had seen her grow up under his eye, and therefore, though
+there were but six years difference in their ages, he felt a kind of
+paternal interest in her welfare. Habit had rendered her in a manner
+necessary to him, and, in every recess from the occupations of the field
+and the pleasures of the table, he found himself solitary and forlorn
+without the society of Miss Melville. Nearness of kindred, and Emily's
+want of personal beauty, prevented him from ever looking on her with the
+eyes of desire. Her accomplishments were chiefly of the customary and
+superficial kind, dancing and music. Her skill in the first led him
+sometimes to indulge her with a vacant corner in his carriage, when he
+went to the neighbouring assembly; and, in whatever light he might
+himself think proper to regard her, he would have imagined his
+chambermaid, introduced by him, entitled to an undoubted place in the
+most splendid circle. Her musical talents were frequently employed for
+his amusement. She had the honour occasionally of playing him to sleep
+after the fatigues of the chase; and, as he had some relish for
+harmonious sounds, she was frequently able to soothe him by their means
+from the perturbations of which his gloomy disposition was so eminently
+a slave. Upon the whole, she might be considered as in some sort his
+favourite. She was the mediator to whom his tenants and domestics, when
+they had incurred his displeasure, were accustomed to apply; the
+privileged companion, that could approach this lion with impunity in the
+midst of his roarings. She spoke to him without fear; her solicitations
+were always good-natured and disinterested; and when he repulsed her, he
+disarmed himself of half his terrors, and was contented to smile at her
+presumption.
+
+Such had been for some years the situation of Miss Melville. Its
+precariousness had been beguiled by the uncommon forbearance with which
+she was treated by her savage protector. But his disposition, always
+brutal, had acquired a gradual accession of ferocity since the
+settlement of Mr. Falkland in his neighbourhood. He now frequently
+forgot the gentleness with which he had been accustomed to treat his
+good-natured cousin. Her little playful arts were not always successful
+in softening his rage; and he would sometimes turn upon her
+blandishments with an impatient sternness that made her tremble. The
+careless ease of her disposition, however, soon effaced these
+impressions, and she fell without variation into her old habits.
+
+A circumstance occurred about this time which gave peculiar strength to
+the acrimony of Mr. Tyrrel, and ultimately brought to its close the
+felicity that Miss Melville, in spite of the frowns of fortune, had
+hitherto enjoyed. Emily was exactly seventeen when Mr. Falkland returned
+from the continent. At this age she was peculiarly susceptible of the
+charms of beauty, grace, and moral excellence, when united in a person
+of the other sex. She was imprudent, precisely because her own heart was
+incapable of guile. She had never yet felt the sting of the poverty to
+which she was condemned, and had not reflected on the insuperable
+distance that custom has placed between the opulent and the poorer
+classes of the community. She beheld Mr. Falkland, whenever he was
+thrown in her way at any of the public meetings, with admiration; and,
+without having precisely explained to herself the sentiments she
+indulged, her eyes followed him through all the changes of the scene,
+with eagerness and impatience. She did not see him, as the rest of the
+assembly did, born to one of the amplest estates in the county, and
+qualified to assert his title to the richest heiress. She thought only
+of Falkland, with those advantages which were most intimately his own,
+and of which no persecution of adverse fortune had the ability to
+deprive him. In a word, she was transported when he was present; he was
+the perpetual subject of her reveries and her dreams; but his image
+excited no sentiment in her mind beyond that of the immediate pleasure
+she took in his idea.
+
+The notice Mr. Falkland bestowed on her in return, appeared sufficiently
+encouraging to a mind so full of prepossession as that of Emily. There
+was a particular complacency in his looks when directed towards her. He
+had said in a company, of which one of the persons present repeated his
+remarks to Miss Melville, that she appeared to him amiable and
+interesting; that he felt for her unprovided and destitute situation;
+and that he should have been glad to be more particular in his attention
+to her, had he not been apprehensive of doing her a prejudice in the
+suspicious mind of Mr. Tyrrel. All this she considered as the ravishing
+condescension of a superior nature; for, if she did not recollect with
+sufficient assiduity his gifts of fortune, she was, on the other hand,
+filled with reverence for his unrivalled accomplishments. But, while she
+thus seemingly disclaimed all comparison between Mr. Falkland and
+herself, she probably cherished a confused feeling as if some event,
+that was yet in the womb of fate, might reconcile things apparently the
+most incompatible. Fraught with these prepossessions, the civilities
+that had once or twice occurred in the bustle of a public circle, the
+restoring her fan which she had dropped, or the disembarrassing her of
+an empty tea-cup, made her heart palpitate, and gave birth to the
+wildest chimeras in her deluded imagination.
+
+About this time an event happened, that helped to give a precise
+determination to the fluctuations of Miss Melville's mind. One evening,
+a short time after the death of Mr. Clare, Mr. Falkland had been at the
+house of his deceased friend in his quality of executor, and, by some
+accidents of little intrinsic importance, had been detained three or
+four hours later than he expected. He did not set out upon his return
+till two o'clock in the morning. At this time, in a situation so remote
+from the metropolis, every thing is as silent as it would be in a
+region wholly uninhabited. The moon shone bright; and the objects around
+being marked with strong variations of light and shade, gave a kind of
+sacred solemnity to the scene. Mr. Falkland had taken Collins with him,
+the business to be settled at Mr. Clare's being in some respects similar
+to that to which this faithful domestic had been accustomed in the
+routine of his ordinary service. They had entered into some
+conversation, for Mr. Falkland was not then in the habit of obliging the
+persons about him by formality and reserve to recollect who he was. The
+attractive solemnity of the scene made him break off the talk somewhat
+abruptly, that he might enjoy it without interruption. They had not
+ridden far, before a hollow wind seemed to rise at a distance, and they
+could hear the hoarse roarings of the sea. Presently the sky on one side
+assumed the appearance of a reddish brown, and a sudden angle in the
+road placed this phenomenon directly before them. As they proceeded, it
+became more distinct, and it was at length sufficiently visible that it
+was occasioned by a fire. Mr. Falkland put spurs to his horse; and, as
+they approached, the object presented every instant a more alarming
+appearance. The flames ascended with fierceness; they embraced a large
+portion of the horizon; and, as they carried up with them numerous
+little fragments of the materials that fed them, impregnated with fire,
+and of an extremely bright and luminous colour, they presented some
+feeble image of the tremendous eruption of a volcano.
+
+The flames proceeded from a village directly in their road. There were
+eight or ten houses already on fire, and the whole seemed to be
+threatened with immediate destruction. The inhabitants were in the
+utmost consternation, having had no previous experience of a similar
+calamity. They conveyed with haste their moveables and furniture into
+the adjoining fields. When any of them had effected this as far as it
+could be attempted with safety, they were unable to conceive any further
+remedy, but stood wringing their hands, and contemplating the ravages of
+the fire in an agony of powerless despair. The water that could be
+procured, in any mode practised in that place, was but as a drop
+contending with an element in arms. The wind in the mean time was
+rising, and the flames spread with more and more rapidity.
+
+Mr. Falkland contemplated this scene for a few moments, as if ruminating
+with himself as to what could be done. He then directed some of the
+country people about him to pull down a house, next to one that was
+wholly on fire, but which itself was yet untouched. They seemed
+astonished at a direction which implied a voluntary destruction of
+property, and considered the task as too much in the heart of the danger
+to be undertaken. Observing that they were motionless, he dismounted
+from his horse, and called upon them in an authoritative voice to follow
+him. He ascended the house in an instant, and presently appeared upon
+the top of it, as if in the midst of the flames. Having, with the
+assistance of two or three of the persons that followed him most
+closely, and who by this time had supplied themselves with whatever
+tools came next to hand, loosened the support of a stack of chimneys, he
+pushed them headlong into the midst of the fire. He passed and repassed
+along the roof; and, having set people to work in all parts, descended
+in order to see what could be done in any other quarter. At this moment
+an elderly woman burst from the midst of a house in flames: the utmost
+consternation was painted in her looks; and, as soon as she could
+recollect herself enough to have a proper idea of her situation, the
+subject of her anxiety seemed, in an instant, to be totally changed.
+"Where is my child?" cried she, and cast an anxious and piercing look
+among the surrounding crowd. "Oh, she is lost! she is in the midst of
+flames! Save her! save her! my child!" She filled the air with
+heart-rending shrieks. She turned towards the house. The people that
+were near endeavoured to prevent her, but she shook them off in a
+moment. She entered the passage; viewed the hideous ruin; and was then
+going to plunge into the blazing staircase. Mr. Falkland saw, pursued,
+and seized her by the arm; it was Mrs. Jakeman. "Stop!" he cried, with a
+voice of grand, yet benevolent authority. "Remain you in the street! I
+will seek, and will save her!" Mrs. Jakeman obeyed. He charged the
+persons who were near to detain her; he enquired which was the apartment
+of Emily. Mrs. Jakeman was upon a visit to a sister who lived in the
+village, and had brought Emily along with her. Mr. Falkland ascended a
+neighbouring house, and entered that in which Emily was, by a window in
+the roof.
+
+He found her already awaked from her sleep; and, becoming sensible of
+her danger, she had that instant wrapped a loose gown round her. Such is
+the almost irresistible result of feminine habits; but, having done
+this, she examined the surrounding objects with the wildness of despair.
+Mr. Falkland entered the chamber. She flew into his arms with the
+rapidity of lightning. She embraced and clung to him, with an impulse
+that did not wait to consult the dictates of her understanding. Her
+emotions were indescribable. In a few short moments she had lived an age
+in love. In two minutes Mr. Falkland was again in the street with his
+lovely, half-naked burthen in his arms. Having restored her to her
+affectionate protector, snatched from the immediate grasp of death, from
+which, if he had not, none would have delivered her, he returned to his
+former task. By his presence of mind, by his indefatigable humanity and
+incessant exertions, he saved three fourths of the village from
+destruction.
+
+The conflagration being at length abated, he sought again Mrs. Jakeman
+and Emily, who by this time had obtained a substitute for the garments
+she had lost in the fire. He displayed the tenderest solicitude for the
+young lady's safety, and directed Collins to go with as much speed as he
+could, and send his chariot to attend her. More than an hour elapsed in
+this interval. Miss Melville had never seen so much of Mr. Falkland upon
+any former occasion; and the spectacle of such humanity, delicacy,
+firmness, and justice in the form of man, as he crowded into this small
+space, was altogether new to her, and in the highest degree fascinating.
+She had a confused feeling as if there had been something indecorous in
+her behaviour or appearance, when Mr. Falkland had appeared to her
+relief; and this combined with her other emotions to render the whole
+critical and intoxicating.
+
+Emily no sooner arrived at the family mansion, than Mr. Tyrrel ran out
+to receive her. He had just heard of the melancholy accident that had
+taken place at the village, and was terrified for the safety of his
+good-humoured cousin. He displayed those unpremeditated emotions which
+are common to almost every individual of the human race. He was greatly
+shocked at the suspicion that Emily might possibly have become the
+victim of a catastrophe which had thus broken out in the dead of night.
+His sensations were of the most pleasing sort when he folded her in his
+arms, and fearful apprehension was instantaneously converted into
+joyous certainty. Emily no sooner entered under the well known roof than
+her spirits were brisk, and her tongue incessant in describing her
+danger and her deliverance. Mr. Tyrrel had formerly been tortured with
+the innocent eulogiums she pronounced of Mr. Falkland. But these were
+lameness itself, compared with the rich and various eloquence that now
+flowed from her lips. Love had not the same effect upon her, especially
+at the present moment, which it would have had upon a person instructed
+to feign a blush, and inured to a consciousness of wrong. She described
+his activity and resources, the promptitude with which every thing was
+conceived, and the cautious but daring wisdom with which it was
+executed. All was fairy-land and enchantment in the tenour of her
+artless tale; you saw a beneficent genius surveying and controlling the
+whole, but could have no notion of any human means by which his purposes
+were effected.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel listened for a while to these innocent effusions with
+patience; he could even bear to hear the man applauded, by whom he had
+just obtained so considerable a benefit. But the theme by amplification
+became nauseous, and he at length with some roughness put an end to the
+tale. Probably, upon recollection, it appeared still more insolent and
+intolerable than while it was passing; the sensation of gratitude wore
+off, but the hyperbolical praise that had been bestowed still haunted
+his memory, and sounded in his ear;--Emily had entered into the
+confederacy that disturbed his repose. For herself, she was wholly
+unconscious of offence, and upon every occasion quoted Mr. Falkland as
+the model of elegant manners and true wisdom. She was a total stranger
+to dissimulation; and she could not conceive that any one beheld the
+subject of her admiration with less partiality than herself. Her
+artless love became more fervent than ever. She flattered herself that
+nothing less than a reciprocal passion could have prompted Mr. Falkland
+to the desperate attempt of saving her from the flames; and she trusted
+that this passion would speedily declare itself, as well as induce the
+object of her adoration to overlook her comparative unworthiness.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured at first with some moderation to check Miss
+Melville in her applauses, and to convince her by various tokens that
+the subject was disagreeable to him. He was accustomed to treat her with
+kindness. Emily, on her part, was disposed to yield an unreluctant
+obedience, and therefore it was not difficult to restrain her. But upon
+the very next occasion her favourite topic would force its way to her
+lips. Her obedience was the acquiescence of a frank and benevolent
+heart; but it was the most difficult thing in the world to inspire her
+with fear. Conscious herself that she would not hurt a worm, she could
+not conceive that any one would harbour cruelty and rancour against her.
+Her temper had preserved her from obstinate contention with the persons
+under whose protection she was placed; and, as her compliance was
+unhesitating, she had no experience of a severe and rigorous treatment.
+As Mr. Tyrrel's objection to the very name of Falkland became more
+palpable and uniform, Miss Melville increased in her precaution. She
+would stop herself in the half-pronounced sentences that were meant to
+his praise. This circumstance had necessarily an ungracious effect; it
+was a cutting satire upon the imbecility of her kinsman. Upon these
+occasions she would sometimes venture upon a good-humoured
+expostulation:--"Dear sir! well, I wonder how you can be so ill-natured!
+I am sure Mr. Falkland would do you any good office in the
+world:"--till she was checked by some gesture of impatience and
+fierceness.
+
+At length she wholly conquered her heedlessness and inattention. But it
+was too late. Mr. Tyrrel already suspected the existence of that passion
+which she had thoughtlessly imbibed. His imagination, ingenious in
+torment, suggested to him all the different openings in conversation, in
+which she would have introduced the praise of Mr. Falkland, had she not
+been placed under this unnatural restraint. Her present reserve upon the
+subject was even more insufferable than her former loquacity. All his
+kindness for this unhappy orphan gradually subsided. Her partiality for
+the man who was the object of his unbounded abhorrence, appeared to him
+as the last persecution of a malicious destiny. He figured himself as
+about to be deserted by every creature in human form; all men, under the
+influence of a fatal enchantment, approving only what was sophisticated
+and artificial, and holding the rude and genuine offspring of nature in
+mortal antipathy. Impressed with these gloomy presages, he saw Miss
+Melville with no sentiments but those of rancorous aversion; and,
+accustomed as he was to the uncontrolled indulgence of his propensities,
+he determined to wreak upon her a signal revenge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Mr. Tyrrel consulted his old confident respecting the plan he should
+pursue; who, sympathising as he did in the brutality and insolence of
+his friend, had no idea that an insignificant girl, without either
+wealth or beauty, ought to be allowed for a moment to stand in the way
+of the gratifications of a man of Mr. Tyrrel's importance. The first
+idea of her now unrelenting kinsman was to thrust her from his doors,
+and leave her to seek her bread as she could. But he was conscious that
+this proceeding would involve him in considerable obloquy; and he at
+length fixed upon a scheme which, at the same time that he believed it
+would sufficiently shelter his reputation, would much more certainly
+secure her mortification and punishment.
+
+For this purpose he fixed upon a young man of twenty, the son of one
+Grimes, who occupied a small farm, the property of his confident. This
+fellow he resolved to impose as a husband on Miss Melville, who, he
+shrewdly suspected, guided by the tender sentiments she had
+unfortunately conceived for Mr. Falkland, would listen with reluctance
+to any matrimonial proposal. Grimes he selected as being in all respects
+the diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of
+vicious propensities, but in an inconceivable degree boorish and
+uncouth. His complexion was scarcely human; his features were coarse,
+and strangely discordant and disjointed from each other. His lips were
+thick, and the tone of his voice broad and unmodulated. His legs were of
+equal size from one end to the other, and his feet misshapen and clumsy.
+He had nothing spiteful or malicious in his disposition, but he was a
+total stranger to tenderness; he could not feel for those refinements in
+others, of which he had no experience in himself. He was an expert
+boxer: his inclination led him to such amusements as were most
+boisterous; and he delighted in a sort of manual sarcasm, which he could
+not conceive to be very injurious, as it left no traces behind it. His
+general manners were noisy and obstreperous; inattentive to others; and
+obstinate and unyielding, not from any cruelty and ruggedness of
+temper, but from an incapacity to conceive those finer feelings, that
+make so large a part of the history of persons who are cast in a gentler
+mould.
+
+Such was the uncouth and half-civilised animal, which the industrious
+malice of Mr. Tyrrel fixed upon as most happily adapted to his purpose.
+Emily had hitherto been in an unusual degree exempted from the
+oppression of despotism. Her happy insignificance had served her as a
+protection. No one thought it worth his while to fetter her with those
+numerous petty restrictions with which the daughters of opulence are
+commonly tormented. She had the wildness, as well as the delicate frame,
+of the bird that warbles unmolested in its native groves.
+
+When therefore she heard from her kinsman the proposal of Mr. Grimes for
+a husband, she was for a moment silent with astonishment at so
+unexpected a suggestion. But as soon as she recovered her speech, she
+replied, "No, sir, I do not want a husband."
+
+"You do! Are not you always hankering after the men? It is high time you
+should be settled."
+
+"Mr. Grimes! No, indeed! when I do have a husband, it shall not be such
+a man as Mr. Grimes neither."
+
+"Be silent! How dare you give yourself such unaccountable liberties?"
+
+"Lord, I wonder what I should do with him. You might as well give me
+your great rough water-dog, and bid me make him a silk cushion to lie in
+my dressing-room. Besides, sir, Grimes is a common labouring man, and I
+am sure I have always heard my aunt say that ours is a very great
+family."
+
+"It is a lie! Our family! have you the impudence to think yourself one
+of our family?"
+
+"Why, sir, was not your grandpapa my grandpapa? How then can we be of a
+different family?"
+
+"From the strongest reason in the world. You are the daughter of a
+rascally Scotchman, who spent every shilling of my aunt Lucy's fortune,
+and left you a beggar. You have got an hundred pounds, and Grimes's
+father promises to give him as much. How dare you look down upon your
+equals?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am not proud. But, indeed and indeed, I can never love
+Mr. Grimes. I am very happy as I am: why should I be married?"
+
+"Silence your prating! Grimes will be here this afternoon. Look that you
+behave well to him. If you do not, he will remember and repay, when you
+least like it."
+
+"Nay, I am sure, sir--you are not in earnest?"
+
+"Not in earnest! Damn me, but we will see that. I can tell what you
+would be at. You had rather be Mr. Falkland's miss, than the wife of a
+plain downright yeoman. But I shall take care of you.--Ay, this comes of
+indulgence. You must be taken down, miss. You must be taught the
+difference between high-flown notions and realities. Mayhap you may take
+it a little in dudgeon or so; but never mind that. Pride always wants a
+little smarting. If you should be brought to shame, it is I that shall
+bear the blame of it."
+
+The tone in which Mr. Tyrrel spoke was so different from any thing to
+which Miss Melville had been accustomed, that she felt herself wholly
+unable to determine what construction to put upon it. Sometimes she
+thought he had really formed a plan for imposing upon her a condition
+that she could not bear so much as to think of. But presently she
+rejected this idea as an unworthy imputation upon her kinsman, and
+concluded that it was only his way, and that all he meant was to try
+her. To be resolved however, she determined to consult her constant
+adviser, Mrs. Jakeman, and accordingly repeated to her what had passed.
+Mrs. Jakeman saw the whole in a very different light from that in which
+Emily had conceived it, and trembled for the future peace of her beloved
+ward.
+
+"Lord bless me, my dear mamma!" cried Emily, (this was the appellation
+she delighted to bestow upon the good housekeeper,) "you cannot think
+so? But I do not care. I will never marry Grimes, happen what will."
+
+"But how will you help yourself? My master will oblige you."
+
+"Nay, now you think you are talking to a child indeed. It is I am to
+have the man, not Mr. Tyrrel. Do you think I will let any body else
+choose a husband for me? I am not such a fool as that neither."
+
+"Ah, Emily! you little know the disadvantages of your situation. Your
+cousin is a violent man, and perhaps will turn you out of doors, if you
+oppose him."
+
+"Oh, mamma! it is very wicked of you to say so. I am sure Mr. Tyrrel is
+a very good man, though he be a little cross now and then. He knows very
+well that I am right to have a will of my own in such a thing as this,
+and nobody is punished for doing what is right."
+
+"Nobody ought, my dear child. But there are very wicked and tyrannical
+men in the world."
+
+"Well, well, I will never believe my cousin is one of these."
+
+"I hope he is not."
+
+"And if he were, what then? To be sure I should he very sorry to make
+him angry."
+
+"What then! Why then my poor Emily would be a beggar. Do you think I
+could bear to see that?"
+
+"No, no. Mr. Tyrrel has just told me that I have a hundred pounds. But
+if I had no fortune, is not that the case with a thousand other folks?
+Why should I grieve, for what they bear and are merry? Do not make
+yourself uneasy, mamma. I am determined that I will do any thing rather
+than marry Grimes; that is what I will."
+
+Mrs. Jakeman could not bear the uneasy state of suspense in which this
+conversation left her mind, and went immediately to the squire to have
+her doubts resolved. The manner in which she proposed the question,
+sufficiently indicated the judgment she had formed of the match.
+
+"That is true," said Mr. Tyrrel, "I wanted to speak to you about this
+affair. The girl has got unaccountable notions in her head, that will be
+the ruin of her. You perhaps can tell where she had them. But, be that
+as it will, it is high time something should be done. The shortest way
+is the best, and to keep things well while they are well. In short, I am
+determined she shall marry this lad: you do not know any harm of him, do
+you? You have a good deal of influence with her, and I desire, do you
+see, that you will employ it to lead her to her good: you had best, I
+can tell you. She is a pert vixen! By and by she would be a whore, and
+at last no better than a common trull, and rot upon a dunghill, if I
+were not at all these pains to save her from destruction. I would make
+her an honest farmer's wife, and my pretty miss cannot bear the thoughts
+of it!"
+
+In the afternoon Grimes came according to appointment, and was left
+alone with the young lady.
+
+"Well, miss," said he, "it seems the squire has a mind to make us man
+and wife. For my part, I cannot say I should have thought of it. But,
+being as how the squire has broke the ice, if so be as you like of the
+match, why I am your man. Speak the word; a nod is as good as a wink to
+a blind horse."
+
+Emily was already sufficiently mortified at the unexpected proposal of
+Mr. Tyrrel. She was confounded at the novelty of the situation, and
+still more at the uncultivated rudeness of her lover, which even
+exceeded her expectation. This confusion was interpreted by Grimes into
+diffidence.
+
+"Come, come, never be cast down. Put a good face upon it. What though?
+My first sweetheart was Bet Butterfield, but what of that? What must be
+must be; grief will never fill the belly. She was a fine strapping
+wench, that is the truth of it! five foot ten inches, and as stout as a
+trooper. Oh, she would do a power of work! Up early and down late;
+milked ten cows with her own hands; on with her cardinal, rode to market
+between her panniers, fair weather and foul, hail, blow, or snow. It
+would have done your heart good to have seen her frost-bitten cheeks, as
+red as a beefen from her own orchard! Ah! she was a maid of mettle;
+would romp with the harvestmen, slap one upon the back, wrestle with
+another, and had a rogue's trick and a joke for all round. Poor girl!
+she broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be sure I shall
+never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that
+I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful
+as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have
+touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss,
+whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a
+millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at
+the bait, never doubt it. Yes, yes, we shall rub on main well together."
+
+Emily by this time had in some degree mustered up her spirits, and
+began, though with hesitation, to thank Mr. Grimes for his good opinion,
+but to confess that she could never be brought to favour his addresses.
+She therefore entreated him to desist from all further application. This
+remonstrance on her part would have become more intelligible, had it not
+been for his boisterous manners and extravagant cheerfulness, which
+indisposed him to silence, and made him suppose that at half a word he
+had sufficient intimation of another's meaning. Mr. Tyrrel, in the mean
+time, was too impatient not to interrupt the scene before they could
+have time to proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in the
+sequel to prevent the young folks from being too intimately acquainted
+with each other's inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the
+reluctance of Miss Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness
+of an unbroken filly. Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable
+that it would have made any effectual impression upon him; as he was
+always accustomed to consider women as made for the recreation of the
+men, and to exclaim against the weakness of people who taught them to
+imagine they were to judge for themselves.
+
+As the suit proceeded, and Miss Melville saw more of her new admirer,
+her antipathy increased. But, though her character was unspoiled by
+those false wants, which frequently make people of family miserable
+while they have every thing that nature requires within their reach, yet
+she had been little used to opposition, and was terrified at the growing
+sternness of her kinsman. Sometimes she thought of flying from a house
+which was now become her dungeon; but the habits of her youth, and her
+ignorance of the world, made her shrink from this project, when she
+contemplated it more nearly, Mrs. Jakeman, indeed, could not think with
+patience of young Grimes as a husband for her darling Emily; but her
+prudence determined her to resist with all her might the idea on the
+part of the young lady of proceeding to extremities. She could not
+believe that Mr. Tyrrel would persist in such an unaccountable
+persecution, and she exhorted Miss Melville to forget for a moment the
+unaffected independence of her character, and pathetically to deprecate
+her cousin's obstinacy. She had great confidence in the ingenuous
+eloquence of her ward. Mrs. Jakeman did not know what was passing in the
+breast of the tyrant.
+
+Miss Melville complied with the suggestion of her mamma. One morning
+immediately after breakfast, she went to her harpsichord, and played one
+after another several of those airs that were most the favourites of Mr.
+Tyrrel. Mrs. Jakeman had retired; the servants were gone to their
+respective employments. Mr. Tyrrel would have gone also; his mind was
+untuned, and he did not take the pleasure he had been accustomed to take
+in the musical performances of Emily. But her finger was now more
+tasteful than common. Her mind was probably wrought up to a firmer and
+bolder tone, by the recollection of the cause she was going to plead; at
+the same time that it was exempt from those incapacitating tremors which
+would have been felt by one that dared not look poverty in the face. Mr.
+Tyrrel was unable to leave the apartment. Sometimes he traversed it with
+impatient steps; then he hung over the poor innocent whose powers were
+exerted to please him; at length he threw himself in a chair opposite,
+with his eyes turned towards Emily. It was easy to trace the progress of
+his emotions. The furrows into which his countenance was contracted were
+gradually relaxed; his features were brightened into a smile; the
+kindness with which he had upon former occasions contemplated Emily
+seemed to revive in his heart.
+
+Emily watched her opportunity. As soon as she had finished one of the
+pieces, she rose and went to Mr. Tyrrel.
+
+"Now, have not I done it nicely? and after this will not you give me a
+reward?"
+
+"A reward! Ay, come here, and I will give you a kiss."
+
+"No, that is not it. And yet you have not kissed me this many a day.
+Formerly you said you loved me, and called me your Emily. I am sure you
+did not love me better than I loved you. You have not forgot all the
+kindness you once had for me?" added she anxiously.
+
+"Forgot? No, no. How can you ask such a question? You shall be my dear
+Emily still!"
+
+"Ah, those were happy times!" she replied, a little mournfully. "Do you
+know, cousin, I wish I could wake, and find that the last month--only
+about a month--was a dream?"
+
+"What do you mean by that?" said Mr. Tyrrel with an altered voice. "Have
+a care! Do not put me out of humour. Do not come with your romantic
+notions now."
+
+"No, no: I have no romantic notions in my head. I speak of something
+upon which the happiness of my life depends."
+
+"I see what you would be at. Be silent. You know it is to no purpose to
+plague me with your stubbornness. You will not let me be in good humour
+with you for a moment. What my mind is determined upon about Grimes, all
+the world shall not move me to give up."
+
+"Dear, dear cousin! why, but consider now. Grimes is a rough rustic
+lout, like Orson in the story-book. He wants a wife like himself. He
+would be as uneasy and as much at a loss with me, as I with him. Why
+should we both of us be forced to do what neither of us is inclined to?
+I cannot think what could ever have put it into your head. But now, for
+goodness' sake, give it up! Marriage is a serious thing. You should not
+think of joining two people for a whim, who are neither of them fit for
+one another in any respect in the world. We should feel mortified and
+disappointed all our lives. Month would go after month, and year after
+year, and I could never hope to be my own, but by the death of a person
+I ought to love. I am sure, sir, you cannot mean me all this harm. What
+have I done, that I should deserve to have you for an enemy?"
+
+"I am not your enemy. I tell you that it is necessary to put you out of
+harm's way. But, if I were your enemy, I could not be a worse torment to
+you than you are to me. Are not you continually singing the praises of
+Falkland? Are not you in love with Falkland? That man is a legion of
+devils to me! I might as well have been a beggar! I might as well have
+been a dwarf or a monster! Time was when I was thought entitled to
+respect. But now, debauched by this Frenchified rascal, they call me
+rude, surly, a tyrant! It is true that I cannot talk in finical phrases,
+flatter people with hypocritical praise, or suppress the real feelings
+of my mind. The scoundrel knows his pitiful advantages, and insults me
+upon them without ceasing. He is my rival and my persecutor; and, at
+last, as if all this were not enough, he has found means to spread the
+pestilence in my own family. You, whom we took up out of charity, the
+chance-born brat of a stolen marriage! you must turn upon your
+benefactor, and wound me in the point that of all others I could least
+bear. If I were your enemy, should not I have reason? Could I ever
+inflict upon you such injuries as you have made me suffer? And who are
+you? The lives of fifty such cannot atone for an hour of my uneasiness.
+If you were to linger for twenty years upon the rack, you would never
+feel what I have felt. But I am your friend. I see which way you are
+going; and I am determined to save you from this thief, this
+hypocritical destroyer of us all. Every moment that the mischief is left
+to itself, it does but make bad worse; and I am determined to save you
+out of hand."
+
+The angry expostulations of Mr. Tyrrel suggested new ideas to the tender
+mind of Miss Melville. He had never confessed the emotions of his soul
+so explicitly before; but the tempest of his thoughts suffered him to be
+no longer master of himself. She saw with astonishment that he was the
+irreconcilable foe of Mr. Falkland, whom she had fondly imagined it was
+the same thing to know and admire; and that he harboured a deep and
+rooted resentment against herself. She recoiled, without well knowing
+why, before the ferocious passions of her kinsman, and was convinced
+that she had nothing to hope from his implacable temper. But her alarm
+was the prelude of firmness, and not of cowardice.
+
+"No, sir," replied she, "indeed I will not be driven any way that you
+happen to like. I have been used to obey you, and, in all that is
+reasonable, I will obey you still. But you urge me too far. What do you
+tell me of Mr. Falkland? Have I ever done any thing to deserve your
+unkind suspicions? I am innocent, and will continue innocent. Mr. Grimes
+is well enough, and will no doubt find women that like him; but he is
+not fit for me, and torture shall not force me to be his wife."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was not a little astonished at the spirit which Emily
+displayed upon this occasion. He had calculated too securely upon the
+general mildness and suavity of her disposition. He now endeavoured to
+qualify the harshness of his former sentiments.
+
+"God damn my soul! And so you can scold, can you? You expect every body
+to turn out of his way, and fetch and carry, just as you please? I could
+find in my heart--But you know my mind. I insist upon it that you let
+Grimes court you, and that you lay aside your sulks, and give him a fair
+hearing. Will you do that? If then you persist in your wilfulness, why
+there, I suppose, is an end of the matter. Do not think that any body is
+going to marry you, whether you will or no. You are no such mighty
+prize, I assure you. If you knew your own interest, you would be glad to
+take the young fellow while he is willing."
+
+Miss Melville rejoiced in the prospect, which the last words of her
+kinsman afforded her, of a termination at no great distance to her
+present persecutions. Mrs. Jakeman, to whom she communicated them,
+congratulated Emily on the returning moderation and good sense of the
+squire, and herself on her prudence in having urged the young lady to
+this happy expostulation. But their mutual felicitations lasted not
+long. Mr. Tyrrel informed Mrs. Jakeman of the necessity in which he
+found himself of sending her to a distance, upon a business which would
+not fail to detain her several weeks; and, though the errand by no means
+wore an artificial or ambiguous face, the two friends drew a melancholy
+presage from this ill-timed separation. Mrs. Jakeman, in the mean time,
+exhorted her ward to persevere, reminded her of the compunction which
+had already been manifested by her kinsman, and encouraged her to hope
+every thing from her courage and good temper. Emily, on her part, though
+grieved at the absence of her protector and counsellor at so interesting
+a crisis, was unable to suspect Mr. Tyrrel of such a degree either of
+malice or duplicity as could afford ground for serious alarm. She
+congratulated herself upon her delivery from so alarming a persecution,
+and drew a prognostic of future success from this happy termination of
+the first serious affair of her life. She exchanged a state of fortitude
+and alarm for her former pleasing dreams respecting Mr. Falkland. These
+she bore without impatience. She was even taught by the uncertainty of
+the event to desire to prolong, rather than abridge, a situation which
+might be delusive, but which was not without its pleasures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Nothing could be further from Mr. Tyrrel's intention than to suffer his
+project to be thus terminated. No sooner was he freed from the fear of
+his housekeeper's interference, than he changed the whole system of his
+conduct. He ordered Miss Melville to be closely confined to her
+apartment, and deprived of all means of communicating her situation to
+any one out of his own house. He placed over her a female servant, in
+whose discretion he could confide, and who, having formerly been
+honoured with the amorous notices of the squire, considered the
+distinctions that were paid to Emily at Tyrrel Place as an usurpation
+upon her more reasonable claims. The squire himself did every thing in
+his power to blast the young lady's reputation, and represented to his
+attendants these precautions as necessary, to prevent her from eloping
+to his neighbour, and plunging herself in total ruin.
+
+As soon as Miss Melville had been twenty-four hours in durance, and
+there was some reason to suppose that her spirit might be subdued to the
+emergency of her situation, Mr. Tyrrel thought proper to go to her, to
+explain the grounds of her present treatment, and acquaint her with the
+only means by which she could hope for a change. Emily no sooner saw
+him, than she turned towards him with an air of greater firmness than
+perhaps she had ever assumed in her life, and accosted him thus:--
+
+"Well, sir, is it you? I wanted to see you. It seems I am shut up here
+by your orders. What does this mean? What right have you to make a
+prisoner of me? What do I owe you? Your mother left me a hundred pounds:
+have you ever offered to make any addition to my fortune? But, if you
+had, I do not want it. I do not pretend to be better than the children
+of other poor parents; I can maintain myself as they do. I prefer
+liberty to wealth. I see you are surprised at the resolution I exert.
+But ought I not to turn again, when I am trampled upon? I should have
+left you before now, if Mrs. Jakeman had not over-persuaded me, and if I
+had not thought better of you than by your present behaviour I find you
+deserve. But now, sir, I intend to leave your house this moment, and
+insist upon it, that you do not endeavour to prevent me."
+
+Thus saying, she rose, and went towards the door, while Mr. Tyrrel stood
+thunderstruck at her magnanimity. Seeing, however, that she was upon the
+point of being out of the reach of his power, he recovered himself and
+pulled her back.
+
+"What is in the wind now? Do you think, strumpet; that you shall get
+the better of me by sheer impudence? Sit down! rest you satisfied!--So
+you want to know by what right you are here, do you? By the right of
+possession. This house is mine, and you are in my power. There is no
+Mrs. Jakeman now to spirit you away; no, nor no Falkland to bully for
+you. I have countermined you, damn me! and blown up your schemes. Do you
+think I will be contradicted and opposed for nothing? When did you ever
+know any body resist my will without being made to repent? And shall I
+now be browbeaten by a chitty-faced girl?--I have not given you a
+fortune! Damn you! who brought you up? I will make you a bill for
+clothing and lodging. Do not you know that every creditor has a right to
+stop his runaway debtor. You may think as you please; but here you are
+till you marry Grimes. Heaven and earth shall not prevent but I will get
+the better of your obstinacy!"
+
+"Ungenerous, unmerciful man! and so it is enough for you that I have
+nobody to defend me! But I am not so helpless as you may imagine. You
+may imprison my body, but you cannot conquer my mind. Marry Mr. Grimes!
+And is this the way to bring me to your purpose? Every hardship I suffer
+puts still further distant the end for which I am thus unjustly treated.
+You are not used to have your will contradicted! When did I ever
+contradict it? And, in a concern that is so completely my own, shall my
+will go for nothing? Would you lay down this rule for yourself, and
+suffer no other creature to take the benefit of it? I want nothing of
+you: how dare you refuse me the privilege of a reasonable being, to live
+unmolested in poverty and innocence? What sort of a man do you show
+yourself, you that lay claim to the respect and applause of every one
+that knows you?"
+
+The spirited reproaches of Emily had at first the effect to fill Mr.
+Tyrrel with astonishment, and make him feel abashed and overawed in the
+presence of this unprotected innocent. But his confusion was the result
+of surprise. When the first emotion wore off, he cursed himself for
+being moved by her expostulations; and was ten times more exasperated
+against her, for daring to defy his resentment at a time when she had
+every thing to fear. His despotic and unforgiving propensities
+stimulated him to a degree little short of madness. At the same time his
+habits, which were pensive and gloomy, led him to meditate a variety of
+schemes to punish her obstinacy. He began to suspect that there was
+little hope of succeeding by open force, and therefore determined to
+have recourse to treachery.
+
+He found in Grimes an instrument sufficiently adapted to his purpose.
+This fellow, without an atom of intentional malice, was fitted, by the
+mere coarseness of his perceptions, for the perpetration of the greatest
+injuries. He regarded both injury and advantage merely as they related
+to the gratifications of appetite; and considered it an essential in
+true wisdom, to treat with insult the effeminacy of those who suffer
+themselves to be tormented with ideal misfortunes. He believed that no
+happier destiny could befal a young woman than to be his wife; and he
+conceived that that termination would amply compensate for any
+calamities she might suppose herself to undergo in the interval. He was
+therefore easily prevailed upon, by certain temptations which Mr. Tyrrel
+knew how to employ, to take part in the plot into which Miss Melville
+was meant to be betrayed.
+
+Matters being thus prepared, Mr. Tyrrel proceeded, through the means of
+the gaoler (for the experience he already had of personal discussion did
+not incline him to repeat his visits), to play upon the fears of his
+prisoner. This woman, sometimes under the pretence of friendship, and
+sometimes with open malice, informed Emily, from time to time, of the
+preparations that were making for her marriage. One day, "the squire had
+rode over to look at a neat little farm which was destined for the
+habitation of the new-married couple;" and at another, "a quantity of
+live stock and household furniture was procured, that every thing might
+be ready for their reception." She then told her "of a licence that was
+bought, a parson in readiness, and a day fixed for the nuptials." When
+Emily endeavoured, though with increased misgivings, to ridicule these
+proceedings as absolutely nugatory without her consent, her artful
+gouvernante related several stories of forced marriages, and assured her
+that neither protestations, nor silence, nor fainting, would be of any
+avail, either to suspend the ceremony, or to set it aside when
+performed.
+
+The situation of Miss Melville was in an eminent degree pitiable. She
+had no intercourse but with her persecutors. She had not a human being
+with whom to consult, who might afford her the smallest degree of
+consolation and encouragement. She had fortitude; but it was neither
+confirmed nor directed by the dictates of experience. It could not
+therefore be expected to be so inflexible, as with better information it
+would, no doubt, have been found. She had a clear and noble spirit; but
+she had some of her sex's errors. Her mind sunk under the uniform
+terrors with which she was assailed, and her health became visibly
+impaired.
+
+Her firmness being thus far undermined, Grimes, in pursuance of his
+instructions, took care, in his next interview, to throw out an
+insinuation that, for his own part, he had never cared for the match,
+and since she was so averse to it, would be better pleased that it
+should never take place. Between one and the other however, he was got
+into a scrape, and now he supposed he must marry, will he, nill he. The
+two squires would infallibly ruin him upon the least appearance of
+backwardness on his part, as they were accustomed to do every inferior
+that resisted their will. Emily was rejoiced to find her admirer in so
+favourable a disposition; and earnestly pressed him to give effect to
+this humane declaration. Her representations were full of eloquence and
+energy. Grimes appeared to be moved at the fervency of her manner; but
+objected the resentment of Mr. Tyrrel and his landlord. At length,
+however, he suggested a project, in consequence of which he might assist
+her in her escape, without its ever coming to their knowledge, as,
+indeed, there was no likelihood that their suspicions would fix upon
+him. "To be sure," said he, "you have refused me in a disdainful sort of
+a way, as a man may say. Mayhap you thought I was no better 'an a brute:
+but I bear you no malice, and I will show you that I am more
+kind-hearted 'an you have been willing to think. It is a strange sort of
+a vagary you have taken, to stand in your own light, and disoblige all
+your friends. But if you are resolute, do you see? I scorn to be the
+husband of a lass that is not every bit as willing as I; and so I will
+even help to put you in a condition to follow your own inclinations."
+
+Emily listened to these suggestions at first with eagerness and
+approbation. But her fervency somewhat abated, when they came to discuss
+the minute parts of the undertaking. It was necessary, as Grimes
+informed her, that her escape should be effected in the dead of the
+night. He would conceal himself for that purpose in the garden, and be
+provided with false keys, by which to deliver her from her prison. These
+circumstances were by no means adapted to calm her perturbed
+imagination. To throw herself into the arms of the man whose intercourse
+she was employing every method to avoid, and whom, under the idea of a
+partner for life, she could least of all men endure, was, no doubt, an
+extraordinary proceeding. The attendant circumstances of darkness and
+solitude aggravated the picture. The situation of Tyrrel Place was
+uncommonly lonely; it was three miles from the nearest village, and not
+less than seven from that in which Mrs. Jakeman's sister resided, under
+whose protection Miss Melville was desirous of placing herself. The
+ingenuous character of Emily did not allow her once to suspect Grimes of
+intending to make an ungenerous and brutal advantage of these
+circumstances; but her mind involuntarily revolted against the idea of
+committing herself, alone, to the disposal of a man, whom she had lately
+been accustomed to consider as the instrument of her treacherous
+relation.
+
+After having for some time revolved these considerations, she thought of
+the expedient of desiring Grimes to engage Mrs. Jakeman's sister to wait
+for her at the outside of the garden. But this Grimes peremptorily
+refused. He even flew into a passion at the proposal. It showed very
+little gratitude, to desire him to disclose to other people his concern
+in this dangerous affair. For his part, he was determined, in
+consideration of his own safety, never to appear in it to any living
+soul. If Miss did not believe him, when he made this proposal out of
+pure good-nature, and would not trust him a single inch, she might even
+see to the consequences herself. He was resolved to condescend no
+further to the whims of a person who, in her treatment of him, had
+shown herself as proud as Lucifer himself.
+
+Emily exerted herself to appease his resentment; but all the eloquence
+of her new confederate could not prevail upon her instantly to give up
+her objection. She desired till the next day to consider of it. The day
+after was fixed by Mr. Tyrrel for the marriage ceremony. In the mean
+time she was pestered with intimations, in a thousand forms, of the fate
+that so nearly awaited her. The preparations were so continued,
+methodical, and regular, as to produce in her the most painful and
+aching anxiety. If her heart attained a moment's intermission upon the
+subject, her female attendant was sure, by some sly hint or sarcastical
+remark, to put a speedy termination to her tranquillity. She felt
+herself, as she afterwards remarked, alone, uninstructed, just broken
+loose, as it were, from the trammels of infancy, without one single
+creature to concern himself in her fate. She, who till then never knew
+an enemy, had now, for three weeks, not seen the glimpse of a human
+countenance, that she had not good reason to consider as wholly
+estranged to her at least, if not unrelentingly bent on her destruction.
+She now, for the first time, experienced the anguish of never having
+known her parents, and being cast upon the charity of people with whom
+she had too little equality, to hope to receive from them the offices of
+friendship.
+
+The succeeding night was filled with the most anxious thoughts. When a
+momentary oblivion stole upon her senses, her distempered imagination
+conjured up a thousand images of violence and falsehood; she saw herself
+in the hands of her determined enemies, who did not hesitate by the most
+daring treachery to complete her ruin. Her waking thoughts were not more
+consoling. The struggle was too great for her constitution. As morning
+approached, she resolved, at all hazards, to put herself into the hands
+of Grimes. This determination was no sooner made, than she felt her
+heart sensibly lightened. She could not conceive any evil which could
+result from this proceeding, that deserved to be put in the balance
+against those which, under the roof of her kinsman, appeared
+unavoidable.
+
+When she communicated her determination to Grimes, it was not possible
+to say whether he received pleasure or pain from the intimation. He
+smiled indeed; but his smile was accompanied by a certain abrupt
+ruggedness of countenance, so that it might equally well be the smile of
+sarcasm or of congratulation. He, however, renewed his assurances of
+fidelity to his engagements and punctuality of execution. Meanwhile the
+day was interspersed with nuptial presents and preparations, all
+indicating the firmness as well as security of the directors of the
+scene. Emily had hoped that, as the crisis approached, they might have
+remitted something of their usual diligence. She was resolved, in that
+case, if a fair opportunity had offered, to give the slip both to her
+jailors, and to her new and reluctantly chosen confederate. But, though
+extremely vigilant for that purpose, she found the execution of the idea
+impracticable.
+
+At length the night, so critical to her happiness, approached. The mind
+of Emily could not fail, on this occasion, to be extremely agitated. She
+had first exerted all her perspicacity to elude the vigilance of her
+attendant. This insolent and unfeeling tyrant, instead of any
+relentings, had only sought to make sport of her anxiety. Accordingly,
+in one instance she hid herself, and, suffering Emily to suppose that
+the coast was clear, met her at the end of the gallery, near the top of
+the staircase. "How do you do, my dear?" said she, with an insulting
+tone. "And so the little dear thought itself cunning enough to outwit
+me, did it? Oh, it was a sly little gipsy! Go, go back, love; troop!"
+Emily felt deeply the trick that was played upon her. She sighed, but
+disdained to return any answer to this low vulgarity. Being once more in
+her chamber, she sat down in a chair, and remained buried in reverie for
+more than two hours. After this she went to her drawers, and turned
+over, in a hurrying confused way, her linen and clothes, having in her
+mind the provision it would be necessary to make for her elopement. Her
+jailor officiously followed her from place to place, and observed what
+she did for the present in silence. It was now the hour of rest. "Good
+night, child," said this saucy girl, in the act of retiring. "It is time
+to lock up. For the few next hours, the time is your own. Make the best
+use of it! Do'ee think ee can creep out at the key-hole, lovey? At eight
+o'clock you see me again. And then, and then," added she, clapping her
+hands, "it is all over. The sun is not surer to rise, than you and your
+honest man to be made one."
+
+There was something in the tone with which this slut uttered her
+farewell, that suggested the question to Emily, "What does she mean? Is
+it possible that she should know what has been planned for the few next
+hours?"--This was the first moment that suspicion had offered itself,
+and its continuance was short. With an aching heart she folded up the
+few necessaries she intended to take with her. She instinctively
+listened, with an anxiety that would almost have enabled her to hear the
+stirring of a leaf. From time to time she thought her ear was struck
+with the sound of feet; but the treading, if treading it were, was so
+soft, that she could never ascertain whether it were a real sound, or
+the mere creature of the fancy. Then all was still, as if the universal
+motion had been at rest. By and by she conceived she overheard a noise
+as of buzzing and low-muttered speech. Her heart palpitated; for a
+second time she began to doubt the honesty of Grimes. The suggestion was
+now more anxious than before; but it was too late. Presently she heard
+the sound of a key in her chamber-door, and the rustic made his
+appearance. She started, and cried, "Are we discovered? did not I hear
+you speak?" Grimes advanced on tiptoe with his finger to his lip. "No,
+no," replied he, "all is safe!" He took her by the hand, led her in
+silence out of the house, and then across the garden. Emily examined
+with her eye the doors and passages as they proceeded, and looked on all
+sides with fearful suspicion; but every thing was as vacant and still as
+she herself could have wished. Grimes opened a back-door of the garden
+already unlocked, that led into an unfrequented lane. There stood two
+horses ready equipped for the journey, and fastened by their bridles to
+a post not six yards distant from the garden. Grimes pushed the door
+after them.
+
+"By Gemini," said he, "my heart was in my mouth. As I comed along to
+you, I saw Mun, coachey, pop along from the back-door to the stables. He
+was within a hop, step, and jump of me. But he had a lanthorn in his
+hand, and he did not see me, being as I was darkling." Saying this, he
+assisted Miss Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the
+route; on the contrary, he was remarkably silent and contemplative, a
+circumstance by no means disagreeable to Emily, to whom his conversation
+had never been acceptable.
+
+After having proceeded about two miles, they turned into a wood, through
+which the road led to the place of their destination. The night was
+extremely dark, at the same time that the air was soft and mild, it
+being now the middle of summer. Under pretence of exploring the way,
+Grimes contrived, when they had already penetrated into the midst of
+this gloomy solitude, to get his horse abreast with that of Miss
+Melville, and then, suddenly reaching out his hand, seized hold of her
+bridle. "I think we may as well stop here a bit," said he.
+
+"Stop!" exclaimed Emily with surprise; "why should we stop? Mr. Grimes,
+what do you mean?"
+
+"Come, come," said he, "never trouble yourself to wonder. Did you think
+I were such a goose, to take all this trouble merely to gratify your
+whim? I' faith, nobody shall find me a pack-horse, to go of other folks'
+errands, without knowing a reason why. I cannot say that I much minded
+to have you at first; but your ways are enough to stir the blood of my
+grand-dad. Far-fetched and dear-bought is always relishing. Your consent
+was so hard to gain, that squire thought it was surest asking in the
+dark. A' said however, a' would have no such doings in his house, and
+so, do ye see, we are comed here."
+
+"For God's sake, Mr. Grimes, think what you are about! You cannot be
+base enough to ruin a poor creature who has put herself under your
+protection!
+
+"Ruin! No, no, I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done.
+Nay, none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as
+safe AS a horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a
+mile of us; and, if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you
+are a delicate morsel, and there is no time to be lost!"
+
+Miss Melville had but an instant in which to collect her thoughts. She
+felt that there was little hope of softening the obstinate and
+insensible brute in whose power she was placed. But the presence of mind
+and intrepidity annexed to her character did not now desert her. Grimes
+had scarcely finished his harangue, when, with a strong and unexpected
+jerk, she disengaged the bridle from his grasp, and at the same time put
+her horse upon full speed. She had scarcely advanced twice the length of
+her horse, when Grimes recovered from his surprise, and pursued her,
+inexpressibly mortified at being so easily overreached. The sound of his
+horse behind served but to rouse more completely the mettle of that of
+Emily; whether by accident or sagacity, the animal pursued without a
+fault the narrow and winding way; and the chase continued the whole
+length of the wood.
+
+At the extremity of this wood there was a gate. The recollection of this
+softened a little the cutting disappointment of Grimes, as he thought
+himself secure of putting an end, by its assistance, to the career of
+Emily; nor was it very probable that any body would appear to interrupt
+his designs, in such a place, and in the dead and silence of the night.
+By the most extraordinary accident, however, they found a man on
+horseback in wait at this gate. "Help, help!" exclaimed the affrighted
+Emily; "thieves! murder! help!" The man was Mr. Falkland. Grimes knew
+his voice; and therefore, though he attempted a sort of sullen
+resistance, it was feebly made. Two other men, whom, by reason of the
+darkness, he had not at first seen, and who were Mr. Falkland's
+servants, hearing the bustle of the rencounter, and alarmed for the
+safety of their master, rode up; and then Grimes, disappointed at the
+loss of his gratification, and admonished by conscious guilt, shrunk
+from farther parley, and rode off in silence.
+
+It may seem strange that Mr. Falkland should thus a second time have
+been the saviour of Miss Melville, and that under circumstances the most
+unexpected and singular. But in this instance it is easily to be
+accounted for. He had heard of a man who lurked about this wood for
+robbery or some other bad design, and that it was conjectured this man
+was Hawkins, another of the victims of Mr. Tyrrel's rural tyranny, whom
+I shall immediately have occasion to introduce. Mr. Falkland's
+compassion had already been strongly excited in favour of Hawkins; he
+had in vain endeavoured to find him, and do him good; and he easily
+conceived that, if the conjecture which had been made in this instance
+proved true, he might have it in his power not only to do what he had
+always intended, but further, to save from a perilous offence against
+the laws and society a man who appeared to have strongly imbibed the
+principles of justice and virtue. He took with him two servants,
+because, going with the express design of encountering robbers, if
+robbers should be found, he believed he should be inexcusable if he did
+not go provided against possible accidents. But he had directed them, at
+the same time that they kept within call, to be out of the reach of
+being seen; and it was only the eagerness of their zeal that had brought
+them up thus early in the present encounter.
+
+This new adventure promised something extraordinary. Mr. Falkland did
+not immediately recognise Miss Melville; and the person of Grimes was
+that of a total stranger, whom he did not recollect to have ever seen.
+But it was easy to understand the merits of the case, and the propriety
+of interfering. The resolute manner of Mr. Falkland, conjoined with the
+dread which Grimes, oppressed with a sense of wrong, entertained of the
+opposition of so elevated a personage, speedily put the ravisher to
+flight. Emily was left alone with her deliverer. He found her much more
+collected and calm, than could reasonably have been expected from a
+person who had been, a moment before, in the most alarming situation.
+She told him of the place to which she desired to be conveyed, and he
+immediately undertook to escort her. As they went along, she recovered
+that state of mind which inclined her to make a person to whom she had
+such repeated obligations, and who was so eminently the object of her
+admiration, acquainted with the events that had recently befallen her.
+Mr. Falkland listened with eagerness and surprise. Though he had already
+known various instances of Mr. Tyrrel's mean jealousy and unfeeling
+tyranny, this surpassed them all; and he could scarcely credit his ears
+while he heard the tale. His brutal neighbour seemed to realise all that
+has been told of the passions of fiends. Miss Melville was obliged to
+repeat, in the course of her tale, her kinsman's rude accusation against
+her, of entertaining a passion for Mr. Falkland; and this she did with
+the most bewitching simplicity and charming confusion. Though this part
+of the tale was a source of real pain to her deliverer, yet it is not to
+be supposed but that the flattering partiality of this unhappy girl
+increased the interest he felt in her welfare, and the indignation he
+conceived against her infernal kinsman.
+
+They arrived without accident at the house of the good lady under whose
+protection Emily desired to place herself. Here Mr. Falkland willingly
+left her as in a place of security. Such conspiracies as that of which
+she was intended to have been the victim, depend for their success upon
+the person against whom they are formed being out of the reach of help;
+and the moment they are detected, they are annihilated. Such reasoning
+will, no doubt, be generally found sufficiently solid; and it appeared
+to Mr. Falkland perfectly applicable to the present case. But he was
+mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Mr. Falkland had experienced the nullity of all expostulation with Mr.
+Tyrrel, and was therefore content in the present case with confining his
+attention to the intended victim. The indignation with which he thought
+of his neighbour's character was now grown to such a height, as to fill
+him with reluctance to the idea of a voluntary interview. There was
+indeed another affair which had been contemporary with this, that had
+once more brought these mortal enemies into a state of contest, and had
+contributed to raise into a temper little short of madness, the already
+inflamed and corrosive bitterness of Mr. Tyrrel.
+
+There was a tenant of Mr. Tyrrel, one Hawkins;--I cannot mention his
+name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it!
+This Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Tyrrel, with a view of
+protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire,
+though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr.
+Tyrrel himself. The first ground of their connection was this:--Hawkins,
+beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned squire, had a
+small freehold estate that he inherited from his father. This of course
+entitled him to a vote in the county elections; and, a warmly contested
+election having occurred, he was required by his landlord to vote for
+the candidate in whose favour he had himself engaged. Hawkins refused
+to obey the mandate, and soon after received notice to quit the farm he
+at that time rented.
+
+It happened that Mr. Tyrrel had interested himself strongly in behalf of
+the opposite candidate; and, as Mr. Tyrrel's estate bordered upon the
+seat of Hawkins's present residence, the ejected countryman could think
+of no better expedient than that of riding over to this gentleman's
+mansion, and relating the case to him. Mr. Tyrrel heard him through with
+attention. "Well, friend," said he, "it is very true that I wished Mr.
+Jackman to carry his election; but you know it is usual in these cases
+for tenants to vote just as their landlords please. I do not think
+proper to encourage rebellion."--"All that is very right, and please
+you," replied Hawkins, "and I would have voted at my landlord's bidding
+for any other man in the kingdom but Squire Marlow. You must know one
+day his huntsman rode over my fence, and so through my best field of
+standing corn. It was not above a dozen yards about if he had kept the
+cart-road. The fellow had served me the same sauce, an it please your
+honour, three or four times before. So I only asked him what he did that
+for, and whether he had not more conscience than to spoil people's crops
+o' that fashion? Presently the squire came up. He is but a poor,
+weazen-face chicken of a gentleman, saving your honour's reverence. And
+so he flew into a woundy passion, and threatened to horsewhip me. I will
+do as much in reason to pleasure my landlord as arr a tenant he has; but
+I will not give my vote to a man that threatens to horsewhip me. And so,
+your honour, I and my wife and three children are to be turned out of
+house and home, and what I am to do to maintain them God knows. I have
+been a hard-working man, and have always lived well, and I do think the
+case is main hard. Squire Underwood turns me out of my farm; and if your
+honour do not take me in, I know none of the neighbouring gentry will,
+for fear, as they say, of encouraging their own tenants to run rusty
+too."
+
+This representation was not without its effect upon Mr. Tyrrel. "Well,
+well, man," replied he, "we will see what can be done. Order and
+subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to
+require. As you tell the story, I cannot see that you are greatly to
+blame. Marlow is a coxcombical prig, that is the truth on't; and if a
+man will expose himself, why, he must even take what follows. I do hate
+a Frenchified fop with all my soul: and I cannot say that I am much
+pleased with my neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a
+rascal. Hawkins, I think, is your name? You may call on Barnes, my
+steward, to-morrow, and he shall speak to you."
+
+While Mr. Tyrrel was speaking, he recollected that he had a farm vacant,
+of nearly the same value as that which Hawkins at present rented under
+Mr. Underwood. He immediately consulted his steward, and, finding the
+thing suitable in every respect, Hawkins was installed out of hand in
+the catalogue of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants. Mr. Underwood extremely resented
+this proceeding, which indeed, as being contrary to the understood
+conventions of the country gentlemen, few people but Mr. Tyrrel would
+have ventured upon. There was an end, said Mr. Underwood, to all
+regulation, if tenants were to be encouraged in such disobedience. It
+was not a question of this or that candidate, seeing that any gentleman,
+who was a true friend to his country, would rather lose his election
+than do a thing which, if once established into a practice, would
+deprive them for ever of the power of managing any election. The
+labouring people were sturdy and resolute enough of their own accord; it
+became every day more difficult to keep them under any subordination;
+and, if the gentlemen were so ill advised as to neglect the public good,
+and encourage them in their insolence, there was no foreseeing where it
+would end.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel was not of a stamp to be influenced by these remonstrances.
+Their general spirit was sufficiently conformable to the sentiments he
+himself entertained; but he was of too vehement a temper to maintain the
+character of a consistent politician; and, however wrong his conduct
+might be, he would by no means admit of its being set right by the
+suggestions of others. The more his patronage of Hawkins was criticised,
+the more inflexibly he adhered to it; and he was at no loss in clubs and
+other assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute, his
+censurers. Beside which, Hawkins had certain accomplishments which
+qualified him to be a favourite with Mr. Tyrrel. The bluntness of his
+manner and the ruggedness of his temper gave him some resemblance to his
+landord; and, as these qualities were likely to be more frequently
+exercised on such persons as had incurred Mr. Tyrrel's displeasure, than
+upon Mr. Tyrrel himself, they were not observed without some degree of
+complacency. In a word, he every day received new marks of distinction
+from his patron, and after some time was appointed coadjutor to Mr.
+Barnes under the denomination of bailiff. It was about the same period
+that he obtained a lease of the farm of which he was tenant.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel determined, as occasion offered, to promote every part of the
+family of this favoured dependent. Hawkins had a son, a lad of
+seventeen, of an agreeable person, a ruddy complexion, and of quick and
+lively parts. This lad was in an uncommon degree the favourite of his
+father, who seemed to have nothing so much at heart as the future
+welfare of his son. Mr. Tyrrel had noticed him two or three times with
+approbation; and the boy, being fond of the sports of the field, had
+occasionally followed the hounds, and displayed various instances, both
+of agility and sagacity, in presence of the squire. One day in
+particular he exhibited himself with uncommon advantage; and Mr. Tyrrel
+without further delay proposed to his father, to take him into his
+family, and make him whipper-in to his hounds, till he could provide him
+with some more lucrative appointment in his service.
+
+This proposal was received by Hawkins with various marks of
+mortification. He excused himself with hesitation for not accepting the
+offered favour; said the lad was in many ways useful to him; and hoped
+his honour would not insist upon depriving him of his assistance. This
+apology might perhaps have been sufficient with any other man than Mr.
+Tyrrel; but it was frequently observed of this gentleman that, when he
+had once formed a determination, however slight, in favour of any
+measure, he was never afterwards known to give it up, and that the only
+effect of opposition was to make him eager and inflexible, in pursuit of
+that to which he had before been nearly indifferent. At first he seemed
+to receive the apology of Hawkins with good humour, and to see nothing
+in it but what was reasonable; but afterwards, every time he saw the
+boy, his desire of retaining him in his service was increased, and he
+more than once repeated to his father the good disposition in which he
+felt himself towards him. At length he observed that the lad was no more
+to be seen mingling in his favourite sports, and he began to suspect
+that this originated in a determination to thwart him in his projects.
+
+Roused by this suspicion, which, to a man of Mr. Tyrrel's character,
+was not of a nature to brook delay, he sent for Hawkins to confer with
+him. "Hawkins," said he, in a tone of displeasure, "I am not satisfied
+with you. I have spoken to you two or three times about this lad of
+yours, whom I am desirous of taking into favour. What is the reason,
+sir, that you seem unthankful and averse to my kindness? You ought to
+know that I am not to be trifled with. I shall not be contented, when I
+offer my favours, to have them rejected by such fellows as you. I made
+you what you are; and, if I please, can make you more helpless and
+miserable than you were when I found you. Have a care!"
+
+"An it please your honour," said Hawkins, "you have been a very good
+master to me, and I will tell you the whole truth. I hope you will na be
+angry. This lad is my favourite, my comfort, and the stay of my age."
+
+"Well, and what then? Is that a reason you should hinder his
+preferment?"
+
+"Nay, pray your honour, hear me. I may be very weak for aught I know in
+this case, but I cannot help it. My father was a clergyman. We have all
+of us lived in a creditable way; and I cannot bear to think that this
+poor lad of mine should go to service. For my part, I do not see any
+good that comes by servants. I do not know, your honour, but, I think, I
+should not like my Leonard to be such as they. God forgive me, if I
+wrong them! But this is a very dear case, and I cannot bear to risk my
+poor boy's welfare, when I can so easily, if you please, keep him out or
+harm's way. At present he is sober and industrious, and, without being
+pert or surly, knows what is due to him. I know, your honour, that it is
+main foolish of me to talk to you thus; but your honour has been a good
+master to me, and I cannot bear to tell you a lie."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel had heard the whole of this harangue in silence, because he
+was too much astonished to open his mouth. If a thunderbolt had fallen
+at his feet, he could not have testified greater surprise. He had
+thought that Hawkins was so foolishly fond of his son, that he could not
+bear to trust him out of his presence; but had never in the slightest
+degree suspected what he now found to be the truth.
+
+"Oh, ho, you are a gentleman, are you? A pretty gentleman truly! your
+father was a clergyman! Your family is too good to enter into my
+service! Why you impudent rascal! was it for this that I took you up,
+when Mr. Underwood dismissed you for your insolence to him? Have I been
+nursing a viper in my bosom? Pretty master's manners will be
+contaminated truly? He will not know what is due to him, but will be
+accustomed to obey orders! You insufferable villain! Get out of my
+sight! Depend upon it, I will have no gentlemen on my estate! I will off
+with them, root and branch, bag and baggage! So do you hear, sir? come
+to me to-morrow morning, bring your son, and ask my pardon; or, take my
+word for it, I will make you so miserable, you shall wish you had never
+been born."
+
+This treatment was too much for Hawkins's patience. "There is no need,
+your honour, that I should come to you again about this affair. I have
+taken up my determination, and no time can make any change in it. I am
+main sorry to displease your worship, and I know that you can do me a
+great deal of mischief. But I hope you will not be so hardhearted as to
+ruin a father only for being fond of his child, even if so be that his
+fondness should make him do a foolish thing. But I cannot help it, your
+honour: you must do as you please. The poorest neger, as a man may say,
+has some point that he will not part with. I will lose all that I have,
+and go to day-labour, and my son too, if needs must; but I will not make
+a gentleman's servant of him."
+
+"Very well, friend; very well!" replied Mr. Tyrrel, foaming with rage.
+"Depend upon it, I will remember you! Your pride shall have a downfal!
+God damn it! is it come to this? Shall a rascal that farms his forty
+acres, pretend to beard the lord of the manor? I will tread you into
+paste! Let me advise you, scoundrel, to shut up your house and fly, as
+if the devil was behind you! You may think yourself happy, if I be not
+too quick for you yet, if you escape in a whole skin! I would not suffer
+such a villain to remain upon my land a day longer, if I could gain the
+Indies by it!"
+
+"Not so fast, your honour," answered Hawkins, sturdily. "I hope you will
+think better of it, and see that I have not been to blame. But if you
+should not, there is some harm that you can do me, and some harm that
+you cannot. Though I am a plain, working man, your honour, do you see?
+yet I am a man still. No; I have got a lease of my farm, and I shall not
+quit it o' thaten. I hope there is some law for poor folk, as well as for
+rich."
+
+Mr. Tyrrel, unused to contradiction, was provoked beyond bearing at the
+courage and independent spirit of his retainer. There was not a tenant
+upon his estate, or at least not one of Hawkins's mediocrity of fortune,
+whom the general policy of landowners, and still more the arbitrary and
+uncontrollable temper of Mr. Tyrrel, did not effectually restrain from
+acts of open defiance.
+
+"Excellent, upon my soul! God damn my blood! but you are a rare fellow.
+You have a lease, have you? You will not quit, not you! a pretty pass
+things are come to, if a lease can protect such fellows as you against
+the lord of a manor! But you are for a trial of skill? Oh, very well,
+friend, very well! With all my soul! Since it is come to that, we will
+show you some pretty sport before we have done! But get out of my sight,
+you rascal! I have not another word to say to you! Never darken my doors
+again."
+
+Hawkins (to borrow the language of the world) was guilty in this affair
+of a double imprudence. He talked to his landlord in a more peremptory
+manner than the constitution and practices of this country allow a
+dependent to assume. But above all, having been thus hurried away by his
+resentment, he ought to have foreseen the consequences. It was mere
+madness in him to think of contesting with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's
+eminence and fortune. It was a fawn contending with a lion. Nothing
+could have been more easy to predict, than that it was of no avail for
+him to have right on his side, when his adversary had influence and
+wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies
+that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely
+illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to
+engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were
+perhaps at first intended [witless and miserable precaution!] for the
+safeguards of the poor.
+
+From this moment Mr. Tyrrel was bent upon Hawkins's destruction; and he
+left no means unemployed that could either harass or injure the object
+of his persecution. He deprived him of his appointment of bailiff, and
+directed Barnes and his other dependents to do him ill offices upon all
+occasions. Mr. Tyrrel, by the tenure of his manor, was impropriator of
+the great tithes, and this circumstance afforded him frequent
+opportunities of petty altercation. The land of one part of Hawkins's
+farm, though covered with corn, was lower than the rest; and
+consequently exposed to occasional inundations from a river by which it
+was bounded. Mr. Tyrrel had a dam belonging to this river privately cut,
+about a fortnight before the season of harvest, and laid the whole under
+water. He ordered his servants to pull away the fences of the higher
+ground during the night, and to turn in his cattle, to the utter
+destruction of the crop. These expedients, however, applied to only one
+part of the property of this unfortunate man. But Mr. Tyrrel did not
+stop here. A sudden mortality took place among Hawkins's live stock,
+attended with very suspicious circumstances. Hawkins's vigilance was
+strongly excited by this event, and he at length succeeded in tracing
+the matter so accurately, that he conceived he could bring it home to
+Mr. Tyrrel himself.
+
+Hawkins had hitherto carefully avoided, notwithstanding the injuries he
+had suffered, the attempting to right himself by legal process; being of
+opinion that law was better adapted for a weapon of tyranny in the hands
+of the rich, than for a shield to protect the humbler part of the
+community against their usurpations. In this last instance however he
+conceived that the offence was so atrocious, as to make it impossible
+that any rank could protect the culprit against the severity of justice.
+In the sequel, he saw reason to applaud himself for his former
+inactivity in this respect, and to repent that any motive had been
+strong enough to persuade him into a contrary system.
+
+This was the very point to which Mr. Tyrrel wanted to bring him, and he
+could scarcely credit his good fortune, when he was told that Hawkins
+had entered an action. His congratulation upon this occasion was
+immoderate, as he now conceived that the ruin of his late favourite was
+irretrievable. He consulted his attorney, and urged him by every motive
+he could devise, to employ the whole series of his subterfuges in the
+present affair. The direct repelling of the charge exhibited against him
+was the least part of his care; the business was, by affidavits,
+motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and appeals, to protract the question
+from term to term, and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel
+argued, be the disgrace of a civilized country, if a gentleman, when
+insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert
+the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts
+of his adversary till he had reduced him to beggary.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel, however, was by no means so far engrossed by his law-suit,
+as to neglect other methods of proceeding offensively against his
+tenant. Among the various expedients that suggested themselves, there
+was one, which, though it tended rather to torment than irreparably
+injure the sufferer, was not rejected. This was derived from the
+particular situation of Hawkins's house, barns, stacks, and outhouses.
+They were placed at the extremity of a slip of land connecting them with
+the rest of the farm, and were surrounded on three sides by fields, in
+the occupation of one of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants most devoted to the
+pleasures of his landlord. The road to the market-town ran at the bottom
+of the largest of these fields, and was directly in view of the front of
+the house. No inconvenience had yet arisen from that circumstance, as
+there had always been a broad path, that intersected this field, and led
+directly from Hawkins's house to the road. This path, or private road,
+was now, by concert of Mr. Tyrrel and his obliging tenant, shut up, so
+as to make Hawkins a sort of prisoner in his own domains, and oblige him
+to go near a mile about for the purposes of his traffic.
+
+Young Hawkins, the lad who had been the original subject of dispute
+between his father and the squire, had much of his father's spirit, and
+felt an uncontrollable indignation against the successive acts of
+despotism of which he was a witness. His resentment was the greater,
+because the sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them
+flowed from affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose
+removing the ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in
+the face of his father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion,
+without asking any counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went
+in the middle of the night, and removed all the obstructions that had
+been placed in the way of the old path, broke the padlocks that had been
+fixed, and threw open the gates.
+
+In these operations he did not proceed unobserved, and the next day a
+warrant was issued for apprehending him. He was accordingly carried
+before a meeting of justices, and by them committed to the county gaol,
+to take his trial for the felony at the next assizes. Mr. Tyrrel was
+determined to prosecute the offence with the greatest severity; and his
+attorney, having made the proper enquiries for that purpose, undertook
+to bring it under that clause of the act 9 Geo. I. commonly called the
+Black Act, which declares that "any person, armed with a sword, or other
+offensive weapon, and having his face blackened, or being otherwise
+disguised, appearing in any warren or place where hares or conies have
+been or shall be usually kept, and being thereof duly convicted, shall
+be adjudged guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, as in cases of
+felony, without benefit of clergy." Young Hawkins, it seemed, had
+buttoned the cape of his great coat over his face, as soon as he
+perceived himself to be observed, and he was furnished with a
+wrenching-iron for the purpose of breaking the padlocks. The attorney
+further undertook to prove, by sufficient witnesses, that the field in
+question was a warren in which hares were regularly fed. Mr. Tyrrel
+seized upon these pretences with inexpressible satisfaction. He
+prevailed upon the justices, by the picture he drew of the obstinacy and
+insolence of the Hawkinses, fully to commit the lad upon this miserable
+charge; and it was by no means so certain as paternal affection would
+have desired, that the same overpowering influence would not cause in
+the sequel the penal clause to be executed in all its strictness.
+
+This was the finishing stroke to Hawkins's miseries: as he was not
+deficient in courage, he had stood up against his other persecutions
+without flinching. He was not unaware of the advantages which our laws
+and customs give to the rich over the poor, in contentions of this kind.
+But, being once involved, there was a stubbornness in his nature that
+would not allow him to retract, and he suffered himself to hope, rather
+than expect, a favourable issue. But in this last event he was wounded
+in the point that was nearest his heart. He had feared to have his son
+contaminated and debased by a servile station, and he now saw him
+transferred to the seminary of a gaol. He was even uncertain as to the
+issue of his imprisonment, and trembled to think what the tyranny of
+wealth might effect to blast his hopes for ever.
+
+From this moment his heart died within him. He had trusted to
+persevering industry and skill, to save the wreck of his little property
+from the vulgar spite of his landlord. But he had now no longer any
+spirit to exert those efforts which his situation more than ever
+required. Mr. Tyrrel proceeded without remission in his machinations;
+Hawkins's affairs every day grew more desperate, and the squire,
+watching the occasion, took the earliest opportunity of seizing upon
+his remaining property in the mode of a distress for rent.
+
+It was precisely in this stage of the affair, that Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+Tyrrel accidentally met, in a private road near the habitation of the
+latter. They were on horseback, and Mr. Falkland was going to the house
+of the unfortunate tenant, who seemed upon the point of perishing under
+his landlord's malice. He had been just made acquainted with the tale of
+this persecution. It had indeed been an additional aggravation of
+Hawkins's calamity, that Mr. Falkland, whose interference might
+otherwise have saved him, had been absent from the neighbourhood for a
+considerable time. He had been three months in London, and from thence
+had gone to visit his estates in another part of the island. The proud
+and self-confident spirit of this poor fellow always disposed him to
+depend, as long as possible, upon his own exertions. He had avoided
+applying to Mr. Falkland, or indeed indulging himself in any manner in
+communicating and bewailing his hard hap, in the beginning of the
+contention, and, when the extremity grew more urgent, and he would have
+been willing to recede in some degree from the stubbornness of his
+measures, he found it no longer in his power. After an absence of
+considerable duration, Mr. Falkland at length returned somewhat
+unexpectedly; and having learned, among the first articles of country
+intelligence, the distresses of this unfortunate yeoman, he resolved to
+ride over to his house the next morning, and surprise him with all the
+relief it was in his power to bestow.
+
+At sight of Mr. Tyrrel in this unexpected rencounter, his face reddened
+with indignation. His first feeling, as he afterwards said, was to avoid
+him; but finding that he must pass him, he conceived that it would be
+want of spirit not to acquaint him with his feelings on the present
+occasion.
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel," said he, somewhat abruptly, "I am sorry for a piece of
+news which I have just heard."
+
+"And pray, sir, what is your sorrow to me?"
+
+"A great deal, sir: it is caused by the distresses of a poor tenant of
+yours, Hawkins. If your steward have proceeded without your authority, I
+think it right to inform you what he has done; and, if he have had your
+authority, I would gladly persuade you to think better of it."
+
+"Mr. Falkland, it would be quite as well if you would mind your own
+business, and leave me to mind mine. I want no monitor, and I will have
+none."
+
+"You mistake, Mr. Tyrrel; I am minding my own business. If I see you
+fall into a pit, it is my business to draw you out and save your life.
+If I see you pursuing a wrong mode of conduct, it is my business to set
+you right and save your honour."
+
+"Zounds, sir, do not think to put your conundrums upon me! Is not the
+man my tenant? Is not my estate my own? What signifies calling it mine,
+if I am not to have the direction of it? Sir, I pay for what I have: I
+owe no man a penny; and I will not put my estate to nurse to you, nor
+the best he that wears a head."
+
+"It is very true," said Mr. Falkland, avoiding any direct notice of the
+last words of Mr. Tyrrel, "that there is a distinction of ranks. I
+believe that distinction is a good thing, and necessary to the peace of
+mankind. But, however necessary it may be, we must acknowledge that it
+puts some hardship upon the lower orders of society. It makes one's
+heart ache to think, that one man is born to the inheritance of every
+superfluity, while the whole share of another, without any demerit of
+his, is drudgery and starving; and that all this is indispensable. We
+that are rich, Mr. Tyrrel, must do every thing in our power to lighten
+the yoke of these unfortunate people. We must not use the advantage that
+accident has given us with an unmerciful hand. Poor wretches! they are
+pressed almost beyond bearing as it is; and, if we unfeelingly give
+another turn to the machine, they will be crushed into atoms."
+
+This picture was not without its effect, even upon the obdurate mind of
+Mr. Tyrrel.--"Well, sir, I am no tyrant. I know very well that tyranny
+is a bad thing. But you do not infer from thence that these people are
+to do as they please, and never meet with their deserts?"
+
+"Mr. Tyrrel, I see that you are shaken in your animosity. Suffer me to
+hail the new-born benevolence of your nature. Go with me to Hawkins. Do
+not let us talk of his deserts! Poor fellow! he has suffered almost all
+that human nature can endure. Let your forgiveness upon this occasion be
+the earnest of good neighbourhood and friendship between you and me."
+
+"No, sir, I will not go. I own there is something in what you say. I
+always knew you had the wit to make good your own story, and tell a
+plausible tale. But I will not be come over thus. It has been my
+character, when I had once conceived a scheme of vengeance, never to
+forego it; and I will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when
+every body forsook him, and made a man of him; and the ungrateful rascal
+has only insulted me for my pains. Curse me, if I ever forgive him! It
+would be a good jest indeed, if I were to forgive the insolence of my
+own creature at the desire of a man like you that has been my perpetual
+plague."
+
+"For God's sake, Mr. Tyrrel, have some reason in your resentment! Let us
+suppose that Hawkins has behaved unjustifiably, and insulted you: is
+that an offence that never can be expiated? Must the father be ruined,
+and the son hanged, to glut your resentment?"
+
+"Damn me, sir, but you may talk your heart out; you shall get nothing of
+me. I shall never forgive myself for having listened to you for a
+moment. I will suffer nobody to stop the stream of my resentment; if I
+ever were to forgive him, it should be at nobody's, entreaty but my own.
+But, sir, I never will. If he and all his family were at my feet, I
+would order them all to be hanged the next minute, if my power were as
+good as my will."
+
+"And this is your decision, is it? Mr. Tyrrel, I am ashamed of you!
+Almighty God! to hear you talk gives one a loathing for the institutions
+and regulations of society, and would induce one to fly the very face of
+man! But, no! society casts you out; man abominates you. No wealth, no
+rank, can buy out your stain. You will live deserted in the midst of
+your species; you will go into crowded societies, and no one will deign
+so much as to salute you. They will fly from your glance as they would
+from the gaze of a basilisk. Where do you expect to find the hearts of
+flint that shall sympathise with yours? You have the stamp of misery,
+incessant, undivided, unpitied misery!"
+
+Thus saying, Mr. Falkland gave spurs to his horse, rudely pushed beside
+Mr. Tyrrel, and was presently out of sight. Flaming indignation
+annihilated even his favourite sense of honour, and he regarded his
+neighbour as a wretch, with whom it was impossible even to enter into
+contention. For the latter, he remained for the present motionless and
+petrified. The glowing enthusiasm of Mr. Falkland was such as might well
+have unnerved the stoutest foe. Mr. Tyrrel, in spite of himself, was
+blasted with the compunctions of guilt, and unable to string himself
+for the contest. The picture Mr. Falkland had drawn was prophetic. It
+described what Mr. Tyrrel chiefly feared; and what in its commencements
+he thought he already felt. It was responsive to the whispering of his
+own meditations; it simply gave body and voice to the spectre that
+haunted him, and to the terrors of which he was an hourly prey.
+
+By and by, however, he recovered. The more he had been temporarily
+confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such
+hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with
+violence and death. Mr. Tyrrel, however, felt no inclination to have
+recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a
+coward; but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his
+vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his
+animosity would never be forgotten nor diminished by the interposition
+of any time or events. Vengeance was his nightly dream, and the
+uppermost of his waking thoughts.
+
+Mr. Falkland had departed from this conference with a confirmed
+disapprobation of the conduct of his neighbour, and an unalterable
+resolution to do every thing in his power to relieve the distresses of
+Hawkins. But he was too late. When he arrived, he found the house
+already evacuated by its master. The family was removed nobody knew
+whither; Hawkins had absconded, and, what was still more extraordinary,
+the boy Hawkins had escaped on the very same day from the county gaol.
+The enquiries Mr. Falkland set on foot after them were fruitless; no
+traces could be found of the catastrophe of these unhappy people. That
+catastrophe I shall shortly have occasion to relate, and it will be
+found pregnant with horror, beyond what the blackest misanthropy could
+readily have suggested.
+
+I go on with my tale. I go on to relate those incidents in which my own
+fate was so mysteriously involved. I lift the curtain, and bring forward
+the last act of the tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+It may easily be supposed, that the ill temper cherished by Mr. Tyrrel
+in his contention with Hawkins, and the increasing animosity between him
+and Mr. Falkland, added to the impatience with which he thought of the
+escape of Emily.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel heard with astonishment of the miscarriage of an expedient,
+of the success of which he had not previously entertained the slightest
+suspicion. He became frantic with vexation. Grimes had not dared to
+signify the event of his expedition in person, and the footman whom he
+desired to announce to his master that Miss Melville was lost, the
+moment after fled from his presence with the most dreadful
+apprehensions. Presently he bellowed for Grimes, and the young man at
+last appeared before him, more dead than alive. Grimes he compelled to
+repeat the particulars of the tale; which he had no sooner done, than he
+once again slunk away, shocked at the execrations with which Mr. Tyrrel
+overwhelmed him. Grimes was no coward; but he reverenced the inborn
+divinity that attends upon rank, as Indians worship the devil. Nor was
+this all. The rage of Mr. Tyrrel was so ungovernable and fierce, that
+few hearts could have been found so stout, as not to have trembled
+before it with a sort of unconquerable inferiority.
+
+He no sooner obtained a moment's pause than he began to recall to his
+tempestuous mind the various circumstances of the case. His complaints
+were bitter; and, in a tranquil observer, might have produced the united
+feeling of pity for his sufferings, and horror at his depravity. He
+recollected all the precautions he had used; he could scarcely find a
+flaw in the process; and he cursed that blind and malicious power which
+delighted to cross his most deep-laid schemes. "Of this malice he was
+beyond all other human beings the object. He was mocked with the shadow
+of power; and when he lifted his hand to smite, it was struck with
+sudden palsy. [In the bitterness of his anguish, he forgot his recent
+triumph over Hawkins, or perhaps he regarded it less as a triumph, than
+an overthrow, because it had failed of coming up to the extent of his
+malice.] To what purpose had Heaven given him a feeling of injury, and
+an instinct to resent, while he could in no case make his resentment
+felt! It was only necessary for him to be the enemy of any person, to
+insure that person's being safe against the reach of misfortune. What
+insults, the most shocking and repeated, had he received from this
+paltry girl! And by whom was she now torn from his indignation? By that
+devil that haunted him at every moment, that crossed him at every step,
+that fixed at pleasure his arrows in his heart, and made mows and
+mockery at his insufferable tortures."
+
+There was one other reflection that increased his anguish, and made him
+careless and desperate as to his future conduct. It was in vain to
+conceal from himself that his reputation would be cruelly wounded by
+this event. He had imagined that, while Emily was forced into this
+odious marriage, she would be obliged by decorum, as soon as the event
+was decided, to draw a veil over the compulsion she had suffered. But
+this security was now lost, and Mr. Falkland would take a pride in
+publishing his dishonour. Though the provocations he had received from
+Miss Melville would, in his own opinion, have justified him in any
+treatment he should have thought proper to inflict, he was sensible the
+world would see the matter in a different light. This reflection
+augmented the violence of his resolutions, and determined him to refuse
+no means by which he could transfer the anguish that now preyed upon his
+own mind to that of another.
+
+Meanwhile, the composure and magnanimity of Emily had considerably
+subsided, the moment she believed herself in a place of safety. While
+danger and injustice assailed her with their menaces, she found in
+herself a courage that disdained to yield. The succeeding appearance of
+calm was more fatal to her. There was nothing now, powerfully to foster
+her courage or excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had
+passed, and her soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while
+it was in act, she had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at
+which Mr. Tyrrel had been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had
+been in all instances a stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to
+misfortune, she had suddenly and without preparation been made the
+subject of the most infernal malignity. When a man of robust and
+vigorous constitution has a fit of sickness, it produces a more powerful
+effect, than the same indisposition upon a delicate valetudinarian. Such
+was the case with Miss Melville. She passed the succeeding night
+sleepless and uneasy, and was found in the morning with a high fever.
+Her distemper resisted for the present all attempts to assuage it,
+though there was reason to hope that the goodness of her constitution,
+assisted by tranquillity and the kindness of those about her, would
+ultimately surmount it. On the second day she was delirious. On the
+night of that day she was arrested at the suit of Mr. Tyrrel, for a debt
+contracted for board and necessaries for the last fourteen years.
+
+The idea of this arrest, as the reader will perhaps recollect, first
+occurred, in the conversation between Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville, soon
+after he had thought proper to confine her to her chamber. But at that
+time he had probably no serious conception of ever being induced to
+carry it into execution. It had merely been mentioned by way of threat,
+and as the suggestion of a mind, whose habits had long been accustomed
+to contemplate every possible instrument of tyranny and revenge. But
+now, that the unlooked-for rescue and escape of his poor kinswoman had
+wrought up his thoughts to a degree of insanity, and that he revolved in
+the gloomy recesses of his mind, how he might best shake off the load of
+disappointment which oppressed him, the idea recurred with double force.
+He was not long in forming his resolution; and, calling for Barnes his
+steward, immediately gave him directions in what manner to proceed.
+
+Barnes had been for several years the instrument of Mr. Tyrrel's
+injustice. His mind was hardened by use, and he could, without remorse,
+officiate as the spectator, or even as the author and director, of a
+scene of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the
+present occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Tyrrel's
+family had been without a blot. She had not a single enemy; and it was
+impossible to contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless
+innocence, without emotions of sympathy and compassion.
+
+"Your worship?--I do not understand you!--Arrest Miss--Miss Emily!"
+
+"Yes,--I tell you!--What is the matter with you?--Go instantly to
+Swineard, the lawyer, and bid him finish the business out of hand!"
+
+"Lord love your honour! Arrest her! Why she does not owe you a brass
+farthing: she always lived upon your charity!"
+
+"Ass! Scoundrel! I tell you she does owe me,--owes me eleven hundred
+pounds.--The law justifies it.--What do you think laws were made for? I
+do nothing but right, and right I will have."
+
+"Your honour, I never questioned your orders in my life; but I must now.
+I cannot see you ruin Miss Emily, poor girl! nay, and yourself too, for
+the matter of that, and not say which way you are going. I hope you will
+bear with me. Why, if she owed you ever so much, she cannot be arrested.
+She is not of age."
+
+"Will you have done?--Do not tell me of--It cannot, and It can. It has
+been done before,--and it shall be done again. Let him dispute it that
+dares! I will do it now and stand to it afterwards. Tell Swineard,--if
+he make the least boggling, it is as much as his life is worth;--he
+shall starve by inches."
+
+"Pray, your honour, think better of it. Upon my life, the whole country
+will cry shame of it."
+
+"Barnes!--What do you mean? I am not used to be talked to, and I cannot
+hear it! You have been a good fellow to me upon many occasions--But, if
+I find you out for making one with them that dispute my authority, damn
+my soul, if I do not make you sick of your life!"
+
+"I have done, your honour. I will not say another word except this,--I
+have heard as how that Miss Emily is sick a-bed. You are determined, you
+say, to put her in jail. You do not mean to kill her, I take it."
+
+"Let her die! I will not spare her for an hour--I will not always be
+insulted. She had no consideration for me, and I have no mercy for
+her.--I am in for it! They have provoked me past bearing,--and they
+shall feel me! Tell Swineard, in bed or up, day or night, I will not
+hear of an instant's delay."
+
+Such were the directions of Mr. Tyrrel, and in strict conformity to his
+directions were the proceedings of that respectable limb of the law he
+employed upon the present occasion. Miss Melville had been delirious,
+through a considerable part of the day on the evening of which the
+bailiff and his follower arrived. By the direction of the physician whom
+Mr. Falkland had ordered to attend her, a composing draught was
+administered; and, exhausted as she was by the wild and distracted
+images that for several hours had haunted her fancy, she was now sunk
+into a refreshing slumber. Mrs. Hammond, the sister of Mrs. Jakeman, was
+sitting by her bed-side, full of compassion for the lovely sufferer, and
+rejoicing in the calm tranquillity that had just taken possession of
+her, when a little girl, the only child of Mrs. Hammond, opened the
+street-door to the rap of the bailiff He said he wanted to speak with
+Miss Melville, and the child answered that she would go tell her mother.
+So saying, she advanced to the door of the back-room upon the
+ground-floor, in which Emily lay; but the moment it was opened, instead
+of waiting for the appearance of the mother, the bailiff entered along
+with the girl.
+
+Mrs. Hammond looked up. "Who are you?" said she. "Why do you come in
+here? Hush! be quiet!'
+
+"I must speak with Miss Melville."
+
+"Indeed, but you must not. Tell me your business. The poor child has
+been light-headed all day. She has just fallen asleep, and must not be
+disturbed."
+
+"That is no business of mine. I must obey orders."
+
+"Orders? Whose orders? What is it you mean?"
+
+At this moment Emily opened her eyes. "What noise is that? Pray let me
+be quiet."
+
+"Miss, I want to speak with you. I have got a writ against you for
+eleven hundred pounds at the suit of squire Tyrrel."
+
+At these words both Mrs. Hammond and Emily were dumb. The latter was
+scarcely able to annex any meaning to the intelligence; and, though Mrs.
+Hammond was somewhat better acquainted with the sort of language that
+was employed, yet in this strange and unexpected connection it was
+almost as mysterious to her as to poor Emily herself.
+
+"A writ? How can she be in Mr. Tyrrel's debt? A writ against a child!"
+
+"It is no signification putting your questions to us. We only do as we
+are directed. There is our authority. Look at it."
+
+"Lord Almighty!" exclaimed Mrs. Hammond, "what does this mean? It is
+impossible Mr. Tyrrel should have sent you."
+
+"Good woman, none of your jabber to us! Cannot you read?"
+
+"This is all a trick! The paper is forged! It is a vile contrivance to
+get the poor orphan out of the hands of those with whom only she can be
+safe. Proceed upon it at your peril!"
+
+"Rest you content; that is exactly what we mean to do. Take my word, we
+know very well what we are about."
+
+"Why, you would not tear her from her bed? I tell you, she is in a high
+fever; she is light-headed; it would be death to remove her! You are
+bailiffs, are not you? You are not murderers?"
+
+"The law says nothing about that. We have orders to take her sick or
+well. We will do her no harm except so far as we must perform our
+office, be it how it will."
+
+"Where would you take her? What is it you mean to do?"
+
+"To the county jail. Bullock, go, order a post-chaise from the Griffin!"
+
+"Stay, I say! Give no such orders! Wait only three hours; I will send
+off a messenger express to squire Falkland, and I am sure he will
+satisfy you as to any harm that can come to you, without its being
+necessary to take the poor child to jail."
+
+"We have particular directions against that. We are not at liberty to
+lose a minute. Why are not you gone? Order the horses to be put to
+immediately!"
+
+Emily had listened to the course of this conversation, which had
+sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first
+appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was
+thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which
+she had just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do
+not harass yourself with useless efforts. I am very sorry for all the
+trouble I have given you. But my misfortune is inevitable. Sir, if you
+will step into the next room, I will dress myself, and attend you
+immediately."
+
+Mrs. Hammond began to be equally aware that her struggles were to no
+purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved
+upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil
+incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter
+invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him
+to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function;
+but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily
+yielded with the sweetest resignation to an inevitable evil. Mrs.
+Hammond insisted that, at least, they should permit her to attend her
+young lady in the chaise; and the bailiff, though the orders he had
+received were so peremptory that he dared not exercise his discretion as
+to the execution of the writ, began to have some apprehensions of
+danger, and was willing to admit of any precaution that was not in
+direct hostility to his functions. For the rest he understood, that it
+was in all cases dangerous to allow sickness, or apparent unfitness for
+removal, as a sufficient cause to interrupt a direct process; and that,
+accordingly, in all doubtful questions and presumptive murders, the
+practice of the law inclined, with a laudable partiality, to the
+vindication of its own officers. In addition to these general rules, he
+was influenced by the positive injunctions and assurances of Swineard,
+and the terror which, through a circle of many miles, was annexed to the
+name of Tyrrel. Before they departed, Mrs. Hammond despatched a
+messenger with a letter of three lines to Mr. Falkland, informing him of
+this extraordinary event. Mr. Falkland was from home when the messenger
+arrived, and not expected to return till the second day; accident seemed
+in this instance to favour the vengeance of Mr. Tyrrel, for he had
+himself been too much under the dominion of an uncontrollable fury, to
+take a circumstance of this sort into his estimate.
+
+The forlorn state of these poor women, who were conducted, the one by
+compulsion, the other a volunteer, to a scene so little adapted to their
+accommodation as that of a common jail, may easily be imagined Mrs.
+Hammond, however, was endowed with a masculine courage and impetuosity
+of spirit, eminently necessary in the difficulties they had to
+encounter. She was in some degree fitted by a sanguine temper, and an
+impassioned sense of injustice, for the discharge of those very offices
+which sobriety and calm reflection might have prescribed. The health of
+Miss Melville was materially affected by the surprise and removal she
+had undergone at the very time that repose was most necessary for her
+preservation. Her fever became more violent; her delirium was stronger;
+and the tortures of her imagination were proportioned to the
+unfavourableness of the state in which the removal had been effected. It
+was highly improbable that she could recover.
+
+In the moments of suspended reason she was perpetually calling on the
+name of Falkland. Mr. Falkland, she said, was her first and only love,
+and he should be her husband. A moment after she exclaimed upon him in a
+disconsolate, yet reproachful tone, for his unworthy deference to the
+prejudices of the world. It was very cruel of him to show himself so
+proud, and tell her that he would never consent to marry a beggar. But,
+if he were proud, she was determined to be proud too. He should see that
+she would not conduct herself like a slighted maiden, and that, though
+he could reject her, it was not in his power to break her heart. At
+another time she imagined she saw Mr. Tyrrel and his engine Grimes,
+their hands and garments dropping with blood: and the pathetic
+reproaches she vented against them might have affected a heart of stone.
+Then the figure of Falkland presented itself to her distracted fancy,
+deformed with wounds, and of a deadly paleness, and she shrieked with
+agony, while she exclaimed that such was the general hardheartedness,
+that no one would make the smallest exertion for his rescue. In such
+vicissitudes of pain, perpetually imagining to her self unkindness,
+insult, conspiracy, and murder, she passed a considerable part of two
+days.
+
+On the evening of the second Mr. Falkland arrived, accompanied by Doctor
+Wilson, the physician by whom she had previously been attended. The
+scene he was called upon to witness was such as to be most exquisitely
+agonising to a man of his acute sensibility. The news of the arrest had
+given him an inexpressible shock; he was transported out of himself at
+the unexampled malignity of its author. But, when he saw the figure of
+Miss Melville, haggard, and a warrant of death written in her
+countenance, a victim to the diabolical passions of her kinsman, it
+seemed too much to be endured. When he entered, she was in the midst of
+one of her fits of delirium, and immediately mistook her visitors for
+two assassins. She asked, where they had hid her Falkland, her lord, her
+life, her husband! and demanded that they should restore to her his
+mangled corpse, that she might embrace him with her dying arms, breathe
+her last upon his lips, and be buried in the same grave. She reproached
+them with the sordidness of their conduct in becoming the tools of her
+vile cousin, who had deprived her of her reason, and would never be
+contented till he had murdered her. Mr. Falkland tore himself away from
+this painful scene, and, leaving Doctor Wilson with his patient, desired
+him, when he had given the necessary directions, to follow him to his
+inn.
+
+The perpetual hurry of spirits in which Miss Melville had been kept for
+several days, by the nature of her indisposition, was extremely
+exhausting to her; and, in about an hour from the visit of Mr. Falkland,
+her delirium subsided, and left her in so low a state as to render it
+difficult to perceive any signs of life. Doctor Wilson, who had
+withdrawn, to soothe, if possible, the disturbed and impatient thoughts
+of Mr. Falkland, was summoned afresh upon this change of symptoms, and
+sat by the bed-side during the remainder of the night. The situation of
+his patient was such, as to keep him in momentary apprehension of her
+decease. While Miss Melville lay in this feeble and exhausted condition,
+Mrs. Hammond betrayed every token of the tenderest anxiety. Her
+sensibility was habitually of the acutest sort, and the qualities of
+Emily were such as powerfully to fix her affection. She loved her like a
+mother. Upon the present occasion, every sound, every motion, made her
+tremble. Doctor Wilson had introduced another nurse, in consideration of
+the incessant fatigue Mrs. Hammond had undergone; and he endeavoured, by
+representations, and even by authority, to compel her to quit the
+apartment of the patient. But she was uncontrollable; and he at length
+found that he should probably do her more injury, by the violence that
+would be necessary to separate her from the suffering innocent, than by
+allowing her to follow her inclination. Her eye was a thousand times
+turned, with the most eager curiosity, upon the countenance of Doctor
+Wilson, without her daring to breathe a question respecting his opinion,
+lest he should answer her by a communication of the most fatal tidings.
+In the mean time she listened with the deepest attention to every thing
+that dropped either from the physician or the nurse, hoping to collect
+as it were from some oblique hint, the intelligence which she had not
+courage expressly to require.
+
+Towards morning the state of the patient seemed to take a favourable
+turn. She dozed for near two hours, and, when she awoke, appeared
+perfectly calm and sensible. Understanding that Mr. Falkland had
+brought the physician to attend her, and was himself in her
+neighbourhood, she requested to see him. Mr. Falkland had gone in the
+mean time, with one of his tenants, to bail the debt, and now entered
+the prison to enquire whether the young lady might be safely removed,
+from her present miserable residence, to a more airy and commodious
+apartment. When he appeared, the sight of him revived in the mind of
+Miss Melville an imperfect recollection of the wanderings of her
+delirium. She covered her face with her fingers, and betrayed the most
+expressive confusion, while she thanked him, with her usual unaffected
+simplicity, for the trouble he had taken. She hoped she should not give
+him much more; she thought she should get better. It was a shame, she
+said, if a young and lively girl, as she was, could not contrive to
+outlive the trifling misfortunes to which she had been subjected. But,
+while she said this, she was still extremely weak. She tried to assume a
+cheerful countenance; but it was a faint effort, which the feeble state
+of her frame did not seem sufficient to support. Mr. Falkland and the
+doctor joined to request her to keep herself quiet, and avoid for the
+present all occasions of exertion.
+
+Encouraged by these appearances, Mrs. Hammond ventured to follow the two
+gentlemen out of the room, in order to learn from the physician what
+hopes he entertained. Doctor Wilson acknowledged, that he found his
+patient at first in a very unfavourable situation, that the symptoms
+were changed for the better, and that he was not without some
+expectation of her recovery. He added, however, that he could answer for
+nothing, that the next twelve hours would be exceedingly critical, but
+that if she did not grow worse before morning, he would then undertake
+for her life. Mrs. Hammond, who had hitherto seen nothing but despair,
+now became frantic with joy. She burst into tears of transport, blessed
+the physician in the most emphatic and impassioned terms, and uttered a
+thousand extravagancies. Doctor Wilson seized this opportunity to press
+her to give herself a little repose, to which she consented, a bed being
+first procured for her in the room next to Miss Melville's, she having
+charged the nurse to give her notice of any alteration in the state of
+the patient.
+
+Mrs. Hammond enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep of several hours. It was
+already night, when she was awaked by an unusual bustle in the next
+room. She listened for a few moments, and then determined to go and
+discover the occasion of it. As she opened her door for that purpose,
+she met the nurse coming to her. The countenance of the messenger told
+her what it was she had to communicate, without the use of words. She
+hurried to the bed-side, and found Miss Melville expiring. The
+appearances that had at first been so encouraging were of short
+duration. The calm of the morning proved to be only a sort of lightening
+before death. In a few hours the patient grew worse. The bloom of her
+countenance faded; she drew her breath with difficulty; and her eyes
+became fixed. Doctor Wilson came in at this period, and immediately
+perceived that all was over. She was for some time in convulsions; but,
+these subsiding, she addressed the physician with a composed, though
+feeble voice. She thanked him for his attention; and expressed the most
+lively sense of her obligations to Mr. Falkland. She sincerely forgave
+her cousin, and hoped he might never be visited by too acute a
+recollection of his barbarity to her. She would have been contented to
+live. Few persons had a sincerer relish of the pleasures of life; but
+she was well pleased to die, rather than have become the wife of Grimes.
+As Mrs. Hammond entered, she turned her countenance towards her, and
+with an affectionate expression repeated her name. This was her last
+word; in less than two hours from that time she breathed her last in the
+arms of this faithful friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Such was the fate of Miss Emily Melville. Perhaps tyranny never
+exhibited a more painful memorial of the detestation in which it
+deserves to be held. The idea irresistibly excited in every spectator of
+the scene, was that of regarding Mr. Tyrrel as the most diabolical
+wretch that had ever dishonoured the human form. The very attendants
+upon this house of oppression, for the scene was acted upon too public a
+stage not to be generally understood, expressed their astonishment and
+disgust at his unparalleled cruelty.
+
+If such were the feelings of men bred to the commission of injustice, it
+is difficult to say what must have been those of Mr. Falkland. He raved,
+he swore, he beat his head, he rent up his hair. He was unable to
+continue in one posture, and to remain in one place. He burst away from
+the spot with vehemence, as if he sought to leave behind him his
+recollection and his existence. He seemed to tear up the ground with
+fierceness and rage. He returned soon again. He approached the sad
+remains of what had been Emily, and gazed on them with such intentness,
+that his eyes appeared, ready to burst from their sockets. Acute and
+exquisite as were his notions of virtue and honour, he could not prevent
+himself from reproaching the system of nature, for having given birth to
+such a monster as Tyrrel. He was ashamed of himself for wearing the same
+form. He could not think of the human species with patience. He foamed
+with indignation against the laws of the universe, that did not permit
+him to crush such reptiles at a blow, as we would crush so many noxious
+insects. It was necessary to guard him like a madman.
+
+The whole office of judging what was proper to be done under the present
+circumstances devolved upon Doctor Wilson. The doctor was a man of cool
+and methodical habits of acting. One of the first ideas that suggested
+itself to him was, that Miss Melvile was a branch of the family of
+Tyrrel. He did not doubt of the willingness of Mr. Falkland to discharge
+every expense that might be further incident to the melancholy remains
+of this unfortunate victim; but he conceived that the laws of fashion
+and decorum required some notification of the event to be made to the
+head of the family. Perhaps, too, he had an eye to his interest in his
+profession, and was reluctant to expose himself to the resentment of a
+person of Mr. Tyrrel's consideration in the neighbourhood. But, with
+this weakness, he had nevertheless some feelings in common with the rest
+of the world, and must have suffered considerable violence, before he
+could have persuaded himself to be the messenger; beside which, he did
+not think it right in the present situation to leave Mr. Falkland.
+
+Doctor Wilson no sooner mentioned these ideas, than they seemed to make
+a sudden impression on Mrs. Hammond, and she earnestly requested that
+she might be permitted to carry the intelligence. The proposal was
+unexpected; but the doctor did not very obstinately refuse his assent.
+She was determined, she said, to see what sort of impression the
+catastrophe would make upon the author of it; and she promised to
+comport herself with moderation and civility. The journey was soon
+performed.
+
+"I am come, sir," said she to Mr. Tyrrel, "to inform you that your
+cousin, Miss Melville, died this afternoon."
+
+"Died?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I saw her die. She died in these arms."
+
+"Died? Who killed her? What do you mean?"
+
+"Who? Is it for you to ask that question? Your cruelty and malice killed
+her!"
+
+"Me?--my?--Poh! she is not dead--it cannot be--it is not a week since
+she left this house."
+
+"Do not you believe me? I say she is dead!"
+
+"Have a care, woman! this is no matter for jesting. No: though she used
+me ill, I would not believe her dead for all the world!"
+
+Mrs. Hammond shook her head in a manner expressive at once of grief and
+indignation.
+
+"No, no, no, no! I will never believe that!--No, never!"
+
+"Will you come with me, and convince your eyes? It is a sight worthy of
+you; and will be a feast to such a heart as yours!"--Saying this, Mrs.
+Hammond offered her hand, as if to conduct him to the spot.
+
+Mr. Tyrrel shrunk back.
+
+"If she be dead, what is that to me? Am I to answer for every thing that
+goes wrong in the world?--What do you come here for? Why bring your
+messages to me?"
+
+"To whom should I bring them but to her kinsman,--and her murderer."
+
+"Murderer?--Did I employ knives or pistols? Did I give her poison? I did
+nothing but what the law allows. If she be dead, nobody can say that I
+am to blame!"
+
+"To blame?--All the world will abhor and curse you. Were you such a
+fool as to think, because men pay respect to wealth and rank, this would
+extend to such a deed? They will laugh at so barefaced a cheat. The
+meanest beggar will spurn and spit at you. Ay, you may well stand
+confounded at what you have done. I will proclaim you to the whole
+world, and you will be obliged to fly the very face of a human
+creature!"
+
+"Good woman," said Mr. Tyrrel, extremely humbled, "talk no more in this
+strain!--Emmy is not dead! I am sure--I hope--she is not dead!--Tell me
+that you have only been deceiving me, and I will forgive you every
+thing--I will forgive her--I will take her into favour--I will do any
+thing you please!--I never meant her any harm!"
+
+"I tell you she is dead! You have murdered the sweetest innocent that
+lived! Can you bring her back to life, as you have driven her out of it?
+If you could, I would kneel to you twenty times a day! What is it you
+have done?--Miserable wretch! did you think you could do and undo, and
+change things this way and that, as you pleased?"
+
+The reproaches of Mrs. Hammond were the first instance in which Mr.
+Tyrrel was made to drink the full cup of retribution. This was, however,
+only a specimen of a long series of contempt, abhorrence, and insult,
+that was reserved for him. The words of Mrs. Hammond were prophetic. It
+evidently appeared, that though wealth and hereditary elevation operate
+as an apology for many delinquencies, there are some which so
+irresistibly address themselves to the indignation of mankind, that,
+like death, they level all distinctions, and reduce their perpetrator to
+an equality with the most indigent and squalid of his species. Against
+Mr. Tyrrel, as the tyrannical and unmanly murderer of Emily, those who
+dared not venture the unreserved avowal of their sentiments muttered
+curses, deep, not loud; while the rest joined in an universal cry of
+abhorrence and execration. He stood astonished at the novelty of his
+situation. Accustomed as he had been to the obedience and trembling
+homage of mankind, he had imagined they would be perpetual, and that no
+excess on his part would ever be potent enough to break the enchantment.
+Now he looked round, and saw sullen detestation in every face, which
+with difficulty restrained itself, and upon the slightest provocation
+broke forth with an impetuous tide, and swept away the mounds of
+subordination and fear. His large estate could not purchase civility
+from the gentry, the peasantry, scarcely from his own servants. In the
+indignation of all around him he found a ghost that haunted him with
+every change of place, and a remorse that stung his conscience, and
+exterminated his peace. The neighbourhood appeared more and more every
+day to be growing too hot for him to endure, and it became evident that
+he would ultimately be obliged to quit the country. Urged by the
+flagitiousness of this last example, people learned to recollect every
+other instance of his excesses, and it was, no doubt, a fearful
+catalogue that rose up in judgment against him. It seemed as if the
+sense of public resentment had long been gathering strength unperceived,
+and now burst forth into insuppressible violence.
+
+There was scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution
+could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a
+consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the
+detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet
+the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had
+of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and
+undisguised condemnation into which he was sunk with uncommon emotions
+of anger and impatience. That he, at the beam of whose eye every
+countenance fell, and to whom in the fierceness of his wrath no one was
+daring enough to reply, should now be regarded with avowed dislike, and
+treated with unceremonious censure, was a thing he could not endure to
+recollect or believe. Symptoms of the universal disgust smote him at
+every instant, and at every blow he writhed with intolerable anguish.
+His rage was unbounded and raving. He repelled every attack with the
+fiercest indignation; while the more he struggled, the more desperate
+his situation appeared to become. At length he determined to collect his
+strength for a decisive effort, and to meet the whole tide of public
+opinion in a single scene.
+
+In pursuance of these thoughts he resolved to repair, without delay, to
+the rural assembly which I have already mentioned in the course of my
+story. Miss Melville had now been dead one month. Mr. Falkland had been
+absent the last week in a distant part of the country, and was not
+expected to return for a week longer. Mr. Tyrrel willingly embraced the
+opportunity, trusting, if he could now effect his re-establishment, that
+he should easily preserve the ground he had gained, even in the face of
+his formidable rival. Mr. Tyrrel was not deficient in courage; but he
+conceived the present to be too important an epoch in his life to allow
+him to make any unnecessary risk in his chance for future ease and
+importance.
+
+There was a sort of bustle that took place at his entrance into the
+assembly, it having been agreed by the gentlemen of the assembly, that
+Mr. Tyrrel was to be refused admittance, as a person with whom they did
+not choose to associate. This vote had already been notified to him by
+letter by the master of the ceremonies, but the intelligence was rather
+calculated, with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's disposition, to excite defiance
+than to overawe. At the door of the assembly he was personally met by
+the master of the ceremonies, who had perceived the arrival of an
+equipage, and who now endeavoured to repeat his prohibition: but he was
+thrust aside by Mr. Tyrrel with an air of native authority and ineffable
+contempt. As he entered; every eye was turned upon him. Presently all
+the gentlemen in the room assembled round him. Some endeavoured to
+hustle him, and others began to expostulate. But he found the secret
+effectually to silence the one set, and to shake off the other. His
+muscular form, the well-known eminence of his intellectual powers, the
+long habits to which every man was formed of acknowledging his
+ascendancy, were all in his favour. He considered himself as playing a
+desperate stake, and had roused all the energies he possessed, to enable
+him to do justice to so interesting a transaction. Disengaged from the
+insects that at first pestered him, he paced up and down the room with a
+magisterial stride, and flashed an angry glance on every side. He then
+broke silence. "If any one had any thing to say to him, he should know
+where and how to answer him. He would advise any such person, however,
+to consider well what he was about. If any man imagined he had any thing
+personally to complain of, it was very well. But he did expect that
+nobody there would be ignorant and raw enough to meddle with what was no
+business of theirs, and intrude into the concerns of any man's private
+family."
+
+This being a sort of defiance, one and another gentleman advanced to
+answer it. He that was first began to speak; but Mr. Tyrrel, by the
+expression of his countenance and a peremptory tone, by well-timed
+interruptions and pertinent insinuations, caused him first to hesitate,
+and then to be silent. He seemed to be fast advancing to the triumph he
+had promised himself. The whole company were astonished. They felt the
+same abhorrence and condemnation of his character; but they could not
+help admiring the courage and resources he displayed upon the present
+occasion. They could without difficulty have concentred afresh their
+indignant feelings, but they seemed to want a leader.
+
+At this critical moment Mr. Falkland entered the room. Mere accident had
+enabled him to return sooner than he expected.
+
+Both he and Mr. Tyrrel reddened at sight of each other. He advanced
+towards Mr. Tyrrel without a moment's pause, and in a peremptory voice
+asked him what he did there?
+
+"Here? What do you mean by that? This place is as free to me as you, and
+you are the last person to whom I shall deign to give an account of
+myself."
+
+"Sir, the place is not free to you. Do not you know, you have been voted
+out? Whatever were your rights, your infamous conduct has forfeited
+them."
+
+"Mr. what do you call yourself, if you have anything to say to me,
+choose a proper time and place. Do not think to put on your bullying
+airs under shelter of this company! I will not endure it."
+
+"You are mistaken, sir. This public scene is the only place where I can
+have any thing to say to you. If you would not hear the universal
+indignation of mankind, you must not come into the society of men.--Miss
+Melville!--Shame upon you, inhuman, unrelenting tyrant! Can you hear her
+name, and not sink into the earth? Can you retire into solitude, and not
+see her pale and patient ghost rising to reproach you? Can you recollect
+her virtues, her innocence, her spotless manners, her unresentful
+temper, and not run distracted with remorse? Have you not killed her in
+the first bloom of her youth? Can you bear to think that she now lies
+mouldering in the grave through your cursed contrivance, that deserved a
+crown, ten thousand times more than you deserve to live? And do you
+expect that mankind will ever forget, or forgive such a deed? Go,
+miserable wretch; think yourself too happy that you are permitted to fly
+the face of man! Why, what a pitiful figure do you make at this moment!
+Do you think that any thing could bring so hardened a wretch as you are
+to shrink from reproach, if your conscience were not in confederacy with
+them that reproached you? And were you fool enough to believe that any
+obstinacy, however determined, could enable you to despise the keen
+rebuke of justice? Go, shrink into your miserable self! Begone, and let
+me never be blasted with your sight again!"
+
+And here, incredible as it may appear, Mr. Tyrrel began to obey his
+imperious censurer. His looks were full of wildness and horror; his
+limbs trembled; and his tongue refused its office. He felt no power of
+resisting the impetuous torrent of reproach that was poured upon him. He
+hesitated; he was ashamed of his own defeat; he seemed to wish to deny
+it. But his struggles were ineffectual; every attempt perished in the
+moment it was made. The general voice was eager to abash him. As his
+confusion became more visible, the outcry increased. It swelled
+gradually to hootings, tumult, and a deafening noise of indignation. At
+length he willingly retired from the public scene, unable any longer to
+endure the sensations it inflicted.
+
+In about an hour and a half he returned. No precaution had been taken
+against this incident, for nothing could be more unexpected. In the
+interval he had intoxicated himself with large draughts of brandy. In a
+moment he was in a part of the room where Mr. Falkland was standing, and
+with one blow of his muscular arm levelled him with the earth. The blow
+however was not stunning, and Mr. Falkland rose again immediately. It is
+obvious to perceive how unequal he must have been in this species of
+contest. He was scarcely risen before Mr. Tyrrel repeated his blow. Mr.
+Falkland was now upon his guard, and did not fall. But the blows of his
+adversary were redoubled with a rapidity difficult to conceive, and Mr.
+Falkland was once again brought to the earth. In this situation Mr.
+Tyrrel kicked his prostrate enemy, and stooped apparently with the
+intention of dragging him along the floor. All this passed in a moment,
+and the gentlemen present had not time to recover their surprise. They
+now interfered, and Mr. Tyrrel once more quitted the apartment.
+
+It is difficult to conceive any event more terrible to the individual
+upon whom it fell, than the treatment which Mr. Falkland in this
+instance experienced. Every passion of his life was calculated to make
+him feel it more acutely. He had repeatedly exerted an uncommon energy
+and prudence, to prevent the misunderstanding between Mr. Tyrrel and
+himself from proceeding to extremities; but in vain! It was closed with
+a catastrophe, exceeding all that he had feared, or that the most
+penetrating foresight could have suggested. To Mr. Falkland disgrace was
+worse than death. The slightest breath of dishonour would have stung him
+to the very soul. What must it have been with this complication of
+ignominy, base, humiliating, and public? Could Mr. Tyrrel have
+understood the evil he inflicted, even he, under all his circumstances
+of provocation, could scarcely have perpetrated it. Mr. Falkland's mind
+was full of uproar like the war of contending elements, and of such
+suffering as casts contempt on the refinements of inventive cruelty. He
+wished for annihilation, to lie down in eternal oblivion, in an
+insensibility, which, compared with what he experienced, was scarcely
+less enviable than beatitude itself. Horror, detestation, revenge,
+inexpressible longings to shake off the evil, and a persuasion that in
+this case all effort was powerless, filled his soul even to bursting.
+
+One other event closed the transactions of this memorable evening. Mr.
+Falkland was baffled of the vengeance that yet remained to him. Mr.
+Tyrrel was found by some of the company dead in the street, having been
+murdered at the distance of a few yards from the assembly house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+I shall endeavour to state the remainder of this narrative in the words
+of Mr. Collins. The reader has already had occasion to perceive that Mr.
+Collins was a man of no vulgar order; and his reflections on the subject
+were uncommonly judicious.
+
+"This day was the crisis of Mr. Falkland's history. From hence took its
+beginning that gloomy and unsociable melancholy, of which he has since
+been the victim. No two characters can be in certain respects more
+strongly contrasted, than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and
+subsequent to these events. Hitherto he had been attended by a fortune
+perpetually prosperous. His mind was sanguine; full of that undoubting
+confidence in its own powers which prosperity is qualified to produce.
+Though the habits of his life were those of a serious and sublime
+visionary they were nevertheless full of cheerfulness and tranquillity.
+But from this moment, his pride, and the lofty adventurousness of his
+spirit, were effectually subdued. From an object of envy he was changed
+into an object of compassion. Life, which hitherto no one had more
+exquisitely enjoyed, became a burden to him. No more self-complacency,
+no more rapture, no more self-approving and heart-transporting
+benevolence! He who had lived beyond any man upon the grand and
+animating reveries of the imagination, seemed now to have no visions but
+of anguish and despair. His case was peculiarly worthy of sympathy,
+since, no doubt, if rectitude and purity of disposition could give a
+title to happiness, few men could exhibit a more consistent and powerful
+claim than Mr. Falkland.
+
+"He was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+chivalry, ever to forget the situation, humiliating and dishonourable
+according to his ideas, in which he had been placed upon this occasion.
+There is a mysterious sort of divinity annexed to the person of a true
+knight, that makes any species of brute violence committed upon it
+indelible and immortal. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged
+along the floor! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not
+to be endured! No future lustration could ever remove the stain: and,
+what was perhaps still worse in the present case, the offender having
+ceased to exist, the lustration which the laws of knight-errantry
+prescribe was rendered impossible.
+
+"In some future period of human improvement, it is probable, that that
+calamity will be in a manner unintelligible, which in the present
+instance contributed to tarnish and wither the excellence of one of the
+most elevated and amiable of human minds. If Mr. Falkland had reflected
+with perfect accuracy upon the case, he would probably have been able
+to look down with indifference upon a wound, which, as it was, pierced
+to his very vitals. How much more dignity, than in the modern duellist,
+do we find in Themistocles, the most gallant of the Greeks; who, when
+Eurybiades, his commander in chief, in answer to some of his
+remonstrances, lifted his cane over him with a menacing air, accosted
+him in that noble apostrophe, 'Strike, but hear!'
+
+"How would a man of true discernment in such a case reply to his brutal
+assailant? 'I make it my boast that I can endure calamity and pain:
+shall I not be able to endure the trifling inconvenience that your folly
+can inflict upon me? Perhaps a human being would be more accomplished,
+if he understood the science of personal defence; but how few would be
+the occasions upon which he would be called to exert it? How few persons
+would he encounter so unjust and injurious as you, if his own conduct
+were directed by the principles of reason and benevolence? Beside, how
+narrow would be the use of this science when acquired? It will scarcely
+put the man of delicate make and petty stature upon a level with the
+athletic pugilist; and, if it did in some measure secure me against the
+malice of a single adversary, still my person and my life, so far as
+mere force is concerned, would always be at the mercy of two. Further
+than immediate defence against actual violence, it could never be of use
+to me. The man who can deliberately meet his adversary for the purpose
+of exposing the person of one or both of them to injury, tramples upon
+every principle of reason and equity. Duelling is the vilest of all
+egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and
+exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an
+unintelligible chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my
+exclusive attention. I am unable to cope with you: what then? Can that
+circumstance dishonour me? No; I can only be dishonoured by perpetrating
+an unjust action. My honour is in my own keeping, beyond the reach of
+all mankind. Strike! I am passive. No injury that you can inflict, shall
+provoke me to expose you or myself to unnecessary evil. I refuse that;
+but I am not therefore pusillanimous: when I refuse any danger or
+suffering by which the general good may be promoted, then brand me for a
+coward!
+
+"These reasonings, however simple and irresistible they must be found by
+a dispassionate enquirer, are little reflected on by the world at large,
+and were most of all uncongenial to the prejudices of Mr. Falkland.
+
+"But the public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon
+him, intolerable as they were to be recollected, were not the whole of
+the mischief that redounded to our unfortunate patron from the
+transactions of that day. It was presently whispered that he was no
+other than the murderer of his antagonist. This rumour was of too much
+importance to the very continuance of his life, to justify its being
+concealed from him. He heard it with inexpressible astonishment and
+horror; it formed a dreadful addition to the load of intellectual
+anguish that already oppressed him. No man had ever held his reputation
+more dear than Mr. Falkland; and now, in one day, he was fallen under
+the most exquisite calamities, a complicated personal insult, and the
+imputation of the foulest of crimes. He might have fled; for no one was
+forward to proceed against a man so adored as Mr. Falkland, or in
+revenge of one so universally execrated as Mr. Tyrrel. But flight he
+disdained. In the mean time the affair was of the most serious
+magnitude, and the rumour unchecked seemed daily to increase in
+strength. Mr. Falkland appeared sometimes inclined to adopt such steps
+as might have been best calculated to bring the imputation to a speedy
+trial. But he probably feared, by too direct an appeal to judicature, to
+render more precise an imputation, the memory of which he deprecated; at
+the same time that he was sufficiently willing to meet the severest
+scrutiny, and, if he could not hope to have it forgotten that he had
+ever been accused, to prove in the most satisfactory manner that the
+accusation was unjust.
+
+"The neighbouring magistrates at length conceived it necessary to take
+some steps upon the subject. Without causing Mr. Falkland to be
+apprehended, they sent to desire he would appear before them at one of
+their meetings. The proceeding being thus opened, Mr. Falkland expressed
+his hope that, if the business were likely to stop there, their
+investigation might at least be rendered as solemn as possible. The
+meeting was numerous; every person of a respectable class in society was
+admitted to be an auditor; the whole town, one of the most considerable
+in the county, was apprised of the nature of the business. Few trials,
+invested with all the forms of judgment, have excited so general an
+interest. A trial, under the present circumstances, was scarcely
+attainable; and it seemed to be the wish both of principal and umpires,
+to give to this transaction all the momentary notoriety and decisiveness
+of a trial.
+
+"The magistrates investigated the particulars of the story. Mr.
+Falkland, it appeared, had left the rooms immediately after his
+assailant; and though he had been attended by one or two of the
+gentlemen to his inn, it was proved that he had left them upon some
+slight occasion, as soon as he arrived at it, and that, when they
+enquired for him of the waiters, he had already mounted his horse and
+ridden home.
+
+"By the nature of the case, no particular facts could be stated in
+balance against these. As soon as they had been sufficiently detailed,
+Mr. Falkland therefore proceeded to his defence. Several copies of his
+defence were-made, and Mr. Falkland seemed, for a short time, to have
+had the idea of sending it to the press, though, for some reason or
+other, he afterwards suppressed it. I have one of the copies in my
+possession, and I will read it to you."
+
+Saying this, Mr. Collins rose, and took it from a private drawer in his
+escritoire. During this action he appeared to recollect himself. He did
+not, in the strict sense of the word, hesitate; but he was prompted to
+make some apology for what he was doing.
+
+"You seem never to have heard of this memorable transaction; and,
+indeed, that is little to be wondered at, since the good nature of the
+world is interested in suppressing it, and it is deemed a disgrace to a
+man to have defended himself from a criminal imputation, though with
+circumstances the most satisfactory and honourable. It may be supposed
+that this suppression is particularly acceptable to Mr. Falkland; and I
+should not have acted in contradiction to his modes of thinking in
+communicating the story to you, had there not been circumstances of
+peculiar urgency, that seemed to render the communication desirable."
+Saying this, he proceeded to read from the paper in his hand.
+
+"Gentlemen,
+
+"I stand here accused of a crime, the most black that any human creature
+is capable of perpetrating. I am innocent. I have no fear that I shall
+fail to make every person in this company acknowledge my innocence. In
+the mean time, what must be my feelings? Conscious as I am of deserving
+approbation and not censure, of having passed my life in acts of
+justice and philanthropy, can any thing be more deplorable than for me
+to answer to a charge of murder? So wretched is my situation, that I
+cannot accept your gratuitous acquittal, if you should be disposed to
+bestow it. I must answer to an imputation, the very thought of which is
+ten thousand times worse to me than death. I must exert the whole energy
+of my mind, to prevent my being ranked with the vilest of men.
+
+"Gentlemen, this is a situation in which a man may be allowed to boast.
+Accursed situation! No man need envy me the vile and polluted triumph I
+am now to gain! I have called no witnesses to my character. Great God!
+what sort of character is that which must be supported by witnesses?
+But, if I must speak, look round the company, ask of every one present,
+enquire of your own hearts! Not one word of reproach was ever whispered
+against me. I do not hesitate to call upon those who have known me most,
+to afford me the most honourable testimony.
+
+"My life has been spent in the keenest and most unintermitted
+sensibility to reputation. I am almost indifferent as to what shall be
+the event of this day. I would not open my mouth upon the occasion, if
+my life were the only thing that was at stake. It is not in the power of
+your decision to restore to me my unblemished reputation, to obliterate
+the disgrace I have suffered, or to prevent it from being remembered
+that I have been brought to examination upon a charge of murder. Your
+decision can never have the efficacy to prevent the miserable remains of
+my existence from being the most intolerable of all burthens.
+
+"I am accused of having committed murder upon the body of Barnabas
+Tyrrel. I would most joyfully have given every farthing I possess, and
+devoted myself to perpetual beggary, to have preserved his life. His
+life was precious to me, beyond that of all mankind. In my opinion, the
+greatest injustice committed by his unknown assassin was that of
+defrauding me of my just revenge. I confess that I would have called him
+out to the field, and that our encounter should not have been terminated
+but by the death of one or both of us. This would have been a pitiful
+and inadequate compensation for his unparalleled insult, but it was all
+that remained.
+
+"I ask for no pity, but I must openly declare that never was any
+misfortune so horrible as mine. I would willingly have taken refuge from
+the recollection of that night in a voluntary death. Life was now
+stripped of all those recommendations, for the sake of which it was dear
+to me. But even this consolation is denied me. I am compelled to drag
+for ever the intolerable load of existence, upon penalty, if at any
+period, however remote, I shake it off, of having that impatience
+regarded as confirming a charge of murder. Gentlemen, if by your
+decision you could take away my life, without that act being connected
+with my disgrace, I would bless the cord that stopped the breath of my
+existence for ever.
+
+"You all know how easily I might have fled from this purgation. If I had
+been guilty, should I not have embraced the opportunity? But, as it was,
+I could not. Reputation has been the idol, the jewel of my life. I could
+never have borne to think that a human creature, in the remotest part of
+the globe, should believe that I was a criminal. Alas! what a deity it
+is that I have chosen for my worship! I have entailed upon myself
+everlasting agony and despair!
+
+"I have but one word to add. Gentlemen, I charge you to do me the
+imperfect justice that is in your power! My life is a worthless thing.
+But my honour, the empty remains of honour I have now to boast, is in
+your judgment, and you will each of you, from this day, have imposed
+upon yourselves the task of its vindicators. It is little that you can
+do for me; but it is not less your duty to do that little. May that God
+who is the fountain of honour and good prosper and protect you! The man
+who now stands before you is devoted to perpetual barrenness and blast!
+He has nothing to hope for beyond the feeble consolation of this day!"
+
+"You will easily imagine that Mr. Falkland was discharged with every
+circumstance of credit. Nothing is more to be deplored in human
+institutions, than that the ideas of mankind should have annexed a
+sentiment of disgrace to a purgation thus satisfactory and decisive. No
+one entertained the shadow of a doubt upon the subject, and yet a mere
+concurrence of circumstances made it necessary that the best of men
+should be publicly put on his defence, as if really under suspicion of
+an atrocious crime. It may be granted indeed that Mr. Falkland had his
+faults, but those very faults placed him at a still further distance
+from the criminality in question. He was the fool of honour and fame: a
+man whom, in the pursuit of reputation, nothing could divert; who would
+have purchased the character of a true, gallant, and undaunted hero, at
+the expense of worlds, and who thought every calamity nominal but a
+stain upon his honour. How atrociously absurd to suppose any motive
+capable of inducing such a man to play the part of a lurking assassin?
+How unfeeling to oblige him to defend himself from such an imputation?
+Did any man, and, least of all, a man of the purest honour, ever pass in
+a moment, from a life unstained by a single act of injury, to the
+consummation of human depravity?
+
+"When the decision of the magistrates was declared, a general murmur of
+applause and involuntary transport burst forth from every one present.
+It was at first low, and gradually became louder. As it was the
+expression of rapturous delight, and an emotion disinterested and
+divine, so there was an indescribable something in the very sound, that
+carried it home to the heart, and convinced every spectator that there
+was no merely personal pleasure which ever existed, that would not be
+foolish and feeble in the comparison. Every one strove who should most
+express his esteem of the amiable accused. Mr. Falkland was no sooner
+withdrawn than the gentlemen present determined to give a still further
+sanction to the business, by their congratulations. They immediately
+named a deputation to wait upon him for that purpose. Every one
+concurred to assist the general sentiment. It was a sort of sympathetic
+feeling that took hold upon all ranks and degrees. The multitude
+received him with huzzas, they took his horses from his carriage,
+dragged him along in triumph, and attended him many miles on his return
+to his own habitation. It seemed as if a public examination upon a
+criminal charge, which had hitherto been considered in every event as a
+brand of disgrace, was converted, in the present instance, into an
+occasion of enthusiastic adoration and unexampled honour.
+
+"Nothing could reach the heart of Mr. Falkland. He was not insensible to
+the general kindness and exertions; but it was too evident that the
+melancholy that had taken hold of his mind was invincible.
+
+"It was only a few weeks after this memorable scene that the real
+murderer was discovered. Every part of this story was extraordinary. The
+real murderer was Hawkins. He was found with his son, under a feigned
+name, at a village about thirty miles distant, in want of all the
+necessaries of life. He had lived there, from the period of his flight,
+in so private a manner, that all the enquiries that had been set on
+foot, by the benevolence of Mr. Falkland, or the insatiable malice of
+Mr. Tyrrel, had been insufficient to discover him. The first thing that
+had led to the detection was a parcel of clothes covered with blood,
+that were found in a ditch, and that, when drawn out, were known by the
+people of the village to belong to this man. The murder of Mr. Tyrrel
+was not a circumstance that could be unknown, and suspicion was
+immediately roused. A diligent search being made, the rusty handle, with
+part of the blade of a knife, was found thrown in a corner of his
+lodging, which, being applied to a piece of the point of a knife that
+had been broken in the wound, appeared exactly to correspond. Upon
+further enquiry two rustics, who had been accidentally on the spot,
+remembered to have seen Hawkins and his son in the town that very
+evening and to have called after them, and received no answer, though
+they were sure of their persons. Upon this accumulated evidence both
+Hawkins and his son were tried, condemned, and afterwards executed. In
+the interval between the sentence and execution Hawkins confessed his
+guilt with many marks of compunction; though there are persons by whom
+this is denied; but I have taken some pains to enquire into the fact,
+and am persuaded that their disbelief is precipitate and groundless.
+
+"The cruel injustice that this man had suffered from his village-tyrant
+was not forgotten upon the present occasion. It was by a strange
+fatality that the barbarous proceedings of Mr. Tyrrel seemed never to
+fall short of their completion; and even his death served eventually to
+consummate the ruin of a man he hated; a circumstance which, if it could
+have come to his knowledge, would perhaps have in some measure consoled
+him for his untimely end. This poor Hawkins was surely entitled to some
+pity, since his being finally urged to desperation, and brought,
+together with his son, to an ignominious fate, was originally owing to
+the sturdiness of his virtue and independence. But the compassion of the
+public was in a great measure shut against him, as they thought it a
+piece of barbarous and unpardonable selfishness, that he had not rather
+come boldly forward to meet the consequences of his own conduct, than
+suffer a man of so much public worth as Mr. Falkland, and who had been
+so desirous of doing him good, to be exposed to the risk of being tried
+for a murder that he had committed.
+
+"From this time to the present Mr. Falkland has been nearly such as you
+at present see him. Though it be several years since these transactions,
+the impression they made is for ever fresh in the mind of our
+unfortunate patron. From thenceforward his habits became totally
+different. He had before been fond of public scenes, and acting a part
+in the midst of the people among whom he immediately resided. He now
+made himself a rigid recluse. He had no associates, no friends.
+Inconsolable himself, he yet wished to treat others with kindness. There
+was a solemn sadness in his manner, attended with the most perfect
+gentleness and humanity. Every body respects him, for his benevolence is
+unalterable; but there is a stately coldness and reserve in his
+behaviour, which makes it difficult for those about him to regard him
+with the familiarity of affection. These symptoms are uninterrupted,
+except at certain times when his sufferings become intolerable, and he
+displays the marks of a furious insanity. At those times his language is
+fearful and mysterious, and he seems to figure to himself by turns every
+sort of persecution and alarm, which may be supposed to attend upon an
+accusation of murder. But, sensible of his own weakness, he is anxious
+at such times to withdraw into solitude: and his domestics in general
+know nothing of him, but the uncommunicative and haughty, but mild,
+dejection that accompanies every thing he does."
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I have stated the narrative of Mr. Collins, interspersed with such other
+information as I was able to collect, with all the exactness that my
+memory, assisted by certain memorandums I made at the time, will afford.
+I do not pretend to warrant the authenticity of any part of these
+memoirs, except so much as fell under my own knowledge, and that part
+shall be given with the same simplicity and accuracy, that I would
+observe towards a court which was to decide in the last resort upon
+every thing dear to me. The same scrupulous fidelity restrains me from
+altering the manner of Mr. Collins's narrative to adapt it to the
+precepts of my own taste; and it will soon be perceived how essential
+that narrative is to the elucidation of my history.
+
+The intention of my friend in this communication was to give me ease;
+but he in reality added to my embarrassment. Hitherto I had had no
+intercourse with the world and its passions; and, though I was not
+totally unacquainted with them as they appear in books, this proved of
+little service to me when I came to witness them myself. The case seemed
+entirely altered, when the subject of those passions was continually
+before my eyes, and the events had happened but the other day as it
+were, in the very neighbourhood where I lived. There was a connection
+and progress in this narrative, which made it altogether unlike the
+little village incidents I had hitherto known. My feelings were
+successively interested for the different persons that were brought upon
+the scene. My veneration was excited for Mr. Clare, and my applause for
+the intrepidity of Mrs. Hammond. I was astonished that any human
+creature should be so shockingly perverted as Mr. Tyrrel. I paid the
+tribute of my tears to the memory of the artless Miss Melville. I found
+a thousand fresh reasons to admire and love Mr. Falkland.
+
+At present I was satisfied with thus considering every incident in its
+obvious sense. But the story I had heard was for ever in my thoughts,
+and I was peculiarly interested to comprehend its full import. I turned
+it a thousand ways, and examined it in every point of view. In the
+original communication it appeared sufficiently distinct and
+satisfactory; but as I brooded over it, it gradually became mysterious.
+There was something strange in the character of Hawkins. So firm, so
+sturdily honest and just, as he appeared at first; all at once to become
+a murderer! His first behaviour under the prosecution, how accurately
+was it calculated to prepossess one in his favour! To be sure, if he
+were guilty, it was unpardonable in him to permit a man of so much
+dignity and worth as Mr. Falkland to suffer under the imputation of his
+crime! And yet I could not help bitterly compassionating the honest
+fellow, brought to the gallows, as he was, strictly speaking, by the
+machinations of that devil incarnate, Mr. Tyrrel. His son, too, that son
+for whom he voluntarily sacrificed his all, to die with him at the same
+tree; surely never was a story more affecting!
+
+Was it possible, after all, that Mr. Falkland should be the murderer?
+The reader will scarcely believe, that the idea suggested itself to my
+mind that I would ask him. It was but a passing thought; but it serves
+to mark the simplicity of my character. Then I recollected the virtues
+of my master, almost too sublime for human nature; I thought of his
+sufferings so unexampled, so unmerited; and chid myself for the
+suspicion. The dying confession of Hawkins recurred to my mind; and I
+felt that there was no longer a possibility of doubting. And yet what
+was the meaning of all Mr. Falkland's agonies and terrors? In fine, the
+idea having once occurred to my mind, it was fixed there for ever. My
+thoughts fluctuated from conjecture to conjecture, but this was the
+centre about which they revolved. I determined to place myself as a
+watch upon my patron.
+
+The instant I had chosen this employment for myself, I found a strange
+sort of pleasure in it. To do what is forbidden always has its charms,
+because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and
+tyrannical in the prohibition. To be a spy upon Mr. Falkland! That there
+was danger in the employment, served to give an alluring pungency to the
+choice. I remembered the stern reprimand I had received, and his
+terrible looks; and the recollection gave a kind of tingling sensation,
+not altogether unallied to enjoyment. The further I advanced, the more
+the sensation was irresistible. I seemed to myself perpetually upon the
+brink of being countermined, and perpetually roused to guard my designs.
+The more impenetrable Mr. Falkland was determined to be, the more
+uncontrollable was my curiosity. Through the whole, my alarm and
+apprehension of personal danger had a large mixture of frankness and
+simplicity, conscious of meaning no ill, that made me continually ready
+to say every thing that was upon my mind, and would not suffer me to
+believe that, when things were brought to the test, any one could be
+seriously angry with me.
+
+These reflections led gradually to a new state of my mind. When I had
+first removed into Mr. Falkland's family, the novelty of the scene
+rendered me cautious and reserved. The distant and solemn manners of my
+master seemed to have annihilated my constitutional gaiety. But the
+novelty by degrees wore off, and my constraint in the same degree
+diminished. The story I had now heard, and the curiosity it excited,
+restored to me activity, eagerness, and courage. I had always had a
+propensity to communicate my thoughts; my age was, of course, inclined
+to talkativeness; and I ventured occasionally in a sort of hesitating
+way, as if questioning whether such a conduct might be allowed, to
+express my sentiments as they arose, in the presence of Mr. Falkland.
+
+The first time I did so, he looked at me with an air of surprise, made
+me no answer, and presently took occasion to leave me. The experiment
+was soon after repeated. My master seemed half inclined to encourage me,
+and yet doubtful whether he might venture.
+
+He had long been a stranger to pleasure of every sort, and my artless
+and untaught remarks appeared to promise him some amusement. Could an
+amusement of this sort be dangerous?
+
+In this uncertainty he could not probably find it in his heart to treat
+with severity my innocent effusions. I needed but little encouragement;
+for the perturbation of my mind stood in want of this relief. My
+simplicity, arising from my being a total stranger to the intercourse of
+the world, was accompanied with a mind in some degree cultivated with
+reading, and perhaps not altogether destitute of observation and talent.
+My remarks were therefore perpetually unexpected, at one time implying
+extreme ignorance, and at another some portion of acuteness, but at all
+times having an air of innocence, frankness, and courage. There was
+still an apparent want of design in the manner, even after I was excited
+accurately to compare my observations, and study the inferences to which
+they led; for the effect of old habit was more visible than that of a
+recently conceived purpose which was yet scarcely mature.
+
+Mr. Falkland's situation was like that of a fish that plays with the
+bait employed to entrap him. By my manner he was in a certain degree
+encouraged to lay aside his usual reserve, and relax his stateliness;
+till some abrupt observation or interrogatory stung him into
+recollection, and brought back his alarm. Still it was evident that he
+bore about him a secret wound. Whenever the cause of his sorrows was
+touched, though in a manner the most indirect and remote, his
+countenance altered, his distemper returned, and it was with difficulty
+that he could suppress his emotions, sometimes conquering himself with
+painful effort, and sometimes bursting into a sort of paroxysm of
+insanity, and hastening to bury himself in solitude.
+
+These appearances I too frequently interpreted into grounds of
+suspicion, though I might with equal probability and more liberality
+have ascribed them to the cruel mortifications he had encountered in the
+objects of his darling ambition. Mr. Collins had strongly urged me to
+secrecy; and Mr. Falkland, whenever my gesture or his consciousness
+impressed him with the idea of my knowing more than I expressed, looked
+at me with wistful earnestness, as questioning what was the degree of
+information I possessed, and how it was obtained. But again at our next
+interview the simple vivacity of my manner restored his tranquillity,
+obliterated the emotion of which I had been the cause, and placed
+things afresh in their former situation.
+
+The longer this humble familiarity on my part had continued, the more
+effort it would require to suppress it; and Mr. Falkland was neither
+willing to mortify me by a severe prohibition of speech, nor even
+perhaps to make me of so much consequence, as that prohibition might
+seem to imply. Though I was curious, it must not be supposed that I had
+the object of my enquiry for ever in my mind, or that my questions and
+innuendoes were perpetually regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed
+inquisitor. The secret wound of Mr. Falkland's mind was much more
+uniformly present to his recollection than to mine; and a thousand times
+he applied the remarks that occurred in conversation; when I had not the
+remotest idea of such an application, till some singularity in his
+manner brought it back to my thoughts. The consciousness of this morbid
+sensibility, and the imagination that its influence might perhaps
+constitute the whole of the case, served probably to spur Mr. Falkland
+again to the charge, and connect a sentiment of shame, with every
+project that suggested itself for interrupting the freedom of our
+intercourse.
+
+I will give a specimen of the conversations to which I allude; and, as
+it shall be selected from those which began upon topics the most general
+and remote, the reader will easily imagine the disturbance that was
+almost daily endured by a mind so tremblingly alive as that of my
+patron.
+
+"Pray, sir," said I, one day as I was assisting Mr. Falkland in
+arranging some papers, previously to their being transcribed into his
+collection, "how came Alexander of Macedon to be surnamed the Great?"
+
+"How came it? Did you never read his history?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, Williams, and could you find no reasons there?"
+
+"Why, I do not know, sir. I could find reasons why he should be so
+famous; but every man that is talked of is not admired. Judges differ
+about the merits of Alexander. Doctor Prideaux says in his Connection,
+that he deserves only to be called the Great Cut-throat; and the author
+of Tom Jones has written a volume, to prove that he and all other
+conquerors ought to be classed with Jonathan Wild."
+
+Mr. Falkland reddened at these citations.
+
+"Accursed blasphemy! Did these authors think that, by the coarseness of
+their ribaldry, they could destroy his well-earned fame? Are learning,
+sensibility, and taste, no securities to exempt their possessor from
+this vulgar abuse? Did you ever read, Williams, of a man more gallant,
+generous, and free? Was ever mortal so completely the reverse of every
+thing engrossing and selfish? He formed to himself a sublime image of
+excellence, and his only ambition was to realise it in his own story.
+Remember his giving away every thing when he set out upon his grand
+expedition, professedly reserving for himself nothing but hope.
+Recollect his heroic confidence in Philip the physician, and his entire
+and unalterable friendship for Ephestion. He treated the captive family
+of Darius with the most cordial urbanity, and the venerable Sysigambis
+with all the tenderness and attention of a son to his mother. Never take
+the judgment, Williams, upon such a subject, of a clerical pedant or a
+Westminster justice. Examine for yourself, and you will find in
+Alexander a model of honour, generosity, and disinterestedness,--a man
+who, for the cultivated liberality of his mind, and the unparalleled
+grandeur of his projects, must stand alone the spectacle and admiration
+of all ages of the world."
+
+"Ah, sir! it is a fine thing for us to sit here and compose his
+panegyric. But shall I forget what a vast expense was bestowed in
+erecting the monument of his fame? Was not he the common disturber of
+mankind? Did not he over-run nations that would never have heard of him
+but for his devastations? How many hundred thousands of lives did he
+sacrifice in his career? What must I think of his cruelties; a whole
+tribe massacred for a crime committed by their ancestors one hundred and
+fifty years before; fifty thousand sold into slavery; two thousand
+crucified for their gallant defence of their country? Man is surely a
+strange sort of creature, who never praises any one more heartily than
+him who has spread destruction and ruin over the face of nations!"
+
+"The way of thinking you express, Williams, is natural enough, and I
+cannot blame you for it. But let me hope that you will become more
+liberal. The death of a hundred thousand men is at first sight very
+shocking; but what in reality are a hundred thousand such men, more than
+a hundred thousand sheep? It is mind, Williams, the generation of
+knowledge and virtue, that we ought to love. This was the project of
+Alexander; he set out in a great undertaking to civilise mankind; he
+delivered the vast continent of Asia from the stupidity and degradation
+of the Persian monarchy: and, though he was cut off in the midst of his
+career, we may easily perceive the vast effects of his project. Grecian
+literature and cultivation, the Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the
+Ptolemies followed, in nations which before had been sunk to the
+condition of brutes. Alexander was the builder, as notoriously as the
+destroyer, of cities."
+
+"And yet, sir, I am afraid that the pike and the battle-axe are not the
+right instruments for making men wise. Suppose it were admitted that
+the lives of men were to be sacrificed without remorse if a paramount
+good were to result, it seems to me as if murder and massacre were but a
+very left-handed way of producing civilisation and love. But pray, do
+not you think this great hero was a sort of a madman? What now will you
+say to his firing the palace of Persepolis, his weeping for other worlds
+to conquer, and his marching his whole army over the burning sands of
+Libya, merely to visit a temple, and persuade mankind that he was the
+son of Jupiter Ammon?"
+
+"Alexander, my boy, has been much misunderstood. Mankind have revenged
+themselves upon him by misrepresentation, for having so far eclipsed the
+rest of his species. It was necessary to the realising his project, that
+he should pass for a god. It was the only way by which he could get a
+firm hold upon the veneration of the stupid and bigoted Persians. It was
+this, and not a mad vanity, that was the source of his proceeding. And
+how much had he to struggle with in this respect, in the unapprehending
+obstinacy of some of his Macedonians?"
+
+"Why then, sir, at last Alexander did but employ means that all
+politicians profess to use, as well as he. He dragooned men into wisdom,
+and cheated them into the pursuit of their own happiness. But what is
+worse, sir, this Alexander, in the paroxysm of his headlong rage, spared
+neither friend nor foe. You will not pretend to justify the excesses of
+his ungovernable passion. It is impossible, sure, that a word can be
+said for a man whom a momentary provocation can hurry into the
+commission of murders--"
+
+The instant I had uttered these words, I felt what it was that I had
+done. There was a magnetical sympathy between me and my patron, so that
+their effect was not sooner produced upon him, than my own mind
+reproached me with the inhumanity of the allusion. Our confusion was
+mutual. The blood forsook at once the transparent complexion of Mr.
+Falkland, and then rushed back again with rapidity and fierceness. I
+dared not utter a word, lest I should commit a new error, worse than
+that into which I had just fallen. After a short, but severe, struggle
+to continue the conversation, Mr. Falkland began with trepidation, but
+afterwards became calmer:--
+
+"You are not candid--Alexander--You must learn more clemency--Alexander,
+I say, does not deserve this rigour. Do you remember his tears, his
+remorse, his determined abstinence from food, which he could scarcely be
+persuaded to relinquish? Did not that prove acute feeling and a rooted
+principle of equity?--Well, well, Alexander was a true and judicious
+lover of mankind, and his real merits have been little comprehended."
+
+I know not how to make the state of my mind at that moment accurately
+understood. When one idea has got possession of the soul, it is scarcely
+possible to keep it from finding its way to the lips. Error, once
+committed, has a fascinating power, like that ascribed to the eyes of
+the rattlesnake, to draw us into a second error. It deprives us of that
+proud confidence in our own strength, to which we are indebted for so
+much of our virtue. Curiosity is a restless propensity, and often does
+but hurry us forward the more irresistibly, the greater is the danger
+that attends its indulgence.
+
+"Clitus," said I, "was a man of very coarse and provoking manners, was
+he not?"
+
+Mr. Falkland felt the full force of this appeal. He gave me a
+penetrating look, as if he would see my very soul. His eyes were then in
+an instant withdrawn. I could perceive him seized with a convulsive
+shuddering which, though strongly counteracted, and therefore scarcely
+visible, had I know not what of terrible in it. He left his employment,
+strode about the room in anger, his visage gradually assumed an
+expression as of supernatural barbarity, he quitted the apartment
+abruptly, and flung the door with a violence that seemed to shake the
+house.
+
+"Is this," said I, "the fruit of conscious guilt, or of the disgust that
+a man of honour conceives at guilt undeservedly imputed?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The reader will feel how rapidly I was advancing to the brink of the
+precipice. I had a confused apprehension of what I was doing, but I
+could not stop myself. "Is it possible," said I, "that Mr. Falkland, who
+is thus overwhelmed with a sense of the unmerited dishonour that has
+been fastened upon him in the face of the world, will long endure the
+presence of a raw and unfriended youth, who is perpetually bringing back
+that dishonour to his recollection, and who seems himself the most
+forward to entertain the accusation?"
+
+I felt indeed that Mr. Falkland would not hastily incline to dismiss me,
+for the same reason that restrained him from many other actions, which
+might seem to savour of a too tender and ambiguous sensibility. But this
+reflection was little adapted to comfort me. That he should cherish in
+his heart a growing hatred against me, and that he should think himself
+obliged to retain me a continual thorn in his side, was an idea by no
+means of favourable augury to my future peace.
+
+It was some time after this that, in clearing out a case of drawers, I
+found a paper that, by some accident, had slipped behind one of the
+drawers, and been overlooked. At another time perhaps my curiosity might
+have given way to the laws of decorum, and I should have restored it
+unopened to my master, its owner. But my eagerness for information had
+been too much stimulated by the preceding incidents, to allow me at
+present to neglect any occasion of obtaining it. The paper proved to be
+a letter written by the elder Hawkins, and from its contents seemed to
+have been penned when he had first been upon the point of absconding
+from the persecutions of Mr. Tyrrel. It was as follows:--
+
+"Honourable Sir,
+
+"I have waited some time in daily hope of your honour's return into
+these parts. Old Warnes and his dame, who are left to take care of your
+house, tell me they cannot say when that will be, nor justly in what
+part of England you are at present. For my share, misfortune comes so
+thick upon me, that I must determine upon something (that is for
+certain), and out of hand. Our squire, who I must own at first used me
+kindly enough, though I am afraid that was partly out of spite to squire
+Underwood, has since determined to be the ruin of me. Sir, I have been
+no craven; I fought it up stoutly; for after all, you know, God bless
+your honour! it is but a man to a man; but he has been too much for me.
+
+"Perhaps if I were to ride over to the market-town and enquire of
+Munsle, your lawyer, he could tell me how to direct to you. But having
+hoped and waited o' this fashion, and all in vain, has put me upon other
+thoughts. I was in no hurry, sir, to apply to you; for I do not love to
+be a trouble to any body. I kept that for my last stake. Well, sir, and
+now that has failed me like, I am ashamed, as it were, to have thought
+of it. Have not I, thinks I, arms and legs as well as other people? I am
+driven out of house and home. Well, and what then? Sure I arn't a
+cabbage, that if you pull it out of the ground it must die. I am
+pennyless. True; and how many hundreds are there that live from hand to
+mouth all the days of their life? (Begging your honour's pardon) thinks
+I, if we little folks had but the wit to do for ourselves, the great
+folks would not be such maggotty changelings as they are. They would
+begin to look about them.
+
+"But there is another thing that has swayed with me more than all the
+rest. I do not know how to tell you, sir,--My poor boy, my Leonard, the
+pride of my life, has been three weeks in the county jail. It is true
+indeed, sir. Squire Tyrrel put him there. Now, sir, every time that I
+lay my head upon my pillow under my own little roof, my heart smites me
+with the situation of my Leonard. I do not mean so much for the
+hardship; I do not so much matter that. I do not expect him to go
+through the world upon velvet! I am not such a fool. But who can tell
+what may hap in a jail! I have been three times to see him; and there is
+one man in the same quarter of the prison that looks so wicked! I do not
+much fancy the looks of the rest. To be sure, Leonard is as good a lad
+as ever lived. I think he will not give his mind to such. But come what
+will, I am determined he shall not stay among them twelve hours longer.
+I am an obstinate old fool perhaps; but I have taken it into my head,
+and I will do it. Do not ask me what. But, if I were to write to your
+honour, and wait for your answer, it might take a week or ten days more.
+I must not think of it!
+
+"Squire Tyrrel is very headstrong, and you, your honour, might be a
+little hottish, or so. No, I would not have any body quarrel for me.
+There has been mischief enough done already; and I will get myself out
+of the way. So I write this, your honour, merely to unload my mind. I
+feel myself equally as much bound to respect and love you, as if you had
+done every thing for me, that I believe you would have done if things
+had chanced differently. It is most likely you will never hear of me any
+more. If it should be so, set your worthy heart at rest. I know myself
+too well, ever to be tempted to do any thing that is really bad. I have
+now my fortune to seek in the world. I have been used ill enough, God
+knows. But I bear no malice; my heart is at peace with all mankind; and
+I forgive every body. It is like enough that poor Leonard and I may have
+hardship enough to undergo, among strangers, and being obliged to hide
+ourselves like housebreakers or highwaymen. But I defy all the malice of
+fortune to make us do an ill thing. That consolation we will always keep
+against all the crosses of a heart-breaking world.
+
+          "God bless you!
+               So prays,
+  Your honour's humble servant to command,
+                    BENJAMIN HAWKINS."
+
+I read this letter with considerable attention, and it occasioned me
+many reflections. To my way of thinking it contained a very interesting
+picture of a blunt, downright, honest mind. "It is a melancholy
+consideration," said I to myself; "but such is man! To have judged from
+appearances one would have said, this is a fellow to have taken
+fortune's buffets and rewards with an incorruptible mind. And yet see
+where it all ends! This man was capable of afterwards becoming a
+murderer, and finished his life at the gallows. O poverty! thou art
+indeed omnipotent! Thou grindest us into desperation; thou confoundest
+all our boasted and most deep-rooted principles; thou fillest us to the
+very brim with malice and revenge, and renderest us capable of acts of
+unknown horror! May I never be visited by thee in the fulness of thy
+power!"
+
+Having satisfied my curiosity with respect to this paper, I took care to
+dispose of it in such a manner as that it should be found by Mr.
+Falkland; at the same time that, in obedience to the principle which at
+present governed me with absolute dominion, I was willing that the way
+in which it offered itself to his attention should suggest to him the
+idea that it had possibly passed through my hands. The next morning I
+saw him, and I exerted myself to lead the conversation, which by this
+time I well knew how to introduce, by insensible degrees to the point I
+desired. After several previous questions, remarks, and rejoinders, I
+continued:--
+
+"Well, sir, after all, I cannot help feeling very uncomfortably as to my
+ideas of human nature, when I find that there is no dependence to be
+placed upon its perseverance, and that, at least among the illiterate,
+the most promising appearances may end in the foulest disgrace."
+
+"You think, then, that literature and a cultivated mind are the only
+assurance for the constancy of our principles!"
+
+"Humph!--why do you suppose, sir, that learning and ingenuity do not
+often serve people rather to hide their crimes than to restrain them
+from committing them? History tells us strange things in that respect."
+
+"Williams," said Mr. Falkland, a little disturbed, "you are extremely
+given to censure and severity."
+
+"I hope not. I am sure I am most fond of looking on the other side of
+the picture, and considering how many men have been aspersed, and even
+at some time or other almost torn to pieces by their fellow-creatures,
+whom, when properly understood, we find worthy of our reverence and
+love."
+
+"Indeed," replied Mr. Falkland, with a sigh, "when I consider these
+things I do not wonder at the dying exclamation of Brutus, 'O Virtue, I
+sought thee as a substance, but I find thee an empty name!' I am too
+much inclined to be of his opinion."
+
+"Why, to be sure, sir, innocence and guilt are too much confounded in
+human life. I remember an affecting story of a poor man in the reign of
+Queen Elizabeth, who would have infallibly been hanged for murder upon
+the strength of circumstantial evidence, if the person really concerned
+had not been himself upon the jury and prevented it."
+
+In saying this I touched the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He
+came up to me with a ferocious countenance, as if determined to force me
+into a confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change
+his design! he drew back with trepidation, and exclaimed, "Detested be
+the universe, and the laws that govern it! Honour, justice, virtue, are
+all the juggle of knaves! If it were in my power I would instantly crush
+the whole system into nothing!"
+
+I replied; "Oh, sir! things are not so bad as you imagine. The world was
+made for men of sense to do what they will with. Its affairs cannot be
+better than in the direction of the genuine heroes; and as in the end
+they will be found the truest friends of the whole, so the multitude
+have nothing to do but to look on, be fashioned, and admire."
+
+Mr. Falkland made a powerful effort to recover his tranquillity.
+"Williams," said he, "you instruct me well. You have a right notion of
+things, and I have great hopes of you. I will be more of a man; I will
+forget the past, and do better for the time to come. The future, the
+future is always our own."
+
+"I am sorry, sir, that I have given you pain. I am afraid to say all
+that I think. But it is my opinion that mistakes will ultimately be
+cleared up, justice done, and the true state of things come to light, in
+spite of the false colours that may for a time obscure it."
+
+The idea I suggested did not give Mr. Falkland the proper degree of
+delight. He suffered a temporary relapse. "Justice!"--he muttered. "I do
+not know what is justice. My case is not within the reach of common
+remedies; perhaps of none. I only know that I am miserable. I began life
+with the best intentions and the most fervid philanthropy; and here I
+am--miserable--miserable beyond expression or endurance."
+
+Having said this, he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and
+re-assumed his accustomed dignity and command. "How came this
+conversation?" cried he. "Who gave you a right to be my confidant? Base,
+artful wretch that you are! learn to be more respectful! Are my passions
+to be wound and unwound by an insolent domestic? Do you think I will be
+an instrument to be played on at your pleasure, till you have extorted
+all the treasures of my soul? Begone, and fear lest you be made to pay
+for the temerity you have already committed!"
+
+There was an energy and determination in the gestures with which these
+words were accompanied, that did not admit of their being disputed. My
+mouth was closed; I felt as if deprived of all share of activity, and
+was only able silently and passively to quit the apartment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Two days subsequent to this conversation, Mr. Falkland ordered me to be
+called to him. [I shall continue to speak in my narrative of the silent,
+as well as the articulate part of the intercourse between us. His
+countenance was habitually animated and expressive, much beyond that of
+any other man I have seen. The curiosity which, as I have said,
+constituted my ruling passion, stimulated me to make it my perpetual
+study. It will also most probably happen, while I am thus employed in
+collecting the scattered incidents of my history, that I shall upon some
+occasions annex to appearances an explanation which I was far from
+possessing at the time, and was only suggested to me through the medium
+of subsequent events.]
+
+When I entered the apartment, I remarked in Mr. Falkland's countenance
+an unwonted composure. This composure however did not seem to result
+from internal ease, but from an effort which, while he prepared himself
+for an interesting scene, was exerted to prevent his presence of mind,
+and power of voluntary action, from suffering any diminution.
+
+"Williams," said he, "I am determined, whatever it may cost me, to have
+an explanation with you. You are a rash and inconsiderate boy, and have
+given me much disturbance. You ought to have known that, though I allow
+you to talk with me upon indifferent subjects, it is very improper in
+you to lead the conversation to any thing that relates to my personal
+concerns. You have said many things lately in a very mysterious way, and
+appear to know something more than I am aware of. I am equally at a loss
+to guess how you came by your knowledge, as of what it consists. But I
+think I perceive too much inclination on your part to trifle with my
+peace of mind. That ought not to be, nor have I deserved any such
+treatment from you. But, be that as it will, the guesses in which you
+oblige me to employ myself are too painful. It is a sort of sporting
+with my feelings, which, as a man of resolution, I am determined to
+bring to an end. I expect you therefore to lay aside all mystery and
+equivocation, and inform me explicitly what it is upon which your
+allusions are built. What is it you know? What is it you want? I have
+been too much exposed already to unparalleled mortification and
+hardship, and my wounds will not bear this perpetual tampering."
+
+"I feel, sir," answered I, "how wrong I have been, and am ashamed that
+such a one as I should have given you all this trouble and displeasure.
+I felt it at the time; but I have been hurried along, I do not know how.
+I have always tried to stop myself, but the demon that possessed me was
+too strong for me. I know nothing, sir, but what Mr. Collins told me. He
+told me the story of Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville and Hawkins. I am
+sure, sir, he said nothing but what was to your honour, and proved you
+to be more an angel than a man."
+
+"Well, sir: I found a letter written by that Hawkins the other day; did
+not that letter fall into your hands? Did not you read it?"
+
+"For God's sake, sir, turn me out of your house. Punish me in some way
+or other, that I may forgive myself. I am a foolish, wicked, despicable
+wretch. I confess, sir, I did read the letter."
+
+"And how dared you read it? It was indeed very wrong of you. But we will
+talk of that by and by. Well, and what did you say to the letter? You
+know it seems, that Hawkins was hanged."
+
+"I say, sir? why it went to my heart to read it. I say, as I said the
+day before yesterday, that when I see a man of so much principle
+afterwards deliberately proceeding to the very worst of crimes, I can
+scarcely bear to think of it."
+
+"That is what you say? It seems too you know--accursed
+remembrance!--that I was accused of this crime?"
+
+I was silent.
+
+"Well, sir. You know too, perhaps, that from the hour the crime was
+committed--yes, sir, that was the date [and as he said this, there was
+somewhat frightful, I had almost said diabolical, in his countenance]--I
+have not had an hour's peace; I became changed from the happiest to the
+most miserable thing that lives; sleep has fled from my eyes; joy has
+been a stranger to my thoughts; and annihilation I should prefer a
+thousand times to the being that I am. As soon as I was capable of a
+choice, I chose honour and the esteem of mankind as a good I preferred
+to all others. You know, it seems, in how many ways my ambition has been
+disappointed,--I do not thank Collins for having been the historian of
+my disgrace,--would to God that night could be blotted from the memory
+of man!--But the scene of that night, instead of perishing, has been a
+source of ever new calamity to me, which must flow for ever! Am I then,
+thus miserable and ruined, a proper subject upon which for you to
+exercise your ingenuity, and improve your power of tormenting? Was it
+not enough that I was publicly dishonoured? that I was deprived, by the
+pestilential influence of some demon, of the opportunity of avenging my
+dishonour? No: in addition to this, I have been charged with having in
+this critical moment intercepted my own vengeance by the foulest of
+crimes. That trial is past. Misery itself has nothing worse in store for
+me, except what you have inflicted: the seeming to doubt of my
+innocence, which, after the fullest and most solemn examination, has
+been completely established. You have forced me to this explanation. You
+have extorted from me a confidence which I had no inclination to make.
+But it is a part of the misery of my situation, that I am at the mercy
+of every creature, however little, who feels himself inclined to sport
+with my distress. Be content. You have brought me low enough."
+
+"Oh, sir, I am not content; I cannot be content! I cannot bear to think
+what I have done. I shall never again be able to look in the face of the
+best of masters and the best of men. I beg of you, sir, to turn me out
+of your service. Let me go and hide myself where I may never see you
+more."
+
+Mr. Falkland's countenance had indicated great severity through the
+whole of this conversation; but now it became more harsh and tempestuous
+than ever. "How now, rascal!" cried he. "You want to leave me, do you?
+Who told you that I wished to part with you? But you cannot bear to live
+with such a miserable wretch as I am! You are not disposed to put up
+with the caprices of a man so dissatisfied and unjust!"
+
+"Oh, sir! do not talk to me thus! Do with me any thing you will. Kill me
+if you please."
+
+"Kill you!" [Volumes could not describe the emotions with which this
+echo of my words was given and received.]
+
+"Sir, I could die to serve you! I love you more than I can express. I
+worship you as a being of a superior nature. I am foolish, raw,
+inexperienced,--worse than any of these;--but never did a thought of
+disloyalty to your service enter into my heart."
+
+Here our conversation ended; and the impression it made upon my youthful
+mind it is impossible to describe. I thought with astonishment, even
+with rapture, of the attention and kindness towards me I discovered in
+Mr. Falkland, through all the roughness of his manner. I could never
+enough wonder at finding myself, humble as I was by my birth, obscure as
+I had hitherto been, thus suddenly become of so much importance to the
+happiness of one of the most enlightened and accomplished men in
+England. But this consciousness attached me to my patron more eagerly
+than ever, and made me swear a thousand times, as I meditated upon my
+situation, that I would never prove unworthy of so generous a protector.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Is it not unaccountable that, in the midst of all my increased
+veneration for my patron, the first tumult of my emotion was scarcely
+subsided, before the old question that had excited my conjectures
+recurred to my mind, Was he the murderer? It was a kind of fatal
+impulse, that seemed destined to hurry me to my destruction. I did not
+wonder at the disturbance that was given to Mr. Falkland by any
+allusion, however distant, to this fatal affair. That was as completely
+accounted for from the consideration of his excessive sensibility in
+matters of honour, as it would have been upon the supposition of the
+most atrocious guilt. Knowing, as he did, that such a charge had once
+been connected with his name, he would of course be perpetually uneasy,
+and suspect some latent insinuation at every possible opportunity. He
+would doubt and fear, lest every man with whom he conversed harboured
+the foulest suspicion against him. In my case he found that I was in
+possession of some information, more than he was aware of, without its
+being possible for him to decide to what it amounted, whether I had
+heard a just or unjust, a candid or calumniatory tale. He had also
+reason to suppose that I gave entertainment to thoughts derogatory to
+his honour, and that I did not form that favourable judgment, which the
+exquisite refinement of his ruling passion made indispensable to his
+peace. All these considerations would of course maintain in him a state
+of perpetual uneasiness. But, though I could find nothing that I could
+consider as justifying me in persisting in the shadow of a doubt, yet,
+as I have said, the uncertainty and restlessness of my contemplations
+would by no means depart from me.
+
+The fluctuating state of my mind produced a contention of opposite
+principles, that by turns usurped dominion over my conduct. Sometimes I
+was influenced by the most complete veneration for my master; I placed
+an unreserved confidence in his integrity and his virtue, and implicitly
+surrendered my understanding for him to set it to what point he pleased.
+At other times the confidence, which had before flowed with the most
+plenteous tide, began to ebb; I was, as I had already been, watchful,
+inquisitive, suspicious, full of a thousand conjectures as to the
+meaning of the most indifferent actions. Mr. Falkland, who was most
+painfully alive to every thing that related to his honour, saw these
+variations, and betrayed his consciousness of them now in one manner,
+and now in another, frequently before I was myself aware, sometimes
+almost before they existed. The situation of both was distressing; we
+were each of us a plague to the other; and I often wondered, that the
+forbearance and benignity of my master was not at length exhausted, and
+that he did not determine to thrust from him for ever so incessant an
+observer. There was indeed one eminent difference between his share in
+the transaction and mine. I had some consolation in the midst of my
+restlessness. Curiosity is a principle that carries its pleasures, as
+well as its pains, along with it. The mind is urged by a perpetual
+stimulus; it seems as if it were continually approaching to the end of
+its race; and as the insatiable desire of satisfaction is its principle
+of conduct, so it promises itself in that satisfaction an unknown
+gratification, which seems as if it were capable of fully compensating
+any injuries that may be suffered in the career. But to Mr. Falkland
+there was no consolation. What he endured in the intercourse between us
+appeared to be gratuitous evil. He had only to wish that there was no
+such person as myself in the world, and to curse the hour when his
+humanity led him to rescue me from my obscurity, and place me in his
+service.
+
+A consequence produced upon me by the extraordinary nature of my
+situation it is necessary to mention. The constant state of vigilance
+and suspicion in which my mind was retained, worked a very rapid change
+in my character. It seemed to have all the effect that might have been
+expected from years of observation and experience. The strictness with
+which I endeavoured to remark what passed in the mind of one man, and
+the variety of conjectures into which I was led, appeared, as it were,
+to render me a competent adept in the different modes in which the
+human intellect displays its secret workings. I no longer said to
+myself, as I had done in the beginning, "I will ask Mr. Falkland whether
+he were the murderer." On the contrary, after having carefully examined
+the different kinds of evidence of which the subject was susceptible,
+and recollecting all that had already passed upon the subject, it was
+not without considerable pain, that I felt myself unable to discover any
+way in which I could be perfectly and unalterably satisfied of my
+patron's innocence. As to his guilt, I could scarcely bring myself to
+doubt that in some way or other, sooner or later, I should arrive at the
+knowledge of that, if it really existed. But I could not endure to
+think, almost for a moment, of that side of the alternative as true; and
+with all my ungovernable suspicion arising from the mysteriousness of
+the circumstances, and all the delight which a young and unfledged mind
+receives from ideas that give scope to all that imagination can picture
+of terrible or sublime, I could not yet bring myself to consider Mr.
+Falkland's guilt as a supposition attended with the remotest
+probability.
+
+I hope the reader will forgive me for dwelling thus long on preliminary
+circumstances. I shall come soon enough to the story of my own misery. I
+have already said, that one of the motives which induced me to the
+penning of this narrative, was to console myself in my insupportable
+distress. I derive a melancholy pleasure from dwelling upon the
+circumstances which imperceptibly paved the way to my ruin. While I
+recollect or describe past scenes, which occurred in a more favourable
+period of my life, my attention is called off for a short interval, from
+the hopeless misfortune in which I am at present involved. The man must
+indeed possess an uncommon portion of hardness of heart, who can envy
+me so slight a relief.--To proceed.
+
+For some time after the explanation which had thus taken place between
+me and Mr. Falkland, his melancholy, instead of being in the slightest
+degree diminished by the lenient hand of time, went on perpetually to
+increase. His fits of insanity--for such I must denominate them for want
+of a distinct appellation, though it is possible they might not fall
+under the definition that either the faculty or the court of chancery
+appropriate to the term--became stronger and more durable than ever. It
+was no longer practicable wholly to conceal them from the family, and
+even from the neighbourhood. He would sometimes, without any previous
+notice, absent himself from his house for two or three days,
+unaccompanied by servant or attendant. This was the more extraordinary,
+as it was well known that he paid no visits, nor kept up any sort of
+intercourse with the gentlemen of the vicinity. But it was impossible
+that a man of Mr. Falkland's distinction and fortune should long
+continue in such a practice, without its being discovered what was
+become of him; though a considerable part of our county was among the
+wildest and most desolate districts that are to be found in South
+Britain. Mr. Falkland was sometimes seen climbing among the rocks,
+reclining motionless for hours together upon the edge of a precipice, or
+lulled into a kind of nameless lethargy of despair by the dashing of the
+torrents. He would remain for whole nights together under the naked cope
+of heaven, inattentive to the consideration either of place or time;
+insensible to the variations of the weather, or rather seeming to be
+delighted with that uproar of the elements, which partially called off
+his attention from the discord and dejection that occupied his own mind.
+
+At first, when we received intelligence at any time of the place to
+which Mr. Falkland had withdrawn himself, some person of his household,
+Mr. Collins or myself, but most generally myself, as I was always at
+home, and always, in the received sense of the word, at leisure, went to
+him to persuade him to return. But, after a few experiments, we thought
+it advisable to desist, and leave him to prolong his absence, or to
+terminate it, as might happen to suit his own inclination. Mr. Collins,
+whose grey hairs and long services seemed to give him a sort of right to
+be importunate, sometimes succeeded; though even in that case there was
+nothing that could sit more uneasily upon Mr. Falkland than this
+insinuation as if he wanted a guardian to take care of him, or as if he
+were in, or in danger of falling into, a state in which he would be
+incapable of deliberately controlling his own words and actions. At one
+time he would suddenly yield to his humble, venerable friend, murmuring
+grievously at the constraint that was put upon him, but without spirit
+enough even to complain of it with energy. At another time, even though
+complying, he would suddenly burst out in a paroxysm of resentment. Upon
+these occasions there was something inconceivably, savagely terrible in
+his anger, that gave to the person against whom it was directed the most
+humiliating and insupportable sensations. Me he always treated, at these
+times, with fierceness, and drove me from him with a vehemence lofty,
+emphatical, and sustained, beyond any thing of which I should have
+thought human nature to be capable. These sallies seemed always to
+constitute a sort of crisis in his indisposition; and, whenever he was
+induced to such a premature return, he would fall immediately after into
+a state of the most melancholy inactivity, in which he usually continued
+for two or three days. It was by an obstinate fatality that, whenever I
+saw Mr. Falkland in these deplorable situations, and particularly when I
+lighted upon him after having sought him among the rocks and precipices,
+pale, emaciated, solitary, and haggard, the suggestion would continually
+recur to me, in spite of inclination, in spite of persuasion, and in
+spite of evidence, Surely this man is a murderer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+It was in one of the lucid intervals, as I may term them, that occurred
+during this period, that a peasant was brought before him, in his
+character of a justice of peace, upon an accusation of having murdered
+his fellow. As Mr. Falkland had by this time acquired the repute of a
+melancholy valetudinarian, it is probable he would not have been called
+upon to act in his official character upon the present occasion, had it
+not been that two or three of the neighbouring justices were all of them
+from home at once, so that he was the only one to be found in a circuit
+of many miles. The reader however must not imagine, though I have
+employed the word insanity in describing Mr. Falkland's symptoms, that
+he was by any means reckoned for a madman by the generality of those who
+had occasion to observe him. It is true that his behaviour, at certain
+times, was singular and unaccountable; but then, at other times, there
+was in it so much dignity, regularity, and economy; he knew so well how
+to command and make himself respected; his actions and carriage were so
+condescending, considerate, and benevolent, that, far from having
+forfeited the esteem of the unfortunate or the many, they were loud and
+earnest in his praises.
+
+I was present at the examination of this peasant. The moment I heard of
+the errand which had brought this rabble of visitors, a sudden thought
+struck me. I conceived the possibility of rendering the incident
+subordinate to the great enquiry which drank up all the currents of my
+soul. I said, this man is arraigned of murder, and murder is the
+master-key that wakes distemper in the mind of Mr. Falkland. I will
+watch him without remission. I will trace all the mazes of his thought.
+Surely at such a time his secret anguish must betray itself. Surely, if
+it be not my own fault, I shall now be able to discover the state of his
+plea before the tribunal of unerring justice.
+
+I took my station in a manner most favourable to the object upon which
+my mind was intent. I could perceive in Mr. Falkland's features, as he
+entered, a strong reluctance to the business in which he was engaged;
+but there was no possibility of retreating. His countenance was
+embarrassed and anxious; he scarcely saw any body. The examination had
+not proceeded far, before he chanced to turn his eye to the part of the
+room where I was. It happened in this as in some preceding instances--we
+exchanged a silent look, by which we told volumes to each other. Mr.
+Falkland's complexion turned from red to pale, and from pale to red. I
+perfectly understood his feelings, and would willingly have withdrawn
+myself. But it was impossible; my passions were too deeply engaged; I
+was rooted to the spot; though my own life, that of my master, or almost
+of a whole nation had been at stake, I had no power to change my
+position.
+
+The first surprise however having subsided, Mr. Falkland assumed a look
+of determined constancy, and even seemed to increase in self-possession
+much beyond what could have been expected from his first entrance. This
+he could probably have maintained, had it not been that the scene,
+instead of being permanent, was in some sort perpetually changing. The
+man who was brought before him was vehemently accused by the brother of
+the deceased as having acted from the most rooted malice. He swore that
+there had been an old grudge between the parties, and related several
+instances of it. He affirmed that the murderer had sought the earliest
+opportunity of wreaking his revenge; had struck the first blow; and,
+though the contest was in appearance only a common boxing match, had
+watched the occasion of giving a fatal stroke, which was followed by the
+instant death of his antagonist.
+
+While the accuser was giving in his evidence, the accused discovered
+every token of the most poignant sensibility. At one time his features
+were convulsed with anguish; tears unbidden trickled down his manly
+cheeks; and at another he started with apparent astonishment at the
+unfavourable turn that was given to the narrative, though without
+betraying any impatience to interrupt. I never saw a man less ferocious
+in his appearance. He was tall, well made, and comely. His countenance
+was ingenuous and benevolent, without folly. By his side stood a young
+woman, his sweetheart, extremely agreeable in her person, and her looks
+testifying how deeply she interested herself in the fate of her lover.
+The accidental spectators were divided, between indignation against the
+enormity of the supposed criminal, and compassion for the poor girl that
+accompanied him. They seemed to take little notice of the favourable
+appearances visible in the person of the accused, till, in the sequel,
+those appearances were more forcibly suggested to their attention. For
+Mr. Falkland, he was at one moment engrossed by curiosity and
+earnestness to investigate the tale, while at another he betrayed a sort
+of revulsion of sentiment, which made the investigation too painful for
+him to support.
+
+When the accused was called upon for his defence, he readily owned the
+misunderstanding that had existed, and that the deceased was the worst
+enemy he had in the world. Indeed he was his only enemy, and he could
+not tell the reason that had made him so. He had employed every effort
+to overcome his animosity, but in vain. The deceased had upon all
+occasions sought to mortify him, and do him an ill turn; but he had
+resolved never to be engaged in a broil with him, and till this day he
+had succeeded. If he had met with a misfortune with any other man,
+people at least might have thought it accident; but now it would always
+be believed that he had acted from secret malice and a bad heart.
+
+The fact was, that he and his sweetheart had gone to a neighbouring
+fair, where this man had met them. The man had often tried to affront
+him; and his passiveness, interpreted into cowardice, had perhaps
+encouraged the other to additional rudeness. Finding that he had endured
+trivial insults to himself with an even temper, the deceased now thought
+proper to turn his brutality upon the young woman that accompanied him.
+He pursued them; he endeavoured in various manners to harass and vex
+them; they had sought in vain to shake him off. The young woman was
+considerably terrified. The accused expostulated with their persecutor,
+and asked him how he could be so barbarous as to persist in frightening
+a woman? He replied with an insulting tone, "Then the woman should find
+some one able to protect her; people that encouraged and trusted to such
+a thief as that, deserved no better!" The accused tried every expedient
+he could invent; at length he could endure it no longer; he became
+exasperated, and challenged the assailant. The challenge was accepted; a
+ring was formed; he confided the care of his sweetheart to a bystander;
+and unfortunately the first blow he struck proved fatal.
+
+The accused added, that he did not care what became of him. He had been
+anxious to go through the world in an inoffensive manner, and now he had
+the guilt of blood upon him. He did not know but it would be kindness in
+them to hang him out of the way; for his conscience would reproach him
+as long as he lived, and the figure of the deceased, as he had lain
+senseless and without motion at his feet, would perpetually haunt him.
+The thought of this man, at one moment full of life and vigour, and the
+next lifted a helpless corpse from the ground, and all owing to him, was
+a thought too dreadful to be endured. He had loved the poor maiden, who
+had been the innocent occasion of this, with all his heart; but from
+this time he should never support the sight of her. The sight would
+bring a tribe of fiends in its rear. One unlucky minute had poisoned all
+his hopes, and made life a burden to him. Saying this, his countenance
+fell, the muscles of his face trembled with agony, and he looked the
+statue of despair.
+
+This was the story of which Mr. Falkland was called upon to be the
+auditor. Though the incidents were, for the most part, wide of those
+which belonged to the adventures of the preceding volume, and there had
+been much less policy and skill displayed on either part in this rustic
+encounter, yet there were many points which, to a man who bore the
+former strongly in his recollection, suggested a sufficient resemblance.
+In each case it was a human brute persisting in a course of hostility to
+a man of benevolent character, and suddenly and terribly cut off in the
+midst of his career. These points perpetually smote upon the heart of
+Mr. Falkland. He at one time started with astonishment, and at another
+shifted his posture, like a man who is unable longer to endure the
+sensations that press upon him. Then he new strung his nerves to
+stubborn patience. I could see, while his muscles preserved an
+inflexible steadiness, tears of anguish roll down his cheeks. He dared
+not trust his eyes to glance towards the side of the room where I stood;
+and this gave an air of embarrassment to his whole figure. But when the
+accused came to speak of his feelings, to describe the depth of his
+compunction for an involuntary fault, he could endure it no longer. He
+suddenly rose, and with every mark of horror and despair rushed out of
+the room.
+
+This circumstance made no material difference in the affair of the
+accused. The parties were detained about half an hour. Mr. Falkland had
+already heard the material parts of the evidence in person. At the
+expiration of that interval, he sent for Mr. Collins out of the room.
+The story of the culprit was confirmed by many witnesses who had seen
+the transaction. Word was brought that my master was indisposed; and, at
+the same time, the accused was ordered to be discharged. The vengeance
+of the brother however, as I afterwards found, did not rest here, and he
+met with a magistrate, more scrupulous or more despotic, by whom the
+culprit was committed for trial.
+
+This affair was no sooner concluded, than I hastened into the garden,
+and plunged into the deepest of its thickets. My mind was full, almost
+to bursting. I no sooner conceived myself sufficiently removed from all
+observation, than my thoughts forced their way spontaneously to my
+tongue, and I exclaimed, in a fit of uncontrollable enthusiasm, "This is
+the murderer; the Hawkinses were innocent! I am sure of it! I will
+pledge my life for it! It is out! It is discovered! Guilty, upon my
+soul!"
+
+While I thus proceeded with hasty steps along the most secret paths of
+the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts
+in involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone
+a total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind
+of rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of
+rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy. In the very tempest
+and hurricane of the passions, I seemed to enjoy the most soul-ravishing
+calm. I cannot better express the then state of my mind than by saying,
+I was never so perfectly alive as at that moment.
+
+This state of mental elevation continued for several hours, but at
+length subsided, and gave place to more deliberate reflection. One of
+the first questions that then occurred was, what shall I do with the
+knowledge I have been so eager to acquire? I had no inclination to turn
+informer. I felt what I had had no previous conception of, that it was
+possible to love a murderer, and, as I then understood it, the worst of
+murderers. I conceived it to be in the highest degree absurd and
+iniquitous, to cut off a man qualified for the most essential and
+extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act which, whatever
+were its merits, could not be retrieved.
+
+This thought led me to another, which had at first passed unnoticed. If
+I had been disposed to turn informer, what had occurred amounted to no
+evidence that was admissible in a court of justice. Well then, added I,
+if it be such as would not be admitted at a criminal tribunal, am I sure
+it is such as I ought to admit? There were twenty persons besides myself
+present at the scene from which I pretend to derive such entire
+conviction. Not one of them saw it in the light that I did. It either
+appeared to them a casual and unimportant circumstance, or they thought
+it sufficiently accounted for by Mr. Falkland's infirmity and
+misfortunes. Did it really contain such an extent of arguments and
+application, that nobody but I was discerning enough to see?
+
+But all this reasoning produced no alteration in my way of thinking. For
+this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: "Mr. Falkland
+is the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!"
+Thus was I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny. The state of my
+passions in their progressive career, the inquisitiveness and impatience
+of my thoughts, appeared to make this determination unavoidable.
+
+An incident occurred while I was in the garden, that seemed to make no
+impression upon me at the time, but which I recollected when my thoughts
+were got into somewhat of a slower motion. In the midst of one of my
+paroxysms of exclamation, and when I thought myself most alone, the
+shadow of a man as avoiding me passed transiently by me at a small
+distance. Though I had scarcely caught a faint glimpse of his person,
+there was something in the occurrence that persuaded me it was Mr.
+Falkland. I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the
+words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not power
+immediately to suspend the career of my reflections. Subsequent
+circumstances however brought back the apprehension to my mind. I had
+scarcely a doubt of its reality, when dinner-time came, and Mr. Falkland
+was not to be found. Supper and bed-time passed in the same manner. The
+only conclusion made by his servants upon this circumstance was, that he
+was gone upon one of his accustomed melancholy rambles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The period at which my story is now arrived seemed as if it were the
+very crisis of the fortune of Mr. Falkland. Incident followed upon
+incident, in a kind of breathless succession. About nine o'clock the
+next morning an alarm was given, that one of the chimneys of the house
+was on fire. No accident could be apparently more trivial; but presently
+it blazed with such fury, as to make it clear that some beam of the
+house, which in the first building had been improperly placed, had been
+reached by the flames. Some danger was apprehended for the whole
+edifice. The confusion was the greater, in consequence of the absence of
+the master, as well as of Mr. Collins, the steward. While some of the
+domestics were employed in endeavouring to extinguish the flames, it was
+thought proper that others should busy themselves in removing the most
+valuable moveables to a lawn in the garden. I took some command in the
+affair, to which indeed my station in the family seemed to entitle me,
+and for which I was judged qualified by my understanding and mental
+resources.
+
+Having given some general directions, I conceived, that it was not
+enough to stand by and superintend, but that I should contribute my
+personal labour in the public concern. I set out for that purpose; and
+my steps, by some mysterious fatality, were directed to the private
+apartment at the end of the library. Here, as I looked round, my eye was
+suddenly caught by the trunk mentioned in the first pages of my
+narrative.
+
+My mind was already raised to its utmost pitch. In a window-seat of the
+room lay a number of chisels and other carpenter's tools. I know not
+what infatuation instantaneously seized me. The idea was too powerful to
+be resisted. I forgot the business upon which I came, the employment of
+the servants, and the urgency of general danger. I should have done the
+same if the flames that seemed to extend as they proceeded, and already
+surmounted the house, had reached this very apartment. I snatched a tool
+suitable for the purpose, threw myself upon the ground, and applied with
+eagerness to a magazine which inclosed all for which my heart panted.
+After two or three efforts, in which the energy of uncontrollable
+passion was added to my bodily strength, the fastenings gave way, the
+trunk opened, and all that I sought was at once within my reach.
+
+I was in the act of lifting up the lid, when Mr. Falkland entered, wild,
+breathless, distracted in his looks! He had been brought home from a
+considerable distance by the sight of the flames. At the moment of his
+appearance the lid dropped down from my hand. He no sooner saw me than
+his eyes emitted sparks of rage. He ran with eagerness to a brace of
+loaded pistols which hung in the room, and, seizing one, presented it to
+my head. I saw his design, and sprang to avoid it; but, with the same
+rapidity with which he had formed his resolution, he changed it, and
+instantly went to the window, and flung the pistol into the court below.
+He bade me begone with his usual irresistible energy; and, overcome as
+I was already by the horror of the detection, I eagerly complied.
+
+A moment after, a considerable part of the chimney tumbled with noise
+into the court below, and a voice exclaimed that the fire was more
+violent than ever. These circumstances seemed to produce a mechanical
+effect upon my patron, who, having first locked the closet, appeared on
+the outside of the house, ascended the roof, and was in a moment in
+every place where his presence was required. The flames were at length
+extinguished.
+
+The reader can with difficulty form a conception of the state to which I
+was now reduced. My act was in some sort an act of insanity; but how
+undescribable are the feelings with which I looked back upon it! It was
+an instantaneous impulse, a short-lived and passing alienation of mind;
+but what must Mr. Falkland think of that alienation? To any man a person
+who had once shown himself capable of so wild a flight of the mind, must
+appear dangerous: how must he appear to a man under Mr. Falkland's
+circumstances? I had just had a pistol held to my head, by a man
+resolved to put a period to my existence. That indeed was past; but what
+was it that fate had yet in reserve for me! The insatiable vengeance of
+a Falkland, of a man whose hands were, to my apprehension, red with
+blood, and his thoughts familiar with cruelty and murder. How great were
+the resources of his mind, resources henceforth to be confederated for
+my destruction! This was the termination of an ungoverned curiosity, an
+impulse that I had represented to myself as so innocent or so venial.
+
+In the high tide of boiling passion I had overlooked all consequences.
+It now appeared to me like a dream. Is it in man to leap from the
+high-raised precipice, or rush unconcerned into the midst of flames? Was
+it possible I could have forgotten for a moment the awe-creating manners
+of Falkland, and the inexorable fury I should awake in his soul? No
+thought of future security had reached my mind. I had acted upon no
+plan. I had conceived no means of concealing my deed, after it had once
+been effected. But it was over now. One short minute had effected a
+reverse in my situation, the suddenness of which the history of man,
+perhaps is unable to surpass.
+
+I have always been at a loss to account for my having plunged thus
+headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of
+unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity
+of nature, into another sentiment of the same general character. This
+was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All
+was confusion around me, and all changed into hurricane within. The
+general situation, to my unpractised apprehension, appeared desperate,
+and I by contagion became alike desperate. At first I had been in some
+degree calm and collected, but that too was a desperate effort; and when
+it gave way, a kind of instant insanity became its successor.
+
+I had now every thing to fear. And yet what was my fault? It proceeded
+from none of those errors which are justly held up to the aversion of
+mankind; my object had been neither wealth, nor the means of indulgence,
+nor the usurpation of power. No spark of malignity had harboured in my
+soul. I had always reverenced the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland; I
+reverenced it still. My offence had merely been a mistaken thirst of
+knowledge. Such however it was, as to admit neither of forgiveness nor
+remission. This epoch was the crisis of my fate, dividing what may be
+called the offensive part from the defensive, which has been the sole
+business of my remaining years. Alas! my offence was short, not
+aggravated by any sinister intention: but the reprisals I was to suffer
+are long, and can terminate only with my life!
+
+In the state in which I found myself, when the recollection of what I
+had done flowed back upon my mind, I was incapable of any resolution.
+All was chaos and uncertainty within me. My thoughts were too full of
+horror to be susceptible of activity. I felt deserted of my intellectual
+powers, palsied in mind, and compelled to sit in speechless expectation
+of the misery to which I was destined. To my own conception I was like a
+man, who, though blasted with lightning, and deprived for ever of the
+power of motion, should yet retain the consciousness of his situation.
+Death-dealing despair was the only idea of which I was sensible.
+
+I was still in this situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His
+message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening
+and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure
+who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the
+power of arranging my ideas and directing my steps. I understood, that
+the minute the affair of the fire was over Mr. Falkland had retired to
+his own room. It was evening before he ordered me to be called.
+
+I found in him every token of extreme distress, except that there was an
+air of solemn and sad composure that crowned the whole. For the present,
+all appearance of gloom, stateliness, and austerity was gone. As I
+entered he looked up, and, seeing who it was, ordered me to bolt the
+door. I obeyed. He went round the room, and examined its other avenues.
+He then returned to where I stood. I trembled in every joint of my
+frame. I exclaimed within myself, "What scene of death has Roscius now
+to act?"
+
+"Williams!" said he, in a tone which had more in it of sorrow than
+resentment, "I have attempted your life! I am a wretch devoted to the
+scorn and execration of mankind!" There he stopped.
+
+"If there be one being on the whole earth that feels the scorn and
+execration due to such a wretch more strongly than another, it is
+myself. I have been kept in a state of perpetual torture and madness.
+But I can put an end to it and its consequences; and, so far at least as
+relates to you, I am determined to do it. I know the price, and--I will
+make the purchase.
+
+"You must swear," said he. "You must attest every sacrament, divine and
+human, never to disclose what I am now to tell you."--He dictated the
+oath, and I repeated it with an aching heart. I had no power to offer a
+word of remark.
+
+"This confidence," said he, "is of your seeking, not of mine. It is
+odious to me, and is dangerous to you."
+
+Having thus prefaced the disclosure he had to make, he paused. He seemed
+to collect himself as for an effort of magnitude. He wiped his face with
+his handkerchief. The moisture that incommoded him appeared not to be
+tears, but sweat.
+
+"Look at me. Observe me. Is it not strange that such a one as I should
+retain lineaments of a human creature? I am the blackest of villains. I
+am the murderer of Tyrrel. I am the assassin of the Hawkinses."
+
+I started with terror, and was silent.
+
+"What a story is mine! Insulted, disgraced, polluted in the face of
+hundreds, I was capable of any act of desperation. I watched my
+opportunity, followed Mr. Tyrrel from the rooms, seized a sharp-pointed
+knife that fell in my way, came behind him, and stabbed him to the
+heart. My gigantic oppressor rolled at my feet.
+
+"All are but links of one chain. A blow! A murder! My next business was
+to defend myself, to tell so well-digested a lie as that all mankind
+should believe it true. Never was a task so harrowing and intolerable!
+
+"Well, thus far fortune favoured me; she favoured me beyond my desire.
+The guilt was removed from me, and cast upon another; but this I was to
+endure. Whence came the circumstantial evidence against him, the broken
+knife and the blood, I am unable to tell. I suppose, by some miraculous
+accident, Hawkins was passing by, and endeavoured to assist his
+oppressor in the agonies of death. You have heard his story; you have
+read one of his letters. But you do not know the thousandth part of the
+proofs of his simple and unalterable rectitude that I have known. His
+son suffered with him; that son, for the sake of whose happiness and
+virtue he ruined himself, and would have died a hundred times.--I have
+had feelings, but I cannot describe them.
+
+"This it is to be a gentleman! a man of honour! I was the fool of fame.
+My virtue, my honesty, my everlasting peace of mind, were cheap
+sacrifices to be made at the shrine of this divinity. But, what is
+worse, there is nothing that has happened that has in any degree
+contributed to my cure. I am as much the fool of fame as ever. I cling
+to it to my last breath. Though I be the blackest of villains, I will
+leave behind me a spotless and illustrious name. There is no crime so
+malignant, no scene of blood so horrible, in which that object cannot
+engage me. It is no matter that I regard these things at a distance with
+aversion;--I am sure of it; bring me to the test, and I shall yield. I
+despise myself, but thus I am; things are gone too far to be recalled.
+
+"Why is it that I am compelled to this confidence? From the love of
+fame. I should tremble at the sight of every pistol or instrument of
+death that offered itself to my hands; and perhaps my next murder may
+not be so fortunate as those I have already committed. I had no
+alternative but to make you my confidant or my victim. It was better to
+trust you with the whole truth under every seal of secrecy, than to live
+in perpetual fear of your penetration or your rashness.
+
+"Do you know what it is you have done? To gratify a foolishly
+inquisitive humour, you have sold yourself. You shall continue in my
+service, but can never share my affection. I will benefit you in respect
+of fortune, but I shall always hate you. If ever an unguarded word
+escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy or suspicion,
+expect to pay for it by your death or worse. It is a dear bargain you
+have made. But it is too late to look back. I charge and adjure you by
+every thing that is sacred, and that is tremendous, preserve your faith!
+
+"My tongue has now for the first time for several years spoken the
+language of my heart; and the intercourse from this hour shall be shut
+for ever. I want no pity. I desire no consolation. Surrounded as I am
+with horrors, I will at least preserve my fortitude to the last. If I
+had been reserved to a different destiny, I have qualities in that
+respect worthy of a better cause. I can be mad, miserable, and frantic;
+but even in frenzy I can preserve my presence of mind and discretion."
+
+Such was the story I had been so desirous to know. Though my mind had
+brooded upon the subject for months, there was not a syllable of it that
+did not come to my ear with the most perfect sense of novelty. "Mr.
+Falkland is a murderer!" said I, as I retired from the conference. This
+dreadful appellative, "a murderer," made my very blood run cold within
+me. "He killed Mr. Tyrrel, for he could not control his resentment and
+anger: he sacrificed Hawkins the elder and Hawkins the younger, because
+he could upon no terms endure the public loss of honour: how can I
+expect that a man thus passionate and unrelenting will not sooner or
+later make me his victim?"
+
+But, notwithstanding this terrible application of the story, an
+application to which perhaps in some form or other, mankind are indebted
+for nine tenths of their abhorrence against vice, I could not help
+occasionally recurring to reflections of an opposite nature. "Mr.
+Falkland is a murderer!" resumed I. "He might yet be a most excellent
+man, if he did but think so." It is the thinking ourselves vicious then,
+that principally contributes to make us vicious.
+
+Amidst the shock I received from finding, what I had never suffered
+myself constantly to believe, that my suspicions were true, I still
+discovered new cause of admiration for my master. His menaces indeed
+were terrible. But, when I recollected the offence I had given, so
+contrary to every received principle of civilised society, so insolent
+and rude, so intolerable to a man of Mr. Falkland's elevation, and in
+Mr. Falkland's peculiarity of circumstances, I was astonished at his
+forbearance. There were indeed sufficiently obvious reasons why he might
+not choose to proceed to extremities with me. But how different from the
+fearful expectations I had conceived were the calmness of his
+behaviour, and the regulated mildness of his language! In this respect,
+I for a short time imagined that I was emancipated from the mischiefs
+which had appalled me; and that, in having to do with a man of Mr.
+Falkland's liberality, I had nothing rigorous to apprehend.
+
+"It is a miserable prospect," said I, "that he holds up to me. He
+imagines that I am restrained by no principles, and deaf to the claims
+of personal excellence. But he shall find himself mistaken. I will never
+become an informer. I will never injure my patron; and therefore he will
+not be my enemy. With all his misfortunes and all his errors, I feel
+that my soul yearns for his welfare. If he have been criminal, that is
+owing to circumstances; the same qualities under other circumstances
+would have been, or rather were, sublimely beneficent."
+
+My reasonings were, no doubt, infinitely more favourable to Mr.
+Falkland, than those which human beings are accustomed to make in the
+case of such as they style great criminals. This will not be wondered
+at, when it is considered that I had myself just been trampling on the
+established boundaries of obligation, and therefore might well have a
+fellow-feeling for other offenders. Add to which, I had known Mr.
+Falkland from the first as a beneficent divinity. I had observed at
+leisure, and with a minuteness which could not deceive me, the excellent
+qualities of his heart; and I found him possessed of a mind beyond
+comparison the most fertile and accomplished I had ever known.
+
+But though the terrors which had impressed me were considerably
+alleviated, my situation was notwithstanding sufficiently miserable. The
+ease and light-heartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of
+an irresistible necessity had commanded me to "sleep no more." I was
+tormented with a secret, of which I must never disburthen myself; and
+this consciousness was, at my age, a source of perpetual melancholy. I
+had made myself a prisoner, in the most intolerable sense of that term,
+for years--perhaps for the rest of my life. Though my prudence and
+discretion should be invariable, I must remember that I should have an
+overseer, vigilant from conscious guilt, full of resentment at the
+unjustifiable means by which I had extorted from him a confession, and
+whose lightest caprice might at any time decide upon every thing that
+was dear to me. The vigilance even of a public and systematical
+despotism is poor, compared with a vigilance which is thus goaded by the
+most anxious passions of the soul. Against this species of persecution I
+knew not how to invent a refuge. I dared neither fly from the
+observation of Mr. Falkland, nor continue exposed to its operation. I
+was at first indeed lulled in a certain degree to security upon the
+verge of the precipice. But it was not long before I found a thousand
+circumstances perpetually reminding me of my true situation. Those I am
+now to relate are among the most memorable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+In no long time after the disclosure Mr. Falkland had made, Mr.
+Forester, his elder brother by the mother's side, came to reside for a
+short period in our family. This was a circumstance peculiarly adverse
+to my patron's habits and inclinations. He had broken off, as I have
+already said, all intercourse of visiting with his neighbours. He
+debarred himself every kind of amusement and relaxation. He shrunk from
+the society of his fellows, and thought he could never be sufficiently
+buried in obscurity and solitude. This principle was, in most cases, of
+no difficult execution to a man of firmness. But Mr. Falkland knew not
+how to avoid the visit of Mr. Forester. This gentleman was just returned
+from a residence of several years upon the continent; and his demand of
+an apartment in the house of his half-brother, till his own house at the
+distance of thirty miles should be prepared for his reception, was made
+with an air of confidence that scarcely admitted of a refusal. Mr.
+Falkland could only allege, that the state of his health and spirits was
+such, that lie feared a residence at his house would be little agreeable
+to his kinsman; and Mr. Forester conceived that this was a
+disqualification which would always augment in proportion as it was
+tolerated, and hoped that his society, by inducing Mr. Falkland to
+suspend his habits of seclusion, would be the means of essential
+benefit. Mr. Falkland opposed him no further. He would have been sorry
+to be thought unkind to a kinsman for whom he had a particular esteem;
+and the consciousness of not daring to assign the true reason, made him
+cautious of adhering to his objection.
+
+The character of Mr. Forester was, in many respects, the reverse of that
+of my master. His very appearance indicated the singularity of his
+disposition. His figure was short and angular. His eyes were sunk far
+into his head, and were overhung with eye-brows, black, thick, and
+bushy. His complexion was swarthy, and his lineaments hard. He had seen
+much of the world; but, to judge of him from his appearance and manners,
+one would have thought that he had never moved from his fire-side.
+
+His temper was acid, petulant, and harsh. He was easily offended by
+trifles, respecting which, previously to the offence, the persons with
+whom he had intercourse could have no suspicion of such a result. When
+offended, his customary behaviour was exceedingly rugged. He thought
+only of setting the delinquent right, and humbling him for his error;
+and, in his eagerness to do this, overlooked the sensibility of the
+sufferer, and the pains he inflicted. Remonstrance in such a case he
+regarded as the offspring of cowardice, which was to be extirpated with
+a steady and unshrinking hand, and not soothed with misjudging kindness
+and indulgence. As is usual in human character, he had formed a system
+of thinking to suit the current of his feelings. He held that the
+kindness we entertain for a man should be veiled and concealed, exerted
+in substantial benefits, but not disclosed, lest an undue advantage
+should be taken of it by its object.
+
+With this rugged outside, Mr. Forester had a warm and generous heart. At
+first sight all men were deterred by his manner, and excited to give him
+an ill character. But the longer any one knew him, the more they
+approved him. His harshness was then only considered as habit; and
+strong sense and active benevolence were uppermost in the recollection
+of his familiar acquaintance. His conversation, when he condescended to
+lay aside his snappish, rude, and abrupt half-sentences, became flowing
+in diction, and uncommonly amusing with regard to its substance. He
+combined, with weightiness of expression, a dryness of characteristic
+humour, that demonstrated at once the vividness of his observation, and
+the force of his understanding. The peculiarities of this gentleman's
+character were not undisplayed in the scene to which he was now
+introduced. Having much kindness in his disposition, he soon became
+deeply interested in the unhappiness of his relation. He did every thing
+in his power to remove it; but his attempts were rude and unskilful.
+With a mind so accomplished and a spirit so susceptible as that of Mr.
+Falkland, Mr. Forester did not venture to let loose his usual violence
+of manner; but, if he carefully abstained from harshness, he was however
+wholly incapable of that sweet and liquid eloquence of the soul, which
+would perhaps have stood the fairest chance of seducing Mr. Falkland for
+a moment to forget his anguish. He exhorted his host to rouse up his
+spirit, and defy the foul fiend; but the tone of his exhortations found
+no sympathetic chord in the mind of my patron. He had not the skill to
+carry conviction to an understanding so well fortified in error. In a
+word, after a thousand efforts of kindness to his entertainer, he drew
+off his forces, growling and dissatisfied with his own impotence, rather
+than angry at the obstinacy of Mr. Falkland. He felt no diminution of
+his affection for him, and was sincerely grieved to find that he was so
+little capable of serving him. Both parties in this case did justice to
+the merits of the other; at the same time that the disparity of their
+humours was such, as to prevent the stranger from being in any degree a
+dangerous companion to the master of the house. They had scarcely one
+point of contact in their characters. Mr. Forester was incapable of
+giving Mr. Falkland that degree either of pain or pleasure, which can
+raise the soul into a tumult, and deprive it for a while of tranquillity
+and self-command.
+
+Our visitor was a man, notwithstanding appearances, of a peculiarly
+sociable disposition, and, where he was neither interrupted nor
+contradicted, considerably loquacious. He began to feel himself
+painfully out of his element upon the present occasion. Mr. Falkland
+was devoted to contemplation and solitude. He put upon himself some
+degree of restraint upon the arrival of his kinsman, though even then
+his darling habits would break out. But when they had seen each other a
+certain number of times, and it was sufficiently evident that the
+society of either would be a burthen rather than a pleasure to the
+other, they consented, by a sort of silent compact, that each should be
+at liberty to follow his own inclination. Mr. Falkland was, in a sense,
+the greatest gainer by this. He returned to the habits of his choice,
+and acted, as nearly as possible, just as he would have done if Mr.
+Forester had not been in existence. But the latter was wholly at a loss.
+He had all the disadvantages of retirement, without being able, as he
+might have done at his house, to bring his own associates or his own
+amusements about him.
+
+In this situation he cast his eyes upon me. It was his principle to do
+every thing that his thoughts suggested, without caring for the forms of
+the world. He saw no reason why a peasant, with certain advantages of
+education and opportunity, might not be as eligible a companion as a
+lord; at the same time that he was deeply impressed with the
+venerableness of old institutions. Reduced as he was to a kind of last
+resort, he found me better qualified for his purpose than any other of
+Mr. Falkland's household.
+
+The manner in which he began this sort of correspondence was
+sufficiently characteristical. It was abrupt; but it was strongly
+stamped with essential benevolence. It was blunt and humorous; but there
+was attractiveness, especially in a case of unequal intercourse, in that
+very rusticity by which he levelled himself with the mass of his
+species. He had to reconcile himself as well as to invite me; not to
+reconcile himself to the postponing an aristocratical vanity, for of
+that he had a very slender portion, but to the trouble of invitation,
+for he loved his ease. All this produced some irregularity and
+indecision in his own mind, and gave a whimsical impression to his
+behaviour.
+
+On my part, I was by no means ungrateful for the distinction that was
+paid me. My mind had been relaxed into temporary dejection, but my
+reserve had no alloy of moroseness or insensibility. It did not long
+hold out against the condescending attentions of Mr. Forester. I became
+gradually heedful, encouraged, confiding. I had a most eager thirst for
+the knowledge of mankind; and though no person perhaps ever purchased so
+dearly the instructions he received in that school, the inclination was
+in no degree diminished. Mr. Forester was the second man I had seen
+uncommonly worthy of my analysis, and who seemed to my thoughts, arrived
+as I was at the end of my first essay, almost as much deserving to be
+studied as Mr. Falkland himself. I was glad to escape from the
+uneasiness of my reflections; and, while engaged with this new friend, I
+forgot the criticalness of the evils with which I was hourly menaced.
+
+Stimulated by these feelings, I was what Mr. Forester wanted, a diligent
+and zealous hearer, I was strongly susceptible of impression; and the
+alternate impressions my mind received, visibly displayed themselves in
+my countenance and gestures. The observations Mr. Forester had made in
+his travels, the set of opinions he had formed, all amused and
+interested me. His manner of telling a story, or explaining his
+thoughts, was forcible, perspicuous, and original: his style in
+conversation had an uncommon zest. Every thing he had to relate
+delighted me; while, in return, my sympathy, my eager curiosity, and my
+unsophisticated passions, rendered me to Mr. Forester a most desirable
+hearer. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that every day rendered
+our intercourse more intimate and cordial.
+
+Mr. Falkland was destined to be for ever unhappy; and it seemed as if no
+new incident could occur, from which he was not able to extract food for
+this imperious propensity. He was wearied with a perpetual repetition of
+similar impressions; and entertained an invincible disgust against all
+that was new. The visit of Mr. Forester he regarded with antipathy. He
+was scarcely able to look at him without shuddering; an emotion which
+his guest perceived, and pitied as the result of habit and disease,
+rather than of judgment. None of his actions passed unremarked; the most
+indifferent excited uneasiness and apprehension. The first overtures of
+intimacy between me and Mr. Forester probably gave birth to sentiments
+of jealousy in the mind of my master. The irregular, variable character
+of his visitor tended to heighten them, by producing an appearance of
+inexplicableness and mystery. At this time he intimated to me that it
+was not agreeable to him, that there should be much intercourse between
+me and this gentleman.
+
+What could I do? Young as I was, could it be expected that I should play
+the philosopher, and put a perpetual curb upon my inclinations?
+Imprudent though I had been, could I voluntarily subject myself to an
+eternal penance, and estrangement from human society? Could I discourage
+a frankness so perfectly in consonance with my wishes, and receive in an
+ungracious way a kindness that stole away my heart?
+
+Besides this, I was but ill prepared for the servile submission Mr.
+Falkland demanded. In early life I had been accustomed to be much my own
+master. When I first entered into Mr. Falkland's service, my personal
+habits were checked by the novelty of my situation, and my affections
+were gained by the high accomplishments of my patron. To novelty and its
+influence, curiosity had succeeded: curiosity, so long as it lasted, was
+a principle stronger in my bosom than even the love of independence. To
+that I would have sacrificed my liberty or my life; to gratify it, I
+would have submitted to the condition of a West Indian negro, or to the
+tortures inflicted by North American savages. But the turbulence of
+curiosity had now subsided.
+
+As long as the threats of Mr. Falkland had been confined to generals, I
+endured it. I was conscious of the unbecoming action I had committed,
+and this rendered me humble. But, when he went further, and undertook to
+prescribe to every article of my conduct, my patience was at an end. My
+mind, before sufficiently sensible to the unfortunate situation to which
+my imprudence had reduced me, now took a nearer and a more alarming view
+of the circumstances of the case. Mr. Falkland was not an old man; he
+had in him the principles of vigour, however they might seem to be
+shaken; he might live as long as I should. I was his prisoner; and what
+a prisoner! All my actions observed; all my gestures marked. I could
+move neither to the right nor the left, but the eye of my keeper was
+upon me. He watched me; and his vigilance was a sickness to my heart.
+For me there was no more freedom, no more of hilarity, of
+thoughtlessness, or of youth. Was this the life upon which I had entered
+with such warm and sanguine expectation? Were my days to be wasted in
+this cheerless gloom; a galley-slave in the hands of the system of
+nature, whom death only, the death of myself or my inexorable superior,
+could free?
+
+I had been adventurous in the gratification of an infantine and
+unreasonable curiosity; and I resolved not to be less adventurous, if
+need were, in the defence of every thing that can make life a blessing.
+I was prepared for an amicable adjustment of interests: I would
+undertake that Mr. Falkland should never sustain injury through my
+means; but I expected in return that I should suffer no encroachment,
+but be left to the direction of my own understanding.
+
+I went on, then, to seek Mr. Forester's society with eagerness; and it
+is the nature of an intimacy that does not decline, progressively to
+increase. Mr. Falkland observed these symptoms with visible
+perturbation. Whenever I was conscious of their being perceived by him,
+I betrayed tokens of confusion: this did not tend to allay his
+uneasiness. One day he spoke to me alone; and, with a look of mysterious
+but terrible import, expressed himself thus:--
+
+"Young man, take warning! Perhaps this is the last time you shall have
+an opportunity to take it! I will not always be the butt of your
+simplicity and inexperience, nor suffer your weakness to triumph over my
+strength! Why do you trifle with me? You little suspect the extent of my
+power. At this moment you are enclosed with the snares of my vengeance
+unseen by you, and, at the instant that you flatter yourself you are
+already beyond their reach, they will close upon you. You might as well
+think of escaping from the power of the omnipresent God, as from mine!
+If you could touch so much as my finger, you should expiate it in hours
+and months and years of a torment, of which as yet you have not the
+remotest idea. Remember! I am not talking at random! I do not utter a
+word, that, if you provoke me, shall not be executed to the severest
+letter!"
+
+It may be supposed that these menaces were not without their effect. I
+withdrew in silence. My whole soul revolted against the treatment I
+endured, and yet I could not utter a word. Why could not I speak the
+expostulations of my heart, or propose the compromise I meditated? It
+was inexperience, and not want of strength, that awed me. Every act of
+Mr. Falkland contained something new, and I was unprepared to meet it.
+Perhaps it will be found that the greatest hero owes the propriety of
+his conduct to the habit of encountering difficulties, and calling out
+with promptness the energies of his mind.
+
+I contemplated the proceedings of my patron with the deepest
+astonishment. Humanity and general kindness were fundamental parts of
+his character; but in relation to me they were sterile and inactive. His
+own interest required that he should purchase my kindness; but he
+preferred to govern me by terror, and watch me with unceasing anxiety. I
+ruminated with the most mournful sensations upon the nature of my
+calamity. I believed that no human being was ever placed in a situation
+so pitiable as mine. Every atom of my frame seemed to have a several
+existence, and to crawl within me. I had but too much reason to believe
+that Mr. Falkland's threats were not empty words. I knew his ability; I
+felt his ascendancy. If I encountered him, what chance had I of victory?
+If I were defeated, what was the penalty I had to suffer? Well then, the
+rest of my life must be devoted to slavish subjection. Miserable
+sentence! And, if it were, what security had I against the injustice of
+a man, vigilant, capricious, and criminal? I envied the condemned wretch
+upon the scaffold; I envied the victim of the inquisition in the midst
+of his torture. They know what they have to suffer. I had only to
+imagine every thing terrible, and then say, "The fate reserved for me
+is worse than this!"
+
+It was well for me that these sensations were transient: human nature
+could not long support itself under what I then felt. By degrees my mind
+shook off its burthen. Indignation succeeded to emotions of terror. The
+hostility of Mr. Falkland excited hostility in me. I determined I would
+never calumniate him in matters of the most trivial import, much less
+betray the grand secret upon which every thing dear to him depended.
+But, totally abjuring the offensive, I resolved to stand firmly upon the
+defensive. The liberty of acting as I pleased I would preserve, whatever
+might be the risk. If I were worsted in the contest, I would at least
+have the consolation of reflecting that I had exerted myself with
+energy. In proportion as I thus determined, I drew off my forces from
+petty incursions, and felt the propriety of acting with premeditation
+and system. I ruminated incessantly upon plans of deliverance, but I was
+anxious that my choice should not be precipitately made.
+
+It was during this period of my deliberation and uncertainty that Mr.
+Forester terminated his visit. He observed a strange distance in my
+behaviour, and, in his good-natured, rough way, reproached me for it. I
+could only answer with a gloomy look of mysterious import, and a
+mournful and expressive silence. He sought me for an explanation, but I
+was now as ingenious in avoiding as I had before been ardent to seek
+him; and he quitted our house, as he afterwards told me, with an
+impression, that there was some ill destiny that hung over it, which
+seemed fated to make all its inhabitants miserable, without its being
+possible for a bystander to penetrate the reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Mr. Forester had left us about three weeks, when Mr. Falkland sent me
+upon some business to an estate he possessed in a neighbouring county,
+about fifty miles from his principal residence. The road led in a
+direction wholly wide of the habitation of our late visitor. I was upon
+my return from the place to which I had been sent, when I began in fancy
+to take a survey of the various circumstances of my condition, and by
+degrees lost, in the profoundness of my contemplation, all attention to
+the surrounding objects. The first determination of my mind was to
+escape from the lynx-eyed jealousy and despotism of Mr. Falkland; the
+second to provide, by every effort of prudence and deliberation I could
+devise, against the danger with which I well knew my attempt must be
+accompanied.
+
+Occupied with these meditations, I rode many miles before I perceived
+that I had totally deviated from the right path. At length I roused
+myself, and surveyed the horizon round me; but I could observe nothing
+with which my organ was previously acquainted. On three sides, the heath
+stretched as far as the eye could reach; on the fourth, I discovered at
+some distance a wood of no ordinary dimensions. Before me, scarcely a
+single track could be found, to mark that any human being had ever
+visited the spot. As the best expedient I could devise, I bent my course
+towards the wood I have mentioned, and then pursued, as well as I was
+able, the windings of the inclosure. This led me, after some time, to
+the end of the heath; but I was still as much at a loss as ever
+respecting the road I should pursue. The sun was hid from me by a grey
+and cloudy atmosphere; I was induced to continue along the skirts of
+the wood, and surmounted with some difficulty the hedges and other
+obstacles that from time to time presented themselves. My thoughts were
+gloomy and disconsolate; the dreariness of the day, and the solitude
+which surrounded me, seemed to communicate a sadness to my soul. I had
+proceeded a considerable way, and was overcome with hunger and fatigue,
+when I discovered a road and a little inn at no great distance. I made
+up to them, and upon enquiry found that, instead of pursuing the proper
+direction, I had taken one that led to Mr. Forester's rather than to my
+own habitation. I alighted, and was entering the house, when the
+appearance of that gentleman struck my eyes.
+
+Mr. Forester accosted me with kindness, invited me into the room where
+he had been sitting, and enquired what accident had brought me to that
+place.
+
+While he was speaking, I could not help recollecting the extraordinary
+manner in which we were thus once more brought together, and a train of
+ideas was by this means suggested to my mind. Some refreshment was, by
+Mr. Forester's order, prepared for me; I sat down, and partook of it.
+Still this thought dwelt upon my recollection:--"Mr. Falkland will never
+be made acquainted with our meeting; I have an opportunity thrown in my
+way, which if I do not improve, I shall deserve all the consequences
+that may result. I can now converse with a friend, and a powerful
+friend, without fear of being watched and overlooked." What wonder that
+I was tempted to disclose, not Mr. Falkland's secret, but my own
+situation, and receive the advice of a man of worth and experience,
+which might perhaps be adequately done without entering into any detail
+injurious to my patron?
+
+Mr. Forester, on his part, expressed a desire to learn why it was I
+thought myself unhappy, and why I had avoided him during the latter part
+of his residence under the same roof, as evidently as I had before taken
+pleasure in his communications. I replied, that I could give him but an
+imperfect satisfaction upon these points; but what I could, I would
+willingly explain. The fact, I proceeded, was, that there were reasons
+which rendered it impossible for me to have a tranquil moment under the
+roof of Mr. Falkland. I had revolved the matter again and again in my
+mind, and was finally convinced that I owed it to myself to withdraw
+from his service. I added, that I was sensible, by this half-confidence,
+I might rather seem to merit the disapprobation of Mr. Forester than his
+countenance; but I declared my persuasion that, if he could be
+acquainted with the whole affair, however strange my behaviour might at
+present appear, he would applaud my reserve.
+
+He appeared to muse for a moment upon what I had said, and then asked
+what reason I could have to complain of Mr. Falkland? I replied, that I
+entertained the deepest reverence for my patron; I admired his
+abilities, and considered him as formed for the benefit of his species.
+I should in my own opinion be the vilest of miscreants, if I uttered a
+whisper to his disadvantage. But this did not avail: I was not fit for
+him; perhaps I was not good enough for him; at all events, I must be
+perpetually miserable so long as I continued to live with him.
+
+I observed Mr. Forester gaze upon me eagerly with curiosity and
+surprise; but this circumstance I did not think proper to notice. Having
+recovered himself, he enquired, why then, that being the case, I did not
+quit his service? I answered, what he now touched upon was that which
+most of all contributed to my misfortune. Mr. Falkland was not ignorant
+of my dislike to my present situation; perhaps he thought it
+unreasonable, unjust; but I knew that he would never be brought to
+consent to my giving way to it.
+
+Here Mr. Forester interrupted me, and, smiling, said, I magnified
+obstacles, and over-rated my own importance; adding, that he would
+undertake to remove that difficulty, as well as to provide me with a
+more agreeable appointment. This suggestion produced in me a serious
+alarm. I replied, that I must entreat him upon no account to think of
+applying to Mr. Falkland upon the subject. I added, that perhaps I was
+only betraying my imbecility; but in reality, unacquainted as I was with
+experience and the world, I was afraid, though disgusted with my present
+residence, to expose myself upon a mere project of my own, to the
+resentment of so considerable a man as Mr. Falkland. If he would favour
+me with his advice upon the subject, or if he would only give me leave
+to hope for his protection in case of any unforeseen accident, this was
+all I presumed to request; and, thus encouraged. I would venture to obey
+the dictates of my inclination, and fly in pursuit of my lost
+tranquillity.
+
+Having thus opened myself to this generous friend, as far as I could do
+it with propriety and safety, he sat for some time silent, with an air
+of deep reflection. At length, with a countenance of unusual severity,
+and a characteristic fierceness of manner and voice, he thus addressed
+me: "Young man, perhaps you are ignorant of the nature of the conduct
+you at present hold. May be, you do not know that where there is
+mystery, there is always something at bottom that will not bear the
+telling. Is this the way to obtain the favour of a man of consequence
+and respectability? To pretend to make a confidence, and then tell him a
+disjointed story that has not common sense in it!"
+
+I answered, that, whatever were the amount of that prejudice, I must
+submit. I placed my hope of a candid construction, in the present
+instance, in the rectitude of his nature.
+
+He went on: "You do so; do you? I tell you, sir, the rectitude of my
+nature is an enemy to disguise. Come, boy, you must know that I
+understand these things better than you. Tell all, or expect nothing
+from me but censure and contempt."
+
+"Sir," replied I, "I have spoken from deliberation; I have told you my
+choice, and, whatever be the result, I must abide by it. If in this
+misfortune you refuse me your assistance, here I must end, having gained
+by the communication only your ill opinion and displeasure."
+
+He looked hard at me, as if he would see me through. At length he
+relaxed his features, and softened his manner. "You are a foolish,
+headstrong boy," said he, "and I shall have an eye upon you. I shall
+never place in you the confidence I have done. But--I will not desert
+you. At present, the balance between approbation and dislike is in your
+favour. How long it will last, I cannot tell; I engage for nothing. But
+it is my rule to act as I feel. I will for this time do as you
+require;--and, pray God, it may answer. I will receive you, either now
+or hereafter, under my roof, trusting that I shall have no reason to
+repent, and that appearances will terminate as favourably as I wish,
+though I scarcely know how to hope it."
+
+We were engaged in the earnest discussion of subjects thus interesting
+to my peace, when we were interrupted by an event the most earnestly to
+have been deprecated. Without the smallest notice, and as if he had
+dropped upon us from the clouds, Mr. Falkland burst into the room. I
+found afterwards that Mr. Forester had come thus far upon an
+appointment to meet Mr. Falkland, and that the place of their intended
+rendezvous was at the next stage. Mr. Forester was detained at the inn
+where we now were by our accidental rencounter, and in reality had for
+the moment forgotten his appointment; while Mr. Falkland, not finding
+him where he expected, proceeded thus far towards the house of his
+kinsman. To me the meeting was most unaccountable in the world.
+
+I instantly foresaw the dreadful complication of misfortune that was
+included in this event. To Mr. Falkland, the meeting between me and his
+relation must appear not accidental, but, on my part at least, the
+result of design. I was totally out of the road I had been travelling by
+his direction; I was in a road that led directly to the house of Mr.
+Forester. What must he think of this? How must he suppose I came to that
+place? The truth, if told, that I came there without design, and purely
+in consequence of having lost my way, must appear to be the most
+palpable lie that ever was devised.
+
+Here then I stood detected in the fact of that intercourse which had
+been so severely forbidden. But in this instance it was infinitely worse
+than in those which had already given so much disturbance to Mr.
+Falkland. It was then frank and unconcealed; and therefore the
+presumption was, that it was for purposes that required no concealment.
+But the present interview, if concerted, was in the most emphatical
+degree clandestine. Nor was it less perilous than it was clandestine: it
+had been forbidden with the most dreadful menaces; and Mr. Falkland was
+not ignorant how deep an impression those menaces had made upon my
+imagination. Such a meeting therefore could not have been concerted
+under such circumstances, for a trivial purpose, or for any purpose
+that his heart did not ache to think of. Such was the amount of my
+crime, such was the agony my appearance was calculated to inspire; and
+it was reasonable to suppose that the penalty I had to expect would be
+proportionable. The threats of Mr. Falkland still sounded in my ears,
+and I was in a transport of terror.
+
+The conduct of the same man in different circumstances, is often so
+various as to render it very difficult to be accounted for. Mr.
+Falkland, in this to him, terrible crisis, did not seem to be in any
+degree hurried away by passion. For a moment he was dumb; his eyes
+glared with astonishment; and the next moment, as it were, he had the
+most perfect calmness and self-command. Had it been otherwise, I have no
+doubt that I should instantly have entered into an explanation of the
+manner in which I came there, the ingenuousness and consistency of which
+could not but have been in some degree attended with a favourable event.
+But, as it was, I suffered myself to be overcome; I yielded, as in a
+former instance, to the discomfiting influence of surprise. I dared
+scarcely breathe; I observed the appearances with equal anxiety and
+surprise. Mr. Falkland quietly ordered me to return home, and take along
+with me the groom he had brought with him. I obeyed in silence.
+
+I afterwards understood, that he enquired minutely of Mr. Forester the
+circumstances of our meeting; and that that gentleman, perceiving that
+the meeting itself was discovered, and guided by habits of frankness,
+which, when once rooted in a character, it is difficult to counteract,
+told Mr. Falkland every thing that had passed, together with the remarks
+it had suggested to his own mind. Mr. Falkland received the
+communication with an ambiguous and studied silence, which by no means
+operated to my advantage in the already poisoned mind of Mr. Forester.
+His silence was partly the direct consequence of a mind watchful,
+inquisitive, and doubting; and partly perhaps was adopted for the sake
+of the effect it was calculated to produce, Mr. Falkland not being
+unwilling to encourage prejudices against a character which might one
+day come in competition with his own.
+
+As to me, I went home indeed, for this was not a moment to resist. Mr.
+Falkland, with a premeditation to which he had given the appearance of
+accident, had taken care to send with me a guard to attend upon his
+prisoner. I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in
+the history of despotism, from which the wretched victim is never known
+to come forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were
+entering a dungeon. I reflected that I was at the mercy of a man,
+exasperated at my disobedience, and who was already formed to cruelty by
+successive murders. My prospects were now closed; I was cut off for ever
+from pursuits that I had meditated with ineffable delight; my death
+might be the event of a few hours. I was a victim at the shrine of
+conscious guilt, that knew neither rest nor satiety; I should be blotted
+from the catalogue of the living, and my fate remain eternally a secret;
+the man who added my murder to his former crimes, would show himself the
+next morning, and be hailed with the admiration and applause of his
+species.
+
+In the midst of these terrible imaginations, one idea presented itself
+that alleviated my feelings. This was the recollection of the strange
+and unaccountable tranquillity which Mr. Falkland had manifested, when
+he discovered me in company with Mr. Forester. I was not deceived by
+this. I knew that the calm was temporary, and would be succeeded by a
+tumult and whirlwind of the most dreadful sort. But a man under the
+power of such terrors as now occupied me catches at every reed. I said
+to myself, "This tranquillity is a period it is incumbent upon me to
+improve; the shorter its duration may be found, the more speedy am I
+obliged to be in the use of it." In a word, I took the resolution,
+because I already stood in fear of the vengeance of Mr. Falkland, to
+risk the possibility of provoking it in a degree still more inexpiable,
+and terminate at once my present state of uncertainty. I had now opened
+my case to Mr. Forester, and he had given me positive assurances of his
+protection. I determined immediately to address the following letter to
+Mr. Falkland. The consideration that, if he meditated any thing
+tragical, such a letter would only tend to confirm him, did not enter
+into the present feelings of my mind.
+
+"Sir,
+
+"I have conceived the intention of quitting your service. This is a
+measure we ought both of us to desire. I shall then be, what it is my
+duty to be, master of my own actions. You will be delivered from the
+presence of a person, whom you cannot prevail upon yourself to behold
+without unpleasing emotions.
+
+"Why should you subject me to an eternal penance? Why should you consign
+my youthful hopes to suffering and despair? Consult the principles of
+humanity that have marked the general course of your proceedings, and do
+not let me, I entreat you, be made the subject of a useless severity. My
+heart is impressed with gratitude for your favours. I sincerely ask your
+forgiveness for the many errors of my conduct. I consider the treatment
+I have received under your roof, as one almost uninterrupted scene of
+kindness and generosity. I shall never forget my obligations to you,
+and will never betray them.
+
+"I remain, Sir,
+
+"Your most grateful, respectful,
+
+"and dutiful servant,
+
+"CALEB WILLIAMS."
+
+Such was my employment of the evening of a day which will be ever
+memorable in the history of my life. Mr. Falkland not being yet
+returned, though expected every hour, I was induced to make use of the
+pretence of fatigue to avoid an interview. I went to bed. It may be
+imagined that my slumbers were neither deep nor refreshing.
+
+The next morning I was informed that my patron did not come home till
+late; that he had enquired for me, and, being told that I was in bed,
+had said nothing further upon the subject. Satisfied in this respect, I
+went to the breakfasting parlour, and, though full of anxiety and
+trepidation, endeavoured to busy myself in arranging the books, and a
+few other little occupations, till Mr. Falkland should come down. After
+a short time I heard his step, which I perfectly well knew how to
+distinguish, in the passage. Presently he stopped, and, speaking to some
+one in a sort of deliberate, but smothered voice, I overheard him repeat
+my name as enquiring for me. In conformity to the plan I had persuaded
+myself to adopt, I now laid the letter I had written upon the table at
+which he usually sat, and made my exit at one door as Mr. Falkland
+entered at the other. This done, I withdrew, with flutterings and
+palpitation, to a private apartment, a sort of light closet at the end
+of the library, where I was accustomed not unfrequently to sit.
+
+I had not been here three minutes, when I heard the voice of Mr.
+Falkland calling me. I went to him in the library. His manner was that
+of a man labouring with some dreadful thought, and endeavouring to give
+an air of carelessness and insensibility to his behaviour. Perhaps no
+carriage of any other sort could have produced a sensation of such
+inexplicable horror, or have excited, in the person who was its object,
+such anxious uncertainty about the event.--"That is your letter," said
+he, throwing it.
+
+"My lad," continued he, "I believe now you have played all your tricks,
+and the farce is nearly at an end! With your apishness and absurdity
+however you have taught me one thing; and, whereas before I have winced
+at them with torture, I am now as tough as an elephant. I shall crush
+you in the end with the same indifference, that I would any other little
+insect that disturbed my serenity.
+
+"I am unable to tell what brought about your meeting with Mr. Forester
+yesterday. It might be design; it might be accident. But, I shall not
+forget it. You write me here, that you are desirous to quit my service.
+To that I have a short answer: You never shall quit it with life. If you
+attempt it, you shall never cease to rue your folly as long as you
+exist. That is my will; and I will not have it resisted. The very next
+time you disobey me in that or any other article, there is an end of
+your vagaries for ever. Perhaps your situation may be a pitiable one; it
+is for you to look to that. I only know that it is in your power to
+prevent its growing worse; no time nor chance shall ever make it better.
+
+"Do not imagine I am afraid of you! I wear an armour, against which all
+your weapons are impotent. I have dug a pit for you; and, whichever way
+you move, backward or forward, to the right or the left, it is ready to
+swallow you. Be still! If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no
+man on earth shall hear your cries; prepare a tale however plausible, or
+however true, the whole world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your
+innocence shall be of no service to you; I laugh at so feeble a defence.
+It is I that say it; you may believe what I tell you--Do you not know,
+miserable wretch!" added he, suddenly altering his tone, and stamping
+upon the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve my reputation,
+whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the whole world and
+its inhabitants taken together? And do you think that you shall wound
+it? Begone, miscreant! reptile! and cease to contend with insurmountable
+power!"
+
+The part of my history which I am now relating is that which I reflect
+upon with the least complacency. Why was it, that I was once more
+totally overcome by the imperious carriage of Mr. Falkland, and unable
+to utter a word? The reader will be presented with many occasions in the
+sequel, in which I wanted neither facility in the invention of
+expedients, nor fortitude in entering upon my justification. Persecution
+at length gave firmness to my character, and taught me the better part
+of manhood. But in the present instance I was irresolute, overawed, and
+abashed.
+
+The speech I had heard was the dictate of frenzy, and it created in me a
+similar frenzy. It determined me to do the very thing against which I
+was thus solemnly warned, and fly from my patron's house. I could not
+enter into parley with him; I could no longer endure the vile
+subjugation he imposed on me. It was in vain that my reason warned me of
+the rashness of a measure, to be taken without concert or preparation. I
+seemed to be in a state in which reason had no power. I felt as if I
+could coolly survey the several arguments of the case, perceive that
+they had prudence, truth, and common sense on their side; and then
+answer, I am under the guidance of a director more energetic than you.
+
+I was not long in executing what I had thus rapidly determined. I fixed
+on the evening of that very day as the period of my evasion. Even in
+this short interval I had perhaps sufficient time for deliberation. But
+all opportunity was useless to me; my mind was fixed, and each
+succeeding moment only increased the unspeakable eagerness with which I
+meditated my escape. The hours usually observed by our family in this
+country residence were regular; and one in the morning was the time I
+selected for my undertaking.
+
+In searching the apartment where I slept, I had formerly discovered a
+concealed door, which led to a small apartment of the most secret
+nature, not uncommon in houses so old as that of Mr. Falkland, and which
+had perhaps served as a refuge from persecution, or a security from the
+inveterate hostilities of a barbarous age. I believed no person was
+acquainted with this hiding-place but myself. I felt unaccountably
+impelled to remove into it the different articles of my personal
+property. I could not at present take them away with me. If I were never
+to recover them, I felt that it would be a gratification to my
+sentiment, that no trace of my existence should be found after my
+departure. Having completed their removal, and waited till the hour I
+had previously chosen, I stole down quietly from my chamber with a lamp
+in my hand. I went along a passage that led to a small door opening into
+the garden, and then crossed the garden, to a gate that intersected an
+elm-walk and a private horse-path on the outside.
+
+I could scarcely believe my good fortune in having thus far executed my
+design without interruption. The terrible images Mr. Falkland's menaces
+had suggested to my mind, made me expect impediment and detection at
+every step; though the impassioned state of my mind impelled me to
+advance with desperate resolution. He probably however counted too
+securely upon the ascendancy of his sentiments, when imperiously
+pronounced, to think it necessary to take precautions against a sinister
+event. For myself, I drew a favourable omen as to the final result of my
+project, from the smoothness of success that attended it in the outset.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The first plan that had suggested itself to me was, to go to the nearest
+public road, and take the earliest stage for London. There I believed I
+should be most safe from discovery, if the vengeance of Mr. Falkland
+should prompt him to pursue me; and I did not doubt, among the
+multiplied resources of the metropolis, to find something which should
+suggest to me an eligible mode of disposing of my person and industry. I
+reserved Mr. Forester in my arrangement, as a last resource, not to be
+called forth unless for immediate protection from the hand of
+persecution and power. I was destitute of that experience of the world,
+which can alone render us fertile in resources, or enable us to
+institute a just comparison between the resources that offer themselves.
+I was like the fascinated animal, that is seized with the most terrible
+apprehensions, at the same time that he is incapable of adequately
+considering for his own safety.
+
+The mode of my proceeding being digested, I traced, with a cheerful
+heart, the unfrequented path it was now necessary for me to pursue. The
+night was gloomy, and it drizzled with rain. But these were
+circumstances I had scarcely the power to perceive; all was sunshine and
+joy within me. I hardly felt the ground; I repeated to myself a thousand
+times, "I am free. What concern have I with danger and alarm? I feel
+that I am free; I feel that I will continue so. What power is able to
+hold in chains a mind ardent and determined? What power can cause that
+man to die, whose whole soul commands him to continue to live?" I looked
+back with abhorrence to the subjection in which I had been held. I did
+not hate the author of my misfortunes--truth and justice acquit me of
+that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But
+I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of
+which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I
+was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as
+one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so
+insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved--and this
+resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me--to hold myself
+disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the
+oppressor or the sufferer. My mind continued in this enthusiastical
+state, full of confidence, and accessible only to such a portion of fear
+as served rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion than to
+generate anguish and distress, during the whole of this nocturnal
+expedition. After a walk of three hours, I arrived, without accident, at
+the village from which I hoped to have taken my passage for the
+metropolis. At this early hour every thing was quiet; no sound of any
+thing human saluted my ear. It was with difficulty that I gained
+admittance into the yard of the inn, where I found a single ostler
+taking care of some horses. From him I received the unwelcome tidings,
+that the coach was not expected till six o'clock in the morning of the
+day after to-morrow, its route through that town recurring only three
+times a week.
+
+This intelligence gave the first check to the rapturous inebriation by
+which my mind had been possessed from the moment I quitted the
+habitation of Mr. Falkland. The whole of my fortune in ready cash
+consisted of about eleven guineas. I had about fifty more, that had
+fallen to me from the disposal of my property at the death of my father;
+but that was so vested as to preclude it from immediate use, and I even
+doubted whether it would not be found better ultimately to resign it,
+than, by claiming it, to risk the furnishing a clew to what I most of
+all dreaded, the persecution of Mr. Falkland. There was nothing I so
+ardently desired as the annihilation of all future intercourse between
+us, that he should not know there was such a person on the earth as
+myself, and that I should never more hear the repetition of a name which
+had been so fatal to my peace.
+
+Thus circumstanced, I conceived frugality to be an object by no means
+unworthy of my attention, unable as I was to prognosticate what
+discouragements and delays might present themselves to the
+accomplishment of my wishes, after my arrival in London. For this and
+other reasons, I determined to adhere to my design of travelling by the
+stage; it only remaining for me to consider in what manner I should
+prevent the eventful delay of twenty-four hours from becoming, by any
+untoward event, a source of new calamity. It was by no means advisable
+to remain in the village where I now was during this interval; nor did I
+even think proper to employ it, in proceeding on foot along the great
+road. I therefore decided upon making a circuit, the direction of which
+should seem at first extremely wide of my intended route, and then,
+suddenly taking a different inclination, should enable me to arrive by
+the close of day at a market-town twelve miles nearer to the metropolis.
+
+Having fixed the economy of the day, and persuaded myself that it was
+the best which, under the circumstances, could be adopted, I dismissed,
+for the most part, all further anxieties from my mind, and eagerly
+yielded myself up to the different amusements that arose. I rested and
+went forward at the impulse of the moment. At one time I reclined upon a
+bank immersed in contemplation, and at another exerted myself to analyse
+the prospects which succeeded each other. The haziness of the morning
+was followed by a spirit-stirring and beautiful day. With the ductility
+so characteristic of a youthful mind, I forgot the anguish which had
+lately been my continual guest, and occupied myself entirely in dreams
+of future novelty and felicity. I scarcely ever, in the whole course of
+my existence, spent a day of more various or exquisite gratification. It
+furnished a strong, and perhaps not an unsalutary contrast, to the
+terrors which had preceded, and the dreadful scenes that awaited me.
+
+In the evening I arrived at the place of my destination, and enquired
+for the inn at which the coach was accustomed to call. A circumstance
+however had previously excited my attention, and reproduced in me a
+state of alarm.
+
+Though it was already dark before I reached the town, my observation
+had been attracted by a man, who passed me on horseback in the opposite
+direction, about half a mile on the other side of the town. There was an
+inquisitiveness in his gesture that I did not like; and, as far as I
+could discern his figure, I pronounced him an ill-looking man. He had
+not passed me more than two minutes before I heard the sound of a horse
+advancing slowly behind me. These circumstances impressed some degree of
+uneasy sensation upon my mind. I first mended my pace; and, this not
+appearing to answer the purpose, I afterwards loitered, that the
+horseman might pass me. He did so; and, as I glanced at him, I thought I
+saw that it was the same man. He now put his horse into a trot, and
+entered the town. I followed; and it was not long before I perceived him
+at the door of an alehouse, drinking a mug of beer. This however the
+darkness prevented me from discovering, till I was in a manner upon him.
+I pushed forward, and saw him no more, till, as I entered the yard of
+the inn where I intended to sleep, the same man suddenly rode up to me,
+and asked if my name were Williams.
+
+This adventure, _while it had been passing_, expelled the gaiety of my
+mind, and filled me with anxiety. The apprehension however that I felt,
+appeared to me groundless: if I were pursued, I took it for granted it
+would be by some of Mr. Falkland's people, and not by a stranger. The
+darkness took from me some of the simplest expedients of precaution. I
+determined at least to proceed to the inn, and make the necessary
+enquiries.
+
+I no sooner heard the sound of the horse as I entered the yard, and the
+question proposed to me by the rider, than the dreadful certainty of
+what I feared instantly took possession of my mind. Every incident
+connected with my late abhorred situation was calculated to impress me
+with the deepest alarm. My first thought was, to betake myself to the
+fields, and trust to the swiftness of my flight for safety. But this was
+scarcely practicable: I remarked that my enemy was alone; and I believed
+that, man to man, I might reasonably hope to get the better of him,
+either by the firmness of my determination, or the subtlety of my
+invention.
+
+Thus resolved, I replied in an impetuous and peremptory tone, that I was
+the man he took me for; adding, "I guess your errand; but it is to no
+purpose. You come to conduct me back to Falkland House; but no force
+shall ever drag me to that place alive. I have not taken my resolution
+without strong reasons; and all the world shall not persuade me to alter
+it. I am an Englishman, and it is the privilege of an Englishman to be
+sole judge and master of his own actions."
+
+"You are in the devil of a hurry," replied the man, "to guess my
+intentions, and tell your own. But your guess is right; and mayhap you
+may have reason to be thankful that my errand is not something worse.
+Sure enough the squire expects you;--but I have a letter, and when you
+have read that, I suppose you will come off a little of your stoutness.
+If that does not answer, it will then be time to think what is to be
+done next."
+
+Thus saying, he gave me his letter, which was from Mr. Forester, whom,
+as he told me, he had left at Mr. Falkland's house. I went into a room
+of the inn for the purpose of reading it, and was followed by the
+bearer. The letter was as follows:--
+
+WILLIAMS,
+
+"My brother Falkland has sent the bearer in pursuit of you. He expects
+that, if found, you will return with him: I expect it too. It is of the
+utmost consequence to your future honour and character. After reading
+these lines, if you are a villain and a rascal, you will perhaps
+endeavour to fly; if your conscience tells you, you are innocent, you
+will, out of all doubt, come back. Show me then whether I have been your
+dupe: and, while I was won over by your seeming ingenuousness, have
+suffered myself to be made the tool of a designing knave. If you come, I
+pledge myself that, if you clear your reputation, you shall not only be
+free to go wherever you please, but shall receive every assistance in my
+power to give. Remember, I engage for nothing further than that.
+
+"VALENTINE FORESTER."
+
+What a letter was this! To a mind like mine, glowing with the love of
+virtue, such an address was strong enough to draw the person to whom it
+was addressed from one end of the earth to the other. My mind was full
+of confidence and energy. I felt my own innocence, and was determined to
+assert it. I was willing to be driven out a fugitive; I even rejoiced in
+my escape, and cheerfully went out into the world destitute of every
+provision, and depending for my future prospects upon my own ingenuity.
+
+Thus much, said I, Falkland! you may do. Dispose of me as you please
+with respect to the goods of fortune; but you shall neither make prize
+of my liberty, nor sully the whiteness of my name. I repassed in my
+thoughts every memorable incident that had happened to me under his
+roof. I could recollect nothing, except the affair of the mysterious
+trunk, out of which the shadow of a criminal accusation could be
+extorted. In that instance my conduct had been highly reprehensible, and
+I had never looked back upon it without remorse and self-condemnation.
+But I did not believe that it was of the nature of those actions which
+can be brought under legal censure. I could still less persuade myself
+that Mr. Falkland, who shuddered at the very possibility of detection,
+and who considered himself as completely in my power, would dare to
+bring forward a subject so closely connected with the internal agony of
+his soul. In a word, the more I reflected on the phrases of Mr.
+Forester's billet, the less could I imagine the nature of those scenes
+to which they were to serve as a prelude.
+
+The inscrutableness however of the mystery they contained, did not
+suffice to overwhelm my courage. My mind seemed to undergo an entire
+revolution. Timid and embarrassed as I had felt myself, when I regarded
+Mr. Falkland as my clandestine and domestic foe, I now conceived that
+the case was entirely altered. "Meet me," said I, "as an open accuser:
+if we must contend, let us contend in the face of day; and then,
+unparalleled as your resources may be, I will not fear you." Innocence
+and guilt were, in my apprehension, the things in the whole world the
+most opposite to each other. I would not suffer myself to believe, that
+the former could be confounded with the latter, unless the innocent man
+first allowed himself to be subdued in mind, before he was defrauded of
+the good opinion of mankind. Virtue rising superior to every calamity,
+defeating by a plain unvarnished tale all the stratagems of Vice, and
+throwing back upon her adversary the confusion with which he had hoped
+to overwhelm her, was one of the favourite subjects of my youthful
+reveries. I determined never to prove an instrument of destruction to
+Mr. Falkland; but I was not less resolute to obtain justice to myself.
+
+The issue of all these confident hopes I shall immediately have
+occasion to relate. It was thus, with the most generous and undoubting
+spirit, that I rushed upon irretrievable ruin.
+
+"Friend," said I to the bearer, after a considerable interval of
+silence, "you are right. This is, indeed, an extraordinary letter you
+have brought me; but it answers its purpose. I will certainly go with
+you now, whatever be the consequence. No person shall ever impute blame
+to me, so long as I have it in my power to clear myself."
+
+I felt, in the circumstances in which I was placed by Mr. Forester's
+letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to
+return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in
+silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr.
+Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr.
+Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I
+also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle was congenial to
+his character.
+
+When we arrived, midnight was already past, and we were obliged to waken
+one of the servants to give us admittance. I found that Mr. Forester had
+left a message for me, in consideration of the possibility of my arrival
+during the night, directing me immediately to go to bed, and to take
+care that I did not come weary and exhausted to the business of the
+following day. I endeavoured to take his advice; but my slumbers were
+unrefreshing and disturbed. I suffered however no reduction of courage:
+the singularity of my situation, my conjectures with respect to the
+present, my eagerness for the future, did not allow me to sink into a
+languid and inactive state.
+
+Next morning the first person I saw was Mr. Forester. He told me that
+he did not yet know what Mr. Falkland had to allege against me, for that
+he had refused to know. He had arrived at the house of his brother by
+appointment on the preceding day to settle some indispensable business,
+his intention having been to depart the moment the business was
+finished, as he knew that conduct on his part would be most agreeable to
+Mr. Falkland. But he was no sooner come, than he found the whole house
+in confusion, the alarm of my elopement having been given a few hours
+before. Mr. Falkland had despatched servants in all directions in
+pursuit of me; and the servant from the market-town arrived at the same
+moment with Mr. Forester, with intelligence that a person answering the
+description he gave, had been there very early in the morning enquiring
+respecting the stage to London.
+
+Mr. Falkland seemed extremely disturbed at this information, and
+exclaimed on me with acrimony, as an unthankful and unnatural villain.
+
+Mr. Forester replied, "Have more command of yourself, sir! Villain is a
+serious appellation, and must not be trifled with. Englishmen are free;
+and no man is to be charged with villainy, because he changes one source
+of subsistence for another."
+
+Mr. Falkland shook his head, and with a smile, expressive of acute
+sensibility, said, "Brother, brother, you are the dupe of his art. I
+always considered him with an eye of suspicion, and was aware of his
+depravity. But I have just discovered--"
+
+"Stop, sir!" interrupted Mr. Forester. "I own I thought that, in a
+moment of acrimony, you might be employing harsh epithets in a sort of
+random style. But if you have a serious accusation to state, we must not
+be told of that, till it is known whether the lad is within reach of a
+hearing. I am indifferent myself about the good opinion of others. It is
+what the world bestows and retracts with so little thought, that I can
+make no account of its decision. But that does not authorise me lightly
+to entertain an ill opinion of another. The slenderest allowance I think
+I can make to such as I consign to be the example and terror of their
+species, is that of being heard in their own defence. It is a wise
+principle that requires the judge to come into court uninformed of the
+merits of the cause he is to try; and to that principle I am determined
+to conform as an individual. I shall always think it right to be severe
+and inflexible in my treatment of offenders; but the severity I exercise
+in the sequel, must be accompanied with impartiality and caution in what
+is preliminary."
+
+While Mr. Forester related to me these particulars, he observed me ready
+to break out into some of the expressions which the narrative suggested;
+but he would not suffer me to speak. "No," said he; "I would not hear
+Mr. Falkland against you; and I cannot hear you in your defence. I come
+to you at present to speak, and not to hear. I thought it right to warn
+you of your danger, but I have nothing more to do now. Reserve what you
+have to say to the proper time. Make the best story you can for
+yourself--true, if truth, as I hope, will serve your purpose; but, if
+not, the most plausible and ingenious you can invent. That is what
+self-defence requires from every man, where, as it always happens to a
+man upon his trial, he has the whole world against him, and has his own
+battle to fight against the world. Farewell; and God send you a good
+deliverance! If Mr. Falkland's accusation, whatever it be, shall appear
+premature, depend upon having me more zealously your friend than ever.
+If not, this is the last act of friendship you will ever receive from
+me!"
+
+It may be believed that this address, so singular, so solemn, so big
+with conditional menace, did not greatly tend to encourage me. I was
+totally ignorant of the charge to be advanced against me; and not a
+little astonished, when it was in my power to be in the most formidable
+degree the accuser of Mr. Falkland, to find the principles of equity so
+completely reversed, as for the innocent but instructed individual to be
+the party accused and suffering, instead of having, as was natural, the
+real criminal at his mercy. I was still more astonished at the
+superhuman power Mr. Falkland seemed to possess, of bringing the object
+of his persecution within the sphere of his authority; a reflection
+attended with some check to that eagerness and boldness of spirit, which
+now constituted the ruling passion of my mind.
+
+But this was no time for meditation. To the sufferer the course of
+events is taken out of his direction, and he is hurried along with an
+irresistible force, without finding it within the compass of his efforts
+to check their rapidity. I was allowed only a short time to recollect
+myself, when my trial commenced. I was conducted to the library, where I
+had passed so many happy and so many contemplative hours, and found
+there Mr. Forester and three or four of the servants already assembled,
+in expectation of me and my accuser. Every thing was calculated to
+suggest to me that I must trust only in the justice of the parties
+concerned, and had nothing to hope from their indulgence. Mr. Falkland
+entered at one door, almost as soon as I entered at the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+He began: "It has been the principle of my life, never to inflict a
+wilful injury upon any thing that lives; I need not express my regret,
+when I find myself obliged to be the promulgator of a criminal charge.
+How gladly would I pass unnoticed the evil I have sustained; but I owe
+it to society to detect an offender, and prevent other men from being
+imposed upon, as I have been, by an appearance of integrity."
+
+"It would be better," interrupted Mr. Forester "to speak directly to the
+point. We ought not, though unwarily, by apologising for ourselves, to
+create at such a time a prejudice against an individual, against whom a
+criminal accusation will always be prejudice enough."
+
+"I strongly suspect," continued Mr. Falkland, "this young man, who has
+been peculiarly the object of my kindness, of having robbed me to a
+considerable amount."
+
+"What," replied Mr. Forester, "are the grounds of your suspicion?"
+
+"The first of them is the actual loss I have sustained, in notes,
+jewels, and plate. I have missed bank-notes to the amount of nine
+hundred pounds, three gold repeaters of considerable value, a complete
+set of diamonds, the property of my late mother, and several other
+articles."
+
+"And why," continued my arbitrator, astonishment grief, and a desire to
+retain his self-possession, strong contending in his countenance and
+voice, "do you fix on this young man as the instrument of the
+depredation?"
+
+"I found him, on my coming home, upon the day when every thing was in
+disorder from the alarm of fire, in the very act of quitting the private
+apartment where these articles were deposited. He was confounded at
+seeing me, and hastened to withdraw as soon as he possibly could."
+
+"Did you say nothing to him--take no notice of the confusion your sudden
+appearance produced?"
+
+"I asked what was his errand in that place. He was at first so terrified
+and overcome, that he could not answer me. Afterwards, with a good deal
+of faltering, he said that, when all the servants were engaged in
+endeavouring to save the most valuable part of my property, he had come
+hither with the same view; but that he had as yet removed nothing."
+
+"Did you immediately examine to see that every thing was safe?"
+
+"No. I was accustomed to confide in his honesty, and I was suddenly
+called away, in the present instance, to attend to the increasing
+progress of the flames. I therefore only took out the key from the door
+of the apartment, having first locked it, and, putting it in my pocket,
+hastened to go where my presence seemed indispensably necessary."
+
+"How long was it before you missed your property?"
+
+"The same evening. The hurry of the scene had driven the circumstance
+entirely out of my mind, till, going by accident near the apartment, the
+whole affair, together with the singular and equivocal behaviour of
+Williams, rushed at once upon my recollection. I immediately entered,
+examined the trunk in which these things were contained, and, to my
+astonishment, found the locks broken, and the property gone."
+
+"What steps did you take upon this discovery?"
+
+"I sent for Williams, and talked to him very seriously upon the
+subject. But he had now perfectly recovered his self-command, and calmly
+and stoutly denied all knowledge of the matter. I urged him with the
+enormousness of the offence, but I made no impression. He did not
+discover either the surprise and indignation one would have expected
+from a person entirely innocent, or the uneasiness that generally
+attends upon guilt. He was rather silent and reserved. I then informed
+him, that I should proceed in a manner different from what he might
+perhaps expect. I would not, as is too frequent in such cases, make a
+general search; for I had rather lose my property for ever without
+redress, than expose a multitude of innocent persons to anxiety and
+injustice. My suspicion, for the present, unavoidably fixed upon him.
+But, in a matter of so great consequence, I was determined not to act
+upon suspicion. I would neither incur the possibility of ruining him,
+being innocent, nor be the instrument of exposing others to his
+depredations, if guilty. I should therefore merely insist upon his
+continuing in my service. He might depend upon it he should be well
+watched, and I trusted the whole truth would eventually appear. Since he
+avoided confession now, I advised him to consider how far it was likely
+he would come off with impunity at last. This I determined on, that the
+moment he attempted an escape, I would consider that as an indication of
+guilt, and proceed accordingly."
+
+"What circumstances have occurred from that time to the present?"
+
+"None upon which I can infer a certainty of guilt; several that agree to
+favour a suspicion. From that time Williams was perpetually uneasy in
+his situation, always desirous, as it now appears, to escape, but
+afraid to adopt such a measure without certain precautions. It was not
+long after, that you, Mr. Forester, became my visitor. I observed, with
+dissatisfaction, the growing intercourse between you, reflecting on the
+equivocalness of his character, and the attempt he would probably make
+to render you the dupe of his hypocrisy. I accordingly threatened him
+severely; and I believe you observed the change that presently after
+occurred in his behaviour with relation to you."
+
+"I did, and it appeared at that time mysterious and extraordinary."
+
+"Some time after, as you well know, a rencounter took place between you,
+whether accidental or intentional on his part I am not able to say, when
+he confessed to you the uneasiness of his mind, without discovering the
+cause, and openly proposed to you to assist him in his flight, and
+stand, in case of necessity, between him and my resentment. You offered,
+it seems, to take him into your service; but nothing, as he
+acknowledged, would answer his purpose, that did not place his retreat
+wholly out of my power to discover."
+
+"Did it not appear extraordinary to you, that he should hope for any
+effectual protection from me, while it remained perpetually in your
+power to satisfy me of his unworthiness?"
+
+"Perhaps he had hopes that I should not proceed to that step, at least
+so long as the place of his retreat should be unknown to me, and of
+consequence the event of my proceeding dubious. Perhaps he confided in
+his own powers, which are far from contemptible, to construct a
+plausible tale, especially as he had taken care to have the first
+impression in his favour. After all, this protection, on your part, was
+merely reserved in case all other expedients failed. He does not appear
+to have had any other sentiment upon the subject, than that, if he were
+defeated in his projects for placing himself beyond the reach of
+justice, it was better to have bespoken a place in your patronage than
+to be destitute of every resource."
+
+Mr. Falkland having thus finished his evidence, called upon Robert, the
+valet, to confirm the part of it which related to the day of the fire.
+
+Robert stated, that he happened to be coming through the library that
+day, a few minutes after Mr. Falkland's being brought home by the sight
+of the fire; that he had found me standing there with every mark of
+perturbation and fright; that he could not help stopping to notice it;
+that he had spoken to me two or three times before he could obtain an
+answer; and that all he could get from me at last was, that I was the
+most miserable creature alive.
+
+He further said, that in the evening of the same day Mr. Falkland called
+him into the private apartment adjoining to the library, and bid him
+bring a hammer and some nails. He then showed him a trunk standing in
+the apartment with its locks and fastening broken, and ordered him to
+observe and remember what he saw, but not to mention it to any one.
+Robert did not at that time know what Mr. Falkland intended by these
+directions, which were given in a manner uncommonly solemn and
+significant; but he entertained no doubt, that the fastenings were
+broken and wrenched by the application of a chisel or such-like
+instrument, with the intention of forcibly opening the trunk.
+
+Mr. Forester observed upon this evidence, that as much of it as related
+to the day of the fire seemed indeed to afford powerful reasons for
+suspicion; and that the circumstances that had occurred since strangely
+concurred to fortify that suspicion. Meantime, that nothing proper to
+be done might be omitted, he asked whether in my flight I had removed my
+boxes, to see whether by that means any trace could be discovered to
+confirm the imputation. Mr. Falkland treated this suggestion slightly,
+saying, that if I were the thief, I had no doubt taken the precaution to
+obviate so palpable a means of detection. To this Mr. Forester only
+replied, that conjecture, however skilfully formed, was not always
+realised in the actions and behaviour of mankind; and ordered that my
+boxes and trunks, if found, should be brought into the library. I
+listened to this suggestion with pleasure; and, uneasy and confounded as
+I was at the appearances combined against me, I trusted in this appeal
+to give a new face to my cause. I was eager to declare the place where
+my property was deposited; and the servants, guided by my direction,
+presently produced what was enquired for.
+
+The two boxes that were first opened, contained nothing to confirm the
+accusation against me; in the third were found a watch and several
+jewels, that were immediately known to be the property of Mr. Falkland.
+The production of this seemingly decisive evidence excited emotions of
+astonishment and concern; but no person's astonishment appeared to be
+greater than that of Mr. Falkland. That I should have left the stolen
+goods behind me, would of itself have appeared incredible; but when it
+was considered what a secure place of concealment I had found for them,
+the wonder diminished; and Mr. Forester observed, that it was by no
+means impossible I might conceive it easier to obtain possession of them
+afterwards, than to remove them at the period of my precipitate flight.
+
+Here however I thought it necessary to interfere. I fervently urged my
+right to a fair and impartial construction. I asked Mr. Forester,
+whether it were probable, if I had stolen these things, that I should
+not have contrived, at least to remove them along with me? And again,
+whether, if I had been conscious they would he found among my property,
+I should myself have indicated the place where I had concealed it?
+
+The insinuation I conveyed against Mr. Forester's impartiality
+overspread his whole countenance, for an instant, with the flush of
+anger.
+
+"Impartiality, young man! Yes, be sure, from me you shall experience an
+impartial treatment! God send that may answer your purpose! Presently
+you shall be heard at full in your own defence.
+
+"You expect us to believe you innocent, because you did not remove these
+things along with you. The money is removed. Where, sir, is that? We
+cannot answer for the inconsistences and oversights of any human mind,
+and, least of all, if that mind should appear to be disturbed with the
+consciousness of guilt.
+
+"You observe that it was by your own direction these boxes and trunks
+have been found: that is indeed extraordinary. It appears little less
+than infatuation. But to what purpose appeal to probabilities and
+conjecture, in the face of incontestable facts? There, sir, are the
+boxes: you alone knew where they were to be found; you alone had the
+keys: tell us then how this watch and these jewels came to be contained
+in them?"
+
+I was silent.
+
+To the rest of the persons present I seemed to be merely the subject of
+detection; but in reality I was, of all the spectators, that individual
+who was most at a loss to conceive, through every stage of the scene,
+what, would come next, and who listened to every word that was uttered
+with the most uncontrollable amazement. Amazement however alternately
+yielded to indignation and horror. At first I could not refrain from
+repeatedly attempting to interrupt; but I was checked in these attempts
+by Mr. Forester; and I presently felt how necessary it was to my future
+peace, that I should collect the whole energy of my mind to repel the
+charge, and assert my innocence.
+
+Every thing being now produced that could be produced against me, Mr.
+Forester turned to me with a look of concern and pity, and told me that
+now was the time, if I chose to allege any thing in my defence. In reply
+to this invitation, I spoke nearly as follows:--
+
+"I am innocent. It is in vain that circumstances are accumulated against
+me; there is not a person upon earth less capable than I of the things
+of which I am accused. I appeal to my heart--I appeal to my looks--I
+appeal to every sentiment my tongue ever uttered."
+
+I could perceive that the fervour with which I spoke made some
+impression upon every one that heard me. But in a moment their eyes were
+turned upon the property that lay before them, and their countenances
+changed. I proceeded:--
+
+"One thing more I must aver;--Mr. Falkland is not deceived; he perfectly
+knows that I am innocent."
+
+I had no sooner uttered these words, than an involuntary cry of
+indignation burst from every person in the room. Mr. Forester turned to
+me with a look of extreme severity, and said--
+
+"Young man, consider well what you are doing! It is the privilege of the
+party accused to say whatever he thinks proper; and I will take care
+that you shall enjoy that privilege in its utmost extent. But do you
+think it will conduce in any respect to your benefit, to throw out such
+insolent and intolerable insinuations?"
+
+"I thank you most sincerely," replied I, "for your caution; but I well
+know what it is I am doing. I make this declaration, not merely because
+it is solemnly true, but because it is inseparably connected with my
+vindication. I am the party accused, and I shall be told that I am not
+to be believed in my own defence. I can produce no other witnesses of my
+innocence; I therefore call upon Mr. Falkland to be my evidence. I ask
+him--
+
+"Did you never boast to me in private of your power to ruin me? Did you
+never say that, if once I brought on myself the weight of your
+displeasure, my fall should be irreparable? Did you not tell me that,
+though I should prepare in that case a tale however plausible or however
+true, you would take care that the whole world should execrate me as an
+impostor? Were not those your very words? Did you not add, that my
+innocence should be of no service to me, and that you laughed at so
+feeble a defence? I ask you further,--Did you not receive a letter from
+me the morning of the day on which I departed, requesting your consent
+to my departure? Should I have done that if my flight had been that of a
+thief? I challenge any man to reconcile the expressions of that letter
+with this accusation. Should I have begun with stating that I had
+conceived a desire to quit your service, if my desire and the reasons
+for it, had been of the nature that is now alleged? Should I have dared
+to ask for what reason I was thus subjected to an eternal penance?"
+
+Saying this, I took out a copy of my letter, and laid it open upon the
+table.
+
+Mr. Falkland returned no immediate answer to my interrogations. Mr.
+Forester turned to him, and said.
+
+"Well, sir, what is your reply to this challenge of your servant?"
+
+Mr. Falkland answered, "Such a mode of defence scarcely calls for a
+reply. But I answer, I held no such conversation; I never used such
+words; I received no such letter. Surely it is no sufficient refutation
+of a criminal charge, that the criminal repels what is alleged against
+him with volubility of speech, and intrepidity of manner."
+
+Mr. Forester then turned to me: "If," said he, "you trust your
+vindication to the plausibility of your tale, you must take care to
+render it consistent and complete. You have not told us what was the
+cause of the confusion and anxiety in which Robert professes to have
+found you, why you were so impatient to quit the service of Mr.
+Falkland, or how you account for certain articles of his property being
+found in your possession."
+
+"All that, sir," answered I, "is true. There are certain parts of my
+story that I have not told. If they were told, they would not conduce to
+my disadvantage, and they would make the present accusation appear still
+more astonishing. But I cannot, as yet at least, prevail upon myself to
+tell them. Is it necessary to give any particular and precise reasons
+why I should wish to change the place of my residence? You all of you
+know the unfortunate state of Mr. Falkland's mind. You know the
+sternness, reservedness, and distance of his manners. If I had no other
+reasons, surely it would afford small presumption of criminality that I
+should wish to change his service for another.
+
+"The question of how these articles of Mr. Falkland's property came to
+be found in my possession, is more material. It is a question I am
+wholly unable to answer. Their being found there, was at least as
+unexpected to me as to any one of the persons now present. I only know
+that, as I have the most perfect assurance of Mr. Falkland's being
+conscious of my innocence--for, observe! I do not shrink from that
+assertion; I reiterate it with new confidence--I therefore firmly and
+from my soul believe, that their being there is of Mr. Falkland's
+contrivance."
+
+I no sooner said this, than I was again interrupted by an involuntary
+exclamation from every one present. They looked at me with furious
+glances, as if they could have torn me to pieces. I proceeded:--
+
+"I have now answered every thing that is alleged against me.
+
+"Mr. Forester, you are a lover of justice; I conjure you not to violate
+it in my person. You are a man of penetration; look at me! do you see
+any of the marks of guilt? Recollect all that has ever passed under your
+observation; is it compatible with a mind capable of what is now alleged
+against me? Could a real criminal have shown himself so unabashed,
+composed, and firm as I have now done?
+
+"Fellow-servants! Mr. Falkland is a man of rank and fortune; he is your
+master. I am a poor country lad, without a friend in the world. That is
+a ground of real difference to a certain extent; but it is not a
+sufficient ground for the subversion of justice. Remember, that I am in
+a situation that is not to be trifled with; that a decision given
+against me now, in a case in which I solemnly assure you I am innocent,
+will for ever deprive me of reputation and peace of mind, combine the
+whole world in a league against me, and determine perhaps upon my
+liberty and my life. If you believe--if you see--if you know, that I am
+innocent, speak for me. Do not suffer a pusillanimous timidity to
+prevent you from saving a fellow-creature from destruction, who does not
+deserve to have a human being for his enemy. Why have we the power of
+speech, but to communicate our thoughts? I will never believe that a
+man, conscious of innocence, cannot make other men perceive that he has
+that thought. Do not you feel that my whole heart tells me. I am not
+guilty of what is imputed to me?
+
+"To you, Mr. Falkland, I have nothing to say: I know you, and know that
+you are impenetrable. At the very moment that you are urging such odious
+charges against me, you admire my resolution and forbearance. But I have
+nothing to hope from you. You can look upon my ruin without pity or
+remorse. I am most unfortunate indeed in having to do with such an
+adversary. You oblige me to say ill things of you; but I appeal to your
+own heart, whether my language is that of exaggeration or revenge."
+
+Every thing that could be alleged on either side being now concluded,
+Mr. Forester undertook to make some remarks upon the whole.
+
+"Williams," said he, "the charge against you is heavy; the direct
+evidence strong; the corroborating circumstances numerous and striking.
+I grant that you have shown considerable dexterity in your answers; but
+you will learn, young man, to your cost, that dexterity, however
+powerful it may be in certain cases, will avail little against the
+stubbornness of truth. It is fortunate for mankind that the empire of
+talents has its limitations, and that it is not in the power of
+ingenuity to subvert the distinctions of right and wrong. Take my word
+for it, that the true merits of the case against you will be too strong
+for sophistry to overturn; that justice will prevail, and impotent
+malice be defeated.
+
+"To you, Mr. Falkland, society is obliged for having placed this black
+affair in its true light. Do not suffer the malignant aspersions of the
+criminal to give you uneasiness. Depend upon it that they will be found
+of no weight I have no doubt that your character, in the judgment of
+every person that has heard them, stands higher than ever. We feel for
+your misfortune, in being obliged to hear such calumnies from a person
+who has injured you so grossly. But you must be considered in that
+respect as a martyr in the public cause. The purity of your motives and
+dispositions is beyond the reach of malice; and truth and equity will
+not fail to award, to your calumniator infamy, and to you the love and
+approbation of mankind.
+
+"I have now told you, Williams, what I think of your case. But I have no
+right to assume to be your ultimate judge. Desperate as it appears to
+me, I will give you one piece of advice, as if I were retained as a
+counsel to assist you. Leave out of it whatever tends to the
+disadvantage of Mr. Falkland. Defend yourself as well as you can, but do
+not attack your master. It is your business to create in those who hear
+you a prepossession in your favour. But the recrimination you have been
+now practising, will always create indignation. Dishonesty will admit of
+some palliation. The deliberate malice you have now been showing is a
+thousand times more atrocious. It proves you to have the mind of a
+demon, rather than of a felon. Wherever you shall repeat it, those who
+hear you will pronounce you guilty upon that, even if the proper
+evidence against you were glaringly defective. If therefore you would
+consult your interest, which seems to be your only consideration, it is
+incumbent upon you by all means immediately to retract that. If you
+desire to be believed honest, you must in the first place show that you
+have a due sense of merit in others. You cannot better serve your cause
+than by begging pardon of your master, and doing homage to rectitude and
+worth, even when they are employed in vengeance against you."
+
+It is easy to conceive that my mind sustained an extreme shock from the
+decision of Mr. Forester; but his call upon me to retract and humble
+myself before my accuser penetrated my whole soul with indignation. I
+answered:--
+
+"I have already told you I am innocent. I believe that I could not
+endure the effort of inventing a plausible defence, if it were
+otherwise. You have just affirmed that it is not in the power of
+ingenuity to subvert the distinctions of right and wrong, and in that
+very instant I find them subverted. This is indeed to me a very awful
+moment. New to the world, I know nothing of its affairs but what has
+reached me by rumour, or is recorded in books. I have come into it with
+all the ardour and confidence inseparable from my years. In every
+fellow-being I expected to find a friend. I am unpractised in its wiles,
+and have even no acquaintance with its injustice. I have done nothing to
+deserve the animosity of mankind; but, if I may judge from the present
+scene, I am henceforth to be deprived of the benefits of integrity and
+honour. I am to forfeit the friendship of every one I have hitherto
+known, and to be precluded from the power of acquiring that of others. I
+must therefore be reduced to derive my satisfaction from myself. Depend
+upon it, I will not begin that career by dishonourable concessions. If I
+am to despair of the good-will of other men, I will at least maintain
+the independence of my own mind. Mr. Falkland is my implacable enemy.
+Whatever may be his merits in other respects, he is acting towards me
+without humanity, without remorse, and without principle. Do you think I
+will ever make submissions to a man by whom I am thus treated, that I
+will fall down at the feet of one who is to me a devil, or kiss the hand
+that is red with my blood?"
+
+"In that respect," answered Mr. Forester, "do as you shall think
+proper. I must confess that your firmness and consistency astonish me.
+They add something to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you
+have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your
+purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating.
+The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may
+have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail
+against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I
+see in you a new instance of that abuse which is so generally made of
+talents, the admiration of an undiscerning public. I regard you with
+horror. All that remains is, that I should discharge my duty, in
+consigning you, as a monster of depravity, to the justice of your
+country."
+
+"No," rejoined Mr. Falkland, "to that I can never consent. I have put a
+restraint upon myself thus far, because it was right that evidence and
+enquiry should take their course. I have suppressed all my habits and
+sentiments, because it seemed due to the public that hypocrisy should be
+unmasked. But I can suffer this violence no longer. I have through my
+whole life interfered to protect, not overbear, the sufferer; and I must
+do so now. I feel not the smallest resentment of his impotent attacks
+upon my character; I smile at their malice; and they make no diminution
+in my benevolence to their author. Let him say what he pleases; he
+cannot hurt me. It was proper that he should be brought to public shame,
+that other people might not be deceived by him as we have been. But
+there is no necessity for proceeding further; and I must insist upon it
+that he be permitted to depart wherever he pleases. I am sorry that
+public interest affords so gloomy a prospect for his future happiness."
+
+"Mr. Falkland," answered Mr. Forester, "these sentiments do honour to
+your humanity; but I must not give way to them. They only serve to set
+in a stronger light the venom of this serpent, this monster of
+ingratitude, who first robs his benefactor, and then reviles him. Wretch
+that you are, will nothing move you? Are you inaccessible to remorse?
+Are you not struck to the heart with the unmerited goodness of your
+master? Vile calumniator! you are the abhorrence of nature, the
+opprobrium of the human species, and the earth can only be freed from an
+insupportable burthen by your being exterminated! Recollect, sir, that
+this monster, at the very moment that you are exercising such unexampled
+forbearance in his behalf, has the presumption to charge you with
+prosecuting a crime of which you know him to be innocent, nay, with
+having conveyed the pretended stolen goods among his property, for the
+express purpose of ruining him. By this unexampled villainy, he makes it
+your duty to free the world from such a pest, and your interest to admit
+no relaxing in your pursuit of him, lest the world should be persuaded
+by your clemency to credit his vile insinuations."
+
+"I care not for the consequences," replied Mr. Falkland; "I will obey
+the dictates of my own mind. I will never lend my assistance to the
+reforming mankind by axes and gibbets. I am sure things will never be as
+they ought, till honour, and not law, be the dictator of mankind, till
+vice be taught to shrink before the resistless might of inborn dignity,
+and not before the cold formality of statutes. If my calumniator were
+worthy of my resentment, I would chastise him with my own sword, and not
+that of the magistrate; but in the present case I smile at his malice,
+and resolve to spare him, as the generous lord of the forest spares the
+insect that would disturb his repose."
+
+"The language you now hold," said Mr. Forester, "is that of romance, and
+not of reason. Yet I cannot but be struck with the contrast exhibited
+before me, of the magnanimity of virtue, and the obstinate impenetrable
+injustice of guilt. While your mind overflows with goodness, nothing can
+touch the heart of this thrice-refined villain. I shall never forgive
+myself for having once been entrapped by his detestable arts. This is no
+time for us to settle the question between chivalry and law. I shall
+therefore simply insist as a magistrate, having taken the evidence in
+this felony, upon my right and duty of following the course of justice,
+and committing the accused to the county jail."
+
+After some further contest Mr. Falkland, finding Mr. Forester obstinate
+and impracticable, withdrew his opposition. Accordingly a proper officer
+was summoned from the neighbouring village, a mittimus made out, and one
+of Mr. Falkland's carriages prepared to conduct me to the place of
+custody. It will easily be imagined that this sudden reverse was very
+painfully felt by me. I looked round on the servants who had been the
+spectators of my examination, but not one of them, either by word or
+gesture, expressed compassion for my calamity. The robbery of which I
+was accused appeared to them atrocious from its magnitude; and whatever
+sparks of compassion might otherwise have sprung up in their ingenuous
+and undisciplined minds, were totally obliterated by indignation at my
+supposed profligacy in recriminating upon their worthy and excellent
+master. My fate being already determined, and one of the servants
+despatched for the officer, Mr. Forester and Mr. Falkland withdrew, and
+left me in the custody of two others.
+
+One of these was the son of a farmer at no great distance, who had been
+in habits of long-established intimacy with my late father. I was
+willing accurately to discover the state of mind of those who had been
+witnesses of this scene, and who had had some previous opportunity of
+observing my character and manners. I, therefore, endeavoured to open a
+conversation with him. "Well, my good Thomas," said I, in a querulous
+tone, and with a hesitating manner, "am I not a most miserable
+creature?"
+
+"Do not speak to me, Master Williams! You have given me a shock that I
+shall not get the better of for one while. You were hatched by a hen, as
+the saying is, but you came of the spawn of a cockatrice. I am glad to
+my heart that honest farmer Williams is dead; your villainy would else
+have made him curse the day that ever he was born."
+
+"Thomas, I am innocent! I swear by the great God that shall judge me
+another day, I am innocent!"
+
+"Pray, do not swear! for goodness' sake, do not swear! your poor soul is
+damned enough without that. For your sake, lad, I will never take any
+body's word, nor trust to appearances, tho' it should be an angel. Lord
+bless us! how smoothly you palavered it over, for all the world, as if
+you had been as fair as a new-born babe! But it will not do; you will
+never be able to persuade people that black is white. For my own part, I
+have done with you. I loved you yesterday, all one as if you had been my
+own brother. To-day I love you so well, that I would go ten miles with
+all the pleasure in life to see you hanged."
+
+"Good God, Thomas! have you the heart? What a change! I call God to
+witness, I have done nothing to deserve it! What a world do we live in!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, boy! It makes my very heart sick to hear you! I
+would not lie a night under the same roof with you for all the world! I
+should expect the house to fall and crush such wickedness! I admire that
+the earth does not open and swallow you alive! It is poison so much as
+to look at you! If you go on at this hardened rate, I believe from my
+soul that the people you talk to will tear you to pieces, and you will
+never live to come to the gallows. Oh, yes, you do well to pity
+yourself; poor tender thing! that spit venom all round you like a toad,
+and leave the very ground upon which you crawl infected with your
+slime."
+
+Finding the person with whom I talked thus impenetrable to all I could
+say, and considering that the advantage to be gained was small, even if
+I could overcome his prepossession, I took his advice, and was silent.
+It was not much longer before every thing was prepared for my departure,
+and I was conducted to the same prison which had so lately enclosed the
+wretched and innocent Hawkinses. They too had been the victims of Mr.
+Falkland. He exhibited, upon a contracted scale indeed, but in which the
+truth of delineation was faithfully sustained, a copy of what monarchs
+are, who reckon among the instruments of their power prisons of state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+For my own part, I had never seen a prison, and, like the majority of my
+brethren, had given myself little concern to enquire what was the
+condition of those who committed offence against, or became obnoxious to
+suspicion from, the community. Oh, how enviable is the most tottering
+shed under which the labourer retires to rest, compared with the
+residence of these walls!
+
+To me every thing was new,--the massy doors, the resounding locks, the
+gloomy passages, the grated windows, and the characteristic looks of the
+keepers, accustomed to reject every petition, and to steel their hearts
+against feeling and pity. Curiosity, and a sense of my situation,
+induced me to fix my eyes on the faces of these men; but in a few
+minutes I drew them away with unconquerable loathing. It is impossible
+to describe the sort of squalidness and filth with which these mansions
+are distinguished. I have seen dirty faces in dirty apartments, which
+have nevertheless borne the impression of health, and spoke carelessness
+and levity rather than distress. But the dirt of a prison speaks sadness
+to the heart, and appears to be already in a state of putridity and
+infection.
+
+I was detained for more than an hour in the apartment of the keeper, one
+turnkey after another coming in, that they might make themselves
+familiar with my person. As I was already considered as guilty of felony
+to a considerable amount, I underwent a rigorous search, and they took
+from me a penknife, a pair of scissars, and that part of my money which
+was in gold. It was debated whether or not these should be sealed up, to
+be returned to me, as they said, as soon as I should be acquitted; and
+had I not displayed an unexpected firmness of manner and vigour of
+expostulation, such was probably the conduct that would have been
+pursued. Having undergone these ceremonies, I was thrust into a
+day-room, in which all the persons then under confinement for felony
+were assembled, to the number of eleven. Each of them was too much
+engaged in his own reflections, to take notice of me. Of these, two were
+imprisoned for horse-stealing, and three for having stolen a sheep, one
+for shop-lifting, one for coining, two for highway-robbery, and two for
+burglary.
+
+The horse-stealers were engaged in a game at cards, which was presently
+interrupted by a difference of opinion, attended with great
+vociferation,--they calling upon one and another to decide it, to no
+purpose; one paying no attention to their summons, and another leaving
+them in the midst of their story, being no longer able to endure his own
+internal anguish, in the midst of their mummery.
+
+It is a custom among thieves to constitute a sort of mock tribunal of
+their own body, from whose decision every one is informed whether he
+shall be acquitted, respited, or pardoned, as well as respecting the
+supposed most skilful way of conducting his defence. One of the
+housebreakers, who had already passed this ordeal, and was stalking up
+and down the room with a forced bravery, exclaimed to his companion,
+that he was as rich as the Duke of Bedford himself. He had five guineas
+and a half, which was as much as he could possibly spend in the course
+of the ensuing month; and what happened after that, it was Jack Ketch's
+business to see to, not his. As he uttered these words, he threw himself
+abruptly upon a bench that was near him, and seemed to be asleep in a
+moment. But his sleep was uneasy and disturbed, his breathing was hard,
+and, at intervals, had rather the nature of a groan. A young fellow from
+the other side of the room came softly to the place where he lay, with a
+large knife in his hand: and pressed the back of it with such violence
+upon his neck, the head hanging over the side of the bench, that it was
+not till after several efforts that he was able to rise. "Oh, Jack!"
+cried this manual jester, "I had almost done your business for you!" The
+other expressed no marks of resentment, but sullenly answered, "Damn
+you, why did not you take the edge? It would have been the best thing
+you have done this many a day!"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: An incident exactly similar to this was witnessed by a
+friend of the author, a few years since, in a visit to the prison of
+Newgate.]
+
+The case of one of the persons committed for highway-robbery was not a
+little extraordinary. He was a common soldier of a most engaging
+physiognomy, and two-and-twenty years of age. The prosecutor, who had
+been robbed one evening, as he returned late from the alehouse, of the
+sum of three shillings, swore positively to his person. The character of
+the prisoner was such as has seldom been equalled. He had been ardent in
+the pursuit of intellectual cultivation, and was accustomed to draw his
+favourite amusement from the works of Virgil and Horace. The humbleness
+of his situation, combined with his ardour for literature, only served
+to give an inexpressible heightening to the interestingness of his
+character. He was plain and unaffected; he assumed nothing; he was
+capable, when occasion demanded, of firmness, but, in his ordinary
+deportment, he seemed unarmed and unresisting, unsuspicious of guile in
+others, as he was totally free from guile in himself. His integrity was
+proverbially great. In one instance he had been intrusted by a lady to
+convey a sum of a thousand pounds to a person at some miles distance: in
+another, he was employed by a gentleman, during his absence, in the care
+of his house and furniture, to the value of at least five times that
+sum. His habits of thinking were strictly his own, full of justice,
+simplicity, and wisdom. He from time to time earned money of his
+officers, by his peculiar excellence in furbishing arms; but he declined
+offers that had been made him to become a Serjeant or a corporal,
+saying that he did not want money, and that in a new situation he should
+have less leisure for study. He was equally constant in refusing
+presents that were offered him by persons who had been struck with his
+merit; not that he was under the influence of false delicacy and pride,
+but that he had no inclination to accept that, the want of which he did
+not feel to be an evil. This man died while I was in prison. I received
+his last breath.[C]
+
+[Footnote C: A story extremely similar to this is to be found in the
+Newgate Calendar, vol. i. p. 382.]
+
+The whole day I was obliged to spend in the company of these men, some
+of them having really committed the actions laid to their charge, others
+whom their ill fortune had rendered the victims of suspicion. The whole
+was a scene of misery, such as nothing short of actual observation can
+suggest to the mind. Some were noisy and obstreperous, endeavouring by a
+false bravery to keep at bay the remembrance of their condition; while
+others, incapable even of this effort, had the torment of their thoughts
+aggravated by the perpetual noise and confusion that prevailed around
+them. In the faces of those who assumed the most courage, you might
+trace the furrows of anxious care and in the midst of their laboured
+hilarity dreadful ideas would ever and anon intrude, convulsing their
+features, and working every line into an expression of the keenest
+agony. To these men the sun brought no return of joy. Day after day
+rolled on, but their state was immutable. Existence was to them a scene
+of invariable melancholy; every moment was a moment of anguish; yet did
+they wish to prolong that moment, fearful that the coming period would
+bring a severer fate. They thought of the past with insupportable
+repentance, each man contented to give his right hand to have again the
+choice of that peace and liberty, which he had unthinkingly bartered
+away. We talk of instruments of torture; Englishmen take credit to
+themselves for having banished the use of them from their happy shore!
+Alas! he that has observed the secrets of a prison, well knows that
+there is more torture in the lingering existence of a criminal, in the
+silent intolerable minutes that he spends, than in the tangible misery
+of whips and racks!
+
+Such were our days. At sunset our jailors appeared, and ordered each man
+to come away, and be locked into his dungeon. It was a bitter
+aggravation of our fate, to be under the arbitrary control of these
+fellows. They felt no man's sorrow; they were of all men least capable
+of any sort of feeling. They had a barbarous and sullen pleasure in
+issuing their detested mandates, and observing the mournful reluctance
+with which they were obeyed. Whatever they directed, it was in vain to
+expostulate; fetters, and bread and water, were the sure consequences of
+resistance. Their tyranny had no other limit than their own caprice. To
+whom shall the unfortunate felon appeal? To what purpose complain, when
+his complaints are sure to be received with incredulity? A tale of
+mutiny and necessary precaution is the unfailing refuge of the keeper,
+and this tale is an everlasting bar against redress.
+
+Our dungeons were cells, 7-1/2 feet by 6-1/2, below the surface of the
+ground, damp, without window, light, or air, except from a few holes
+worked for that purpose in the door. In some of these miserable
+receptacles three persons were put to sleep together.[D] I was fortunate
+enough to have one to myself. It was now the approach of winter. We
+were not allowed to have candles, and, as I have already said, were
+thrust in here at sunset, and not liberated till the returning day. This
+was our situation for fourteen or fifteen hours out of the
+four-and-twenty. I had never been accustomed to sleep more than six or
+seven hours, and my inclination to sleep was now less than ever. Thus
+was I reduced to spend half my day in this dreary abode, and in complete
+darkness. This was no trifling aggravation of my lot.
+
+[Footnote D: See Howard on Prisons.]
+
+Among my melancholy reflections I tasked my memory, and counted over the
+doors, the locks, the bolts, the chains, the massy walls, and grated
+windows, that were between me and liberty. "These," said I, "are the
+engines that tyranny sits down in cold and serious meditation to invent.
+This is the empire that man exercises over man. Thus is a being, formed
+to expatiate, to act, to smile, and enjoy, restricted and benumbed. How
+great must be his depravity or heedlessness, who vindicates this scheme
+for changing health and gaiety and serenity, into the wanness of a
+dungeon, and the deep furrows of agony and despair!"
+
+"Thank God," exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God,
+with us no man can be punished without a crime!" Unthinking wretch! Is
+that a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and
+fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons!
+witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their
+governors, the misery of their inmates! After that, show me the man
+shameless enough to triumph, and say, England has no Bastile! Is there
+any charge so frivolous, upon which men are not consigned to those
+detested abodes? Is there any villainy that is not practised by justices
+and prosecutors? But against all this perhaps you have been told there
+is redress. Yes; a redress, that it is the consummation of insult so
+much as to name! Where shall the poor wretch reduced to the last
+despair, to whom acquittal perhaps comes just time enough to save him
+from perishing,--where shall this man find leisure, and much less money,
+to fee counsel and officers, and purchase the tedious dear-bought remedy
+of the law? No; he is too happy to leave his dungeon, and the memory of
+his dungeon, behind him; and the same tyranny and wanton oppression
+become the inheritance of his successor.
+
+For myself, I looked round upon my walls, and forward upon the premature
+death I had too much reason to expect: I consulted my own heart, that
+whispered nothing but innocence; and I said, "This is society. This is
+the object, the distribution of justice, which is the end of human
+reason. For this sages have toiled, and midnight oil has been wasted.
+This!"
+
+The reader will forgive this digression from the immediate subject of my
+story. If it should be said these are general remarks, let it be
+remembered that they are the dear-bought, result of experience. It is
+from the fulness of a bursting heart that reproach thus flows to my pen.
+These are not the declamations of a man desirous to be eloquent. I have
+felt the iron of slavery grating upon my soul.
+
+I believed that misery, more pure than that which I now endured, had
+never fallen to the lot of a human being. I recollected with
+astonishment my puerile eagerness to be brought to the test, and have my
+innocence examined. I execrated it, as the vilest and most insufferable
+pedantry. I exclaimed, in the bitterness of my heart, "Of what value is
+a fair fame? It is the jewel of men formed to be amused with baubles.
+Without it, I might have had serenity of heart and cheerfulness of
+occupation, peace, and liberty; why should I consign my happiness to
+other men's arbitration? But, if a fair fame were of the most
+inexpressible value, is this the method which common sense would
+prescribe to retrieve it? The language which these institutions hold out
+to the unfortunate is, 'Come, and be shut out from the light of day; be
+the associate of those whom society has marked out for her abhorrence,
+be the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you be
+cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and
+honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or
+folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the
+smallest foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own
+innocence; and I soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those
+who are regularly subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom,
+even with all the superciliousness and precipitation of our courts of
+justice, no evidence can be found sufficient to convict. How slender
+then must be that man's portion of information and discernment, who is
+willing to commit his character and welfare to such guardianship!
+
+But my case was even worse than this. I intimately felt that a trial,
+such as our institutions have hitherto been able to make it, is only the
+worthy sequel of such a beginning. What chance was there after the
+purgation I was now suffering, that I should come out acquitted at last?
+What probability was there that the trial I had endured in the house of
+Mr. Falkland was not just as fair as any that might be expected to
+follow? No; I anticipated my own condemnation.
+
+Thus was I cut off, for ever, from all that existence has to
+bestow--from all the high hopes I had so often conceived--from all the
+future excellence my soul so much delighted to imagine,--to spend a few
+weeks in a miserable prison, and then to perish by the hand of the
+public executioner. No language can do justice to the indignant and
+soul-sickening loathing that these ideas excited. My resentment was not
+restricted to my prosecutor, but extended itself to the whole machine of
+society. I could never believe that all this was the fair result of
+institutions inseparable from the general good. I regarded the whole
+human species as so many hangmen and torturers; I considered them as
+confederated to tear me to pieces; and this wide scene of inexorable
+persecution inflicted upon me inexpressible agony. I looked on this side
+and on that: I was innocent; I had a right to expect assistance; but
+every heart was steeled against me; every hand was ready to lend its
+force to make my ruin secure. No man that has not felt, in his own most
+momentous concerns, justice, eternal truth, unalterable equity engaged
+in his behalf, and on the other side brute force, impenetrable
+obstinacy, and unfeeling insolence, can imagine the sensations that then
+passed through my mind. I saw treachery triumphant and enthroned; I saw
+the sinews of innocence crumbled into dust by the gripe of almighty
+guilt.
+
+What relief had I from these sensations? Was it relief, that I spent the
+day in the midst of profligacy and execrations--that I saw reflected
+from every countenance agonies only inferior to my own? He that would
+form a lively idea of the regions of the damned, need only to witness,
+for six hours, a scene to which I was confined for many months. Not for
+one hour could I withdraw myself from this complexity of horrors, or
+take refuge in the calmness of meditation. Air, exercise, series,
+contrast, those grand enliveners of the human frame, I was for ever
+debarred from, by the inexorable tyranny under which I was fallen. Nor
+did I find the solitude of my nightly dungeon less insupportable. Its
+only furniture was the straw that served me for my repose. It was
+narrow, damp, and unwholesome. The slumbers of a mind, wearied, like
+mine, with the most detestable uniformity, to whom neither amusement nor
+occupation ever offered themselves to beguile the painful hours, were
+short, disturbed, and unrefreshing. My sleeping, still more than my
+waking thoughts, were full of perplexity, deformity, and disorder. To
+these slumbers succeeded the hours which, by the regulations of our
+prison, I was obliged, though awake, to spend in solitary and cheerless
+darkness. Here I had neither books nor pens, nor any thing upon which to
+engage my attention; all was a sightless blank. How was a mind, active
+and indefatigable like mine, to endure this misery? I could not sink it
+in lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with
+unintermitted and demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human
+affairs, that condemns a man to torture like this; that sanctions it,
+and knows not what is done under its sanction; that is too supine and
+unfeeling to enquire into these petty details; that calls this the
+ordeal of innocence, and the protector of freedom! A thousand times I
+could have dashed my brains against the walls of my dungeon; a thousand
+times I longed for death, and wished, with inexpressible ardour, for an
+end to what I suffered; a thousand times I meditated suicide, and
+ruminated, in the bitterness of my soul, upon the different means of
+escaping from the load of existence. What had I to do with life? I had
+seen enough to make me regard it with detestation. Why should I wait the
+lingering process of legal despotism, and not dare so much as to die,
+but when and how its instruments decreed? Still some inexplicable
+suggestion withheld my hand. I clung with desperate fondness to this
+shadow of existence, its mysterious attractions, and its hopeless
+prospects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Such were the reflections that haunted the first days of my
+imprisonment, in consequence of which they were spent in perpetual
+anguish. But, after a time, nature, wearied with distress, would no
+longer stoop to the burthen; thought, which is incessantly varying,
+introduced a series of reflections totally different.
+
+My fortitude revived. I had always been accustomed to cheerfulness, good
+humour, and serenity; and this habit now returned to visit me at the
+bottom of my dungeon. No sooner did my contemplations take this turn,
+than I saw the reasonableness and possibility of tranquillity and peace;
+and my mind whispered to me the propriety of showing, in this forlorn
+condition, that I was superior to all my persecutors. Blessed state of
+innocence and self-approbation! The sunshine of conscious integrity
+pierced through all the barriers of my cell, and spoke ten thousand
+times more joy to my heart, than the accumulated splendours of nature
+and art can communicate to the slaves of vice.
+
+I found out the secret of employing my mind. I said, "I am shut up for
+half the day in total darkness, without any external source of
+amusement; the other half I spend in the midst of noise, turbulence,
+and, confusion. What then? Can I not draw amusement from the stores of
+my own mind? Is it not freighted with various knowledge? Have I not been
+employed from my infancy in gratifying an insatiable curiosity? When
+should I derive benefit from these superior advantages, if not at
+present?" Accordingly I tasked the stores of my memory, and my powers of
+invention. I amused myself with recollecting the history of my life. By
+degrees I called to mind a number of minute circumstances, which, but
+for this exercise, would have been for ever forgotten. I repassed in my
+thoughts whole conversations, I recollected their subjects, their
+arrangement, their incidents, frequently their very words. I mused upon
+these ideas, till I was totally absorbed in thought. I repeated them,
+till my mind glowed with enthusiasm. I had my different employments,
+fitted for the solitude of the night, in which I could give full scope
+to the impulses of my mind; and for the uproar of the day, in which my
+chief object was, to be insensible to the disorder with which I was
+surrounded.
+
+By degrees I quitted my own story, and employed myself in imaginary
+adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be
+placed, and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of
+insult and danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me.
+In fancy I often passed the awful hour of dissolving nature. In some of
+my reveries I boiled with impetuous indignation, and in others patiently
+collected the whole force of my mind for some fearful encounter. I
+cultivated the powers of oratory suited to these different states, and
+improved more in eloquence in the solitude of my dungeon, than perhaps I
+should have done in the busiest and most crowded scenes.
+
+At length I proceeded to as regular a disposition of my time, as the man
+in his study, who passes from mathematics to poetry, and from poetry to
+the law of nations, in the different parts of each single day; and I as
+seldom infringed upon my plan. Nor were my subjects of disquisition less
+numerous than his. I went over, by the assistance of memory only, a
+considerable part of Euclid during my confinement, and revived, day
+after day, the series of facts and incidents in some of the most
+celebrated historians. I became myself a poet; and, while I described
+the sentiments cherished by the view of natural objects, recorded the
+characters and passions of men, and partook with a burning zeal in the
+generosity of their determinations, I eluded the squalid solitude of my
+dungeon, and wandered in idea through all the varieties of human
+society. I easily found expedients, such as the mind seems always to
+require, and which books and pens supply to the man at large, to record
+from time to time the progress that had been made.
+
+While I was thus employed, I reflected with exultation upon the degree
+in which man is independent of the smiles and frowns of fortune. I was
+beyond her reach, for I could fall no lower. To an ordinary eye I might
+seem destitute and miserable, but in reality I wanted for nothing. My
+fare was coarse; but I was in health. My dungeon was noisome; but I felt
+no inconvenience. I was shut up from the usual means of exercise and
+air; but I found the method of exercising myself even to perspiration in
+my dungeon. I had no power of withdrawing my person from a disgustful
+society, in the most cheerful and valuable part of the day; but I soon
+brought to perfection the art of withdrawing my thoughts, and saw and
+heard the people about me, for just as short a time, and as seldom, as I
+pleased.
+
+Such is man in himself considered; so simple his nature; so few his
+wants. How different from the man of artificial society! Palaces are
+built for his reception, a thousand vehicles provided for his exercise,
+provinces are ransacked for the gratification of his appetite, and the
+whole world traversed to supply him with apparel and furniture. Thus
+vast is his expenditure, and the purchase slavery. He is dependent on a
+thousand accidents for tranquillity and health, and his body and soul
+are at the devotion of whoever will satisfy his imperious cravings.
+
+In addition to the disadvantages of my present situation, I was reserved
+for an ignominious death. What then? Every man must die. No man knows
+how soon. It surely is not worse to encounter the king of terrors, in
+health, and with every advantage for the collection of fortitude, than
+to encounter him, already half subdued by sickness and suffering. I was
+resolved at least fully to possess the days I had to live; and this is
+peculiarly in the power of the man who preserves his health to the last
+moment of his existence. Why should I suffer my mind to be invaded by
+unavailing regrets? Every sentiment of vanity, or rather of independence
+and justice within me, instigated me to say to my persecutor, "You may
+cut off my existence, but you cannot disturb my serenity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the midst of these reflections, another thought, which had not before
+struck me, occurred to my mind. "I exult," said I, "and reasonably, over
+the impotence of my persecutor. Is not that impotence greater than I
+have yet imagined? I say, he may cut off my existence, but cannot
+disturb my serenity. It is true: my mind, the clearness of my spirit,
+the firmness of my temper, are beyond his reach; is not my life equally
+so, if I please? What are the material obstacles, that man never
+subdued? What is the undertaking so arduous, that by some has not been
+accomplished? And if by others, why not by me? Had they stronger motives
+than I? Was existence more variously endeared to them? or had they more
+numerous methods by which to animate and adorn it? Many of those who
+have exerted most perseverance and intrepidity, were obviously my
+inferiors in that respect. Why should not I be as daring as they?
+Adamant and steel have a ductility like water, to a mind sufficiently
+bold and contemplative. The mind is master of itself; and is endowed
+with powers that might enable it to laugh at the tyrant's vigilance." I
+passed and repassed these ideas in my mind; and, heated with the
+contemplation, I said, "No, I will not die!"
+
+My reading, in early youth, had been extremely miscellaneous. I had read
+of housebreakers, to whom locks and bolts were a jest, and who, vain of
+their art, exhibited the experiment of entering a house the most
+strongly barricaded, with as little noise, and almost as little trouble,
+as other men would lift up a latch. There is nothing so interesting to
+the juvenile mind, as the wonderful; there is no power that it so
+eagerly covets, as that of astonishing spectators by its miraculous
+exertions. Mind appeared, to my untutored reflections, vague, airy, and
+unfettered, the susceptible perceiver of reasons, but never intended by
+nature to be the slave of force. Why should it be in the power of man to
+overtake and hold me by violence? Why, when I choose to withdraw myself,
+should I not be capable of eluding the most vigilant search? These
+limbs, and this trunk, are a cumbrous and unfortunate load for the power
+of thinking to drag along with it; but why should not the power of
+thinking be able to lighten the load, till it shall be no longer
+felt?--These early modes of reflection were by no means indifferent to
+my present enquiries.
+
+Our next-door neighbour at my father's house had been a carpenter. Fresh
+from the sort of reading I have mentioned, I was eager to examine his
+tools, their powers and their uses. This carpenter was a man of strong
+and vigorous mind; and, his faculties having been chiefly confined to
+the range of his profession, he was fertile in experiments, and
+ingenious in reasoning upon these particular topics. I therefore
+obtained from him considerable satisfaction; and, my mind being set in
+action, I sometimes even improved upon the hints he furnished. His
+conversation was particularly agreeable to me; I at first worked with
+him sometimes for my amusement, and afterwards occasionally for a short
+time as his journeyman. I was constitutionally vigorous; and, by the
+experience thus attained, I added to the abstract possession of power,
+the skill of applying it, when I pleased, in such a manner as that no
+part should be inefficient.
+
+It is a strange, but no uncommon feature in the human mind, that the
+very resource of which we stand in greatest need in a critical
+situation, though already accumulated, it may be, by preceding industry,
+fails to present itself at the time when it should be called into
+action. Thus my mind had passed through two very different stages since
+my imprisonment, before this means of liberation suggested itself. My
+faculties were overwhelmed in the first instance, and raised to a pitch
+of enthusiasm in the second; while in both I took it for granted in a
+manner, that I must passively submit to the good pleasure of my
+persecutors.
+
+During the period in which my mind had been thus undecided, and when I
+had been little more than a month in durance, the assizes, which were
+held twice a year in the town in which I was a prisoner, came on. Upon
+this occasion my case was not brought forward, but was suffered to stand
+over six months longer. It would have been just the same, if I had had
+as strong reason to expect acquittal as I had conviction. If I had been
+apprehended upon the most frivolous reasons upon which any justice of
+the peace ever thought proper to commit a naked beggar for trial, I must
+still have waited about two hundred and seventeen days before my
+innocence could be cleared. So imperfect are the effects of the boasted
+laws of a country, whose legislators hold their assembly from four to
+six months in every year! I could never discover with certainty, whether
+this delay were owing to any interference on the part of my prosecutor,
+or whether it fell out in the regular administration of justice, which
+is too solemn and dignified to accommodate itself to the rights or
+benefit of an insignificant individual.
+
+But this was not the only incident that occurred to me during my
+confinement, for which I could find no satisfactory solution. It was
+nearly at the same time, that the keeper began to alter his behaviour to
+me. He sent for me one morning into the part of the building which was
+appropriated for his own use, and, after some hesitation, told me he was
+sorry my accommodations had been so indifferent, and asked whether I
+should like to have a chamber in his family? I was struck with the
+unexpectedness of this question, and desired to know whether any body
+had employed him to ask it. No, he replied; but, now the assizes were
+over, he had fewer felons on his hands, and more time to look about him.
+He believed I was a good kind of a young man, and he had taken a sort of
+a liking to me. I fixed my eye upon his countenance as he said this. I
+could discover none of the usual symptoms of kindness; he appeared to me
+to be acting a part, unnatural, and that sat with awkwardness upon him.
+He went on however to offer me the liberty of eating at his table;
+which, if I chose it, he said, would make no difference to him, and he
+should not think of charging me any thing for it. He had always indeed
+as much upon his hands as one person could see to; but his wife and his
+daughter Peggy would be woundily pleased to hear a person of learning
+talk, as he understood I was; and perhaps I might not feel myself
+unpleasantly circumstanced in their company.
+
+I reflected on this proposal, and had little doubt, notwithstanding what
+the keeper had affirmed to the contrary, that it did not proceed from
+any spontaneous humanity in him, but that he had, to speak the language
+of persons of his cast, good reasons for what he did. I busied myself in
+conjectures as to who could be the author of this sort of indulgence and
+attention. The two most likely persons were Mr. Falkland and Mr.
+Forester. The latter I knew to be a man austere and inexorable towards
+those whom he deemed vicious. He piqued himself upon being insensible to
+those softer emotions, which, he believed, answered no other purpose
+than to seduce us from our duty. Mr. Falkland, on the contrary, was a
+man of the acutest sensibility; hence arose his pleasures and his pains,
+his virtues and his vices. Though he were the bitterest enemy to whom I
+could possibly be exposed, and though no sentiments of humanity could
+divert or control the bent of his mind, I yet persuaded myself, that he
+was more likely than his kinsman, to visit in idea the scene of my
+dungeon, and to feel impelled to alleviate my sufferings.
+
+This conjecture was by no means calculated to serve as balm to my mind.
+My thoughts were full of irritation against my persecutor. How could I
+think kindly of a man, in competition with the gratification of whose
+ruling passion my good name or my life was deemed of no consideration? I
+saw him crushing the one, and bringing the other into jeopardy, with a
+quietness and composure on his part that I could not recollect without
+horror. I knew not what were his plans respecting me. I knew not whether
+he troubled himself so much as to form a barren wish for the
+preservation of one whose future prospects he had so iniquitously
+tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to my principal topic of
+recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I should consent to
+go out of the world in silence, the victim of this man's obduracy and
+art. In every view I felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of his
+injustice; and my very soul spurned these pitiful indulgences, at a time
+that he was grinding me into dust with the inexorableness of his
+vengeance.
+
+I was influenced by these sentiments in my reply to the jailor; and I
+found a secret pleasure in pronouncing them in all their bitterness. I
+viewed him with a sarcastic smile, and said, I was glad to find him of a
+sudden become so humane: I was not however without some penetration as
+to the humanity of a jailor, and could guess at the circumstances by
+which it was produced. But he might tell his employer, that his cares
+were fruitless: I would accept no favours from a man that held a halter
+about my neck; and had courage enough to endure the worst both in time
+to come and now.--The jailor looked at me with astonishment, and turning
+upon his heel, exclaimed, "Well done, my cock! You have not had your
+learning for nothing, I see. You are set upon not dying dunghill. But
+that is to come, lad; you had better by half keep your courage till you
+shall find it wanted."
+
+The assizes, which passed over without influence to me, produced a great
+revolution among my fellow-prisoners. I lived long enough in the jail to
+witness a general mutation of its inhabitants. One of the housebreakers
+(the rival of the Duke of Bedford), and the coiner, were hanged. Two
+more were cast for transportation, and the rest acquitted. The
+transports remained with us; and, though the prison was thus lightened
+of nine of its inhabitants, there were, at the next half-yearly period
+of assizes, as many persons on the felons' side, within three, as I had
+found on my first arrival.
+
+The soldier, whose story I have already recorded, died on the evening of
+the very day on which the judges arrived, of a disease the consequence
+of his confinement. Such was the justice, that resulted from the laws of
+his country to an individual who would have been the ornament of any
+age; one who, of all the men I ever knew, was perhaps the kindest, of
+the most feeling heart, of the most engaging and unaffected manners, and
+the most unblemished life. The name of this man was Brightwel. Were it
+possible for my pen to consecrate him to never-dying fame, I could
+undertake no task more grateful to my heart. His judgment was
+penetrating and manly, totally unmixed with imbecility and confusion,
+while at the same time there was such an uncontending frankness in his
+countenance, that a superficial observer would have supposed he must
+have been the prey of the first plausible knavery that was practised
+against him. Great reason have I to remember him with affection! He was
+the most ardent, I had almost said the last, of my friends. Nor did I
+remain in this respect in his debt. There was indeed a great
+congeniality, if I may presume to say so, in our characters, except that
+I cannot pretend to rival the originality and self-created vigour of his
+mind, or to compare with, what the world has scarcely surpassed, the
+correctness and untainted purity of his conduct. He heard my story, as
+far as I thought proper to disclose it, with interest; he examined it
+with sincere impartiality; and if, at first, any doubt remained upon his
+mind, a frequent observation of me in my most unguarded moments taught
+him in no long time to place an unreserved confidence in my innocence.
+
+He talked of the injustice of which we were mutual victims, without
+bitterness; and delighted to believe that the time would come, when the
+possibility of such intolerable oppression would be extirpated. But
+this, he said, was a happiness reserved for posterity; it was too late
+for us to reap the benefit of it. It was some consolation to him, that
+he could not tell the period in his past life, which the best judgment
+of which he was capable would teach him to spend better. He could say,
+with as much reason as most men, he had discharged his duty. But he
+foresaw that he should not survive his present calamity. This was his
+prediction, while yet in health. He might be said, in a certain sense,
+to have a broken heart. But, if that phrase were in any way applicable
+to him, sure never was despair more calm, more full of resignation and
+serenity.
+
+At no time in the whole course of my adventures was I exposed to a shock
+more severe, than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of
+his fate presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of
+iniquity. From him, and the execrations with which I loaded the
+government that could be the instrument of his tragedy, I turned to
+myself. I beheld the catastrophe of Brightwel with envy. A thousand
+times I longed that my corse had lain in death, instead of his. I was
+only reserved, as I persuaded myself, for unutterable woe. In a few days
+he would have been acquitted; his liberty, his reputation restored;
+mankind perhaps, struck with the injustice he had suffered, would have
+shown themselves eager to balance his misfortunes, and obliterate his
+disgrace. But this man died; and I remained alive! I, who, though not
+less wrongfully treated than he, had no hope of reparation, must be
+marked as long as I lived for a villain, and in my death probably held
+up to the scorn and detestation of my species!
+
+Such were some of the immediate reflections which the fate of this
+unfortunate martyr produced in my mind. Yet my intercourse with
+Brightwel was not, in the review, without its portion of comfort. I
+said, "This man has seen through the veil of calumny that overshades me:
+he has understood, and has loved me. Why should I despair? May I not
+meet hereafter with men ingenuous like him, who shall do me justice, and
+sympathise with my calamity? With that consolation I will be satisfied.
+I will rest in the arms of friendship, and forget the malignity of the
+world. Henceforth I will be contented with tranquil obscurity, with the
+cultivation of sentiment and wisdom, and the exercise of benevolence
+within a narrow circle." It was thus that my mind became excited to the
+project I was about to undertake.
+
+I had no sooner meditated the idea of an escape, than I determined upon
+the following method of facilitating the preparations for it. I
+undertook to ingratiate myself with my keeper. In the world I have
+generally found such persons as had been acquainted with the outline of
+my story, regarding me with a sort of loathing and abhorrence, which
+made them avoid me with as much care as if I had been spotted with the
+plague. The idea of my having first robbed my patron, and then
+endeavouring to clear myself by charging him with subornation against
+me, placed me in a class distinct from, and infinitely more guilty than
+that of common felons. But this man was too good a master of his
+profession, to entertain aversion against a fellow-creature upon that
+score. He considered the persons committed to his custody, merely as so
+many human bodies, for whom he was responsible that they should be
+forthcoming in time and place; and the difference of innocence and guilt
+he looked down upon as an affair beneath his attention. I had not
+therefore the prejudices to encounter in recommending myself to him,
+that I have found so peculiarly obstinate in other cases. Add to which,
+the same motive, whatever it was, that had made him so profuse in his
+offers a little before, had probably its influence on the present
+occasion.
+
+I informed him of my skill in the profession of a joiner, and offered to
+make him half a dozen handsome chairs, if he would facilitate my
+obtaining the tools necessary for carrying on my profession in my
+present confinement; for, without his consent previously obtained, it
+would have been in vain for me to expect that I could quietly exert an
+industry of this kind, even if my existence had depended upon it. He
+looked at me first, as asking himself what he was to understand by this
+novel proposal; and then, his countenance most graciously relaxing,
+said, he was glad I was come off a little of my high notions and my
+buckram, and he would see what he could do. Two days after, he signified
+his compliance. He said that, as to the matter of the present I had
+offered him, he thought nothing of that; I might do as I pleased in it;
+but I might depend upon every civility from him that he could show with
+safety to himself, if so be as, when he was civil, I did not offer a
+second time for to snap and take him up short.
+
+Having thus gained my preliminary, I gradually accumulated tools of
+various sorts--gimlets, piercers, chisels, _et cetera_. I immediately
+set myself to work. The nights were long, and the sordid eagerness of my
+keeper, notwithstanding his ostentatious generosity, was great; I
+therefore petitioned for, and was indulged with, a bit of candle, that I
+might amuse myself for an hour or two with my work after I was locked up
+in my dungeon. I did not however by any means apply constantly to the
+work I had undertaken, and my jailor betrayed various tokens of
+impatience. Perhaps he was afraid I should not have finished it, before
+I was hanged. I however insisted upon working at my leisure as I
+pleased; and this he did not venture expressly to dispute. In addition
+to the advantages thus obtained, I procured secretly from Miss Peggy,
+who now and then came into the jail to make her observations of the
+prisoners, and who seemed to have conceived some partiality for my
+person, the implement of an iron crow.
+
+In these proceedings it is easy to trace the vice and duplicity that
+must be expected to grow out of injustice. I know not whether my readers
+will pardon the sinister advantage I extracted from the mysterious
+concessions of my keeper. But I must acknowledge my weakness in that
+respect; I am writing my adventures, and not my apology; and I was not
+prepared to maintain the unvaried sincerity of my manners, at the
+expense of a speedy close of my existence.
+
+My plan was now digested. I believed that, by means of the crow, I could
+easily, and without much noise, force the door of my dungeon from its
+hinges, or if not, that I could, in case of necessity, cut away the
+lock. This door led into a narrow passage, bounded on one side by the
+range of dungeons, and on the other by the jailor's and turnkeys'
+apartments, through which was the usual entrance from the street. This
+outlet I dared not attempt, for fear of disturbing the persons close to
+whose very door I should in that case have found it necessary to pass. I
+determined therefore upon another door at the further end of the
+passage, which was well barricaded, and which led to a sort of garden in
+the occupation of the keeper. This garden I had never entered, but I had
+had an opportunity of observing it from the window of the felons'
+day-room, which looked that way, the room itself being immediately over
+the range of dungeons. I perceived that it was bounded by a wall of
+considerable height, which I was told by my fellow-prisoners was the
+extremity of the jail on that side, and beyond which was a back-lane of
+some length, that terminated in the skirts of the town. Upon an accurate
+observation, and much reflection upon the subject, I found I should be
+able, if once I got into the garden, with my gimlets and piercers
+inserted at proper distances to make a sort of ladder, by means of which
+I could clear the wall, and once more take possession of the sweets of
+liberty. I preferred this wall to that which immediately skirted my
+dungeon, on the other side of which was a populous street.
+
+I suffered about two days to elapse from the period at which I had
+thoroughly digested my project, and then in the very middle of the night
+began to set about its execution. The first door was attended with
+considerable difficulty; but at length this obstacle was happily
+removed. The second door was fastened on the inside. I was therefore
+able with perfect ease to push back the bolts. But the lock, which of
+course was depended upon for the principal security, and was therefore
+strong, was double-shot, and the key taken away. I endeavoured with my
+chisel to force back the bolt of the lock, but to no purpose. I then
+unscrewed the box of the lock; and, that being taken away, the door was
+no longer opposed to my wishes.
+
+Thus far I had proceeded with the happiest success; but close on the
+other side of the door there was a kennel with a large mastiff dog, of
+which I had not the smallest previous knowledge. Though I stepped along
+in the most careful manner, this animal was disturbed, and began to
+bark. I was extremely disconcerted, but immediately applied myself to
+soothe the animal, in which I presently succeeded. I then returned along
+the passage to listen whether any body had been disturbed by the noise
+of the dog; resolved, if that had been the case, that I would return to
+my dungeon, and endeavour to replace every thing in its former state.
+But the whole appeared perfectly quiet, and I was encouraged to proceed
+in my operation.
+
+I now got to the wall, and had nearly gained half the ascent, when I
+heard a voice at the garden-door, crying, "Holloa! who is there? who
+opened the door?" The man received no answer, and the night was too dark
+for him to distinguish objects at any distance. He therefore returned,
+as I judged, into the house for a light. Meantime the dog, understanding
+the key in which these interrogations were uttered, began barking again
+more violently than ever. I had now no possibility of retreat, and I was
+not without hopes that I might yet accomplish my object, and clear the
+wall. Meanwhile a second man came out, while the other was getting his
+lantern, and by the time I had got to the top of the wall was able to
+perceive me. He immediately set up a shout, and threw a large stone,
+which grazed me in its flight. Alarmed at my situation, I was obliged
+to descend on the other side without taking the necessary precautions,
+and in my fall nearly dislocated my ankle.
+
+There was a door in the wall, of which I was not previously apprised;
+and, this being opened, the two men with the lantern were on the other
+side in an instant. They had then nothing to do but to run along the
+lane to the place from which I had descended. I endeavoured to rise
+after my fall; but the pain was so intense, that I was scarcely able to
+stand, and, after having limped a few paces, I twisted my foot under me,
+and fell down again. I had now no remedy, and quietly suffered myself to
+be retaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+I was conducted to the keeper's room for that night, and the two men sat
+up with me. I was accosted with many interrogatories, to which I gave
+little answer, but complained of the hurt in my leg. To this I could
+obtain no reply, except "Curse you, my lad! if that be all, we will give
+you some ointment for that; we will anoint it with a little cold iron."
+They were indeed excessively sulky with me, for having broken their
+night's rest, and given them all this trouble. In the morning they were
+as good as their word, fixing a pair of fetters upon both my legs,
+regardless of the ankle which was now swelled to a considerable size,
+and then fastening me, with a padlock, to a staple in the floor of my
+dungeon. I expostulated with warmth upon this treatment, and told them,
+that I was a man upon whom the law as yet had passed no censure, and who
+therefore, in the eye of the law, was innocent. But they bid me keep
+such fudge for people who knew no better; they knew what they did, and
+would answer it to any court in England.
+
+The pain of the fetter was intolerable. I endeavoured in various ways to
+relieve it, and even privily to free my leg; but the more it was
+swelled, the more was this rendered impossible. I then resolved to bear
+it with patience: still, the longer it continued, the worse it grew.
+After two days and two nights, I entreated the turnkey to go and ask the
+surgeon, who usually attended the prison, to look at it, for, if it
+continued longer as it was, I was convinced it would mortify. But he
+glared surlily at me, and said, "Damn my blood! I should like to see
+that day. To die of a mortification is too good an end for such a
+rascal!" At the time that he thus addressed me, the whole mass of my
+blood was already fevered by the anguish I had undergone, my patience
+was wholly exhausted, and I was silly enough to be irritated beyond
+bearing, by his impertinence and vulgarity: "Look, you, Mr. Turnkey,"
+said I, "there is one thing that such fellows as you are set over us
+for, and another thing that you are not. You are to take care we do not
+escape; but it is no part of your office to call us names and abuse us.
+If I were not chained to the floor, you dare as well eat your fingers as
+use such language; and, take my word for it, you shall yet live to
+repent of your insolence."
+
+While I thus spoke, the man stared at me with astonishment. He was so
+little accustomed to such retorts, that, at first, he could scarcely
+believe his ears; and such was the firmness of my manner, that he seemed
+to forget for a moment that I was not at large. But, as soon as he had
+time to recollect himself, he did not deign to be angry. His face
+relaxed into a smile of contempt; he snapped his fingers at me; and,
+turning upon his heel, exclaimed, "Well said, my cock! crow away! Have a
+care you do not burst!" and, as he shut the door upon me, mimicked the
+voice of the animal he mentioned.
+
+This rejoinder brought me to myself in a moment, and showed me the
+impotence of the resentment I was expressing. But, though he thus put an
+end to the violence of my speech, the torture of my body continued as
+great as ever. I was determined to change my mode of attack. The same
+turnkey returned in a few minutes; and, as he approached me, to put down
+some food he had brought, I slipped a shilling into his hand, saying at
+the same time, "My good fellow, for God's sake, go to the surgeon; I am
+sure you do not wish me to perish for want of assistance." The fellow
+put the shilling into his pocket, looked hard at me, and then with one
+nod of his head, and without uttering a single word, went away. The
+surgeon presently after made his appearance; and, finding the part in a
+high state of inflammation, ordered certain applications, and gave
+peremptory directions that the fetter should not be replaced upon that
+leg, till a cure had been effected. It was a full month before the leg
+was perfectly healed, and made equally strong and flexible with the
+other.
+
+The condition in which I was now placed, was totally different from that
+which had preceded this attempt. I was chained all day in my dungeon,
+with no other mitigation, except that the door was regularly opened for
+a few hours in an afternoon, at which time some of the prisoners
+occasionally came and spoke to me, particularly one, who, though he
+could ill replace my benevolent Brightwel, was not deficient in
+excellent qualities. This was no other than the individual whom Mr.
+Falkland had, some months before, dismissed upon an accusation of
+murder. His courage was gone, his garb was squalid, and the comeliness
+and clearness of his countenance was utterly obliterated. He also was
+innocent, worthy, brave, and benevolent. He was, I believe, afterwards
+acquitted, and turned loose, to wander a desolate and perturbed spectre
+through the world. My manual labours were now at an end; my dungeon was
+searched every night, and every kind of tool carefully kept from me. The
+straw, which had been hitherto allowed me, was removed, under pretence
+that it was adapted for concealment; and the only conveniences with
+which I was indulged, were a chair and a blanket.
+
+A prospect of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this
+my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his
+appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity.
+He pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He
+reprehended in strong terms my attempt to escape, and observed, that
+there must be an end of civility from people in his situation, if
+gentlemen, after all, would not know when they were well. It was
+necessary, in cases the like of this, to let the law take its course;
+and it would be ridiculous in me to complain, if, after a regular trial,
+things should go hard with me. He was desirous of being in every respect
+my friend, if I would let him. In the midst of this circumlocution and
+preamble, he was called away from me, for something relating to the
+business of his office. In the mean time I ruminated upon his overtures;
+and, detesting as I did the source from which I conceived them to flow,
+I could not help reflecting how far it would be possible to extract from
+them the means of escape. But my meditations in this case were vain.
+The keeper returned no more during the remainder of that day, and, on
+the next, an incident occurred which put an end to all expectations from
+his kindness.
+
+An active mind, which has once been forced into any particular train,
+can scarcely be persuaded to desert it as hopeless. I had studied my
+chains, during the extreme anguish that I endured from the pressure of
+the fetter upon the ankle which had been sprained; and though, from the
+swelling and acute sensibility of the part, I had found all attempts at
+relief, in that instance, impracticable, I obtained, from the coolness
+of my investigation, another and apparently superior advantage. During
+the night, my dungeon was in a complete state of darkness; but, when the
+door was open, the case was somewhat different. The passage indeed into
+which it opened, was so narrow, and the opposite dead wall so near, that
+it was but a glimmering and melancholy light that entered my apartment,
+even at full noon, and when the door was at its widest extent. But my
+eyes, after a practice of two or three weeks, accommodated themselves to
+this circumstance, and I learned to distinguish the minutest object. One
+day, as I was alternately meditating and examining the objects around
+me, I chanced to observe a nail trodden into the mud-floor at no great
+distance from me. I immediately conceived the desire of possessing
+myself of this implement; but, for fear of surprise, people passing
+perpetually to and fro, I contented myself, for the present, with
+remarking its situation so accurately, that I might easily find it again
+in the dark. Accordingly, as soon as my door was shut, I seized upon
+this new treasure, and, having contrived to fashion it to my purpose,
+found that I could unlock with it the padlock that fastened me to the
+staple in the floor. This I regarded as no inconsiderable advantage,
+separately from the use I might derive from it in relation to my
+principal object. My chain permitted me to move only about eighteen
+inches to the right or left; and, having borne this confinement for
+several weeks, my very heart leaped at the pitiful consolation of being
+able to range, without constraint, the miserable coop in which I was
+immured. This incident had occurred several days previously to the last
+visit of my keeper.
+
+From this time it had been my constant practice to liberate myself every
+night, and not to replace things in their former situation till I awoke
+in the morning, and expected shortly to perceive the entrance of the
+turnkey. Security breeds negligence. On the morning succeeding my
+conference with the jailor, it so happened, whether I overslept myself,
+or the turnkey went his round earlier than usual, that I was roused from
+my sleep by the noise he made in opening the cell next to my own; and
+though I exerted the utmost diligence, yet having to grope for my
+materials in the dark, I was unable to fasten the chain to the staple,
+before he entered, as usual, with his lantern. He was extremely
+surprised to find me disengaged, and immediately summoned the principal
+keeper. I was questioned respecting my method of proceeding; and, as I
+believed concealment could lead to nothing but a severer search, and a
+more accurate watch, I readily acquainted them with the exact truth. The
+illustrious personage, whose functions it was to control the inhabitants
+of these walls, was, by this last instance, completely exasperated
+against me. Artifice and fair speaking were at an end. His eyes sparkled
+with fury; he exclaimed, that he was now convinced of the folly of
+showing kindness to rascals, the scum of the earth, such as I was; and,
+damn him, if any body should catch him at that again towards any one. I
+had cured him effectually! He was astonished that the laws had not
+provided some terrible retaliation for thieves that attempted to deceive
+their jailors. Hanging was a thousand times too good for me!
+
+Having vented his indignation, he proceeded to give such orders as the
+united instigations of anger and alarm suggested to his mind. My
+apartment was changed. I was conducted to a room called the strong room,
+the door of which opened into the middle cell of the range of dungeons.
+It was under-ground, as they were, and had also the day-room for felons,
+already described, immediately over it. It was spacious and dreary. The
+door had not been opened for years; the air was putrid; and the walls
+hung round with damps and mildew. The fetters, the padlock, and the
+staple, were employed, as in the former case, in addition to which they
+put on me a pair of handcuffs. For my first provision, the keeper sent
+me nothing but a bit of bread, mouldy and black, and some dirty and
+stinking water. I know not indeed whether this is to be regarded as
+gratuitous tyranny on the part of the jailor; the law having providently
+directed, in certain cases, that the water to be administered to the
+prisoners shall be taken from "the next sink or puddle nearest to the
+jail."[E] It was further ordered, that one of the turnkeys should sleep
+in the cell that formed a sort of anti-chamber to my apartment. Though
+every convenience was provided, to render this chamber fit for the
+reception of a personage of a dignity so superior to the felon he was
+appointed to guard, he expressed much dissatisfaction at the mandate:
+but there was no alternative.
+
+[Footnote E: In the case of the _peine forte et dure_. See State Trials,
+Vol. I. _anno_ 1615.]
+
+The situation to which I was thus removed was, apparently, the most
+undesirable that could be imagined but I was not discouraged; I had for
+some time learned not to judge by appearances. The apartment was dark
+and unwholesome; but I had acquired the secret of counteracting these
+influences. My door was kept continually shut, and the other prisoners
+were debarred access to me; but if the intercourse of our fellow-men has
+its pleasure, solitude, on the other hand, is not without its
+advantages. In solitude we can pursue our own thoughts undisturbed; and
+I was able to call up at will the most pleasing avocations. Besides
+which, to one who meditated such designs as now filled my mind, solitude
+had peculiar recommendations. I was scarcely left to myself, before I
+tried an experiment, the idea of which I conceived, while they were
+fixing my handcuffs; and, with my teeth only, disengaged myself from
+this restraint. The hours at which I was visited by the keepers were
+regular, and I took care to be provided for them. Add to which, I had a
+narrow grated window near the ceiling, about nine inches in
+perpendicular, and a foot and a half horizontally, which, though small,
+admitted a much stronger light than that to which I had been accustomed
+for several weeks. Thus circumstanced, I scarcely ever found myself in
+total darkness, and was better provided against surprises than I had
+been in my preceding situation. Such were the sentiments which this
+change of abode immediately suggested.
+
+I had been a very little time removed, when I received an unexpected
+visit from Thomas, Mr. Falkland's footman, whom I have already mentioned
+in the course of my narrative. A servant of Mr. Forester happened to
+come to the town where I was imprisoned, a few weeks before, while I was
+confined with the hurt in my ankle, and had called in to see me. The
+account he gave of what he observed had been the source of many an
+uneasy sensation to Thomas. The former visit was a matter of mere
+curiosity; but Thomas was of the better order of servants. He was
+considerably struck at the sight of me. Though my mind was now serene,
+and my health sufficiently good, yet the floridness of my complexion was
+gone, and there was a rudeness in my physiognomy, the consequence of
+hardship and fortitude, extremely unlike the sleekness of my better
+days. Thomas looked alternately in my face, at my hands, and my feet;
+and then fetched a deep sigh. After a pause,
+
+"Lord bless us!" said he, in a voice in which commiseration was
+sufficiently perceptible, "is this you?"
+
+"Why not, Thomas? You knew I was sent to prison, did not you?"
+
+"Prison! and must people in prison be shackled and bound of that
+fashion?--and where do you lay of nights?"
+
+"Here."
+
+"Here? Why there is no bed!"
+
+"No, Thomas, I am not allowed a bed. I had straw formerly, but that is
+taken away."
+
+"And do they take off them there things of nights?"
+
+"No; I am expected to sleep just as you see."
+
+"Sleep! Why I thought this was a Christian country; but this usage is
+too bad for a dog."
+
+"You must not say so, Thomas; it is what the wisdom of government has
+thought fit to provide."
+
+"Zounds, how I have been deceived! They told me what a fine thing it was
+to be an Englishman, and about liberty and property, and all that there;
+and I find it is all a flam. Lord, what fools we be! Things are done
+under our very noses, and we know nothing of the matter; and a parcel of
+fellows with grave faces swear to us, that such things never happen but
+in France, and other countries the like of that. Why, you ha'n't been
+tried, ha' you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And what signifies being tried, when they do worse than hang a man, and
+all beforehand? Well, master Williams, you have been very wicked to be
+sure, and I thought it would have done me good to see you hanged. But, I
+do not know how it is, one's heart melts, and pity comes over one, if we
+take time to cool. I know that ought not to be; but, damn it, when I
+talked of your being hanged, I did not think of your suffering all this
+into the bargain."
+
+Soon after this conversation Thomas left me. The idea of the long
+connection of our families rushed upon his memory, and he felt more for
+my sufferings, at the moment, than I did for myself. In the afternoon I
+was surprised to see him again. He said that he could not get the
+thought of me out of his mind, and therefore he hoped I would not be
+displeased at his coming once more to take leave of me. I could perceive
+that he had something upon his mind, which he did not know how to
+discharge. One of the turnkeys had each time come into the room with
+him, and continued as long as he staid. Upon some avocation however--a
+noise, I believe, in the passage--the turnkey went as far as the door to
+satisfy his curiosity; and Thomas, watching the opportunity, slipped
+into my hand a chisel, a file, and a saw, exclaiming at the same time
+with a sorrowful tone, "I know I am doing wrong; but, if they hang me
+too, I cannot help it; I cannot do no other. For Christ's sake, get out
+of this place; I cannot bear the thoughts of it!" I received the
+implements with great joy, and thrust them into my bosom; and, as soon
+as he was gone, concealed them in the rushes of my chair. For himself
+he had accomplished the object for which he came, and presently after
+bade me farewell.
+
+The next day, the keepers, I know not for what reason, were more than
+usually industrious in their search, saying, though without assigning
+any ground for their suspicion, that they were sure I had some tool in
+my possession that I ought not; but the depository I had chosen escaped
+them.
+
+I waited from this time the greater part of a week, that I might have
+the benefit of a bright moonlight. It was necessary that I should work
+in the night; it was necessary that my operations should be performed
+between the last visit of the keepers at night and their first in the
+morning, that is, between nine in the evening and seven. In my dungeon,
+as I have already said, I passed fourteen or sixteen hours of the
+four-and-twenty undisturbed; but since I had acquired a character for
+mechanical ingenuity, a particular exception with respect to me was made
+from the general rules of the prison.
+
+It was ten o'clock when I entered on my undertaking. The room in which I
+was confined was secured with a double door. This was totally
+superfluous for the purpose of my detention, since there was a sentinel
+planted on the outside. But it was very fortunate for my plan; because
+these doors prevented the easy communication of sound, and afforded me
+tolerable satisfaction that, with a little care in my mode of
+proceeding, I might be secure against the danger of being overheard. I
+first took off my handcuffs. I then filed through my fetters; and next
+performed the same service to three of the iron bars that secured my
+window, to which I climbed, partly by the assistance of my chair, and
+partly by means of certain irregularities in the wall. All this was the
+work of more than two hours. When the bars were filed through, I easily
+forced them a little from the perpendicular, and then drew them, one by
+one, out of the wall, into which they were sunk about three inches
+perfectly straight, and without any precaution to prevent their being
+removed. But the space thus obtained was by no means wide enough to
+admit the passing of my body. I therefore applied myself, partly with my
+chisel, and partly with one of the iron bars, to the loosening the
+brick-work; and when I had thus disengaged four or five bricks, I got
+down and piled them upon the floor. This operation I repeated three or
+four times The space was now sufficient for my purpose: and, having
+crept through the opening, I stepped upon a shed on the outside.
+
+I was now in a kind of rude area between two dead walls, that south of
+the felons' day-room (the windows of which were at the east end) and the
+wall of the prison. But I had not, as formerly, any instruments to
+assist me in scaling the wall, which was of considerable height. There
+was, of consequence, no resource for me but that of effecting a
+practicable breach in the lower part of the wall, which was of no
+contemptible strength, being of stone on the outside, with a facing of
+brick within. The rooms for the debtors were at right angles with the
+building from which I had just escaped; and, as the night was extremely
+bright, I was in momentary danger, particularly in case of the least
+noise, of being discovered by them, several of their windows commanding
+this area. Thus circumstanced, I determined to make the shed answer the
+purpose of concealment. It was locked; but, with the broken link of my
+fetters, which I had had the precaution to bring with me, I found no
+great difficulty in opening the lock. I had now got a sufficient means
+of hiding my person while I proceeded in my work, attended with no
+other disadvantage than that of being obliged to leave the door, through
+which I had thus broken, a little open for the sake of light. After some
+time, I had removed a considerable part of the brick-work of the outer
+wall; but, when I came to the stone, I found the undertaking infinitely
+more difficult. The mortar which bound together the building was, by
+length of time, nearly petrified, and appeared to my first efforts one
+solid rock of the hardest adamant. I had now been six hours incessantly
+engaged in incredible labour: my chisel broke in the first attempt upon
+this new obstacle; and between fatigue already endured, and the
+seemingly invincible difficulty before me, I concluded that I must
+remain where I was, and gave up the idea of further effort as useless.
+At the same time the moon, whose light had till now been of the greatest
+use to me, set, and I was left in total darkness.
+
+After a respite of ten minutes however, I returned to the attack with
+new vigour. It could not be less than two hours before the first stone
+was loosened from the edifice. In one hour more, the space was
+sufficient to admit of my escape. The pile of bricks I had left in the
+strong room was considerable. But it was a mole-hill compared with the
+ruins I had forced from the outer wall. I am fully assured that the work
+I had thus performed would have been to a common labourer, with every
+advantage of tools, the business of two or three days. But my
+difficulties, instead of being ended, seemed to be only begun. The day
+broke, before I had completed the opening, and in ten minutes more the
+keepers would probably enter my apartment, and perceive the devastation
+I had left. The lane, which connected the side of the prison through
+which I had escaped with the adjacent country, was formed chiefly by
+two dead walls, with here and there a stable, a few warehouses, and some
+mean habitations, tenanted by the lower order of people. My best
+security lay in clearing the town as soon as possible, and depending
+upon the open country for protection. My arms were intolerably swelled
+and bruised with my labour, and my strength seemed wholly exhausted with
+fatigue. Speed I was nearly unable to exert for any continuance; and, if
+I could, with the enemy so close at my heels, speed would too probably
+have been useless. It appeared as if I were now in almost the same
+situation as that in which I had been placed five or six weeks before,
+in which, after having completed my escape, I was obliged to yield
+myself up, without resistance, to my pursuers. I was not however
+disabled as then; I was capable of exertion, to what precise extent I
+could not ascertain; and I was well aware, that every instance in which
+I should fail of my purpose would contribute to enhance the difficulty
+of any future attempt. Such were the considerations that presented
+themselves in relation to my escape; and, even if that were effected, I
+had to reckon among my difficulties, that, at the time I quitted my
+prison, I was destitute of every resource, and had not a shilling
+remaining in the world.
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I passed along the lane I have described, without perceiving or being
+observed by a human being. The doors were shut, the window-shutters
+closed, and all was still as night. I reached the extremity of the lane
+unmolested. My pursuers, if they immediately followed, would know that
+the likelihood was small, of my having in the interval found shelter in
+this place; and would proceed without hesitation, as I on my part was
+obliged to do, from the end nearest to the prison to its furthest
+termination.
+
+The face of the country, in the spot to which I had thus opened myself a
+passage, was rude and uncultivated. It was overgrown with brushwood and
+furze; the soil was for the most part of a loose sand; and the surface
+extremely irregular. I climbed a small eminence, and could perceive, not
+very remote in the distance, a few cottages thinly scattered. This
+prospect did not altogether please me; I conceived that my safety would,
+for the present, be extremely assisted, by keeping myself from the view
+of any human being.
+
+I therefore came down again into the valley, and upon a careful
+examination perceived that it was interspersed with cavities, some
+deeper than others, but all of them so shallow, as neither to be capable
+of hiding a man, nor of exciting suspicion as places of possible
+concealment. Meanwhile the day had but just begun to dawn; the morning
+was lowering and drizzly; and, though the depth of these caverns was of
+course well known to the neighbouring inhabitants, the shadows they cast
+were so black and impenetrable, as might well have produced wider
+expectations in the mind of a stranger. Poor therefore as was the
+protection they were able to afford, I thought it right to have recourse
+to it for the moment, as the best the emergency would supply. It was for
+my life; and, the greater was the jeopardy to which it was exposed, the
+more dear did that life seem to become to my affections. The recess I
+chose, as most secure, was within little more than a hundred yards of
+the end of the lane, and the extreme buildings of the town.
+
+I had not stood up in this manner two minutes, before I heard the sound
+of feet, and presently saw the ordinary turnkey and another pass the
+place of my retreat. They were so close to me that, if I had stretched
+out my hand, I believe I could have caught hold of their clothes,
+without so much as changing my posture. As no part of the overhanging
+earth intervened between me and them, I could see them entire, though
+the deepness of the shade rendered me almost completely invisible. I
+heard them say to each other, in tones of vehement asperity, "Curse the
+rascal! which way can he be gone?" The reply was, "Damn him! I wish we
+had him but safe once again!"--"Never fear!" rejoined the first; "he
+cannot have above half a mile the start of us." They were presently out
+of hearing; for, as to sight, I dared not advance my body, so much as an
+inch, to look after them, lest I should be discovered by my pursuers in
+some other direction. From the very short time that elapsed, between my
+escape and the appearance of these men, I concluded that they had made
+their way through the same outlet as I had done, it being impossible
+that they could have had time to come, from the gate of the prison, and
+so round a considerable part of the town, as they must otherwise have
+done.
+
+I was so alarmed at this instance of diligence on the part of the enemy,
+that, for some time, I scarcely ventured to proceed an inch from my
+place of concealment, or almost to change my posture. The morning, which
+had been bleak and drizzly, was succeeded by a day of heavy and
+incessant rain; and the gloomy state of the air and surrounding objects,
+together with the extreme nearness of my prison, and a total want of
+food, caused me to pass the hours in no very agreeable sensations. This
+inclemency of the weather however, which generated a feeling of
+stillness and solitude, encouraged me by degrees to change my retreat,
+for another of the same nature, out of somewhat greater security. I
+hovered with little variation about a single spot, as long as the sun
+continued above the horizon.
+
+Towards evening, the clouds began to disperse, and the moon shone, as on
+the preceding night, in full brightness. I had perceived no human
+creature during the whole day, except in the instance already mentioned.
+This had perhaps been owing to the nature of the day; at all events I
+considered it as too hazardous an experiment, to venture from my
+hiding-place in so clear and fine a night. I was therefore obliged to
+wait for the setting of this luminary, which was not till near five
+o'clock in the morning. My only relief during this interval was to allow
+myself to sink to the bottom of my cavern, it being scarcely possible
+for me to continue any longer on my feet. Here I fell into an
+interrupted and unrefreshing doze, the consequence of a laborious night,
+and a tedious, melancholy day; though I rather sought to avoid sleep,
+which, cooperating with the coldness of the season, would tend more to
+injury than advantage.
+
+The period of darkness, which I had determined to use for the purpose of
+removing to a greater distance from my prison, was, in its whole
+duration, something less than three hours. When I rose from my seat, I
+was weak with hunger and fatigue, and, which was worse, I seemed,
+between the dampness of the preceding day and the sharp, clear frost of
+the night, to have lost the command of my limbs. I stood up and shook
+myself; I leaned against the side of the hill, impelling in different
+directions the muscles of the extremities; and at length recovered in
+some degree the sense of feeling. This operation was attended with an
+incredible aching pain, and required no common share of resolution to
+encounter and prosecute it. Having quitted my retreat, I at first
+advanced with weak and tottering steps; but, as I proceeded, increased
+my pace. The barren heath, which reached to the edge of the town, was,
+at least on this side, without a path; but the stars shone, and, guiding
+myself by them, I determined to steer as far as possible from the
+hateful scene where I had been so long confined. The line I pursued was
+of irregular surface, sometimes obliging me to climb a steep ascent, and
+at others to go down into a dark and impenetrable dell. I was often
+compelled, by the dangerousness of the way, to deviate considerably from
+the direction I wished to pursue. In the mean time I advanced with as
+much rapidity as these and similar obstacles would permit me to do. The
+swiftness of the motion, and the thinness of the air, restored to me my
+alacrity. I forgot the inconveniences under which I laboured, and my
+mind became lively, spirited, and enthusiastic.
+
+I had now reached the border of the heath, and entered upon what is
+usually termed the forest. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless
+true, that, in this conjuncture, exhausted with hunger, destitute of all
+provision for the future, and surrounded with the most alarming dangers,
+my mind suddenly became glowing, animated, and cheerful. I thought that,
+by this time, the most formidable difficulties of my undertaking were
+surmounted; and I could not believe that, after having effected so much,
+I should find any thing invincible in what remained to be done. I
+recollected the confinement I had undergone, and the fate that had
+impended over me, with horror. Never did man feel more vividly, than I
+felt at that moment, the sweets of liberty. Never did man more
+strenuously prefer poverty with independence, to the artificial
+allurements of a life of slavery. I stretched forth my arms with
+rapture; I clapped my hands one upon the other, and exclaimed, "Ah, this
+is indeed to be a man! These wrists were lately galled with fetters; all
+my motions, whether I rose up or sat down, were echoed to with the
+clanking of chains; I was tied down like a wild beast, and could not
+move but in a circle of a few feet in circumference. Now I can run fleet
+as a greyhound, and leap like a young roe upon the mountains. Oh, God!
+(if God there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of an
+anxious heart) thou only canst tell with what delight a prisoner, just
+broke forth from his dungeon, hugs the blessings of new-found liberty!
+Sacred and indescribable moment, when man regains his rights! But lately
+I held my life in jeopardy, because one man was unprincipled enough to
+assert what he knew to be false; I was destined to suffer an early and
+inexorable death from the hands of others, because none of them had
+penetration enough to distinguish from falsehood, what I uttered with
+the entire conviction of a full-fraught heart! Strange, that men, from
+age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another,
+merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant
+according to law! Oh, God! give me poverty! shower upon me all the
+imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them all with
+thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be
+never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of
+authority! Suffer me at least to call life, and the pursuits of life, my
+own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of
+beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded
+prudence of monopolists and kings!"--How enviable was the enthusiasm
+which could thus furnish me with energy, in the midst of hunger,
+poverty, and universal desertion!
+
+I had now walked at least six miles. At first I carefully avoided the
+habitations that lay in my way, and feared to be seen by any of the
+persons to whom they belonged, lest it should in any degree furnish a
+clue to the researches of my pursuers. As I went forward, I conceived it
+might be proper to relax a part of my precaution. At this time I
+perceived several persons coming out of a thicket close to me. I
+immediately considered this circumstance as rather favourable than the
+contrary. It was necessary for me to avoid entering any of the towns and
+villages in the vicinity. It was however full time that I should procure
+for myself some species of refreshment, and by no means improbable that
+these men might be in some way assisting to me in that respect. In my
+situation it appeared to me indifferent what might be their employment
+or profession. I had little to apprehend from thieves, and I believed
+that they, as well as honest men, could not fail to have some compassion
+for a person under my circumstances. I therefore rather threw myself in
+their way than avoided them.
+
+They were thieves. One of the company cried out, "Who goes there?
+stand!" I accosted them; "Gentlemen," said I, "I am a poor traveller,
+almost"--While I spoke, they came round me; and he that had first
+hailed me, said, "Damn me, tip us none of your palaver; we have heard
+that story of a poor traveller any time these five years. Come, down
+with your dust! let us see what you have got!"--"Sir," I replied, "I
+have not a shilling in the world, and am more than half starved
+beside."--"Not a shilling!" answered my assailant, "what, I suppose you
+are as poor as a thief? But, if you have not money, you have clothes,
+and those you must resign."
+
+"My clothes!" rejoined I with indignation, "you cannot desire such a
+thing. Is it not enough that I am pennyless? I have been all night upon
+the open heath. It is now the second day that I have not eaten a morsel
+of bread. Would you strip me naked to the weather in the midst of this
+depopulated forest? No, no, you are men! The same hatred of oppression,
+that arms you against the insolence of wealth, will teach you to relieve
+those who are perishing like me. For God's sake, give me food! do not
+strip me of the comforts I still possess!"
+
+While I uttered this apostrophe, the unpremeditated eloquence of
+sentiment, I could perceive by their gestures, though the day had not
+yet begun to dawn, that the feelings of one or two of the company
+appeared to take my part. The man, who had already undertaken to be
+their spokesman, perceived the same thing; and, excited either by the
+brutality of his temper or the love of command, hastened to anticipate
+the disgrace of a defeat. He brushed suddenly up to me, and by main
+force pushed me several feet from the place where I stood. The shock I
+received drove me upon a second of the gang, not one of those who had
+listened to my expostulation; and he repeated the brutality. My
+indignation was strongly excited by this treatment; and, after being
+thrust backward and forward two or three times in this manner, I broke
+through my assailants, and turned round to defend myself. The first that
+advanced within my reach, was my original enemy. In the present moment I
+listened to nothing but the dictates of passion, and I laid him at his
+length on the earth. I was immediately assailed with sticks and
+bludgeons on all sides, and presently received a blow that almost
+deprived me of my senses. The man I had knocked down was now upon his
+feet again, and aimed a stroke at me with a cutlass as I fell, which
+took place in a deep wound upon my neck and shoulder. He was going to
+repeat his blow. The two who had seemed to waver at first in their
+animosity, afterwards appeared to me to join in the attack, urged either
+by animal sympathy or the spirit of imitation. One of them however, as I
+afterwards, understood seized the arm of the man who was going to strike
+me a second time with his cutlass, and who would otherwise probably have
+put an end to my existence. I could hear the words, "Damn it, enough,
+enough! that is too bad, Gines!"--"How so?" replied a second voice; "he
+will but pine here upon the forest, and die by inches: it will be an act
+of charity to put him out of his pain."--It will be imagined that I was
+not uninterested in this sort of debate. I made an effort to speak; my
+voice failed me. I stretched out one hand with a gesture of entreaty.
+"You shall not strike, by God!" said one of the voices; "why should we
+be murderers?"--The side of forbearance at length prevailed. They
+therefore contented themselves with stripping me of my coat and
+waistcoat, and rolling me into a dry ditch. They then left me totally
+regardless of my distressed condition, and the plentiful effusion of
+blood, which streamed from my wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In this woeful situation, though extremely weak, I was not deprived of
+sense. I tore my shirt from my naked body, and endeavoured, with some
+success, to make of it a bandage to staunch the flowing of the blood. I
+then exerted myself to crawl up the side of the ditch. I had scarcely
+effected the latter, when, with equal surprise and joy, I perceived a
+man advancing at no great distance. I called for help as well as I
+could. The man came towards me with evident signs of compassion, and the
+appearance I exhibited was indeed sufficiently calculated to excite it.
+I had no hat. My hair was dishevelled, and the ends of the locks clotted
+with blood. My shirt was wrapped about my neck and shoulders, and was
+plentifully stained with red. My body, which was naked to my middle, was
+variegated with streams of blood; nor had my lower garments, which were
+white, by any means escaped.
+
+"For God's sake, my good fellow!" said he, with a tone of the greatest
+imaginable kindness, "how came you thus?" and, saying this, he lifted me
+up, and set me on my feet. "Can you stand?" added he, doubtfully. "Oh,
+yes, very well," I replied. Having received this answer, he quitted me,
+and began to take off his own coat, that he might cover me from the
+cold. I had however over-rated my strength, and was no sooner left to
+myself than I reeled, and fell almost at my length upon the ground. But
+I broke my fall by stretching out my sound arm, and again raised myself
+upon my knees. My benefactor now covered me, raised me, and, bidding me
+lean upon him, told me he would presently conduct me to a place where I
+should be taken care of. Courage is a capricious property; and, though
+while I had no one to depend upon but myself, I possessed a mine of
+seemingly inexhaustible fortitude, yet no sooner did I find this
+unexpected sympathy on the part of another, than my resolution appeared
+to give way, and I felt ready to faint. My charitable conductor
+perceived this, and every now and then encouraged me, in a manner so
+cheerful, so good humoured and benevolent, equally free from the torture
+of droning expostulation, and the weakness of indulgence, that I thought
+myself under the conduct of an angel rather than a man. I could perceive
+that his behaviour had in it nothing of boorishness, and that he was
+thoroughly imbued with the principles of affectionate civility.
+
+We walked about three quarters of a mile, and that not towards the open,
+but the most uncouth and unfrequented part of the forest. We crossed a
+place which had once been a moat, but which was now in some parts dry,
+and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the
+enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and
+several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their
+foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however
+with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding
+passage that was perfectly dark, we came to a stand.
+
+At the upper end of this passage was a door, which I was unable to
+perceive. My conductor knocked at the door, and was answered by a voice
+from within, which, for body and force, might have been the voice of a
+man, but with a sort of female sharpness and acidity, enquiring, "Who is
+there?" Satisfaction was no sooner given on this point, than I heard two
+bolts pushed back, and the door unlocked. The apartment opened, and we
+entered. The interior of this habitation by no means corresponded with
+the appearance of my protector, but, on the contrary, wore the face of
+discomfort, carelessness, and dirt. The only person I saw within was a
+woman, rather advanced in life, and whose person had I know not what of
+extraordinary and loathsome. Her eyes were red and blood-shot; her hair
+was pendent in matted and shaggy tresses about her shoulders; her
+complexion swarthy, and of the consistency of parchment; her form spare,
+and her whole body, her arms in particular, uncommonly vigorous and
+muscular. Not the milk of human kindness, but the feverous blood of
+savage ferocity, seemed to flow from her heart; and her whole figure
+suggested an idea of unmitigable energy, and an appetite gorged in
+malevolence. This infernal Thalestris had no sooner cast her eyes upon
+us as we entered, than she exclaimed in a discordant and discontented
+voice, "What have we got here? this is not one of our people!" My
+conductor, without answering this apostrophe, bade her push an easy
+chair which stood in one corner, and set it directly before the fire.
+This she did with apparent reluctance, murmuring, "Ah! you are at your
+old tricks; I wonder what such folks as we have to do with charity! It
+will be the ruin of us at last, I can see that!"--"Hold your tongue,
+beldam!" said he, with a stern significance of manner, "and fetch one of
+my best shirts, a waistcoat, and some dressings." Saying this, he at the
+same time put into her hand a small bunch of keys. In a word, he treated
+me with as much kindness as if he had been my father. He examined my
+wound, washed and dressed it; at the same time that the old woman, by
+his express order, prepared for me such nourishment as he thought most
+suitable to my weak and languid condition.
+
+These operations were no sooner completed than my benefactor recommended
+to me to retire to rest, and preparations were making for that purpose,
+when suddenly a trampling of feet was heard, succeeded by a knock at the
+door. The old woman opened the door with the same precautions as had
+been employed upon our arrival, and immediately six or seven persons
+tumultuously entered the apartment. Their appearance was different, some
+having the air of mere rustics, and others that of a tarnished sort of
+gentry. All had a feature of boldness, inquietude, and disorder,
+extremely unlike any thing I had before observed in such a group. But my
+astonishment was still increased, when upon a second glance I perceived
+something in the general air of several of them, and of one in
+particular, that persuaded me they were the gang from which I had just
+escaped, and this one the antagonist by whose animosity I was so near
+having been finally destroyed. I imagined they had entered the hovel
+with a hostile intention, that my benefactor was upon the point of being
+robbed, and I probably murdered.
+
+This suspicion however was soon removed. They addressed my conductor
+with respect, under the appellation of captain. They were boisterous and
+noisy in their remarks and exclamations, but their turbulence was
+tempered by a certain deference to his opinion and authority. I could
+observe in the person who had been my active opponent some awkwardness
+and irresolution as he first perceived me, which he dismissed with a
+sort of effort, exclaiming, "Who the devil is here?" There was something
+in the tone of this apostrophe that roused the attention of my
+protector. He looked at the speaker with a fixed and penetrating glance,
+and then said, "Nay, Gines, do you know? Did you ever see the person
+before?"--"Curse it, Gines!" interrupted a third, "you are damnably out
+of luck. They say dead men walk, and you see there is some truth in
+it."--"Truce with your impertinence, Jeckols!" replied my protector:
+"this is no proper occasion for a joke. Answer me, Gines, were you the
+cause of this young man being left naked and wounded this bitter morning
+upon the forest?"
+
+"Mayhap I was. What then?"
+
+"What provocation could induce you to so cruel a treatment?"
+
+"Provocation enough. He had no money."
+
+"What, did you use him thus, without so much as being irritated by any
+resistance on his part?"
+
+"Yes, he did resist. I only hustled him, and he had the impudence to
+strike me."
+
+"Gines! you are an incorrigible fellow."
+
+"Pooh, what signifies what I am? You, with your compassion, and your
+fine feelings, will bring us all to the gallows."
+
+"I have nothing to say to you; I have no hopes of you! Comrades, it is
+for you to decide upon the conduct of this man as you think proper. You
+know how repeated his offences have been; you know what pains I have
+taken to mend him. Our profession is the profession of justice." [It is
+thus that the prejudices of men universally teach them to colour the
+most desperate cause to which they have determined to adhere.] "We, who
+are thieves without a licence, are at open war with another set of men
+who are thieves according to law. With such a cause then to bear us out,
+shall we stain it with cruelty, malice, and revenge? A thief is, of
+course, a man living among his equals; I do not pretend therefore to
+assume any authority among you; act as you think proper; but, so far as
+relates to myself, I vote that Gines be expelled from among us as a
+disgrace to our society."
+
+This proposition seemed to meet the general sense. It was easy to
+perceive that the opinion of the rest coincided with that of their
+leader; notwithstanding which a few of them hesitated as to the conduct
+to be pursued. In the mean time Gines muttered something in a surly and
+irresolute way, about taking care how they provoked him. This
+insinuation instantly roused the courage of my protector, and his eyes
+flashed with contempt.
+
+"Rascal!" said he, "do you menace us? Do you think we will be your
+slaves? No, no, do your worst! Go to the next justice of the peace, and
+impeach us; I can easily believe you are capable of it. Sir, when we
+entered into this gang, we were not such fools as not to know that we
+entered upon a service of danger. One of its dangers consists in the
+treachery of fellows like you. But we did not enter at first to flinch
+now. Did you believe that we would live in hourly fear of you, tremble
+at your threats, and compromise, whenever you should so please, with
+your insolence? That would be a blessed life indeed! I would rather see
+my flesh torn piecemeal from my bones! Go, sir! I defy you! You dare not
+do it! You dare not sacrifice these gallant fellows to your rage, and
+publish yourself to all the world a traitor and a scoundrel! If you do,
+you will punish yourself, not us! Begone!"
+
+The intrepidity of the leader communicated itself to the rest of the
+company. Gines easily saw that there was no hope of bringing them over
+to a contrary sentiment. After a short pause, he answered, "I did not
+mean--No, damn it! I will not snivel neither. I was always true to my
+principles, and a friend to you all. But since you are resolved to turn
+me out, why--good bye to you!"
+
+The expulsion of this man produced a remarkable improvement in the whole
+gang. Those who were before inclined to humanity, assumed new energy in
+proportion as they saw such sentiments likely to prevail. They had
+before suffered themselves to be overborne by the boisterous insolence
+of their antagonist; but now they adopted, and with success, a different
+conduct. Those who envied the ascendancy of their comrade, and therefore
+imitated his conduct, began to hesitate in their career. Stories were
+brought forward of the cruelty and brutality of Gines both to men and
+animals, which had never before reached the ear of the leader. The
+stories I shall not repeat. They could excite only emotions of
+abhorrence and disgust; and some of them argued a mind of such a stretch
+of depravity, as to many readers would appear utterly incredible; and
+yet this man had his virtues. He was enterprising, persevering, and
+faithful.
+
+His removal was a considerable benefit to me. It would have been no
+small hardship to have been turned adrift immediately under my
+unfavourable circumstances, with the additional disadvantage of the
+wound I had received; and yet I could scarcely have ventured to remain
+under the same roof with a man, to whom my appearance was as a guilty
+conscience, perpetually reminding him of his own offence, and the
+displeasure of his leader. His profession accustomed him to a certain
+degree of indifference to consequences, and indulgence to the sallies of
+passion; and he might easily have found his opportunity to insult or
+injure me, when I should have had nothing but my own debilitated
+exertions to protect me.
+
+Freed from this danger, I found my situation sufficiently fortunate for
+a man under my circumstances. It was attended with all the advantages
+for concealment my fondest imagination could have hoped; and it was by
+no means destitute of the benefits which arise from kindness and
+humanity. Nothing could be more unlike than the thieves I had seen
+in ---- jail, and the thieves of my new residence. The latter were
+generally full of cheerfulness and merriment. They could expatiate
+freely wherever they thought proper. They could form plans and execute
+them. They consulted their inclinations. They did not impose upon
+themselves the task, as is too often the case in human society, of
+seeming tacitly to approve that from which they suffered most; or, which
+is worst, of persuading themselves that all the wrongs they suffered
+were right; but were at open war with their oppressors. On the contrary,
+the imprisoned felons I had lately seen were shut up like wild beasts in
+a cage, deprived of activity, and palsied with indolence. The occasional
+demonstrations that still remained of their former enterprising life
+were the starts and convulsions of disease, not the meditated and
+consistent exertions of a mind in health. They had no more of hope, of
+project, of golden and animated dreams, but were reserved to the most
+dismal prospects, and forbidden to think upon any other topic. It is
+true, that these two scenes were parts of one whole, the one the
+consummation, the hourly to be expected successor of the other. But the
+men I now saw were wholly inattentive to this, and in that respect
+appeared to hold no commerce with reflection or reason.
+
+I might in one view, as I have said, congratulate myself upon my present
+residence; it answered completely the purposes of concealment. It was
+the seat of merriment and hilarity; but the hilarity that characterised
+it produced no correspondent feelings in my bosom. The persons who
+composed this society had each of them cast off all control from
+established principle; their trade was terror, and their constant object
+to elude the vigilance of the community. The influence of these
+circumstances was visible in their character. I found among them
+benevolence and kindness: they were strongly susceptible of emotions of
+generosity. But, as their situation was precarious, their dispositions
+were proportionably fluctuating. Inured to the animosity of their
+species, they were irritable and passionate. Accustomed to exercise
+harshness towards the subject of their depredations, they did not always
+confine their brutality within that scope. They were habituated to
+consider wounds and bludgeons and stabbing as the obvious mode of
+surmounting every difficulty. Uninvolved in the debilitating routine of
+human affairs, they frequently displayed an energy which, from every
+impartial observer, would have extorted veneration. Energy is perhaps of
+all qualities the most valuable; and a just political system would
+possess the means of extracting from it, thus circumstanced, its
+beneficial qualities, instead of consigning it, as now, to
+indiscriminate destruction. We act like the chemist, who should reject
+the finest ore, and employ none but what was sufficiently debased to fit
+it immediately for the vilest uses. But the energy of these men, such as
+I beheld it, was in the highest degree misapplied, unassisted by liberal
+and enlightened views, and directed only to the most narrow and
+contemptible purposes.
+
+The residence I have been describing might to many persons have appeared
+attended with intolerable inconveniences. But, exclusively of its
+advantages as a field for speculation, it was Elysium, compared with
+that from which I had just escaped. Displeasing company, incommodious
+apartments, filthiness, and riot, lost the circumstance by which they
+could most effectually disgust, when I was not compelled to remain with
+them. All hardships I could patiently endure, in comparison with the
+menace of a violent and untimely death. There was no suffering that I
+could not persuade myself to consider as trivial, except that which
+flowed from the tyranny, the frigid precaution, or the inhuman revenge
+of my own species.
+
+My recovery advanced in the most favourable manner. The attention and
+kindness of my protector were incessant, and the rest caught the spirit
+from his example. The old woman who superintended the household still
+retained her animosity. She considered me as the cause of the expulsion
+of Gines from the fraternity. Gines had been the object of her
+particular partiality; and, zealous as she was for the public concern,
+she thought an old and experienced sinner for a raw probationer but an
+ill exchange. Add to which, that her habits inclined her to moroseness
+and discontent, and that persons of her complexion seem unable to exist
+without some object upon which to pour out the superfluity of their
+gall. She lost no opportunity, upon the most trifling occasion, of
+displaying her animosity; and ever and anon eyed me with a furious
+glance of canine hunger for my destruction. Nothing was more evidently
+mortifying to her, than the procrastination of her malice; nor could she
+bear to think that a fierceness so gigantic and uncontrollable should
+show itself in nothing more terrific than the pigmy spite of a
+chambermaid. For myself, I had been accustomed to the warfare of
+formidable adversaries, and the encounter of alarming dangers; and what
+I saw of her spleen had not power sufficient to disturb my tranquillity.
+
+As I recovered, I told my story, except so far as related to the
+detection of Mr. Falkland's eventful secret, to my protector. That
+particular I could not, as yet, prevail upon myself to disclose, even in
+a situation like this, which seemed to preclude the possibility of its
+being made use of to the disadvantage of my persecutor. My present
+auditor however, whose habits of thinking were extremely opposite to
+those of Mr. Forester, did not, from the obscurity which flowed from
+this reserve, deduce any unfavourable conclusion. His penetration was
+such, as to afford little room for an impostor to hope to mislead him by
+a fictitious statement, and he confided in that penetration. So
+confiding, the simplicity and integrity of my manner carried conviction
+to his mind, and insured his good opinion and friendship.
+
+He listened to my story with eagerness, and commented on the several
+parts as I related them. He said, that this was only one fresh instance
+of the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of
+the community, against those who were less privileged than themselves.
+Nothing could be more clear, than their readiness to sacrifice the human
+species at large to their meanest interest, or wildest caprice. Who that
+saw the situation in its true light would wait till their oppressors
+thought fit to decree their destruction, and not take arms in their
+defence while it was yet in their power? Which was most meritorious,
+the unresisting and dastardly submission of a slave, or the enterprise
+and gallantry of the man who dared to assert his claims? Since, by the
+partial administration of our laws, innocence, when power was armed
+against it, had nothing better to hope for than guilt, what man of true
+courage would fail to set these laws at defiance, and, if he must suffer
+by their injustice, at least take care that he had first shown his
+contempt of their yoke? For himself, he should certainly never have
+embraced his present calling, had he not been stimulated to it by these
+cogent and irresistible reasons; and he hoped, as experience had so
+forcibly brought a conviction of this sort to my mind, that he should
+for the future have the happiness to associate me to his pursuits.--It
+will presently be seen with what event these hopes were attended.
+
+Numerous were the precautions exercised by the gang of thieves with whom
+I now resided, to elude the vigilance of the satellites of justice. It
+was one of their rules to commit no depredations but at a considerable
+distance from the place of their residence; and Gines had transgressed
+this regulation in the attack to which I was indebted for my present
+asylum. After having possessed themselves of any booty, they took care,
+in the sight of the persons whom they had robbed, to pursue a route as
+nearly as possible opposite to that which led to their true haunts. The
+appearance of their place of residence, together with its environs, was
+peculiarly desolate avid forlorn, and it had the reputation of being
+haunted. The old woman I have described had long been its inhabitant,
+and was commonly supposed to be its only inhabitant; and her person well
+accorded with the rural ideas of a witch. Her lodgers never went out or
+came in but with the utmost circumspection, and generally by night. The
+lights which were occasionally seen from various parts of her
+habitation, were, by the country people, regarded with horror as
+supernatural; and if the noise of revelry at any time saluted their
+ears, it was imagined to proceed from a carnival of devils. With all
+these advantages, the thieves did not venture to reside here but by
+intervals: they frequently absented themselves for months, and removed
+to a different part of the country. The old woman sometimes attended
+them in these transportations, and sometimes remained; but in all cases
+her decampment took place either sooner or later than theirs, so that
+the nicest observer could scarcely have traced any connection between
+her reappearance, and the alarms of depredation that were frequently
+given; and the festival of demons seemed, to the terrified rustics,
+indifferently to take place whether she were present or absent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+One day, while I continued in this situation, a circumstance occurred
+which involuntarily attracted my attention. Two of our people had been
+sent to a town at some distance, for the purpose of procuring us the
+things of which we were in want. After having delivered these to our
+landlady, they retired to one corner of the room; and, one of them
+pulling a printed paper from his pocket, they mutually occupied
+themselves in examining its contents. I was sitting in an easy chair by
+the fire, being considerably better than I had been, though still in a
+weak and languid state. Having read for a considerable time, they looked
+at me, and then at the paper, and then at me again. They then went out
+of the room together, as if to consult without interruption upon
+something which that paper suggested to them. Some time after they
+returned; and my protector, who had been absent upon the former
+occasion, entered the room at the same instant.
+
+"Captain!" said one of them with an air of pleasure, "look here! we have
+found a prize! I believe it is as good as a bank-note of a hundred
+guineas."
+
+Mr. Raymond (that was his name) took the paper, and read. He paused for
+a moment. He then crushed the paper in his hand; and, turning to the
+person from whom he had received it, said, with the tone of a man
+confident in the success of his reasons,--
+
+"What use have you for these hundred guineas? Are you in want? Are you
+in distress? Can you be contented to purchase them at the price of
+treachery--of violating the laws of hospitality?"
+
+"Faith, captain, I do not very well know. After having violated other
+laws, I do not see why we should be frightened at an old saw. We pretend
+to judge for ourselves, and ought to be above shrinking from a bugbear
+of a proverb. Beside, this is a good deed, and I should think no more
+harm of being the ruin of such a thief than of getting my dinner."
+
+"A thief! You talk of thieves!"
+
+"Not so fast, captain. God defend that I should say a word against
+thieving as a general occupation! But one man steals in one way, and
+another in another. For my part, I go upon the highway, and take from
+any stranger I meet what, it is a hundred to one, he can very well
+spare. I see nothing to be found fault with in that. But I have as much
+conscience as another man. Because I laugh at assizes, and great wigs,
+and the gallows, and because I will not be frightened from an innocent
+action when the lawyers say me nay, does it follow that I am to have a
+fellow-feeling for pilferers, and rascally servants, and people that
+have neither justice nor principle? No; I have too much respect for the
+trade not to be a foe to interlopers, and people that so much the more
+deserve my hatred, because the world calls them by my name."
+
+"You are wrong, Larkins! You certainly ought not to employ against
+people that you hate, supposing your hatred to be reasonable, the
+instrumentality of that law which in your practice you defy. Be
+consistent. Either be the friend of the law, or its adversary. Depend
+upon it that, wherever there are laws at all, there will be laws against
+such people as you and me. Either therefore we all of us deserve the
+vengeance of the law, or law is not the proper instrument for correcting
+the misdeeds of mankind. I tell you this, because I would fain have you
+aware, that an informer or a king's evidence, a man who takes advantage
+of the confidence of another in order to betray him, who sells the life
+of his neighbour for money, or, coward-like, upon any pretence calls in
+the law to do that for him which he cannot or dares not do for himself,
+is the vilest of rascals. But in the present case, if your reasons were
+the best in the world, they do not apply."
+
+While Mr. Raymond was speaking, the rest of the gang came into the room.
+He immediately turned to them, and said,--
+
+"My friends, here is a piece of intelligence that Larkins has just
+brought in which, with his leave, I will lay before you."
+
+Then unfolding the paper he had received, he continued: "This is the
+description of a felon, with the offer of a hundred guineas for his
+apprehension. Larking picked it up at ----. By the time and other
+circumstances, but particularly by the minute description of his
+person, there can be no doubt but the object of it is our young friend,
+whose life I was a while ago the instrument of saving. He is charged
+here with having taken advantage of the confidence of his patron and
+benefactor to rob him of property to a large amount. Upon this charge he
+was committed to the county jail, from whence he made his escape about a
+fortnight ago, without venturing to stand his trial; a circumstance
+which is stated by the advertiser as tantamount to a confession of his
+guilt.
+
+"My friends, I was acquainted with the particulars of this story some
+time before. This lad let me into his history, at a time that he could
+not possibly foresee that he should stand in need of that precaution as
+an antidote against danger. He is not guilty of what is laid to his
+charge. Which of you is so ignorant as to suppose, that his escape is
+any confirmation of his guilt? Who ever thinks, when he is apprehended
+for trial, of his innocence or guilt as being at all material to the
+issue? Who ever was fool enough to volunteer a trial, where those who
+are to decide think more of the horror of the thing of which he is
+accused, than whether he were the person that did it; and where the
+nature of our motives is to be collected from a set of ignorant
+witnesses, that no wise man would trust for a fair representation of the
+most indifferent action of his life?
+
+"The poor lad's story is a long one, and I will not trouble you with it
+now. But from that story it is as clear as the day, that, because he
+wished to leave the service of his master, because he had been perhaps a
+little too inquisitive in his master's concerns, and because, as I
+suspect, he had been trusted with some important secrets, his master
+conceived an antipathy against him. The antipathy gradually proceeded
+to such a length, as to induce the master to forge this vile accusation.
+He seemed willing to hang the lad out of the way, rather than suffer him
+to go where he pleased, or get beyond the reach of his power. Williams
+has told me the story with such ingenuousness, that I am as sure that he
+is guiltless of what they lay to his charge, as that I am so myself.
+Nevertheless the man's servants who were called in to hear the
+accusation, and his relation, who as justice of the peace made out the
+mittimus, and who had the folly to think he could be impartial, gave it
+on his side with one voice, and thus afforded Williams a sample of what
+he had to expect in the sequel.
+
+"Larkins, who when he received this paper had no previous knowledge of
+particulars, was for taking advantage of it for the purpose of earning
+the hundred guineas. Are you of that mind now you have heard them? Will
+you for so paltry a consideration deliver up the lamb into the jaws of
+the wolf? Will you abet the purposes of this sanguinary rascal, who, not
+contented with driving his late dependent from house and home, depriving
+him of character and all the ordinary means of subsistence, and leaving
+him almost without a refuge, still thirsts for his blood? If no other
+person have the courage to set limits to the tyranny of courts of
+justice, shall not we? Shall we, who earn our livelihood by generous
+daring, be indebted for a penny to the vile artifices of the informer?
+Shall we, against whom the whole species is in arms, refuse our
+protection to an individual, more exposed to, but still less deserving
+of, their persecution than ourselves?"
+
+The representation of the captain produced an instant effect upon the
+whole company. They all exclaimed, "Betray him! No, not for worlds! He
+is safe. We will protect him at the hazard of our lives. If fidelity
+and honour be banished from thieves, where shall they find refuge upon
+the face of the earth?"[F] Larkins in particular thanked the captain for
+his interference, and swore that he would rather part with his right
+hand than injure so worthy a lad or assist such an unheard-of villainy.
+Saying this, he took me by the hand and bade me fear nothing. Under
+their roof no harm should ever befal me; and, even if the understrappers
+of the law should discover my retreat, they would to a man die in my
+defence, sooner than a hair of my head should be hurt. I thanked him
+most sincerely for his good-will; but I was principally struck with the
+fervent benevolence of my benefactor. I told them, I found that my
+enemies were inexorable, and would never be appeased but with my blood;
+and I assured them with the most solemn and earnest veracity, that I had
+done nothing to deserve the persecution which was exercised against me.
+
+[Footnote F: This seems to be the parody of a celebrated saying of John
+King of France, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the battle
+of Poitiers.]
+
+The spirit and energy of Mr. Raymond had been such as to leave no part
+for me to perform in repelling this unlooked-for danger. Nevertheless,
+it left a very serious impression upon my mind. I had always placed some
+confidence in the returning equity of Mr. Falkland. Though he persecuted
+me with bitterness, I could not help believing that he did it
+unwillingly, and I was persuaded it would not be for ever. A man, whose
+original principles had been so full of rectitude and honour, could not
+fail at some time to recollect the injustice of his conduct, and to
+remit his asperity. This idea had been always present to me, and had in
+no small degree conspired to instigate my exertions. I said, "I will
+convince my persecutor that I am of more value than that I should be
+sacrificed purely by way of precaution." These expectations on my part
+had been encouraged by Mr. Falkland's behaviour upon the question of my
+imprisonment, and by various particulars which had occurred since.
+
+But this new incident gave the subject a totally different appearance. I
+saw him, not contented with blasting my reputation, confining me for a
+period in jail, and reducing me to the situation of a houseless
+vagabond, still continuing his pursuit under these forlorn circumstances
+with unmitigable cruelty. Indignation and resentment seemed now for the
+first time to penetrate my mind. I knew his misery so well, I was so
+fully acquainted with its cause, and strongly impressed with the idea of
+its being unmerited, that, while I suffered deeply, I still continued to
+pity, rather than hate my persecutor. But this incident introduced some
+change into my feelings. I said, "Surely he might now believe that he
+had sufficiently disarmed me, and might at length suffer me to be at
+peace. At least, ought he not to be contented to leave me to my fate,
+the perilous and uncertain condition of an escaped felon, instead of
+thus whetting the animosity and vigilance of my countrymen against me?
+Were his interference on my behalf in opposition to the stern severity
+of Mr. Forester, and his various acts of kindness since, a mere part
+that he played in order to lull me into patience? Was he perpetually
+haunted with the fear of an ample retaliation, and for that purpose did
+he personate remorse, at the very moment that he was secretly keeping
+every engine at play that could secure my destruction?" The very
+suspicion of such a fact filled me with inexpressible horror, and
+struck a sudden chill through every fibre of my frame.
+
+My wound was by this time completely healed, and it became absolutely
+necessary that I should form some determination respecting the future.
+My habits of thinking were such as gave me an uncontrollable repugnance
+to the vocation of my hosts. I did not indeed feel that aversion and
+abhorrence to the men which are commonly entertained. I saw and
+respected their good qualities and their virtues. I was by no means
+inclined to believe them worse men, or more hostile in their
+dispositions to the welfare of their species, than the generality of
+those that look down upon them with most censure. But, though I did not
+cease to love them as individuals, my eyes were perfectly open to their
+mistakes. If I should otherwise have been in danger of being misled, it
+was my fortune to have studied felons in a jail before I studied them in
+their state of comparative prosperity; and this was an infallible
+antidote to the poison. I saw that in this profession were exerted
+uncommon energy, ingenuity, and fortitude, and I could not help
+recollecting how admirably beneficial such qualities might be made in
+the great theatre of human affairs; while, in their present direction,
+they were thrown away upon purposes diametrically at war with the first
+interests of human society. Nor were their proceedings less injurious to
+their own interest than incompatible with the general welfare. The man
+who risks or sacrifices his life for the public cause, is rewarded with
+the testimony of an approving conscience; but persons who wantonly defy
+the necessary, though atrociously exaggerated, precautions of government
+in the matter of property, at the same time that they commit an
+alarming hostility against the whole, are, as to their own concerns,
+scarcely less absurd and self-neglectful than the man who should set
+himself up as a mark for a file of musqueteers to shoot at.
+
+Viewing the subject in this light, I not only determined that I would
+have no share in their occupation myself, but thought I could not do
+less, in return for the benefits I had received from them, than
+endeavour to dissuade them from an employment in which they must
+themselves be the greatest sufferers. My expostulation met with a
+various reception. All the persons to whom it was addressed had been
+tolerably successful in persuading themselves of the innocence of their
+calling; and what remained of doubt in their mind was smothered, and, so
+to speak, laboriously forgotten. Some of them laughed at my arguments,
+as a ridiculous piece of missionary quixotism. Others, and particularly
+our captain, repelled them with the boldness of a man that knows he has
+got the strongest side. But this sentiment of ease and self-satisfaction
+did not long remain. They had been used to arguments derived from
+religion and the sacredness of law. They had long ago shaken these from
+them as so many prejudices. But my view of the subject appealed to
+principles which they could not contest, and had by no means the air of
+that customary reproof which is for ever dinned in our ears without
+finding one responsive chord in our hearts. Urged, as they now were,
+with objections unexpected and cogent, some of those to whom I addressed
+them began to grow peevish and impatient of the intrusive remonstrance.
+But this was by no means the case with Mr. Raymond. He was possessed of
+a candour that I have seldom seen equalled. He was surprised to hear
+objections so powerful to that which, as a matter of speculation, he
+believed he had examined on all sides. He revolved them with
+impartiality and care. He admitted them slowly, but he at length fully
+admitted them. He had now but one rejoinder in reserve.
+
+"Alas! Williams," said he, "it would have been fortunate for me if these
+views had been presented to me, previously to my embracing my present
+profession. It is now too late. Those very laws which, by a perception
+of their iniquity, drove me to what I am, preclude my return. God, we
+are told, judges of men by what they are at the period of arraignment,
+and whatever be their crimes, if they have seen and abjured the folly of
+those crimes, receives them to favour. But the institutions of countries
+that profess to worship this God admit no such distinctions. They leave
+no room for amendment, and seem to have a brutal delight in confounding
+the demerits of offenders. It signifies not what is the character of the
+individual at the hour of trial. How changed, how spotless, and how
+useful, avails him nothing. If they discover at the distance of
+fourteen[G] or of forty years[H] an action for which the law ordains
+that his life shall be the forfeit, though the interval should have been
+spent with the purity of a saint and the devotedness of a patriot, they
+disdain to enquire into it. What then can I do? Am I not compelled to go
+on in folly, having once begun?"
+
+[Footnote G: Eugene Aram. See Annual Register for 1759.]
+
+[Footnote H: William Andrew Home. Ibid.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I Was extremely affected by this plea. I could only answer, that Mr.
+Raymond must himself be the best judge of the course it became him to
+hold; I trusted the case was not so desperate as he imagined.
+
+This subject was pursued no further, and was in some degree driven from
+my thoughts by an incident of a very extraordinary nature.
+
+I have already mentioned the animosity that was entertained against me
+by the infernal portress of this solitary mansion. Gines, the expelled
+member of the gang, had been her particular favourite. She submitted to
+his exile indeed, because her genius felt subdued by the energy and
+inherent superiority of Mr. Raymond; but she submitted with murmuring
+and discontent. Not daring to resent the conduct of the principal in
+this affair, she collected all the bitterness of her spirit against me.
+
+To the unpardonable offence I had thus committed in the first instance,
+were added the reasonings I had lately offered against the profession of
+robbery. Robbery was a fundamental article in the creed of this hoary
+veteran, and she listened to my objections with the same unaffected
+astonishment and horror that an old woman of other habits would listen
+to one who objected to the agonies and dissolution of the Creator of the
+world, or to the garment of imputed righteousness prepared to envelope
+the souls of the elect. Like the religious bigot, she was sufficiently
+disposed to avenge a hostility against her opinions with the weapons of
+sublunary warfare.
+
+Meanwhile I had smiled at the impotence of her malice, as an object of
+contempt rather than alarm. She perceived, as I imagine, the slight
+estimation in which I held her, and this did not a little increase the
+perturbation of her thoughts.
+
+One day I was left alone, with no other person in the house than this
+swarthy sybil. The thieves had set out upon an expedition about two
+hours after sunset on the preceding evening, and had not returned, as
+they were accustomed to do, before day-break the next morning. This was
+a circumstance that sometimes occurred, and therefore did not produce
+any extraordinary alarm. At one time the scent of prey would lead them
+beyond the bounds they had prescribed themselves, and at another the
+fear of pursuit: the life of a thief is always uncertain. The old woman
+had been preparing during the night for the meal to which they would
+expect to sit down as soon as might be after their return.
+
+For myself, I had learned from their habits to be indifferent to the
+regular return of the different parts of the day, and in some degree to
+turn day into night, and night into day. I had been now several weeks in
+this residence, and the season was considerably advanced. I had passed
+some hours during the night in ruminating on my situation. The character
+and manners of the men among whom I lived were disgusting to me. Their
+brutal ignorance, their ferocious habits, and their coarse behaviour,
+instead of becoming more tolerable by custom, hourly added force to my
+original aversion. The uncommon vigour of their minds, and acuteness of
+their invention in the business they pursued, compared with the
+odiousness of that business and their habitual depravity, awakened in me
+sensations too painful to be endured. Moral disapprobation, at least in
+a mind unsubdued by philosophy, I found to be one of the most fertile
+sources of disquiet and uneasiness. From this pain the society of Mr.
+Raymond by no means relieved me. He was indeed eminently superior to the
+vices of the rest; but I did not less exquisitely feel how much he was
+out of his place, how disproportionably associated, or how contemptibly
+employed. I had attempted to counteract the errors under which he and
+his companions laboured; but I had found the obstacles that presented
+themselves greater than I had imagined.
+
+What was I to do? Was I to wait the issue of this my missionary
+undertaking, or was I to withdraw myself immediately? When I withdrew,
+ought that to be done privately, or with an open avowal of my design,
+and an endeavour to supply by the force of example what was deficient in
+my arguments? It was certainly improper, as I declined all participation
+in the pursuits of these men, did not pay my contribution of hazard to
+the means by which they subsisted, and had no congeniality with their
+habits, that I should continue to reside with them longer than was
+absolutely necessary. There was one circumstance that rendered this
+deliberation particularly pressing. They intended in a few days removing
+from their present habitation, to a haunt to which they were accustomed,
+in a distant county. If I did not propose to continue with them, it
+would perhaps be wrong to accompany them in this removal. The state of
+calamity to which my inexorable prosecutor had reduced me, had made the
+encounter even of a den of robbers a fortunate adventure. But the time
+that had since elapsed, had probably been sufficient to relax the
+keenness of the quest that was made after me. I sighed for that solitude
+and obscurity, that retreat from the vexations of the world and the
+voice even of common fame, which I had proposed to myself when I broke
+my prison.
+
+Such were the meditations which now occupied my mind. At length I grew
+fatigued with continual contemplation, and to relieve myself pulled out
+a pocket Horace, the legacy of my beloved Brightwel! I read with avidity
+the epistle in which he so beautifully describes to Fuscus, the
+grammarian, the pleasures of rural tranquillity and independence. By
+this time the sun rose from behind the eastern hills, and I opened my
+casement to contemplate it. The day commenced with peculiar brilliancy,
+and was accompanied with all those charms which the poets of nature, as
+they have been styled, have so much delighted to describe. There was
+something in this scene, particularly as succeeding to the active
+exertions of intellect, that soothed the mind to composure. Insensibly a
+confused reverie invaded my faculties; I withdrew from the window, threw
+myself upon the bed, and fell asleep.
+
+I do not recollect the precise images which in this situation passed
+through my thoughts, but I know that they concluded with the idea of
+some person, the agent of Mr. Falkland, approaching to assassinate me.
+This thought had probably been suggested by the project I meditated of
+entering once again into the world, and throwing myself within the
+sphere of his possible vengeance. I imagined that the design of the
+murderer was to come upon me by surprise, that I was aware of his
+design, and yet, by some fascination, had no thought of evading it. I
+heard the steps of the murderer as he cautiously approached. I seemed to
+listen to his constrained yet audible breathings. He came up to the
+corner where I was placed, and then stopped.
+
+The idea became too terrible; I started, opened my eyes, and beheld the
+execrable hag before mentioned standing over me with a butcher's
+cleaver. I shifted my situation with a speed that seemed too swift for
+volition, and the blow already aimed at my skull sunk impotent upon the
+bed. Before she could wholly recover her posture, I sprung upon her,
+seized hold of the weapon, and had nearly wrested it from her. But in a
+moment she resumed her strength and her desperate purpose, and we had a
+furious struggle--she impelled by inveterate malice, and I resisting for
+my life. Her vigour was truly Amazonian, and at no time had I ever
+occasion to contend with a more formidable opponent. Her glance was
+rapid and exact, and the shock with which from time to time she impelled
+her whole frame inconceivably vehement. At length I was victorious, took
+from her the instrument of death, and threw her upon the ground. Till
+now the earnestness of her exertions had curbed her rage; but now she
+gnashed with her teeth, her eyes seemed as if starting from their
+sockets, and her body heaved with uncontrollable insanity.
+
+"Rascal! devil!" she exclaimed, "what do you mean to do to me?"
+
+Till now the scene had passed uninterrupted by a single word.
+
+"Nothing," I replied: "begone, infernal witch! and leave me to myself."
+
+"Leave you! No: I will thrust my fingers through your ribs, and drink
+your blood!--You conquer me?--Ha, ha!--Yes, yes; you shall!--I will sit
+upon you, and press you to hell! I will roast you with brimstone, and
+dash your entrails into your eyes! Ha, ha!--ha!"
+
+Saying this, she sprung up, and prepared to attack me with redoubled
+fury. I seized her hands, and compelled her to sit upon the bed. Thus
+restrained, she continued to express the tumult of her thoughts by
+grinning, by certain furious motions of her head, and by occasional
+vehement efforts to disengage herself from my grasp. These contortions
+and starts were of the nature of those fits in which the patients are
+commonly supposed to need three or four persons to hold them. But I
+found by experience that, under the circumstances in which I was
+placed, my single strength was sufficient. The spectacle of her emotions
+was inconceivably frightful. Her violence at length however began to
+abate, and she became convinced of the hopelessness of the contest.
+
+"Let me go!" said she. "Why do you hold me? I will not be held."
+
+"I wanted you gone from the first," replied I.
+
+"Are you contented to go now?"
+
+"Yes, I tell you, misbegotten villain! Yes, rascal!"
+
+I immediately loosed my hold. She flew to the door, and, holding it in
+her hand, said, "I will be the death of you yet: you shall not be your
+own man twenty-four hours longer!" With these words she shut the door,
+and locked it upon me. An action so totally unexpected startled me.
+Whither was she gone? What was it she intended? To perish by the
+machinations of such a hag as this was a thought not to be endured.
+Death in any form brought upon us by surprise, and for which the mind
+has had no time to prepare, is inexpressibly terrible. My thoughts
+wandered in breathless horror and confusion, and all within was uproar.
+I endeavoured to break the door, but in vain. I went round the room in
+search of some tool to assist me. At length I rushed against it with a
+desperate effort, to which it yielded, and had nearly thrown me from the
+top of the stairs to the bottom.
+
+I descended with all possible caution and vigilance, I entered the room
+which served us for a kitchen, but it was deserted. I searched every
+other apartment in vain. I went out among the ruins; still I discovered
+nothing of my late assailant. It was extraordinaiy: what could be become
+of her? what was I to conclude from her disappearance! I reflected on
+her parting menace,--"I should not be my own man twenty-four hours
+longer." It was mysterious! it did not seem to be the menace of
+assassination. Suddenly the recollection of the hand-bill brought to us
+by Larkins rushed upon my memory. Was it possible that she alluded to
+that in her parting words? Would she set out upon such an expedition by
+herself? Was it not dangerous to the whole fraternity if, without the
+smallest precaution, she should bring the officers of justice in the
+midst of them? It was perhaps improbable she would engage in an
+undertaking thus desperate. It was not however easy to answer for the
+conduct of a person in her state of mind. Should I wait, and risk the
+preservation of my liberty upon the issue?
+
+To this question I returned an immediate negative. I had resolved in a
+short time to quit my present situation, and the difference of a little
+sooner or a little later could not be very material. It promised to be
+neither agreeable nor prudent for me to remain under the same roof with
+a person who had manifested such a fierce and inexpiable hostility. But
+the consideration which had inexpressibly the most weight with me,
+belonged to the ideas of imprisonment, trial, and death. The longer they
+had formed the subject of my contemplation, the more forcibly was I
+impelled to avoid them. I had entered upon a system of action for that
+purpose; I had already made many sacrifices; and I believed that I would
+never miscarry in this project through any neglect of mine. The thought
+of what was reserved for me by my persecutors sickened my very soul; and
+the more intimately I was acquainted with oppression and injustice, the
+more deeply was I penetrated with the abhorrence to which they are
+entitled.
+
+Such were the reasons that determined me instantly, abruptly, without
+leave-taking, or acknowledgment for the peculiar and repeated favours I
+had received, to quit a habitation to which, for six weeks, I had
+apparently been indebted for protection from trial, conviction, and an
+ignominious death. I had come hither pennyless; I quitted my abode with
+the sum of a few guineas in my possession, Mr. Raymond having insisted
+upon my taking a share at the time that each man received his dividend
+from the common stock. Though I had reason to suppose that the heat of
+the pursuit against me would be somewhat remitted by the time that had
+elapsed, the magnitude of the mischief that, in an unfavourable event,
+might fall on me, determined me to neglect no imaginable precaution. I
+recollected the hand-bill which was the source of my present alarm, and
+conceived that one of the principal dangers which threatened me was the
+recognition of my person, either by such as had previously known me, or
+even by strangers. It seemed prudent therefore to disguise it as
+effectually as I could. For this purpose I had recourse to a parcel of
+tattered garments, that lay in a neglected corner of our habitation. The
+disguise I chose was that of a beggar. Upon this plan, I threw off my
+shirt; I tied a handkerchief about my head, with which I took care to
+cover one of my eyes; over this I drew a piece of an old woollen
+nightcap. I selected the worst apparel I could find; and this I reduced
+to a still more deplorable condition, by rents that I purposely made in
+various places. Thus equipped, I surveyed myself in a looking-glass. I
+had rendered my appearance complete; nor would any one have suspected
+that I was not one of the fraternity to which I assumed to belong. I
+said, "This is the form in which tyranny and injustice oblige me to seek
+for refuge: but better, a thousand times better is it, thus to incur
+contempt with the dregs of mankind, than trust to the tender mercies of
+our superiors!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The only rule that I laid down to myself in traversing the forest, was
+to take a direction as opposite as possible to that which led to the
+scene of my late imprisonment. After about two hours walking I arrived
+at the termination of this ruder scene, and reached that part of the
+country which is inclosed and cultivated. Here I sat down by the side of
+a brook, and, pulling out a crust of bread which I had brought away with
+me, rested and refreshed myself. While I continued in this place, I
+began to ruminate upon the plan I should lay down for my future
+proceedings; and my propensity now led me, as it had done in a former
+instance, to fix upon the capital, which I believed, besides its other
+recommendations, would prove the safest place for concealment. During
+these thoughts I saw a couple of peasants passing at a small distance,
+and enquired of them respecting the London road. By their description I
+understood that the most immediate way would be to repass a part of the
+forest, and that it would be necessary to approach considerably nearer
+to the county-town than I was at the spot which I had at present
+reached. I did not imagine that this could be a circumstance of
+considerable importance. My disguise appeared to be a sufficient
+security against momentary danger; and I therefore took a path, though
+not the most direct one, which led towards the point they suggested.
+
+Some of the occurrences of the day are deserving to be mentioned. As I
+passed along a road which lay in my way for a few miles, I saw a
+carriage advancing in the opposite direction. I debated with myself for
+a moment, whether I should pass it without notice, or should take this
+occasion, by voice or gesture, of making an essay of my trade. This idle
+disquisition was however speedily driven from my mind when I perceived
+that the carriage was Mr. Falkland's. The suddenness of the encounter
+struck me with terror, though perhaps it would have been difficult for
+calm reflection to have discovered any considerable danger. I withdrew
+from the road, and skulked behind a hedge till it should have completely
+gone by. I was too much occupied with my own feelings, to venture to
+examine whether or no the terrible adversary of my peace were in the
+carriage. I persuaded myself that he was. I looked after the equipage,
+and exclaimed, "There you may see the luxurious accommodations and
+appendages of guilt, and here the forlornness that awaits upon
+innocence!"--I was to blame to imagine that my case was singular in that
+respect. I only mention it to show how tile most trivial circumstance
+contributes to embitter the cup to the man of adversity. The thought
+however was a transient one. I had learned this lesson from my
+sufferings, not to indulge in the luxury of discontent. As my mind
+recovered its tranquillity, I began to enquire whether the phenomenon I
+had just seen could have any relation to myself. But though my mind was
+extremely inquisitive and versatile in this respect, I could discover no
+sufficient ground upon which to build a judgment.
+
+At night I entered a little public-house at the extremity of a village,
+and, seating myself in a corner of the kitchen, asked for some bread and
+cheese. While I was sitting at my repast, three or four labourers came
+in for a little refreshment after their work. Ideas respecting the
+inequality of rank pervade every order in society; and, as my appearance
+was meaner and more contemptible than theirs, I found it expedient to
+give way to these gentry of a village alehouse, and remove to an
+obscurer station. I was surprised, and not a little startled, to find
+them fall almost immediately into conversation about my history, whom,
+with a slight variation of circumstances, they styled the notorious
+housebreaker, Kit Williams.
+
+"Damn the fellow," said one of them, "one never hears of any thing else.
+O' my life, I think he makes talk for the whole country."
+
+"That is very true," replied another. "I was at the market-town to-day
+to sell some oats for my master, and there was a hue and cry, some of
+them thought they had got him, but it was a false alarm."
+
+"That hundred guineas is a fine thing," rejoined the first. "I should be
+glad if so be as how it fell in my way."
+
+"For the matter of that," said his companion, "I should like a hundred
+guineas as well as another. But I cannot be of your mind for all that. I
+should never think money would do me any good that had been the means of
+bringing a Christian creature to the gallows."
+
+"Poh, that is all my granny! Some folks must be hanged, to keep the
+wheels of our state-folks a-going. Besides, I could forgive the fellow
+all his other robberies, but that he should have been so hardened as to
+break the house of his own master at last, that is too bad."
+
+"Lord! lord!" replied the other, "I see you know nothing of the matter!
+I will tell you how it was, as I learned it at the town. I question
+whether he ever robbed his master at all. But, hark you! you must know
+as how that squire Falkland was once tried for murder"--
+
+"Yes, yes, we know that."
+
+"Well, he was as innocent as the child unborn. But I supposes as how he
+is a little soft or so. And so Kit Williams--Kit is a devilish cunning
+fellow, you may judge that from his breaking prison no less than five
+times,--so, I say, he threatened to bring his master to trial at
+'size all over again, and so frightened him, and got money from him at
+divers times. Till at last one squire Forester, a relation of t'other,
+found it all out. And he made the hell of a rumpus, and sent away Kit to
+prison in a twinky; and I believe he would have been hanged: for when
+two squires lay their heads together, they do not much matter law, you
+know; or else they twist the law to their own ends, I cannot exactly say
+which; but it is much at one when the poor fellow's breath is out of his
+body."
+
+Though this story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient
+detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned. Each man maintained
+the justness of his own statement, and the dispute was long and
+obstinately pursued. Historians and commentators at length withdrew
+together. The terrors with which I was seized when this conversation
+began, were extreme. I stole a sidelong glance to one quarter and
+another, to observe if any man's attention was turned upon me. I
+trembled as if in an ague-fit; and, at first, felt continual impulses to
+quit the house, and take to my heels. I drew closer to my corner, held
+aside my head, and seemed from time to time to undergo a total
+revolution of the animal economy.
+
+At length the tide of ideas turned. Perceiving they paid no attention to
+me, the recollection of the full security my disguise afforded recurred
+strongly to my thoughts; and I began inwardly to exult, though I did not
+venture to obtrude myself to examination. By degrees I began to be
+amused at the absurdity of their tales, and the variety of the
+falsehoods I heard asserted around me. My soul seemed to expand; I felt
+a pride in the self-possession and lightness of heart with which I could
+listen to the scene; and I determined to prolong and heighten the
+enjoyment. Accordingly, when they were withdrawn, I addressed myself to
+our hostess, a buxom, bluff, good-humoured widow, and asked what sort of
+a man this Kit Williams might be? She replied that, as she was informed,
+he was as handsome, likely a lad, as any in four counties round; and
+that she loved him for his cleverness, by which he outwitted all the
+keepers they could set over him, and made his way through stone walls as
+if they were so many cobwebs. I observed, that the country was so
+thoroughly alarmed, that I did not think it possible he should escape
+the pursuit that was set up after him. This idea excited her immediate
+indignation: she said, she hoped he was far enough away by this time;
+but if not, she wished the curse of God might light on them that
+betrayed so noble a fellow to an ignominious end!--Though she little
+thought that the person of whom she spoke was so near her, yet the
+sincere and generous warmth with which She interested herself in my
+behalf gave me considerable pleasure. With this sensation to sweeten the
+fatigues of the day and the calamities of my situation, I retired from
+the kitchen to a neighbouring barn, laid myself down upon some straw,
+and fell into a profound sleep.
+
+The next day about noon, as I was pursuing my journey, I was overtaken
+by two men on horseback, who stopped me, to enquire respecting a person
+that they supposed might have passed along that road. As they proceeded
+in their description, I perceived, with astonishment and terror, that I
+was myself the person to whom their questions related. They entered into
+a tolerably accurate detail of the various characteristics by which my
+person might best be distinguished. They said, they had good reason to
+believe that I had been seen at a place in that county the very day
+before. While they were speaking a third person, who had fallen behind,
+came up; and my alarm was greatly increased upon seeing that this person
+was the servant of Mr. Forester, who had visited me in prison about a
+fortnight before my escape. My best resource in this crisis was
+composure and apparent indifference. It was fortunate for me that my
+disguise was so complete, that the eye of Mr. Falkland itself could
+scarcely have penetrated it. I had been aware for some time before that
+this was a refuge which events might make necessary, and had endeavoured
+to arrange and methodise my ideas upon the subject. From my youth I had
+possessed a considerable facility in the art of imitation; and when I
+quitted my retreat in the habitation of Mr. Raymond, I adopted, along
+with my beggar's attire, a peculiar slouching and clownish gait, to be
+used whenever there should appear the least chance of my being observed,
+together with an Irish brogue which I had had an opportunity of studying
+in my prison. Such are the miserable expedients, and so great the
+studied artifice, which man, who never deserves the name of manhood but
+in proportion as he is erect and independent, may find it necessary to
+employ, for the purpose of eluding the inexorable animosity and
+unfeeling tyranny of his fellow man! I had made use of this brogue,
+though I have not thought it necessary to write it down in my narrative,
+in the conversation of the village alehouse. Mr. Forester's servant, as
+he came up, observed that his companions were engaged in conversation
+with me; and, guessing at the subject, asked whether they had gained any
+intelligence. He added to the information at which they had already
+hinted, that a resolution was taken to spare neither diligence nor
+expense for my discovery and apprehension, and that they were satisfied,
+if I were above ground and in the kingdom, it would be impossible for me
+to escape them.
+
+Every new incident that had occurred to me tended to impress upon my
+mind the extreme danger to which I was exposed. I could almost have
+imagined that I was the sole subject of general attention, and that the
+whole world was in arms to exterminate me. The very idea tingled through
+every fibre of my frame. But, terrible as it appeared to my imagination,
+it did but give new energy to my purpose; and I determined that I would
+not voluntarily resign the field, that is, literally speaking, my neck
+to the cord of the executioner, notwithstanding the greatest superiority
+in my assailants. But the incidents which had befallen me, though they
+did not change my purpose, induced me to examine over again the means by
+which it might be effected. The consequence of this revisal was, to
+determine me to bend my course to the nearest sea-port on the west side
+of the island, and transport myself to Ireland. I cannot now tell what
+it was that inclined me to prefer this scheme to that which I had
+originally formed. Perhaps the latter, which had been for some time
+present to my imagination, for that reason appeared the more obvious of
+the two; and I found an appearance of complexity, which the mind did not
+stay to explain, in substituting the other in its stead.
+
+I arrived without further impediment at the place from which I intended
+to sail, enquired for a vessel, which I found ready to put to sea in a
+few hours, and agreed with the captain for my passage. Ireland had to
+me the disadvantage of being a dependency of the British government, and
+therefore a place of less security than most other countries which are
+divided from it by the ocean. To judge from the diligence with which I
+seemed to be pursued in England, it was not improbable that the zeal of
+my persecutors might follow me to the other side of the channel. It was
+however sufficiently agreeable to my mind, that I was upon the point of
+being removed one step further from the danger which was so grievous to
+my imagination.
+
+Could there be any peril in the short interval that was to elapse,
+before the vessel was to weigh anchor and quit the English shore?
+Probably not. A very short time had intervened between my determination
+for the sea and my arrival at this place; and if any new alarm had been
+given to my prosecutors, it proceeded from the old woman a very few days
+before. I hoped I had anticipated their diligence. Meanwhile, that I
+might neglect no reasonable precaution, I went instantly on board,
+resolved that I would not unnecessarily, by walking the streets of the
+town, expose myself to any untoward accident. This was the first time I
+had, upon any occasion, taken leave of my native country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The time was now nearly elapsed that was prescribed for our stay, and
+orders for weighing anchor were every moment expected, when we were
+hailed by a boat from the shore, with two other men in it besides those
+that rowed. They entered our vessel in an instant. They were officers
+of justice. The passengers, five persons besides myself, were ordered
+upon deck for examination. I was inexpressibly disturbed at the
+occurrence of such a circumstance in so unseasonable a moment. I took it
+for granted that it was of me they were in search. Was it possible that,
+by any unaccountable accident, they should have got an intimation of my
+disguise? It was infinitely more distressing to encounter them upon this
+narrow stage, and under these pointed circumstances, than, as I had
+before encountered my pursuers, under the appearance of an indifferent
+person. My recollection however did not forsake me. I confided in my
+conscious disguise and my Irish brogue, as a rock of dependence against
+all accidents.
+
+No sooner did we appear upon deck than, to my great consternation, I
+could observe the attention of our guests principally turned upon me.
+They asked a few frivolous questions of such of my fellow passengers as
+happened to be nearest to them; and then, turning to me, enquired my
+name, who I was, whence I came, and what had brought me there? I had
+scarcely opened my mouth to reply, when, with one consent, they laid
+hold of me, said I was their prisoner, and declared that my accent,
+together with the correspondence of my person, would be sufficient to
+convict me before any court in England. I was hurried out of the vessel
+into the boat in which they came, and seated between them, as if by way
+of precaution, lest I should spring overboard, and by any means escape
+them.
+
+I now took it for granted that I was once more in the power of Mr.
+Falkland; and the idea was insupportably mortifying and oppressive to my
+imagination. Escape from his pursuit, freedom from his tyranny, were
+objects upon which my whole soul was bent. Could no human ingenuity and
+exertion effect them? Did his power reach through all space, and his
+eye penetrate every concealment? Was he like that mysterious being, to
+protect us from whose fierce revenge mountains and hills, we are told,
+might fall on us in vain? No idea is more heart-sickening and tremendous
+than this. But, in my case, it was not a subject of reasoning or of
+faith; I could derive no comfort, either directly from the unbelief
+which, upon religious subjects, some men avow to their own minds; or
+secretly from the remoteness and incomprehensibility of the conception:
+it was an affair of sense; I felt the fangs of the tiger striking deep
+into my heart.
+
+But though this impression was at first exceedingly strong, and
+accompanied with its usual attendants of dejection and pusillanimity, my
+mind soon began, as it were mechanically, to turn upon the consideration
+of the distance between this sea-port and my county prison, and the
+various opportunities of escape that might offer themselves in the
+interval. My first duty was to avoid betraying myself, more than it
+might afterwards appear I was betrayed already. It was possible that,
+though apprehended, my apprehension might have been determined on upon
+some slight score, and that, by my dexterity, I might render my
+dismission as sudden as my arrest had been. It was even possible that I
+had been seized through a mistake, and that the present measure might
+have no connection with Mr. Falkland's affair. Upon every supposition,
+it was my business to gain information. In my passage from the ship to
+the town I did not utter a word. My conductors commented on my
+sulkiness; but remarked that it would avail me nothing--I should
+infallibly swing, as it was never known that any body got off who was
+tried for robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to conceive the
+lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words: I
+persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their
+conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail
+from Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two
+Irishmen, that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up
+upon suspicion of being the other. They had a description of his person,
+which, though, as I afterwards found, it disagreed from mine in several
+material articles, appeared to them to tally to the minutest tittle. The
+intelligence that the whole proceeding against me was founded in a
+mistake, took an oppressive load from my mind. I believed that I should
+immediately be able to establish my innocence, to the satisfaction of
+any magistrate in the kingdom; and though crossed in my plans, and
+thwarted in my design of quitting the island, even after I was already
+at sea, this was but a trifling inconvenience compared with what I had
+had but too much reason to fear.
+
+As soon as we came ashore, I was conducted to the house of a justice of
+peace, a man who had formerly been the captain of a collier, but who,
+having been successful in the world, had quitted this wandering life,
+and for some years had had the honour to represent his majesty's person.
+We were detained for some time in a sort of anti-room, waiting his
+reverence's leisure. The persons by whom I had been taken up were
+experienced in their trade, and insisted upon employing this interval in
+searching me, in presence of two of his worship's servants. They found
+upon me fifteen guineas and some silver. They required me to strip
+myself perfectly naked, that they might examine whether I had bank-notes
+concealed any where about my person. They took up the detached parcels
+of my miserable attire as I threw it from me, and felt them one by one,
+to discover whether the articles of which they were in search might by
+any device be sewn up in them. To all this I submitted without
+murmuring. It might probably come to the same thing at last; and summary
+justice was sufficiently coincident with my views, my principal object
+being to get as soon as possible out of the clutches of the respectable
+persons who now had me in custody.
+
+This operation was scarcely completed, before we were directed to be
+ushered into his worship's apartment. My accusers opened the charge, and
+told him they had been ordered to this town, upon an intimation that one
+of the persons who robbed the Edinburgh mail was to be found here; and
+that they had taken me on board a vessel which was by this time under
+sail for Ireland. "Well," says his worship, "that is your story; now let
+us hear what account the gentleman gives of himself. What is your
+name--ha, sirrah? and from what part of Tipperary are you pleased to
+come?" I had already taken my determination upon this article; and the
+moment I learned the particulars of the charge against me, resolved, for
+the present at least, to lay aside my Irish accent, and speak my native
+tongue. This I had done in the very few words I had spoken to my
+conductors in the anti-room: they started at the metamorphosis; but they
+had gone too far for it to be possible they should retract, in
+consistence with their honour. I now told the justice that I was no
+Irishman, nor had ever been in that country: I was a native of England.
+This occasioned a consulting of the deposition in which my person was
+supposed to be described, and which my conductors had brought with them
+for their direction. To be sure, that required that the offender should
+be an Irishman.
+
+Observing his worship hesitate, I thought this was the time to push the
+matter a little further. I referred to the paper, and showed that the
+description neither tallied as to height nor complexion. But then it did
+as to years and the colour of the hair; and it was not this gentleman's
+habit, as he informed me, to squabble about trifles, or to let a man's
+neck out of the halter for a pretended flaw of a few inches in his
+stature. "If a man were too short," he said, "there was no remedy like a
+little stretching." The miscalculation in my case happened to be the
+opposite way, but his reverence did not think proper to lose his jest.
+Upon the whole, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed.
+
+My conductors observed this, and began to tremble for the reward, which,
+two hours ago, they thought as good as in their own pocket. To retain me
+in custody they judged to be a safe speculation; if it turned out a
+mistake at last, they felt little apprehension of a suit for false
+imprisonment from a poor man, accoutred as I was, in rags. They
+therefore urged his worship to comply with their views. They told him
+that to be sure the evidence against me did not prove so strong as for
+their part they heartily wished it had, but that there were a number of
+suspicious circumstances respecting me. When I was brought up to them
+upon the deck of the vessel, I spoke as fine an Irish brogue as one
+shall hear in a summer's day; and now, all at once, there was not the
+least particle of it left. In searching me they had found upon me
+fifteen guineas, how should a poor beggar lad, such as I appeared, come
+honestly by fifteen guineas? Besides, when they had stripped me naked,
+though my dress was so shabby my skin had all the sleekness of a
+gentleman. In fine, for what purpose could a poor beggar, who had never
+been in Ireland in his life, want to transport himself to that country?
+It was as clear as the sun that I was no better than I should be. This
+reasoning, together with some significant winks and gestures between the
+justice and the plaintiffs, brought him over to their way of thinking.
+He said, I must go to Warwick, where it seems the other robber was at
+present in custody, and be confronted with him; and if then every thing
+appeared fair and satisfactory, I should be discharged.
+
+No intelligence could be more terrible than that which was contained in
+these words. That I, who had found the whole country in arms against me,
+who was exposed to a pursuit so peculiarly vigilant and penetrating,
+should now be dragged to the very centre of the kingdom, without power
+of accommodating myself to circumstances, and under the immediate
+custody of the officers of justice, seemed to my ears almost the same
+thing as if he had pronounced upon me a sentence of death! I strenuously
+urged the injustice of this proceeding. I observed to the magistrate,
+that it was impossible I should be the person at whom the description
+pointed. It required an Irishman; I was no Irishman. It described a
+person shorter than I; a circumstance of all others the least capable of
+being counterfeited. There was not the slightest reason for detaining me
+in custody. I had been already disappointed of my voyage, and lost the
+money I had paid, down, through the officiousness of these gentlemen in
+apprehending me. I assured his worship, that every delay, under my
+circumstances, was of the utmost importance to me. It was impossible to
+devise a greater injury to be inflicted on me, than the proposal that,
+instead of being permitted to proceed upon my voyage, I should be sent,
+under arrest, into the heart of the kingdom.
+
+My remonstrances were vain. The justice was by no means inclined to
+digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the
+habiliments of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have
+silenced me for my impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness
+with which he was wholly unable to contend. When I had finished, he told
+me it was all to no purpose, and that it might have been better for me,
+if I had shown myself less insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond
+and a suspicious person. The more earnest I showed myself to get off,
+the more reason there was he should keep me fast. Perhaps, after all, I
+should turn out to be the felon in question. But, if I was not that, he
+had no doubt I was worse; a poacher, or, for what he knew, a murderer.
+He had a kind of a notion that he had seen my face before about some
+such affair; out of all doubt I was an old offender. He had it in his
+choice to send me to hard labour as a vagrant, upon the strength of my
+appearance and the contradictions in my story, or to order me to
+Warwick; and, out of the spontaneous goodness of his disposition, he
+chose the milder side of the alternative. He could assure me I should
+not slip through his fingers. It was of more benefit to his majesty's
+government to hang one such fellow as he suspected me to be, than, out
+of mistaken tenderness, to concern one's self for the good of all the
+beggars in the nation.
+
+Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man so
+fully impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter
+insignificance, I claimed that, at least, the money taken from my person
+should be restored to me. This was granted. His worship perhaps
+suspected that he had stretched a point in what he had already done,
+and was therefore the less unwilling to relax in this incidental
+circumstance. My conductors did not oppose themselves to this
+indulgence, for a reason that will appear in the sequel. The justice
+however enlarged upon his clemency in this proceeding. He did not know
+whether he was not exceeding the spirit of his commission in complying
+with my demand. So much money in my possession could not be honestly
+come by. But it was his temper to soften, as far as could be done with
+propriety, the strict letter of the law.
+
+There were cogent reasons why the gentlemen who had originally taken me
+into custody, chose that I should continue in their custody when my
+examination was over. Every man is, in his different mode, susceptible
+to a sense of honour; and they did not choose to encounter the disgrace
+that would accrue to them, if justice had been done. Every man is in
+some degree influenced by the love of power; and they were willing I
+should owe any benefit I received, to their sovereign grace and
+benignity, and not to the mere reason of the case. It was not however an
+unsubstantial honour and barren power that formed the objects of their
+pursuit: no, their views were deeper than that. In a word, though they
+chose that I should retire from the seat of justice, as I had come
+before it, a prisoner, yet the tenor of my examination had obliged them,
+in spite of themselves, to suspect that I was innocent of the charge
+alleged against me. Apprehensive therefore that the hundred guineas
+which had been offered as a reward for taking the robber was completely
+out of the question in the present business, they were contented to
+strike at smaller game. Having conducted me to an inn, and given
+directions respecting a vehicle for the journey, they took me aside,
+while one of them addressed me in the following manner:--
+
+"You see, my lad, how the case stands: hey for Warwick is the word I and
+when we are got there, what may happen then I will not pretend for to
+say. Whether you are innocent or no is no business of mine; but you are
+not such a chicken as to suppose, if so be as you are innocent, that
+that will make your game altogether sure. You say your business calls
+you another way, and as how you are in haste: I scorns to cross any man
+in his concerns, if I can help it. If therefore you will give us them
+there fifteen shiners, why snug is the word. They are of no use to you;
+a beggar, you know, is always at home. For the matter of that, we could
+have had them in the way of business, as you saw, at the justice's. But
+I am a man of principle; I loves to do things above board, and scorns to
+extort a shilling from any man."
+
+He who is tinctured with principles of moral discrimination is apt upon
+occasion to be run away with by his feelings in that respect, and to
+forget the immediate interest of the moment. I confess, that the first
+sentiment excited in my mind by this overture was that of indignation. I
+was irresistibly impelled to give utterance to this feeling, and
+postpone for a moment the consideration of the future. I replied with
+the severity which so base a proceeding appeared to deserve. My
+bear-leaders were considerably surprised with my firmness, but seemed to
+think it beneath them to contest with me the principles I delivered. He
+who had made the overture contented himself with replying, "Well, well,
+my lad, do as you will; you are not the first man that has been hanged
+rather than part with a few guineas." His words did not pass unheeded by
+me. They were strikingly applicable to my situation, and I was
+determined not to suffer the occasion to escape me unimproved.
+
+The pride of these gentlemen however was too great to admit of further
+parley for the present. They left me abruptly; having first ordered an
+old man, the father of the landlady, to stay in the room with me while
+they were absent. The old man they ordered, for security, to lock the
+door, and put the key in his pocket; at the same time mentioning below
+stairs the station in which they had left me, that the people of the
+house might have an eye upon what went forward, and not suffer me to
+escape. What was the intention of this manoeuvre I am unable certainly
+to pronounce. Probably it was a sort of compromise between their pride
+and their avarice; being desirous, for some reason or other, to drop me
+as soon as convenient, and therefore determining to wait the result of
+my private meditations on the proposal they had made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+They were no sooner withdrawn than I cast my eye upon the old man, and
+found something extremely venerable and interesting in his appearance.
+His form was above the middle size. It indicated that his strength had
+been once considerable; nor was it at this time by any means
+annihilated. His hair was in considerable quantity, and was as white as
+the drifted snow. His complexion was healthful and ruddy, at the same
+time that his face was furrowed with wrinkles. In his eye there was
+remarkable vivacity, and his whole countenance was strongly expressive
+of good-nature. The boorishness of his rank in society was lost in the
+cultivation his mind had derived from habits of sensibility and
+benevolence.
+
+The view of his figure immediately introduced a train of ideas into my
+mind, respecting the advantage to be drawn from the presence of such a
+person. The attempt to take any step without his consent was hopeless;
+for, though I should succeed with regard to him, he could easily give
+the alarm to other persons, who would, no doubt, be within call. Add to
+which, I could scarcely have prevailed on myself to offer any offence to
+a person whose first appearance so strongly engaged my affection and
+esteem. In reality my thoughts were turned into a different channel. I
+was impressed with an ardent wish to be able to call this man my
+benefactor. Pursued by a train of ill fortune, I could no longer
+consider myself as a member of society. I was a solitary being, cut off
+from the expectation of sympathy, kindness, and the good-will of
+mankind. I was strongly impelled, by the situation in which the present
+moment placed me, to indulge in a luxury which my destiny seemed to have
+denied. I could not conceive the smallest comparison between the idea of
+deriving my liberty from the spontaneous kindness of a worthy and
+excellent mind, and that of being indebted for it to the selfishness and
+baseness of the worst members of society. It was thus that I allowed
+myself in the wantonness of refinement, even in the midst of
+destruction.
+
+Guided by these sentiments, I requested his attention to the
+circumstances by which I had been brought into my present situation. He
+immediately signified his assent, and said he would cheerfully listen to
+any thing I thought proper to communicate. I told him, the persons who
+had just left me in charge with him had come to this town for the
+purpose of apprehending some person who had been guilty of robbing the
+mail; that they had chosen to take me up under this warrant, and had
+conducted me before a justice of the peace; that they had soon detected
+their mistake, the person in question being an Irishman, and differing
+from me both in country and stature; but that, by collusion between them
+and the justice, they were permitted to retain me in custody, and
+pretended to undertake to conduct me to Warwick to confront me with my
+accomplice; that, in searching me at the justice's, they had found a sum
+of money in my possession which excited their cupidity, and that they
+had just been proposing to me to give me my liberty upon condition of my
+surrendering this sum into their hands. Under these circumstances, I
+requested him to consider, whether he would wish to render himself the
+instrument of their extortion. I put myself into his hands, and solemnly
+averred the truth of the facts I had just stated. If he would assist me
+in my escape, it could have no other effect than to disappoint the base
+passions of my conductors. I would upon no account expose him to any
+real inconvenience; but I was well assured that the same generosity that
+should prompt him to a good deed, would enable him effectually to
+vindicate it when done; and that those who detained me, when they had
+lost sight of their prey, would feel covered with confusion, and not
+dare to take another step in the affair.
+
+The old man listened to what I related with curiosity and interest. He
+said that he had always felt an abhorrence to the sort of people who had
+me in their hands; that he had an aversion to the task they had just
+imposed upon him, but that he could not refuse some little disagreeable
+offices to oblige his daughter and son-in-law. He had no doubt, from my
+countenance and manner, of the truth of what I had asserted to him. It
+was an extraordinary request I had made, and he did not know what had
+induced me to think him the sort of person to whom, with any prospect of
+success, it might be made. In reality however his habits of thinking
+were uncommon, and he felt more than half inclined to act as I desired.
+One thing at least he would ask of me in return, which was to be
+faithfully informed in some degree respecting the person he was desired
+to oblige. What was my name?
+
+The question came upon me unprepared. But, whatever might be the
+consequence, I could not bear to deceive the person by whom it was put,
+and in the circumstances under which it was put. The practice of
+perpetual falsehood is too painful a task. I replied, that my name was
+Williams.
+
+He paused. His eye was fixed upon me. I saw his complexion alter at the
+repetition of that word. He proceeded with visible anxiety.
+
+My Christian name?
+
+Caleb.
+
+Good God! it could not be ----? He conjured me by every thing that was
+sacred to answer him faithfully to one question more. I was not--no, it
+was impossible--the person who had formerly lived servant with Mr.
+Falkland, of ----?
+
+I told him that, whatever might be the meaning of his question, I would
+answer him truly. I was the individual he mentioned.
+
+As I uttered these words the old man rose from his seat. He was sorry
+that fortune had been so unpropitious to him, as for him ever to have
+set eyes upon me! I was a monster with whom the very earth groaned!
+
+I entreated that he would suffer me to explain this new
+misapprehension, as he had done in the former instance. I had no doubt
+that I should do it equally to his satisfaction.
+
+No! no! no! he would upon no consideration admit, that his ears should
+suffer such contamination. This case and the other were very different.
+There was no criminal upon the face of the earth, no murderer, half so
+detestable as the person who could prevail upon himself to utter the
+charges I had done, by way of recrimination, against so generous a
+master.--The old man was in a perfect agony with the recollection.
+
+At length he calmed himself enough to say, he should never cease to
+grieve that he had held a moment's parley with me. He did not know what
+was the conduct severe justice required of him; but, since he had come
+into the knowledge of who I was only by my own confession, it was
+irreconcilably repugnant to his feelings to make use of that knowledge
+to my injury. Here therefore all relation between us ceased; as indeed
+it would be an abuse of words to consider me in the light of a human
+creature. He would do me no mischief; but, on the other hand, he would
+not, for the world, be in any way assisting and abetting me.
+
+I was inexpressibly affected at the abhorrence this good and benevolent
+creature expressed against me. I could not be silent; I endeavoured once
+and again to prevail upon him to hear me. But his determination was
+unalterable. Our contest lasted for some time, and he at length
+terminated it by ringing the bell, and calling up the waiter. A very
+little while after, my conductors entered, and the other persons
+withdrew.
+
+It was a part of the singularity of my fate that it hurried me from one
+species of anxiety and distress to another, too rapidly to suffer any
+one of them to sink deeply into my mind. I am apt to believe, in the
+retrospect, that half the calamities I was destined to endure would
+infallibly have overwhelmed and destroyed me. But, as it was, I had no
+leisure to chew the cud upon misfortunes as they befel me, but was under
+the necessity of forgetting them, to guard against peril that the next
+moment seemed ready to crush me.
+
+The behaviour of this incomparable and amiable old man cut me to the
+heart. It was a dreadful prognostic for all my future life. But, as I
+have just observed, my conductors entered, and another subject called
+imperiously upon my attention. I could have been content, mortified as I
+was at this instant, to have been shut up in some impenetrable solitude,
+and to have wrapped myself in inconsolable misery. But the grief I
+endured had not such power over me as that I could be content to risk
+the being led to the gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred
+against oppression, steeled my heart against that species of inertness.
+In the scene that had just passed I had indulged, as I have said, in a
+wantonness and luxury of refinement. It was time that indulgence should
+be brought to a period. It was dangerous to trifle any more upon the
+brink of fate; and, penetrated as I was with sadness by the result of my
+last attempt, I was little disposed to unnecessary circumambulation.
+
+I was exactly in the temper in which the gentlemen who had me in their
+power would have desired to find me. Accordingly we entered immediately
+upon business; and, after some chaffering, they agreed to accept eleven
+guineas as the price of my freedom. To preserve however the chariness of
+their reputation, they insisted upon conducting me with them for a few
+miles on the outside of a stage-coach. They then pretended that the road
+they had to travel lay in a cross country direction; and, having
+quitted the vehicle, they suffered me, almost as soon as it was out of
+sight, to shake off this troublesome association, and follow my own
+inclinations. It may be worth remarking by the way, that these fellows
+outwitted themselves at their own trade. They had laid hold of me at
+first under the idea of a prize of a hundred guineas; they had since
+been glad to accept a composition of eleven: but if they had retained me
+a little longer in their possession, they would have found the
+possibility of acquiring the sum that had originally excited their
+pursuit, upon a different score.
+
+The mischances that had befallen me, in my late attempt to escape from
+my pursuers by sea, deterred me from the thought of repeating that
+experiment. I therefore once more returned to the suggestion of hiding
+myself, at least for the present, amongst the crowds of the metropolis.
+Meanwhile, I by no means thought proper to venture by the direct route,
+and the less so, as that was the course which would be steered by my
+late conductors; but took my road along the borders of Wales. The only
+incident worth relating in this place occurred in an attempt to cross
+the Severn in a particular point. The mode was by a ferry; but, by some
+strange inadvertence, I lost my way so completely as to be wholly unable
+that night to reach the ferry, and arrive at the town which I had
+destined for my repose.
+
+This may seem a petty disappointment, in the midst of the overwhelming
+considerations that might have been expected to engross every thought of
+my mind. Yet it was borne by me with singular impatience. I was that day
+uncommonly fatigued. Previously to the time that I mistook, or at least
+was aware of the mistake of the road, the sky had become black and
+lowring, and soon after the clouds burst down in sheets of rain. I was
+in the midst of a heath, without a tree or covering of any sort to
+shelter me. I was thoroughly drenched in a moment. I pushed on with a
+sort of sullen determination. By and by the rain gave place to a storm
+of hail. The hail-stones were large and frequent. I was ill defended by
+the miserable covering I wore, and they seemed to cut me in a thousand
+directions. The hail-storm subsided, and was again succeeded by a heavy
+rain. By this time it was that I had perceived I was wholly out of my
+road. I could discover neither man nor beast, nor habitation of any
+kind. I walked on, measuring at every turn the path it would be proper
+to pursue, but in no instance finding a sufficient reason to reject one
+or prefer another. My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I
+muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of
+loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
+After wandering without any certain direction for two hours, I was
+overtaken by the night. The scene was nearly pathless, and it was vain
+to think of proceeding any farther.
+
+Here I was, without comfort, without shelter, and without food. There
+was not a particle of my covering that was not as wet as if it had been
+fished from the bottom of the ocean. My teeth chattered. I trembled in
+every limb. My heart burned with universal fury. At one moment I
+stumbled and fell over some unseen obstacle; at another I was turned
+back by an impediment I could not overcome.
+
+There was no strict connection between these casual inconveniences and
+the persecution under which I laboured. But my distempered thoughts
+confounded them together. I cursed the whole system of human existence.
+I said, "Here I am, an outcast, destined to perish with hunger and cold.
+All men desert me. All men hate me. I am driven with mortal threats
+from the sources of comfort and existence. Accursed world! that hates
+without a cause, that overwhelms innocence with calamities which ought
+to be spared even to guilt! Accursed world! dead to every manly
+sympathy; with eyes of horn, and hearts of steel! Why do I consent to
+live any longer? Why do I seek to drag on an existence, which, if
+protracted, must be protracted amidst the lairs of these human tigers?"
+
+This paroxysm at length exhausted itself. Presently after, I discovered
+a solitary shed, which I was contented to resort to for shelter. In a
+corner of the shed I found some clean straw. I threw off my rags, placed
+them in a situation where they would best be dried, and buried myself
+amidst this friendly warmth. Here I forgot by degrees the anguish that
+had racked me. A wholesome shed and fresh straw may seem but scanty
+benefits; but they offered themselves when least expected, and my whole
+heart was lightened by the encounter. Through fatigue of mind and body,
+it happened in this instance, though in general my repose was remarkably
+short, that I slept till almost noon of the next day. When I rose, I
+found that I was at no great distance from the ferry, which I crossed,
+and entered the town where I intended to have rested the preceding
+night.
+
+It was market-day. As I passed near the cross, I observed two people
+look at me with great earnestness: after which one of them exclaimed, "I
+will be damned if I do not think that this is the very fellow those men
+were enquiring for who set off an hour ago by the coach for ----." I was
+extremely alarmed at this information; and, quickening my pace, turned
+sharp down a narrow lane. The moment I was out of sight I ran with all
+the speed I could exert, and did not think myself safe till I was
+several miles distant from the place where this information had reached
+my ears. I have always believed that the men to whom it related were the
+very persons who had apprehended me on board the ship in which I had
+embarked for Ireland; that, by some accident, they had met with the
+description of my person as published on the part of Mr. Falkland; and
+that, from putting together the circumstances, they had been led to
+believe that this was the very individual who had lately been in their
+custody. Indeed it was a piece of infatuation in me, for which I am now
+unable to account, that, after the various indications which had
+occurred in that affair, proving to them that I was a man in critical
+and peculiar circumstances, I should have persisted in wearing the same
+disguise without the smallest alteration. My escape in the present case
+was eminently fortunate. If I had not lost my way in consequence of the
+hail-storm on the preceding night, or if I had not so greatly overslept
+myself this very morning, I must almost infallibly have fallen into the
+hands of these infernal blood-hunters.
+
+The town they had chosen for their next stage, the name of which I had
+thus caught in the market-place, was the town to which, but for this
+intimation, I should have immediately proceeded. As it was, I determined
+to take a road as wide of it as possible. In the first place to which I
+came, in which it was practicable to do so, I bought a great coat, which
+I drew over my beggar's weeds, and a better hat. The hat I slouched over
+my face, and covered one of my eyes with a green-silk shade. The
+handkerchief, which I had hitherto worn about my head, I now tied about
+the lower part of my visage, so as to cover my mouth. By degrees I
+discarded every part of my former dress, and wore for my upper garment
+a kind of carman's frock, which, being of the better sort, made me look
+like the son of a reputable farmer of the lower class. Thus equipped, I
+proceeded on my journey, and, after a thousand alarms, precautions, and
+circuitous deviations from the direct path, arrived safely in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Here then was the termination of an immense series of labours, upon
+which no man could have looked back without astonishment, or forward
+without a sentiment bordering on despair. It was at a price which defies
+estimation that I had purchased this resting-place; whether we consider
+the efforts it had cost me to escape from the walls of my prison, or the
+dangers and anxieties to which I had been a prey, from that hour to the
+present.
+
+But why do I call the point at which I was now arrived at a
+resting-place? Alas, it was diametrically the reverse! It was my first
+and immediate business to review all the projects of disguise I had
+hitherto conceived, to derive every improvement I could invent from the
+practice to which I had been subjected, and to manufacture a veil of
+concealment more impenetrable than ever. This was an effort to which I
+could see no end. In ordinary cases the hue and cry after a supposed
+offender is a matter of temporary operation; but ordinary cases formed
+no standard for the colossal intelligence of Mr. Falkland. For the same
+reason, London, which appears an inexhaustible reservoir of concealment
+to the majority of mankind, brought no such consolatory sentiment to my
+mind. Whether life were worth accepting on such terms I cannot
+pronounce. I only know that I persisted in this exertion of my
+faculties, through a sort of parental love that men are accustomed to
+entertain for their intellectual offspring; the more thought I had
+expended in rearing it to its present perfection, the less did I find
+myself disposed to abandon it. Another motive, not less strenuously
+exciting me to perseverance, was the ever-growing repugnance I felt to
+injustice and arbitrary power.
+
+The first evening of my arrival in town I slept at an obscure inn in the
+borough of Southwark, choosing that side of the metropolis, on account
+of its lying entirely wide of the part of England from which I came. I
+entered the inn in the evening in my countryman's frock; and, having
+paid for my lodging before I went to bed, equipped myself next morning
+as differently as my wardrobe would allow, and left the house before
+day. The frock I made up into a small packet, and, having carried it to
+a distance as great as I thought necessary, I dropped it in the corner
+of an alley through which I passed. My next care was to furnish myself
+with another suit of apparel, totally different from any to which I had
+hitherto had recourse. The exterior which I was now induced to assume
+was that of a Jew. One of the gang of thieves upon ---- forest, had been
+of that race; and by the talent of mimicry, which I have already stated
+myself to possess, I could copy their pronunciation of the English
+language, sufficiently to answer such occasions as were likely to
+present themselves. One of the preliminaries I adopted, was to repair to
+a quarter of the town in which great numbers of this people reside, and
+study their complexion and countenance. Having made such provision as my
+prudence suggested to me, I retired for that night to an inn in the
+midway between Mile-end and Wapping. Here I accoutred myself in ray new
+habiliments; and, having employed the same precautions as before,
+retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is
+unnecessary to describe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it
+to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it
+the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the
+tribe to which I assumed to belong; and that when my metamorphosis was
+finished, I could not, upon the strictest examination, conceive that any
+one could have traced out the person of Caleb Williams in this new
+disguise.
+
+Thus far advanced in the execution of my project. I deemed it advisable
+to procure a lodging, and change my late wandering life for a stationary
+one. In this lodging I constantly secluded myself from the rising to the
+setting of the sun; the periods I allowed for exercise and air were few,
+and those few by night. I was even cautious of so much as approaching
+the window of my apartment, though upon the attic story; a principle I
+laid down to myself was, not wantonly and unnecessarily to expose myself
+to risk, however slight that risk might appear.
+
+Here let me pause for a moment, to bring before the reader, in the way
+in which it was impressed upon my mind, the nature of my situation. I
+was born free: I was born healthy, vigorous, and active, complete in all
+the lineaments and members of a human body. I was not born indeed to the
+possession of hereditary wealth; but I had a better inheritance, an
+enterprising mind, an inquisitive spirit, a liberal ambition. In a word,
+I accepted my lot with willingness and content; I did not fear but I
+should make my cause good in the lists of existence. I was satisfied to
+aim at small things; I was pleased to play at first for a slender stake;
+I was more willing to grow than to descend in my individual
+significance.
+
+The free spirit and the firm heart with which I commenced, one
+circumstance was sufficient to blast. I was ignorant of the power which
+the institutions of society give to one man over others; I had fallen
+unwarily into the hands of a person who held it as his fondest wish to
+oppress and destroy me.
+
+I found myself subjected, undeservedly on my part, to all the
+disadvantages which mankind, if they reflected upon them, would hesitate
+to impose on acknowledged guilt. In every human countenance I feared to
+find the countenance of an enemy. I shrunk from the vigilance of every
+human eye. I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our
+nature. I was shut up, a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst of my
+species. I dared not look for the consolations of friendship; but,
+instead of seeking to identify myself with the joys and sorrows of
+others, and exchanging the delicious gifts of confidence and sympathy,
+was compelled to centre my thoughts and my vigilance in myself. My life
+was all a lie. I had a counterfeit character to support. I had
+counterfeit manners to assume. My gait, my gestures, my accents, were
+all of them to be studied. I was not free to indulge, no not one, honest
+sally of the soul. Attended with these disadvantages, I was to procure
+myself a subsistence, a subsistence to be acquired with infinite
+precautions, and to be consumed without the hope of enjoyment.
+
+This, even this, I was determined to endure; to put my shoulder to the
+burthen, and support it with unshrinking firmness. Let it not however be
+supposed that I endured it without repining and abhorrence. My time was
+divided between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers,
+the obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that
+from time to time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If
+at some moments I fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others,
+and those of frequent recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence. I
+looked forward without hope through the series of my existence, tears of
+anguish rushed from my eyes, my courage became extinct, and I cursed the
+conscious life that was reproduced with every returning day.
+
+"Why," upon such occasions I was accustomed to exclaim, "why am I
+overwhelmed with the load of existence? Why are all these engines at
+work to torment me? I am no murderer; yet, if I were, what worse could I
+be fated to suffer? How vile, squalid, and disgraceful is the state to
+which I am condemned! This is not my place in the roll of existence, the
+place for which either my temper or my understanding has prepared me! To
+what purpose serve the restless aspirations of my soul, but to make me,
+like a frighted bird, beat myself in vain against the enclosure of my
+cage? Nature, barbarous nature! to me thou hast proved indeed the worst
+of step-mothers; endowed me with wishes insatiate, and sunk me in
+never-ending degradation!"
+
+I might have thought myself more secure if I had been in possession of
+money upon which to subsist. The necessity of earning for myself the
+means of existence, evidently tended to thwart the plan of secrecy to
+which I was condemned. Whatever labour I adopted, or deemed myself
+qualified to discharge, it was first to be considered how I was to be
+provided with employment, and where I was to find an employer or
+purchaser for my commodities. In the mean time I had no alternative.
+The little money with which I had escaped from the blood-hunters was
+almost expended.
+
+After the minutest consideration I was able to bestow upon this
+question. I determined that literature should be the field of my first
+experiment. I had read of money being acquired in this way, and of
+prices given by the speculators in this sort of ware to its proper
+manufacturers. My qualifications I esteemed at a slender valuation. I
+was not without a conviction that experience and practice must pave the
+way to excellent production. But, though of these I was utterly
+destitute, my propensities had always led me in this direction; and my
+early thirst of knowledge had conducted me to a more intimate
+acquaintance with books, than could perhaps have been expected under my
+circumstances. If my literary pretensions were slight, the demand I
+intended to make upon them was not great. All I asked was a subsistence;
+and I was persuaded few persons could subsist upon slenderer means than
+myself. I also considered this as a temporary expedient, and hoped that
+accident or time might hereafter place me in a less precarious
+situation. The reasons that principally determined my choice were, that
+this employment called upon me for the least preparation, and could, as
+I thought, be exercised with least observation.
+
+There was a solitary woman, of middle age, who tenanted a chamber in
+this house, upon the same floor with my own. I had no sooner determined
+upon the destination of my industry than I cast my eye upon her as the
+possible instrument for disposing of my productions. Excluded as I was
+from all intercourse with my species in general, I found pleasure in the
+occasional exchange of a few words with this inoffensive and
+good-humoured creature, who was already of an age to preclude scandal.
+She lived upon a very small annuity, allowed her by a distant relation,
+a woman of quality, who, possessed of thousands herself, had no other
+anxiety with respect to this person than that she should not contaminate
+her alliance by the exertion of honest industry. This humble creature
+was of a uniformly cheerful and active disposition, unacquainted alike
+with the cares of wealth and the pressure of misfortune. Though her
+pretensions were small, and her information slender, she was by no means
+deficient in penetration. She remarked the faults and follies of mankind
+with no contemptible discernment; but her temper was of so mild and
+forgiving a cast, as would have induced most persons to believe that she
+perceived nothing of the matter. Her heart overflowed with the milk of
+kindness. She was sincere and ardent in her attachments, and never did
+she omit a service which she perceived herself able to render to a human
+being.
+
+Had it not been for these qualifications of temper, I should probably
+have found that my appearance, that of a deserted, solitary lad, of
+Jewish extraction, effectually precluded my demands upon her kindness.
+But I speedily perceived, from her manner of receiving and returning
+civilities of an indifferent sort, that her heart was too noble to have
+its effusions checked by any base and unworthy considerations.
+Encouraged by these preliminaries, I determined to select her as my
+agent. I found her willing and alert in the business I proposed to her.
+That I might anticipate occasions of suspicion, I frankly told her that,
+for reasons which I wished to be excused from relating, but which, if
+related, I was sure would not deprive me of her good opinion, I found it
+necessary, for the present, to keep myself private. With this statement
+she readily acquiesced, and told me that she had no desire for any
+further information than I found it expedient to give.
+
+My first productions were of the poetical kind. After having finished
+two or three, I directed this generous creature to take them to the
+office of a newspaper; but they were rejected with contempt by the
+Aristarchus of that place, who, having bestowed on them a superficial
+glance, told her that such matters were not in his way. I cannot help
+mentioning in this place, that the countenance of Mrs. Marney (this was
+the name of my ambassadress) was in all cases a perfect indication of
+her success, and rendered explanation by words wholly unnecessary. She
+interested herself so unreservedly in what she undertook, that she felt
+either miscarriage or good fortune much more exquisitely than I did. I
+had an unhesitating confidence in my own resources, and, occupied as I
+was in meditations more interesting and more painful, I regarded these
+matters as altogether trivial.
+
+I quietly took the pieces back, and laid them upon my table. Upon
+revisal, I altered and transcribed one of them, and, joining it with two
+others, despatched them together to the editor of a magazine. He desired
+they might be left with him till the day after to-morrow. When that day
+came he told my friend they should be inserted; but, Mrs. Marney asking
+respecting the price, he replied, it was their constant rule to give
+nothing for poetical compositions, the letter-box being always full of
+writings of that sort; but if the gentleman would try his hand in prose,
+a short essay or a tale, he would see what he could do for him.
+
+With the requisition of my literary dictator I immediately complied. I
+attempted a paper in the style of Addison's Spectators, which was
+accepted. In a short time I was upon an established footing in this
+quarter. I however distrusted my resources in the way of moral
+disquisition, and soon turned my thoughts to his other suggestion, a
+tale. His demands upon me were now frequent, and, to facilitate my
+labours, I bethought myself of the resource of translation. I had
+scarcely any convenience with respect to the procuring of books; but, as
+my memory was retentive, I frequently translated or modelled my
+narrative upon a reading of some years before. By a fatality, for which
+I did not exactly know how to account, my thoughts frequently led me to
+the histories of celebrated robbers; and I related, from time to time,
+incidents and anecdotes of Cartouche, Gusman d'Alfarache, and other
+memorable worthies, whose career was terminated upon the gallows or the
+scaffold.
+
+In the mean time a retrospect to my own situation rendered a
+perseverance even in this industry difficult to be maintained. I often
+threw down my pen in an ecstasy of despair. Sometimes for whole days
+together I was incapable of action, and sunk into a sort of partial
+stupor, too wretched to be described. Youth and health however enabled
+me, from time to time, to get the better of my dejection, and to rouse
+myself to something like a gaiety, which, if it had been permanent,
+might have made this interval of my story tolerable to my reflections.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+While I was thus endeavouring to occupy and provide for the intermediate
+period, till the violence of the pursuit after me might be abated, a
+new source of danger opened upon me of which I had no previous
+suspicion.
+
+Gines, the thief who had been expelled from Captain Raymond's gang, had
+fluctuated, during the last years of his life, between the two
+professions of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their
+administration. He had originally devoted himself to the first; and
+probably his initiation in the mysteries of thieving qualified him to be
+peculiarly expert in the profession of a thief-taker--a profession he
+had adopted, not from choice, but necessity. In this employment his
+reputation was great, though perhaps not equal to his merits; for it
+happens here as in other departments of human society, that, however the
+subalterns may furnish wisdom and skill, the principals exclusively
+possess the _eclat_. He was exercising this art in a very prosperous
+manner, when it happened, by some accident, that one or two of his
+achievements previous to his having shaken off the dregs of unlicensed
+depredation were in danger of becoming subjects of public attention.
+Having had repeated intimations of this, he thought it prudent to
+decamp; and it was during this period of his retreat that he entered
+into the ---- gang.
+
+Such was the history of this man antecedently to his being placed in the
+situation in which I had first encountered him. At the time of that
+encounter he was a veteran of Captain Raymond's gang; for thieves being
+a short-lived race, the character of veteran costs the less time in
+acquiring. Upon his expulsion from this community he returned once more
+to his lawful profession, and by his old comrades was received with
+congratulation as a lost sheep. In the vulgar classes of society no
+length of time is sufficient to expiate a crime; but among the
+honourable fraternity of thief-takers it is a rule never to bring one of
+their own brethren to a reckoning when it can with any decency be
+avoided. They are probably reluctant to fix an unnecessary stain upon
+the ermine of their profession. Another rule observed by those who have
+passed through the same gradation as Gines had done, and which was
+adopted by Gines himself, is always to reserve such as have been the
+accomplices of their depredations to the last, and on no account to
+assail them without great necessity or powerful temptation. For this
+reason, according to Gines's system of tactics, Captain Raymond and his
+confederates were, as he would have termed it, safe from his
+retaliation.
+
+But, though Gines was, in this sense of the term, a man of strict
+honour, my case unfortunately did not fall within the laws of honour he
+acknowledged. Misfortune had overtaken me, and I was on all sides
+without protection or shelter. The persecution to which I was exposed
+was founded upon the supposition of my having committed felony to an
+immense amount. But in this Gines had had no participation; he was
+careless whether the supposition were true or false, and hated me as
+much as if my innocence had been established beyond the reach of
+suspicion.
+
+The blood-hunters who had taken me into custody at ----, related, as
+usual among their fraternity, a part of their adventure, and told of the
+reason which inclined them to suppose, that the individual who had
+passed through their custody, was the very Caleb Williams for whose
+apprehension a reward had been offered of a hundred guineas. Gines,
+whose acuteness was eminent in the way of his profession, by comparing
+facts and dates, was induced to suspect in his own mind, that Caleb
+Williams was the person he had hustled and wounded upon ---- forest.
+Against that person he entertained the bitterest aversion. I had been
+the innocent occasion of his being expelled with disgrace from Captain
+Raymond's gang; and Gines, as I afterwards understood, was intimately
+persuaded that there was no comparison between the liberal and manly
+profession of a robber from which I had driven him, and the sordid and
+mechanical occupation of a blood-hunter, to which he was obliged to
+return. He no sooner received the information I have mentioned than he
+vowed revenge. He determined to leave all other objects, and consecrate
+every faculty of his mind to the unkennelling me from my hiding-place.
+The offered reward, which his vanity made him consider as assuredly his
+own, appeared as the complete indemnification of his labour and expense.
+Thus I had to encounter the sagacity he possessed in the way of his
+profession, whetted and stimulated by a sentiment of vengeance, in a
+mind that knew no restraint from conscience or humanity.
+
+When I drew to myself a picture of my situation soon after having fixed
+on my present abode, I foolishly thought, as the unhappy are accustomed
+to do, that my calamity would admit of no aggravation. The aggravation
+which, unknown to me, at this time occurred was the most fearful that
+any imagination could have devised. Nothing could have happened more
+critically hostile to my future peace, than my fatal encounter with
+Gines upon ---- forest. By this means, as it now appears, I had fastened
+upon myself a second enemy, of that singular and dreadful sort that is
+determined never to dismiss its animosity as long as life shall endure.
+While Falkland was the hungry lion whose roarings astonished and
+appalled me, Gines was a noxious insect, scarcely less formidable and
+tremendous, that hovered about my goings, and perpetually menaced me
+with the poison of his sting.
+
+The first step pursued by him in execution of his project, was to set
+out for the sea-port town where I had formerly been apprehended. From
+thence he traced me to the banks of the Severn, and from the banks of
+the Severn to London. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this is
+always practicable, provided the pursuer have motives strong enough to
+excite him to perseverance, unless the precautions of the fugitive be,
+in the highest degree, both judicious in the conception, and fortunate
+in the execution. Gines indeed, in the course of his pursuit, was often
+obliged to double his steps; and, like the harrier, whenever he was at a
+fault, return to the place where he had last perceived the scent of the
+animal whose death he had decreed. He spared neither pains nor time in
+the gratification of the passion, which choice had made his ruling one.
+
+Upon my arrival in town he for a moment lost all trace of me, London
+being a place in which, on account of the magnitude of its dimensions,
+it might well be supposed that an individual could remain hidden and
+unknown. But no difficulty could discourage this new adversary. He went
+from inn to inn (reasonably supposing that there was no private house to
+which I could immediately repair), till he found, by the description he
+gave, and the recollections he excited, that I had slept for one night
+in the borough of Southwark. But he could get no further information.
+The people of the inn had no knowledge what had become of me the next
+morning.
+
+This however did but render him more eager in the pursuit. The
+describing me was now more difficult, on account of the partial change
+of dress I had made the second day of my being in town. But Gines at
+length overcame the obstacle from that quarter.
+
+Having traced me to my second inn, he was here furnished with a more
+copious information. I had been a subject of speculation for the leisure
+hours of some of the persons belonging to this inn. An old woman, of a
+most curious and loquacious disposition, who lived opposite to it, and
+who that morning rose early to her washing, had espied me from her
+window, by the light of a large lamp which hung over the inn, as I
+issued from the gate. She had but a very imperfect view of me, but she
+thought there was something Jewish in my appearance. She was accustomed
+to hold a conference every morning with the landlady of the inn, some of
+the waiters and chambermaids occasionally assisting at it. In the course
+of the dialogue of this morning, she asked some questions about the Jew
+who had slept there the night before. No Jew had slept there. The
+curiosity of the landlady was excited in her turn. By the time of the
+morning it could be no other but me. It was very strange! They compared
+notes respecting my appearance and dress. No two things could be more
+dissimilar. The Jew Christian, upon any dearth of subjects of
+intelligence, repeatedly furnished matter for their discourse.
+
+The information thus afforded to Gines appeared exceedingly material.
+But the performance did not for some time keep pace with the promise. He
+could not enter every private house into which lodgers were ever
+admitted, in the same manner that he had treated the inns. He walked the
+streets, and examined with a curious and inquisitive eye the countenance
+of every Jew about my stature; but in vain. He repaired to Duke's Place
+and the synagogues. It was not here that in reality he could calculate
+upon finding me; but he resorted to those means in despair, and as a
+last hope. He was more than once upon the point of giving up the
+pursuit; but he was recalled to it by an insatiable and restless
+appetite for revenge.
+
+It was during this perturbed and fluctuating state of his mind, that he
+chanced to pay a visit to a brother of his, who was the head-workman of
+a printing-office. There was little intercourse between these two
+persons, their dispositions and habits of life being extremely
+dissimilar. The printer was industrious, sober, inclined to methodism,
+and of a propensity to accumulation. He was extremely dissatisfied with
+the character and pursuits of his brother, and had made some ineffectual
+attempts to reclaim him. But, though they by no means agreed in their
+habits of thinking, they sometimes saw each other. Gines loved to boast
+of as many of his achievements as he dared venture to mention; and his
+brother was one more hearer, in addition to the set of his usual
+associates. The printer was amused with the blunt sagacity of remark and
+novelty of incident that characterised Gines's conversation. He was
+secretly pleased, in spite of all his sober and church-going prejudices,
+that he was brother to a man of so much ingenuity and fortitude.
+
+After having listened for some time upon this occasion to the wonderful
+stories which Gines, in his rugged way, condescended to tell, the
+printer felt an ambition to entertain his brother in his turn. He began
+to retail some of my stories of Cartouche and Gusman d'Alfarache. The
+attention of Gines was excited. His first emotion was wonder; his second
+was envy and aversion. Where did the printer get these stories? This
+question was answered. "I will tell you what," said the printer, "we
+none of us know what to make of the writer of these articles. He writes
+poetry, and morality, and history: I am a printer, and corrector of the
+press, and may pretend without vanity to be a tolerably good judge of
+these matters: he writes them all to my mind extremely fine; and yet he
+is no more than a Jew." [To my honest printer this seemed as strange, as
+if they had been written by a Cherokee chieftain at the falls of the
+Mississippi.]
+
+"A Jew! How do you know? Did you ever see him?"
+
+"No; the matter is always brought to us by a woman. But my master hates
+mysteries; he likes to see his authors himself. So he plagues and
+plagues the old woman; but he can never get any thing out of her, except
+that one day she happened to drop that the young gentleman was a Jew."
+
+A Jew! a young gentleman! a person who did every thing by proxy, and
+made a secret of all his motions! Here was abundant matter for the
+speculations and suspicions of Gines. He was confirmed in them, without
+adverting to the process of his own mind, by the subject of my
+lucubrations,--men who died by the hand of the executioner. He said
+little more to his brother, except asking, as if casually, what sort of
+an old woman this was? of what age she might be? and whether she often
+brought him materials of this kind? and soon after took occasion to
+leave him. It was with vast pleasure that Gines had listened to this
+unhoped-for information. Having collected from his brother sufficient
+hints relative to the person and appearance of Mrs. Marney, and
+understanding that he expected to receive something from me the next
+day, Gines took his stand in the street early, that he might not risk
+miscarriage by negligence. He waited several hours, but not without
+success. Mrs. Marney came; he watched her into the house; and after
+about twenty minutes delay, saw her return. He dogged her from street
+to street; observed her finally enter the door of a private house; and
+congratulated himself upon having at length arrived at the consummation
+of his labours.
+
+The house she entered was not her own habitation. By a sort of
+miraculous accident she had observed Gines following her in the street.
+As she went home she saw a woman who had fallen down in a fainting fit.
+Moved by the compassion that was ever alive in her, she approached her,
+in order to render her assistance. Presently a crowd collected round
+them. Mrs. Marney, having done what she was able, once more proceeded
+homewards. Observing the crowd round her, the idea of pickpockets
+occurred to her mind; she put her hands to her sides, and at the same
+time looked round upon the populace. She had left the circle somewhat
+abruptly; and Gines, who had been obliged to come nearer, lest he should
+lose her in the confusion, was at that moment standing exactly opposite
+to her. His visage was of the most extraordinary kind; habit had written
+the characters of malignant cunning and dauntless effrontery in every
+line of his face; and Mrs. Marney, who was neither philosopher nor
+physiognomist, was nevertheless struck. This good woman, like most
+persons of her notable character, had a peculiar way of going home, not
+through the open streets, but by narrow lanes and alleys, with intricate
+insertions and sudden turnings. In one of these, by some accident, she
+once again caught a glance of her pursuer. This circumstance, together
+with the singularity of his appearance, awakened her conjectures. Could
+he be following her? It was the middle of the day, and she could have no
+fears for herself. But could this circumstance have any reference to me?
+She recollected the precautions and secrecy I practised, and had no
+doubt that I had reasons for what I did. She recollected that she had
+always been upon her guard respecting me; but had she been sufficiently
+so? She thought that, if she should be the means of any mischief to me,
+she should be miserable for ever. She determined therefore, by way of
+precaution in case of the worst, to call at a friend's house, and send
+me word of what had occurred. Having instructed her friend, she went out
+immediately upon a visit to a person in the exactly opposite direction,
+and desired her friend to proceed upon the errand to me, five minutes
+after she left the house. By this prudence she completely extricated me
+from the present danger.
+
+Meantime the intelligence that was brought me by no means ascertained
+the greatness of the peril. For any thing I could discover in it the
+circumstance might be perfectly innocent, and the fear solely proceed
+from the over-caution and kindness of this benevolent and excellent
+woman. Yet, such was the misery of my situation, I had no choice. For
+this menace or no menace, I was obliged to desert my habitation at a
+minute's warning, taking with me nothing but what I could carry in my
+hand; to see my generous benefactress no more; to quit my little
+arrangements and provision; and to seek once again, in some forlorn
+retreat, new projects, and, if of that I could have any rational hope, a
+new friend. I descended into the street with a heavy, not an irresolute
+heart. It was broad day. I said, persons are at this moment supposed to
+be roaming the street in search of me: I must not trust to the chance of
+their pursuing one direction, and I another. I traversed half a dozen
+streets, and then dropped into an obscure house of entertainment for
+persons of small expense. In this house I took some refreshment, passed
+several hours of active but melancholy thinking, and at last procured a
+bed. As soon however as it was dark I went out (for this was
+indispensable) to purchase the materials of a new disguise. Having
+adjusted it as well as I could during the night, I left this asylum,
+with the same precautions that I had employed in former instances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+I procured a new lodging. By some bias of the mind, it may be,
+gratifying itself with images of peril, I inclined to believe that Mrs.
+Marney's alarm had not been without foundation. I was however unable to
+conjecture through what means danger had approached me; and had
+therefore only the unsatisfactory remedy of redoubling my watch upon all
+my actions. Still I had the joint considerations pressing upon me of
+security and subsistence. I had some small remains of the produce of my
+former industry; but this was but small, for my employer was in arrear
+with me, and I did not choose in any method to apply to him for payment.
+The anxieties of my mind, in spite of all my struggles, preyed upon my
+health. I did not consider myself as in safety for an instant. My
+appearance was wasted to a shadow; and I started at every sound that was
+unexpected. Sometimes I was half tempted to resign myself into the hands
+of the law, and brave its worst; but resentment and indignation at those
+times speedily flowed back upon my mind, and re-animated my
+perseverance.
+
+I knew no better resource with respect to subsistence than that I had
+employed in the former instance, of seeking some third person to stand
+between me and the disposal of my industry. I might find an individual
+ready to undertake this office in my behalf; but where should I find the
+benevolent soul of Mrs. Marney? The person I fixed upon was a Mr.
+Spurrel, a man who took in work from the watchmakers, and had an
+apartment upon our second floor. I examined him two or three times with
+irresolute glances, as we passed upon the stairs, before I would venture
+to accost him. He observed this, and at length kindly invited me into
+his apartment.
+
+Being seated, he condoled with me upon my seeming bad health, and the
+solitary mode of my living, and wished to know whether he could be of
+any service to me. "From the first moment he saw me, he had conceived an
+affection for me." In my present disguise I appeared twisted and
+deformed, and in other respects by no means an object of attraction. But
+it seemed Mr. Spurrel had lost an only son about six months before, and
+I was "the very picture of him." If I had put off my counterfeited
+ugliness, I should probably have lost all hold upon his affections. "He
+was now an old man," as he observed, "just dropping into the grave, and
+his son had been his only consolation. The poor lad was always ailing,
+but he had been a nurse to him; and the more tending he required while
+he was alive, the more he missed him now he was dead. Now he had not a
+friend, nor any body that cared for him, in the whole world. If I
+pleased, I should be instead of that son to him, and he would treat me
+in all respects with the same attention and kindness."
+
+I expressed my sense of these benevolent offers, but told him that I
+should be sorry to be in any way burthensome to him. "My ideas at
+present led me to a private and solitary life, and my chief difficulty
+was to reconcile this with some mode of earning necessary subsistence.
+If he would condescend to lend me his assistance in smoothing this
+difficulty, it would be the greatest benefit he could confer on me." I
+added, that "my mind had always had a mechanical and industrious turn,
+and that I did not doubt of soon mastering any craft to which I
+seriously applied myself. I had not been brought up to any trade; but,
+if he would favour me with his instructions, I would work with him as
+long as he pleased for a bare subsistence. I knew that I was asking of
+him an extraordinary kindness; but I was urged on the one hand by the
+most extreme necessity, and encouraged on the other by the
+persuasiveness of his friendly professions."
+
+The old man dropped some tears over my apparent distress, and readily
+consented to every thing I proposed. Our agreement was soon made, and I
+entered upon my functions accordingly. My new friend was a man of a
+singular turn of mind. Love of money, and a charitable officiousness of
+demeanour, were his leading characteristics. He lived in the most
+penurious manner, and denied himself every indulgence. I entitled myself
+almost immediately, as he frankly acknowledged, to some remuneration for
+my labours, and accordingly he insisted upon my being paid. He did not
+however, as some persons would have done under the circumstance, pay me
+the whole amount of my earnings, but professed to subtract from them
+twenty per cent, as an equitable consideration for instruction, and
+commission-money in procuring me a channel for my industry. Yet he
+frequently shed tears over me, was uneasy in every moment of our
+indispensable separation, and exhibited perpetual tokens of attachment
+and fondness. I found him a man of excellent mechanical contrivance,
+and received considerable pleasure from his communications. My own
+sources of information were various; and he frequently expressed his
+wonder and delight in the contemplation of my powers, as well of
+amusement as exertion.
+
+Thus I appeared to have attained a situation not less eligible than in
+my connection with Mrs. Marney. I was however still more unhappy. My
+fits of despondence were deeper, and of more frequent recurrence. My
+health every day grew worse; and Mr. Spurrel was not without
+apprehensions that he should lose me, as he before lost his only son.
+
+I had not been long however in this new situation, before an incident
+occurred which filled me with greater alarm and apprehension than ever.
+I was walking out one evening, after a long visitation of languor, for
+an hour's exercise and air, when my ears were struck with two or three
+casual sounds from the mouth of a hawker who was bawling his wares. I
+stood still to inform myself more exactly, when, to my utter
+astonishment and confusion, I heard him deliver himself nearly in these
+words: "_Here you have the_ MOST WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY AND
+MIRACULOUS ADVENTURES OF CALEB WILLIAMS: _you are informed how he first
+robbed, and then brought false accusations against his master; as also
+of his attempting divers times to break out of prison, till at last he
+effected his escape in the most wonderful and uncredible manner; as also
+of his travelling the kingdom in various disguises, and the robberies he
+committed with a most desperate and daring gang of thieves; and of his
+coming up to London, where it is supposed he now lies concealed; with a
+true and faithful copy of the hue and cry printed and published by one
+of his Majesty's most principal secretaries of state, offering a reward
+of one hundred guineas for apprehending him. All for the price of one
+halfpenny_."
+
+Petrified as I was at these amazing and dreadful sounds, I had the
+temerity to go up to the man and purchase one of his papers. I was
+desperately resolved to know the exact state of the fact, and what I had
+to depend upon. I carried it with me a little way, till, no longer able
+to endure the tumult of my impatience, I contrived to make out the chief
+part of its contents, by the help of a lamp, at the upper end of a
+narrow passage. I found it contain a greater number of circumstances
+than could have been expected in this species of publication, I was
+equalled to the most notorious housebreaker in the art of penetrating
+through walls and doors, and to the most accomplished swindler in
+plausibleness, duplicity, and disguise. The hand-bill which Larkins had
+first brought to us upon the forest was printed at length. All my
+disguises, previously to the last alarm that had been given me by the
+providence of Mrs. Marney, were faithfully enumerated; and the public
+were warned to be upon their watch against a person of an uncouth and
+extraordinary appearance, and who lived in a recluse and solitary
+manner. I also learned from this paper that my former lodgings had been
+searched on the very evening of my escape, and that Mrs. Marney had been
+sent to Newgate, upon a charge of misprision of felony.--This last
+circumstance affected me deeply. In the midst of my own sufferings my
+sympathies flowed undiminished. It was a most cruel and intolerable
+idea, if I were not only myself to be an object of unrelenting
+persecution, but my very touch were to be infectious, and every one that
+succoured me was to be involved in the common ruin. My instant feeling
+was that of a willingness to undergo the utmost malice of my enemies,
+could I by that means have saved this excellent woman from alarm and
+peril.--I afterwards learned that Mrs. Marney was delivered from
+confinement, by the interposition of her noble relation.
+
+My sympathy for Mrs. Marney however was at this moment a transient one.
+A more imperious and irresistible consideration demanded to be heard.
+
+With what sensations did I ruminate upon this paper? Every word of it
+carried despair to my heart. The actual apprehension that I dreaded
+would perhaps have been less horrible. It would have put an end to that
+lingering terror to which I was a prey. Disguise was no longer of use. A
+numerous class of individuals, through every department, almost every
+house of the metropolis, would be induced to look with a suspicious eye
+upon every stranger, especially every solitary stranger, that fell under
+their observation. The prize of one hundred guineas was held out to
+excite their avarice and sharpen their penetration. It was no longer
+Bow-street, it was a million of men in arms against me. Neither had I the
+refuge, which few men have been so miserable as to want, of one single
+individual with whom to repose my alarms, and who might shelter me from
+the gaze of indiscriminate curiosity.
+
+What could exceed the horrors of this situation? My heart knocked
+against my ribs, my bosom heaved, I gasped and panted for breath. "There
+is no end then," said I, "to my persecutors! My unwearied and
+long-continued labours lead to no termination! Termination! No; the
+lapse of time, that cures all other things, makes my case more
+desperate! Why then," exclaimed I, a new train of thought suddenly
+rushing into my mind, "why should I sustain the contest any longer? I
+can at least elude my persecutors in death. I can bury myself and the
+traces of my existence together in friendly oblivion; and thus bequeath
+eternal doubt, and ever new alarm, to those who have no peace but in
+pursuing me!"
+
+In the midst of the horrors with which I was now impressed, this idea
+gave me pleasure; and I hastened to the Thames to put it in instant
+execution. Such was the paroxysm of my mind that my powers of vision
+became partially suspended. I was no longer conscious to the feebleness
+of disease, but rushed along with fervent impetuosity. I passed from
+street to street without observing what direction I pursued. After
+wandering I know not how long, I arrived at London Bridge. I hastened to
+the stairs, and saw the river covered with vessels.
+
+"No human being must see me," said I, "at the instant that I vanish for
+ever." This thought required some consideration. A portion of time had
+elapsed since my first desperate purpose. My understanding began to
+return. The sight of the vessels suggested to me the idea of once more
+attempting to leave my native country.
+
+I enquired, and speedily found that the cheapest passage I could procure
+was in a vessel moored near the Tower, and which was to sail in a few
+days for Middleburgh in Holland. I would have gone instantly on board,
+and have endeavoured to prevail with the captain to let me remain there
+till he sailed; but unfortunately I had not money enough in my pocket to
+defray my passage.
+
+It was worse than this. I had not money enough in the world. I however
+paid the captain half his demand, and promised to return with the rest.
+I knew not in what manner it was to be procured, but I believed that I
+should not fail in it. I had some idea of applying to Mr. Spurrel.
+Surely he would not refuse me? He appeared to love me with parental
+affection, and I thought I might trust myself for a moment in his hands.
+
+I approached my place of residence with a heavy and foreboding heart.
+Mr. Spurrel was not at home; and I was obliged to wait for his return.
+Worn out with fatigue, disappointment, and the ill state of my health, I
+sunk upon a chair. Speedily however I recollected myself. I had work of
+Mr. Spurrel's in my trunk, which had been delivered out to me that very
+morning, to five times the amount I wanted. I canvassed for a moment
+whether I should make use of this property as if it were my own; but I
+rejected the idea with disdain. I had never in the smallest degree
+merited the reproaches that were east upon me; and I determined I never
+would merit them. I sat gasping, anxious, full of the blackest
+forebodings. My terrors appeared, even to my own mind, greater and more
+importunate than the circumstances authorised.
+
+It was extraordinary that Mr. Spurrel should be abroad at this hour; I
+had never known it happen before. His bed-time was between nine and ten.
+Ten o'clock came, eleven o'clock, but not Mr. Spurrel. At midnight I
+heard his knock at the door. Every soul in the house was in bed. Mr.
+Spurrel, on account of his regular hours, was unprovided with a key to
+open for himself. A gleam, a sickly gleam, of the social spirit came
+over my heart. I flew nimbly down stairs, and opened the door.
+
+I could perceive, by the little taper in my hand, something
+extraordinary in his countenance. I had not time to speak, before I saw
+two other men follow him. At the first glance I was sufficiently
+assured what sort of persons they were. At the second, I perceived that
+one of them was no other than Gines himself. I had understood formerly
+that he had been of this profession, and I was not surprised to find him
+in it again. Though I had for three hours endeavoured, as it were, to
+prepare myself for the unavoidable necessity of falling once again into
+the hands of the officers of law, the sensation I felt at their entrance
+was indescribably agonising. I was besides not a little astonished at
+the time and manner of their entrance; and I felt anxious to know
+whether Mr. Spurrel could be base enough to have been their introducer.
+
+I was not long held in perplexity. He no sooner saw his followers within
+the door, than he exclaimed, with convulsive eagerness, "There, there,
+that is your man! thank God! thank God!" Gines looked eagerly in my
+face, with a countenance expressive alternately of hope and doubt, and
+answered, "By God, and I do not know whether it be or no! I am afraid we
+are in the wrong box!" Then recollecting himself, "We will go into the
+house, and examine further however." We all went up stairs into Mr.
+Spurrel's room; I set down the candle upon the table. I had hitherto
+been silent; but I determined not to desert myself, and was a little
+encouraged to exertion by the scepticism of Gines. With a calm and
+deliberate manner therefore, in my feigned voice, one of the
+characteristics of which was lisping, I asked, "Pray, gentlemen, what
+may be your pleasure with me?"--"Why," said Gines, "our errand is with
+one Caleb Williams, and a precious rascal he is! I ought to know the
+chap well enough; but they say he has as many faces as there are days in
+the year. So you please to pull off your face; or, if you cannot do
+that, at least you can pull off your clothes, and let us see what your
+hump is made of."
+
+I remonstrated, but in vain. I stood detected in part of my artifice;
+and Gines, though still uncertain, was every moment more and more
+confirmed in his suspicions. Mr. Spurrel perfectly gloated, with eyes
+that seemed ready to devour every thing that passed. As my imposture
+gradually appeared more palpable, he repeated his exclamation, "Thank
+God! thank God!" At last, tired with this scene of mummery, and
+disgusted beyond measure with the base and hypocritical figure I seemed
+to exhibit, I exclaimed, "Well, I am Caleb Williams; conduct me wherever
+you please! And now, Mr. Spurrel!"--He gave a violent start. The
+instant I declared myself his transport had been at the highest, and
+was, to any power he was able to exert, absolutely uncontrollable. But
+the unexpectedness of my address, and the tone in which I spoke,
+electrified him.--"Is it possible," continued I, "that you should
+have been the wretch to betray me? What have I done to deserve this
+treatment? Is this the kindness you professed? the affection that was
+perpetually in your mouth? to be the death of me!"
+
+"My poor boy! my dear creature!" cried Spurrel, whimpering, and in a
+tone of the humblest expostulation, "indeed I could not help it! I would
+have helped it, if I could! I hope they will not hurt my darling! I am
+sure I shall die if they do!"
+
+"Miserable driveller!" interrupted I, with a stern voice, "do you betray
+me into the remorseless fangs of the law, and then talk of my not being
+hurt? I know my sentence, and am prepared to meet it! You have fixed the
+halter upon my neck, and at the same price would have done so to your
+only son! Go, count your accursed guineas! My life would have been
+safer in the hands of one I had never seen than in yours, whose mouth
+and whose eyes for ever ran over with crocodile affection!"
+
+I have always believed that my sickness, and, as he apprehended,
+approaching death, contributed its part to the treachery of Mr. Spurrel.
+He predicted to his own mind the time when I should no longer be able to
+work. He recollected with agony the expense that attended his son's
+illness and death. He determined to afford me no assistance of a similar
+kind. He feared however the reproach of deserting me. He feared the
+tenderness of his nature. He felt, that I was growing upon his
+affections, and that in a short time he could not have deserted me. He
+was driven by a sort of implicit impulse, for the sake of avoiding one
+ungenerous action, to take refuge in another, the basest and most
+diabolical. This motive, conjoining with the prospect of the proffered
+reward, was an incitement too powerful for him to resist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Having given vent to my resentment, I left Mr. Spurrel motionless, and
+unable to utter a word. Gines and his companion attended me. It is
+unnecessary to repeat all the insolence of this man. He alternately
+triumphed in the completion of his revenge, and regretted the loss of
+the reward to the shrivelled old curmudgeon we had just quitted, whom
+however he swore he would cheat of it by one means or another. He
+claimed to himself the ingenuity of having devised the halfpenny legend,
+the thought of which was all his own, and was an expedient that was
+impossible to fail. There was neither law nor justice, he said, to be
+had, if Hunks who had done nothing were permitted to pocket the cash,
+and his merit were left undistinguished and pennyless.
+
+I paid but little attention to his story. It struck upon my sense, and I
+was able to recollect it at my nearest leisure, though I thought not of
+it at the time. For the present I was busily employed, reflecting on my
+new situation, and the conduct to be observed in it. The thought of
+suicide had twice, in moments of uncommon despair, suggested itself to
+my mind; but it was far from my habitual meditations. At present, and in
+all cases where death was immediately threatened me from the injustice
+of others, I felt myself disposed to contend to the last.
+
+My prospects were indeed sufficiently gloomy and discouraging. How much
+labour had I exerted, first to extricate myself from prison, and next to
+evade the diligence of my pursuers; and the result of all, to be brought
+back to the point from which I began! I had gained fame indeed, the
+miserable fame to have my story bawled forth by hawkers and
+ballad-mongers, to have my praises as an active and enterprising villain
+celebrated among footmen and chambermaids; but I was neither an
+Erostratus nor an Alexander, to die contented with that species of
+eulogium. With respect to all that was solid, what chance could I find
+in new exertions of a similar nature? Never was a human creature pursued
+by enemies more inventive or envenomed. I could have small hope that
+they would ever cease their persecution, or that my future attempts
+would be crowned with a more desirable issue.
+
+They were considerations like these that dictated my resolution. My mind
+had been gradually weaning from Mr. Falkland, till its feeling rose to
+something like abhorrence. I had long cherished a reverence for him,
+which not even animosity and subornation on his part could utterly
+destroy. But I now ascribed a character so inhumanly sanguinary to his
+mind; I saw something so fiend-like in the thus hunting me round the
+world, and determining to be satisfied with nothing less than my blood,
+while at the same time he knew my innocence, my indisposition to
+mischief, nay, I might add, my virtues; that henceforth I trampled
+reverence and the recollection of former esteem under my feet. I lost
+all regard to his intellectual greatness, and all pity for the agonies
+of his soul. I also would abjure forbearance. I would show myself bitter
+and inflexible as he had done. Was it wise in him to drive me into
+extremity and madness? Had he no fears for his own secret and atrocious
+offences?
+
+I had been obliged to spend the remainder of the night upon which I had
+been apprehended, in prison. During the interval I had thrown off every
+vestige of disguise, and appeared the next morning in my own person. I
+was of course easily identified; and, this being the whole with which
+the magistrates before whom I now stood thought themselves concerned,
+they were proceeding to make out an order for my being conducted back to
+my own county. I suspended the despatch of this measure by observing
+that I had something to disclose. This is an overture to which men
+appointed for the administration of criminal justice never fail to
+attend.
+
+I went before the magistrates, to whose office Gines and his comrade
+conducted me, fully determined to publish those astonishing secrets of
+which I had hitherto been the faithful depository; and, once for all, to
+turn the tables upon my accuser. It was time that the real criminal
+should be the sufferer, and not that innocence should for ever labour
+under the oppression of guilt.
+
+I said that "I had always protested my innocence, and must now repeat
+the protest."
+
+"In that case," retorted the senior magistrate abruptly, "what can you
+have to disclose? If you are innocent, that is no business of ours! We
+act officially."
+
+"I always declared," continued I, "that I was the perpetrator of no
+guilt, but that the guilt wholly belonged to my accuser. He privately
+conveyed these effects among my property, and then charged me with the
+robbery. I now declare more than that, that this man is a murderer, that
+I detected his criminality, and that, for that reason, he is determined
+to deprive me of life. I presume, gentlemen, that you do consider it as
+your business to take this declaration. I am persuaded you will be by no
+means disposed, actively or passively, to contribute to the atrocious
+injustice under which I suffer, to the imprisonment and condemnation of
+an innocent man, in order that a murderer may go free. I suppressed this
+story as long as I could. I was extremely averse to be the author of the
+unhappiness or the death of a human being. But all patience and
+submission have their limits."
+
+"Give me leave, sir," rejoined the magistrate, with an air of affected
+moderation, "to ask you two questions. Were you any way aiding,
+abetting, or contributing to this murder?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And pray, sir, who is this Mr. Falkland? and what may have been the
+nature of your connection with him?"
+
+"Mr. Falkland is a gentleman of six thousand per annum. I lived with him
+as his secretary."
+
+"In other words, you were his servant?"
+
+"As you please."
+
+"Very well, sir; that is quite enough for me. First, I have to tell you,
+as a magistrate, that I can have nothing to do with your declaration. If
+you had been concerned in the murder you talk of, that would alter the
+case. But it is out of all reasonable rule for a magistrate to take an
+information from a felon, except against his accomplices. Next, I think
+it right to observe to you, in my own proper person, that you appear to
+me to be the most impudent rascal I ever saw. Why, are you such an ass
+as to suppose, that the sort of story you have been telling, can be of
+any service to you, either here or at the assizes, or any where else? A
+fine time of it indeed it would be, if, when gentlemen of six thousand a
+year take up their servants for robbing them, those servants could trump
+up such accusations as these, and could get any magistrate or court of
+justice to listen to them! Whether or no the felony with which you stand
+charged would have brought you to the gallows, I will not pretend to
+say: but I am sure this story will. There would be a speedy end to all
+order and good government, if fellows that trample upon ranks and
+distinctions in this atrocious sort were upon any consideration suffered
+to get off."
+
+"And do you refuse, sir, to attend to the particulars of the charge I
+allege?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do.--But, if I did not, pray what witnesses have you of the
+murder?"
+
+This question staggered me.
+
+"None. But I believe I can make out a circumstantial proof, of a nature
+to force attention from the most indifferent hearer."
+
+"So I thought.--Officers, take him from the bar!"
+
+Such was the success of this ultimate resort on my part, upon which I
+had built with such undoubting confidence. Till now, I had conceived
+that the unfavourable situation in which I was placed was prolonged by
+my own forbearance; and I had determined to endure all that human nature
+could support, rather than have recourse to this extreme recrimination.
+That idea secretly consoled me under all my calamities: it was a
+voluntary sacrifice, and was cheerfully made. I thought myself allied to
+the army of martyrs and confessors; I applauded my fortitude and
+self-denial; and I pleased myself with the idea, that I had the power,
+though I hoped never to employ it, by an unrelenting display of my
+resources, to put an end at once to my sufferings and persecutions.
+
+And this at last was the justice of mankind! A man, under certain
+circumstances, shall not be heard in the detection of a crime, because
+he has not been a participator of it! The story of a flagitious murder
+shall be listened to with indifference, while an innocent man is hunted,
+like a wild beast, to the furthest corners of the earth! Six thousand a
+year shall protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an
+impeachment shall be superseded, because the author of it is a servant!
+
+I was conducted back to the very prison from which a few months before I
+had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls,
+compelled to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my
+own torture, and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had
+acquired some knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter
+experience, by how many links society had a hold upon me, and how
+closely the snares of despotism beset me. I no longer beheld the world,
+as my youthful fancy had once induced me to do, as a scene in which to
+hide or to appear, and to exhibit the freaks of a wanton vivacity. I saw
+my whole species as ready, in one mode or other, to be made the
+instruments of the tyrant. Hope died away in the bottom of my heart.
+Shut up for the first night in my dungeon, I was seized at intervals
+with temporary frenzy. From time to time, I rent the universal silence
+with the roarings of unsupportable despair. But this was a transient
+distraction. I soon returned to the sober recollection of myself and my
+miseries.
+
+My prospects were more gloomy, and my situation apparently more
+irremediable, than ever. I was exposed again, if that were of any
+account, to the insolence and tyranny that are uniformly exercised
+within those walls. Why should I repeat the loathsome tale of all that
+was endured by me, and is endured by every man who is unhappy enough to
+fall under the government of these consecrated ministers of national
+jurisprudence? The sufferings I had already experienced, my anxieties,
+my flight, the perpetual expectation of being discovered, worse than the
+discovery itself, would perhaps have been enough to satisfy the most
+insensible individual, in the court of his own conscience, if I had even
+been the felon I was pretended to be. But the law has neither eyes, nor
+ears, nor bowels of humanity; and it turns into marble the hearts of all
+those that are nursed in its principles.
+
+I however once more recovered my spirit of determination. I resolved
+that, while I had life, I would never be deserted by this spirit.
+Oppressed, annihilated I might be; but, if I died, I would die
+resisting. What use, what advantage, what pleasurable sentiment, could
+arise from a tame surrender? There is no man that is ignorant, that to
+humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts
+there is no room for amendment and reformation.
+
+My fortitude may to some persons appear above the standard of human
+nature. But if I draw back the veil from my heart they will readily
+confess their mistake. My heart bled at every pore. My resolution was
+not the calm sentiment of philosophy and reason. It was a gloomy and
+desperate purpose: the creature, not of hope, but of a mind austerely
+held to its design, that felt, as it were, satisfied with the naked
+effort, and prepared to give success or miscarriage to the winds. It was
+to this miserable condition, which might awaken sympathy in the most
+hardened bosom, that Mr. Falkland had reduced me.
+
+In the mean time, strange as it may seem, here, in prison, subject to
+innumerable hardships, and in the assured expectation of a sentence of
+death, I recovered my health. I ascribe this to the state of my mind,
+which was now changed, from perpetual anxiety, terror, and alarm, the
+too frequent inmates of a prison, but which I upon this occasion did not
+seem to bring along with me, to a desperate firmness.
+
+I anticipated the event of my trial. I determined once more to escape
+from my prison; nor did I doubt of my ability to effect at least this
+first step towards my future preservation. The assizes however were
+near, and there were certain considerations, unnecessary to be detailed,
+that persuaded me there might be benefit in waiting till my trial should
+actually be terminated, before I made my attempt.
+
+It stood upon the list as one of the latest to be brought forward. I was
+therefore extremely surprised to find it called out of its order, early
+on the morning of the second day. But, if this were unexpected, how
+much greater was my astonishment, when my prosecutor was called, to
+find neither Mr. Falkland, nor Mr. Forester, nor a single individual of
+any description, appear against me! The recognizances into which my
+prosecutors had entered were declared to be forfeited; and I was
+dismissed without further impediment from the bar.
+
+The effect which this incredible reverse produced upon my mind it is
+impossible to express. I, who had come to that bar with the sentence of
+death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to
+transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had
+broken through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my
+prison; that I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless,
+spectre-haunted nights; that I had racked my invention for expedients of
+evasion and concealment; that my mind had been roused to an energy of
+which I could scarcely have believed it capable; that my existence had
+been enthralled to an ever-living torment, such as I could scarcely have
+supposed it in man to endure? Great God! what is man? Is he thus blind
+to the future, thus totally unsuspecting of what is to occur in the next
+moment of his existence? I have somewhere read, that heaven in mercy
+hides from us the future incidents of our life. My own experience does
+not well accord with this assertion. In this instance at least I should
+have been saved from insupportable labour and undescribable anguish,
+could I have foreseen the catastrophe of this most interesting
+transaction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+It was not long before I took my everlasting leave of this detested and
+miserable scene. My heart was for the present too full of astonishment
+and exultation in my unexpected deliverance, to admit of anxiety about
+the future. I withdrew from the town; I rambled with a slow and
+thoughtful pace, now bursting with exclamation, and now buried in
+profound and undefinable reverie. Accident led me towards the very heath
+which had first sheltered me, when, upon a former occasion, I broke out
+of my prison. I wandered among its cavities and its valleys. It was a
+forlorn and desolate solitude. I continued here I know not how long.
+Night at length overtook me unperceived, and I prepared to return for
+the present to the town I had quitted.
+
+It was now perfectly dark, when two men, whom I had not previously
+observed, sprung upon me from behind. They seized me by the arms, and
+threw me upon the ground. I had no time for resistance or recollection.
+I could however perceive that one of them was the diabolical Gines. They
+blindfolded, gagged me, and hurried me I knew not whither. As we passed
+along in silence, I endeavoured to conjecture what could be the meaning
+of this extraordinary violence. I was strongly impressed with the idea,
+that, after the event of this morning, the most severe and painful part
+of my history was past; and, strange as it may seem, I could not
+persuade myself to regard with alarm this unexpected attack. It might
+however be some new project, suggested by the brutal temper and
+unrelenting animosity of Gines.
+
+I presently found that we were returned into the town I had just
+quitted. They led me into a house, and, as soon as they had taken
+possession of a room freed me from the restraints they had before
+imposed Here Gines informed me with a malicious grin that no harm was
+intended me, and therefore I should show most sense in keeping myself
+quiet. I perceived that we were in an inn; I overheard company in a room
+at no great distance from us, and therefore was now as thoroughly aware
+as he could be, that there was at present little reason to stand in fear
+of any species of violence, and that it would be time enough to resist,
+when they attempted to conduct me from the inn in the same manner that
+they had brought me into it. I was not without some curiosity to see the
+conclusion that was to follow upon so extraordinary a commencement.
+
+The preliminaries I have described were scarcely completed, before Mr.
+Falkland entered the room. I remember Collins, when he first
+communicated to me the particulars of our patron's history, observed
+that he was totally unlike the man he had once been. I had no means of
+ascertaining the truth of that observation. But it was strikingly
+applicable to the spectacle which now presented itself to my eyes,
+though, when I last beheld this unhappy man, he had been a victim to the
+same passions, a prey to the same undying remorse, as now. Misery was at
+that time inscribed in legible characters upon his countenance. But now
+he appeared like nothing that had ever been visible in human shape. His
+visage was haggard, emaciated, and fleshless. His complexion was a dun
+and tarnished red, the colour uniform through every region of the face,
+and suggested the idea of its being burnt and parched by the eternal
+fire that burned within him. His eyes were red, quick, wandering, full
+of suspicion and rage. His hair was neglected, ragged, and floating.
+His whole figure was thin, to a degree that suggested the idea rather of
+a skeleton than a person actually alive. Life seemed hardly to be the
+capable inhabitant of so woe-begone and ghost-like a figure. The taper
+of wholesome life was expired; but passion, and fierceness, and frenzy,
+were able for the present to supply its place.
+
+I was to the utmost degree astonished and shocked at the sight of
+him.--He sternly commanded my conductors to leave the room.
+
+"Well, sir, I have this day successfully exerted myself to save your
+life from the gallows. A fortnight ago you did what you were able to
+bring my life to that ignominious close.
+
+"Were you so stupid and undistinguishing as not to know that the
+preservation of your life was the uniform object of my exertions? Did
+not I maintain you in prison? Did not I endeavour to prevent your being
+sent thither? Could you mistake the bigoted and obstinate conduct of
+Forester, in offering a hundred guineas for your apprehension, for mine?
+
+"I had my eye upon you in all your wanderings. You have taken no
+material step through their whole course with which I have not been
+acquainted. I meditated to do you good. I have spilt no blood but that
+of Tyrrel: that was in the moment of passion; and it has been the
+subject of my uninterrupted and hourly remorse. I have connived at no
+man's fate but that of the Hawkinses: they could no otherwise have been
+saved, than by my acknowledging myself a murderer. The rest of my life
+has been spent in acts of benevolence.
+
+"I meditated to do you good. For that reason I was willing to prove you.
+You pretended to act towards me with consideration and forbearance. If
+you had persisted in that to the end, I would yet have found a way to
+reward you. I left you to your own discretion. You might show the
+impotent malignity of your own heart; but, in the circumstances in which
+you were then placed, I knew you could not hurt me. Your forbearance has
+proved, as I all along suspected, empty and treacherous. You have
+attempted to blast my reputation. You have sought to disclose the select
+and eternal secret of my soul. Because you have done that, I will never
+forgive you. I will remember it to my latest breath. The memory shall
+survive me, when my existence is no more. Do you think you are out of
+the reach of my power, because a court of justice has acquitted you?"
+
+While Mr. Falkland was speaking a sudden distemper came over his
+countenance, his whole frame was shaken by an instantaneous convulsion,
+and he staggered to a chair. In about three minutes he recovered.
+
+"Yes," said he, "I am still alive. I shall live for days, and months,
+and years; the power that made me, of whatever kind it be, can only
+determine how long. I live the guardian of my reputation. That, and to
+endure a misery such as man never endured, are the only ends to which I
+live. But, when I am no more, my fame shall still survive. My character
+shall be revered as spotless and unimpeachable by all posterity, as long
+as the name of Falkland shall be repeated in the most distant regions of
+the many-peopled globe."
+
+Having said this, he returned to the discourse which more immediately
+related to my future condition and happiness.
+
+"There is one condition," said he, "upon which you may obtain some
+mitigation of your future calamity. It is for that purpose that I have
+sent for you. Listen to my proposal with deliberation and sobriety.
+Remember, that the insanity is not less to trifle with the resolved
+determination of my soul, than it would be to pull a mountain upon your
+head that hung trembling upon the edge of the mighty Apennine!
+
+"I insist then upon your signing a paper, declaring, in the most solemn
+manner, that I am innocent of murder, and that the charge you alleged at
+the office in Bow-street is false, malicious, and groundless. Perhaps
+you may scruple out of a regard to truth. Is truth then entitled to
+adoration for its own sake, and not for the sake of the happiness it is
+calculated to produce? Will a reasonable man sacrifice to barren truth,
+when benevolence, humanity, and every consideration that is dear to the
+human heart, require that it should be superseded? It is probable that I
+may never make use of this paper, but I require it, as the only
+practicable reparation to the honour you have assailed. This is what I
+had to propose. I expect your answer."
+
+"Sir," answered I, "I have heard you to an end, and I stand in need of
+no deliberation to enable me to answer you in the negative. You took me
+up a raw and inexperienced boy, capable of being moulded to any form you
+pleased. But you have communicated to me volumes of experience in a very
+short period. I am no longer irresolute and pliable. What is the power
+you retain over my fate I am unable to discover. You may destroy me; but
+you cannot make me tremble. I am not concerned to enquire, whether what
+I have suffered flowed from you by design or otherwise; whether you were
+the author of my miseries, or only connived at them. This I know, that I
+have suffered too exquisitely on your account, for me to feel the least
+remaining claim on your part to my making any voluntary sacrifice.
+
+"You say that benevolence and humanity require this sacrifice of me. No;
+it would only be a sacrifice to your mad and misguided love of fame,--to
+that passion which has been the source of all your miseries, of the most
+tragical calamities to others, and of every misfortune that has happened
+to me. I have no forbearance to exercise towards that passion. If you be
+not yet cured of this tremendous and sanguinary folly, at least I will
+do nothing to cherish it. I know not whether from my youth I was
+destined for a hero; but I may thank you for having taught me a lesson
+of insurmountable fortitude.
+
+"What is it that you require of me? that I should sign away my own
+reputation for the better maintaining of yours. Where is the equality of
+that? What is it that casts me at such an immense distance below you, as
+to make every thing that relates to me wholly unworthy of consideration?
+You have been educated in the prejudice of birth. I abhor that
+prejudice. You have made me desperate, and I utter what that desperation
+suggests.
+
+"You will tell me perhaps that I have no reputation to lose; that, while
+you are esteemed faultless and unblemished, I am universally reputed a
+thief, a suborner, and a calumniator. Be it so. I will never do any
+thing to countenance those imputations. The more I am destitute of the
+esteem of mankind, the more careful I will be to preserve my own. I will
+never from fear, or any other mistaken motive, do any thing of which I
+ought to be ashamed.
+
+"You are determined to be for ever my enemy. I have in no degree
+deserved this eternal abhorrence. I have always esteemed and pitied you.
+For a considerable time I rather chose to expose myself to every kind
+of misfortune, than disclose the secret that was so dear to you. I was
+not deterred by your menaces--(what could you make me suffer more than
+I actually suffered?)--but by the humanity of my own heart; in which,
+and not in means of violence, you ought to have reposed your confidence.
+What is the mysterious vengeance that you can yet execute against me?
+You menaced me before; you can menace no worse now. You are wearing out
+the springs of terror. Do with me as you please; you teach me to hear
+you with an unshrinking and desperate firmness. Recollect yourself! I
+did not proceed to the step with which you reproach me, till I was
+apparently urged to the very last extremity. I had suffered as much as
+human nature can suffer; I had lived in the midst of eternal alarm and
+unintermitted watchfulness; I had twice been driven to purposes of
+suicide. I am now sorry however, that the step of which you complain was
+ever adopted. But, urged to exasperation by an unintermitted rigour, I
+had no time to cool or to deliberate. Even at present I cherish no
+vengeance against you. All that is reasonable, all that can really
+contribute to your security, I will readily concede; but I will not be
+driven to an act repugnant to all reason, integrity, and justice."
+
+Mr. Falkland listened to me with astonishment and impatience. He had
+entertained no previous conception of the firmness I displayed. Several
+times he was convulsed with the fury that laboured in his breast. Once
+and again he betrayed an intention to interrupt; but he was restrained
+by the collectedness of my manner, and perhaps by a desire to be
+acquainted with the entire state of my mind. Finding that I had
+concluded, he paused for a moment; his passion seemed gradually to
+enlarge, till it was no longer capable of control.
+
+"It is well!" said he, gnashing his teeth, and stamping upon the ground.
+"You refuse the composition I offer! I have no power to persuade you to
+compliance! You defy me! At least I have a power respecting you, and
+that power I will exercise; a power that shall grind you into atoms. I
+condescend to no more expostulation. I know what I am, and what I can
+be. I know what you are, and what fate is reserved for you!"
+
+Saying this he quitted the room.
+
+Such were the particulars of this memorable scene. The impression it has
+left upon my understanding is indelible. The figure and appearance of
+Mr. Falkland, his death-like weakness and decay, his more than mortal
+energy and rage, the words that he spoke, the motives that animated him,
+produced one compounded effect upon my mind that nothing of the same
+nature could ever parallel. The idea of his misery thrilled through my
+frame. How weak in comparison of it is the imaginary hell, which the
+great enemy of mankind is represented as carrying every where about with
+him!
+
+From this consideration, my mind presently turned to the menaces he had
+vented against myself. They were all mysterious and undefined. He had
+talked of power, but had given no hint from which I could collect in
+what he imagined it to consist. He had talked of misery, but had not
+dropped a syllable respecting the nature of the misery to be inflicted.
+
+I sat still for some time, ruminating on these thoughts. Neither Mr.
+Falkland nor any other person appeared to disturb my meditations. I
+rose, went out of the room, and from the inn into the street. No one
+offered to molest me. It was strange! What was the nature of this
+power, from which I was to apprehend so much, yet which seemed to leave
+me at perfect liberty? I began to imagine that all I had heard from this
+dreadful adversary was mere madness and extravagance, and that he was at
+length deprived of the use of reason, which had long served him only as
+a medium of torment. Yet was it likely in that case that he should be
+able to employ Gines and his associate, who had just been his
+instruments of violence upon my person?
+
+I proceeded along the streets with considerable caution. I looked before
+me and behind me, as well as the darkness would allow me to do, that I
+might not again be hunted in sight by some men of stratagem and violence
+without my perceiving it. I went not, as before, beyond the limits of
+the town, but considered the streets, the houses, and the inhabitants,
+as affording some degree of security. I was still walking with my mind
+thus full of suspicion and forecast, when I discovered Thomas, that
+servant of Mr. Falkland whom I have already more than once had occasion
+to mention. He advanced towards me with an air so blunt and direct, as
+instantly to remove from me the idea of any thing insidious in his
+purpose; besides that I had always felt the character of Thomas, rustic
+and uncultivated as it was, to be entitled to a more than common portion
+of esteem.
+
+"Thomas," said I, as he advanced, "I hope you are willing to give me
+joy, that I am at length delivered from the dreadful danger which for
+many months haunted me so unmercifully."
+
+"No," rejoined Thomas, roughly; "I be not at all willing. I do not know
+what to make of myself in this affair. While you were in prison in that
+miserable fashion, I felt all at one almost as if I loved you: and now
+that that is over, and you are turned out loose in the world to do your
+worst, my blood rises at the very sight of you. To look at you, you are
+almost that very lad Williams for whom I could with pleasure, as it
+were, have laid down my life; and yet, behind that smiling face there
+lie robbery, and lying, and every thing that is ungrateful and
+murderous. Your last action was worse than all the rest. How could you
+find in your heart to revive that cruel story about Mr. Tyrrel, which
+every body had agreed, out of regard to the squire, never to mention
+again, and of which I know, and you know, he is as innocent as the child
+unborn? There are causes and reasons, or else I could have wished from
+the bottom of my soul never to have set eyes on you again."
+
+"And you still persist in your hard thoughts of me?"
+
+"Worse! I think worse of you than ever! Before, I thought you as bad as
+man could be. I wonder from my soul what you are to do next. But you
+make good the old saying, 'Needs must go, that the devil drives.'"
+
+"And so there is never to be an end of my misfortunes! What can Mr.
+Falkland contrive for me worse than the ill opinion and enmity of all
+mankind?"
+
+"Mr. Falkland contrive! He is the best friend you have in the world,
+though you are the basest traitor to him. Poor man! it makes one's heart
+ache to look at him; he is the very image of grief. And it is not clear
+to me that it is not all owing to you. At least you have given the
+finishing lift to the misfortune that was already destroying him. There
+have been the devil and all to pay between him and squire Forester. The
+squire is right raving mad with my master, for having outwitted him in
+the matter of the trial, and saved your life. He swears that you shall
+be taken up and tried all over again at the next assizes; but my master
+is resolute, and I believe will carry it his own way. He says indeed
+that the law will not allow squire Forester to have his will in this. To
+see him ordering every thing for your benefit, and taking all your
+maliciousness as mild and innocent as a lamb, and to think of your vile
+proceedings against him, is a sight one shall not see again, go all the
+world over. For God's sake, repent of your reprobate doings, and make
+what little reparation is in your power! Think of your poor soul, before
+you awake, as to be sure one of these days you will, in fire and
+brimstone everlasting!"
+
+Saying this, he held out his hand and took hold of mine. The action
+seemed strange; but I at first thought it the unpremeditated result of
+his solemn and well-intended adjuration. I felt however that he put
+something into my hand. The next moment he quitted his hold, and
+hastened from me with the swiftness of an arrow. What he had thus given
+me was a bank-note of twenty pounds. I had no doubt that he had been
+charged to deliver it to me from Mr. Falkland.
+
+What was I to infer? what light did it throw upon the intentions of my
+inexorable persecutor? his animosity against me was as great as ever;
+that I had just had confirmed to me from his own mouth. Yet his
+animosity appeared to be still tempered with the remains of humanity. He
+prescribed to it a line, wide enough to embrace the gratification of his
+views, and within the boundaries of that line it stopped. But this
+discovery carried no consolation to my mind. I knew not what portion of
+calamity I was fated to endure, before his jealousy of dishonour, and
+inordinate thirst of fame would deem themselves satisfied.
+
+Another question offered itself. Was I to receive the money which had
+just been put into my hands? the money of a man who had inflicted upon
+me injuries, less than those which he had entailed upon himself, but the
+greatest that one man can inflict upon another? who had blasted my
+youth, who had destroyed my peace, who had held me up to the abhorrence
+of mankind, and rendered me an outcast upon the face of the earth? who
+had forced the basest and most atrocious falsehoods, and urged them with
+a seriousness and perseverance which produced universal belief? who, an
+hour before, had vowed against me inexorable enmity, and sworn to entail
+upon me misery without end? Would not this conduct on my part betray a
+base and abject spirit, that crouched under tyranny, and kissed the
+hands that were imbrued in my blood?
+
+If these reasons appeared strong, neither was the other side without
+reasons in reply. I wanted the money: not for any purpose of vice or
+superfluity, but for those purposes without which life cannot subsist.
+Man ought to be able, wherever placed, to find for himself the means of
+existence; but I was to open a new scene of life, to remove to some
+distant spot, to be prepared against all the ill-will of mankind, and
+the unexplored projects of hostility of a most accomplished foe. The
+actual means of existence are the property of all. What should hinder me
+from taking that of which I was really in want, when, in taking it, I
+risked no vengeance, and perpetrated no violence? The property in
+question will be beneficial to me, and the voluntary surrender of it is
+accompanied with no injury to its late proprietor; what other condition
+can be necessary to render the use of it on my part a duty? He that
+lately possessed it has injured me; does that alter its value as a
+medium of exchange? He will boast, perhaps of the imaginary obligation
+he has conferred on me: surely to shrink from a thing in itself right
+from any such apprehension, can be the result only of pusillanimity and
+cowardice!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Influenced by these reasonings, I determined to retain what had thus
+been put into my hands. My next care was in regard to the scene I should
+choose, as the retreat of that life which I had just saved from the
+grasp of the executioner. The danger to which I was exposed of forcible
+interruption in my pursuits, was probably, in some respects, less now
+than it had been previously to this crisis. Besides, that I was
+considerably influenced in this deliberation by the strong loathing I
+conceived for the situations in which I had lately been engaged. I knew
+not in what mode Mr. Falkland intended to exercise his vengeance against
+me; but I was seized with so unconquerable an aversion to disguise, and
+the idea of spending my life in personating a fictitious character, that
+I could not, for the present at least, reconcile my mind to any thing of
+that nature. The same kind of disgust I had conceived for the
+metropolis, where I had spent so many hours of artifice, sadness, and
+terror. I therefore decided in favour of the project which had formerly
+proved amusing to my imagination, of withdrawing to some distant, rural
+scene, a scene of calmness and obscurity, where for a few years at
+least, perhaps during the life of Mr. Falkland, I might be hidden from
+the world, recover the wounds my mind had received in this fatal
+connection, methodise and improve the experience which had been
+accumulated, cultivate the faculties I in any degree possessed, and
+employ the intervals of these occupations in simple industry, and the
+intercourse of guileless, uneducated, kind-intentioned minds. The
+menaces of my persecutor seemed to forebode the inevitable interruption
+of this system. But I deemed it wise to put these menaces out of my
+consideration I compared them to death, which must infallibly overtake
+us we know not when; but the possibility of whose arrival next year,
+next week, to-morrow, must be left out of the calculation of him who
+would enter upon any important or well-concerted undertaking.
+
+Such were the ideas that determined my choice. Thus did my youthful mind
+delineate the system of distant years, even when the threats of instant
+calamity still sounded in my ears. I was inured to the apprehension of
+mischief, till at last the hoarse roarings of the beginning tempest had
+lost their power of annihilating my peace. I however thought it
+necessary, while I was most palpably within the sphere of the enemy, to
+exert every practicable degree of vigilance. I was careful not to incur
+the hazards of darkness and solitude. When I left the town it was with
+the stage-coach, an obvious source of protection against glaring and
+enormous violence. Meanwhile I found myself no more exposed to
+molestation in my progress, than the man in the world who should have
+had the least reason for apprehensions of this nature. As the distance
+increased, I relaxed something in my precaution, though still awake to a
+sense of danger, and constantly pursued with the image of my foe. I
+fixed upon an obscure market-town in Wales as the chosen seat of my
+operations. This place recommended itself to my observation as I was
+wandering in quest of an abode. It was clean, cheerful, and of great
+simplicity of appearance. It was at a distance from any public and
+frequented road, and had nothing which could deserve the name of trade.
+The face of nature around it was agreeably diversified, being partly
+wild and romantic, and partly rich and abundant in production.
+
+Here I solicited employment in two professions; the first, that of a
+watchmaker, in which though the instructions I had received were few,
+they were eked out and assisted by a mind fruitful in mechanical
+invention; the other, that of an instructor in mathematics and its
+practical application, geography, astronomy, land-surveying, and
+navigation. Neither of these was a very copious source of emolument in
+the obscure retreat I had chosen for myself; but, if my receipts were
+slender, my disbursements were still fewer. In this little town I became
+acquainted with the vicar, the apothecary, the lawyer, and the rest of
+the persons who, time out of mind, had been regarded as the top gentry
+of the place. Each of these centred in himself a variety of occupations.
+There was little in the appearance of the vicar that reminded you of his
+profession, except on the recurring Sunday. At other times he
+condescended, with his evangelical hand to guide the plough, or to drive
+the cows from the field to the farm-yard for the milking. The apothecary
+occasionally officiated as a barber, and the lawyer was the village
+schoolmaster.
+
+By all these persons I was received with kindness and hospitality. Among
+people thus remote from the bustle of human life there is an open spirit
+of confidence, by means of which a stranger easily finds access to their
+benevolence and good-will. My manners had never been greatly debauched
+from the simplicity of rural life by the scenes through which I had
+passed; and the hardships I had endured had given additional mildness to
+my character. In the theatre upon which I was now placed I had no rival.
+My mechanical occupation had hitherto been a non-resident; and the
+schoolmaster, who did not aspire to the sublime heights of science I
+professed to communicate, was willing to admit me as a partner in the
+task of civilising the unpolished manners of the inhabitants. For the
+parson, civilisation was no part of his trade; his business was with the
+things of a better life, not with the carnal concerns of this material
+scene; in truth, his thoughts were principally occupied with his oatmeal
+and his cows.
+
+These however were not the only companions which this remote retirement
+afforded me. There was a family of a very different description, of
+which I gradually became the chosen intimate. The father was a shrewd,
+sensible, rational man, but who had turned his principal attention to
+subjects of agriculture. His wife was a truly admirable and
+extraordinary woman. She was the daughter of a Neapolitan nobleman, who,
+after having visited, and made a considerable figure, in every country
+in Europe, had at length received the blow of fate in this village. He
+had been banished his country upon suspicion of religious and political
+heresy, and his estates confiscated. With this only child, like Prospero
+in the Tempest, he had withdrawn himself to one of the most obscure and
+uncultivated regions of the world. Very soon however after his arrival
+in Wales he had been seized with a malignant fever, which carried him
+off in three days. He died possessed of no other property than a few
+jewels, and a bill of credit, to no considerable amount, upon an English
+banker.
+
+Here then was the infant Laura, left in a foreign country, and without
+a single friend. The father of her present husband was led by motives of
+pure humanity to seek to mitigate the misfortunes of the dying Italian.
+Though a plain uninstructed man, with no extraordinary refinement of
+intellect, there was something in his countenance that determined the
+stranger in his present forlorn and melancholy situation, to make him
+his executor, and the guardian of his daughter. The Neapolitan
+understood enough of English to explain his wishes to this friendly
+attendant of his death-bed. As his circumstances were narrow, the
+servants of the stranger, two Italians, a male and a female, were sent
+back to their own country soon after the death of their master.
+
+Laura was at this time eight years of age. At these tender years she had
+been susceptible of little direct instruction; and, as she grew up, even
+the memory of her father became, from year to year, more vague and
+indistinct in her mind. But there was something she derived from her
+father, whether along with the life he bestowed, or as the consequence
+of his instruction and manners, which no time could efface. Every added
+year of her life contributed to develop the fund of her accomplishments.
+She read, she observed, she reflected. Without instructors, she taught
+herself to draw, to sing, and to understand the more polite European
+languages. As she had no society in this remote situation but that of
+peasants, she had no idea of honour or superiority to be derived from
+her acquisitions; but pursued them from a secret taste, and as the
+sources of personal enjoyment.
+
+A mutual attachment gradually arose between her and the only son of her
+guardian. His father led him, from early youth, to the labours and the
+sports of the field, and there was little congeniality between his
+pursuits and those of Laura. But this was a defect that she was slow to
+discover. She had never been accustomed to society in her chosen
+amusements, and habit at that time even made her conceive, that they
+were indebted to solitude for an additional relish. The youthful rustic
+had great integrity, great kindness of heart, and was a lad of excellent
+sense. He was florid, well-proportioned, and the goodness of his
+disposition made his manners amiable. Accomplishments greater than these
+she had never seen in human form, since the death of her father. In
+fact, she is scarcely to be considered as a sufferer in this instance;
+since, in her forlorn and destitute condition, it is little probable,
+when we consider the habits and notions that now prevail, that her
+accomplishments, unassisted by fortune, would have procured her an equal
+alliance in marriage.
+
+When she became a mother her heart opened to a new affection. The idea
+now presented itself, which had never occurred before, that in her
+children at least she might find the partners and companions of her
+favourite employments. She was, at the time of my arrival, mother of
+four, the eldest of which was a son. To all of them she had been a most
+assiduous instructor. It was well for her perhaps that she obtained this
+sphere for the exercise of her mind. It came just at the period when the
+charm which human life derives from novelty is beginning to wear off. It
+gave her new activity and animation. It is perhaps impossible that the
+refinements of which human nature is capable should not, after a time,
+subside into sluggishness, if they be not aided by the influence of
+society and affection.
+
+The son of the Welch farmer by this admirable woman was about seventeen
+years of age at the time of my settlement in their neighbourhood. His
+eldest sister was one year younger than himself. The whole family
+composed a group, with which a lover of tranquillity and virtue would
+have delighted to associate in any situation. It is easy therefore to
+conceive how much I rejoiced in their friendship, in this distant
+retirement, and suffering, as I felt myself, from the maltreatment and
+desertion of my species. The amiable Laura had a wonderful quickness of
+eye, and rapidity of apprehension; but this feature in her countenance
+was subdued by a sweetness of disposition, such as I never in any other
+instance saw expressed in the looks of a human being. She soon
+distinguished me by her kindness and friendship; for, living as she had
+done, though familiar with the written productions of a cultivated
+intellect, she had never seen the thing itself realised in a living
+being, except in the person of her father. She delighted to converse
+with me upon subjects of literature and taste, and she eagerly invited
+my assistance in the education of her children. The son, though young,
+had been so happily improved and instructed by his mother, that I found
+in him nearly all the most essential qualities we require in a friend.
+Engagement and inclination equally led me to pass a considerable part of
+every day in this agreeable society. Laura treated me as if I had been
+one of the family; and I sometimes flattered myself that I might one day
+become such in reality. What an enviable resting-place for me, who had
+known nothing but calamity, and had scarcely dared to look for sympathy
+and kindness in the countenance of a human being!
+
+The sentiments of friendship which early disclosed themselves between me
+and the member of this amiable family daily became stronger. At every
+interview, the confidence reposed in me by the mother increased. While
+our familiarity gained in duration, it equally gained in that subtlety
+of communication by which it seemed to shoot forth its roots in every
+direction. There are a thousand little evanescent touches in the
+development of a growing friendship, that are neither thought of, nor
+would be understood, between common acquaintances. I honoured and
+esteemed the respectable Laura like a mother; for, though the difference
+of our ages was by no means sufficient to authorise the sentiment, it
+was irresistibly suggested to me by the fact of her always being
+presented to my observation under the maternal character. Her son was a
+lad of great understanding, generosity, and feeling, and of no
+contemptible acquirements; while his tender years, and the uncommon
+excellence of his mother, subtracted something from the independence of
+his judgment, and impressed him with a sort of religious deference for
+her will. In the eldest daughter I beheld the image of Laura; for that I
+felt attached to her for the present; and I sometimes conceived it
+probable that hereafter I might learn to love her for her own
+sake.--Alas, it was thus that I amused myself with the visions of distant
+years, while I stood in reality on the brink of the precipice!
+
+It will perhaps be thought strange that I never once communicated the
+particulars of my story to this amiable matron, or to my young friend,
+for such I may also venture to call him, her son. But in truth I
+abhorred the memory of this story; I placed all my hopes of happiness in
+the prospect of its being consigned to oblivion. I fondly flattered
+myself that such would be the event: in the midst of my unlooked-for
+happiness, I scarcely recollected, or, recollecting, was disposed to
+yield but a small degree of credit to, the menaces of Mr. Falkland.
+
+One day, that I was sitting alone with the accomplished Laura, she
+repeated his all-dreadful name. I started with astonishment, amazed
+that a woman like this, who knew nobody, who lived as it were alone in a
+corner of the universe, who had never in a single instance entered into
+any fashionable circle, this admirable and fascinating hermit, should,
+by some unaccountable accident, have become acquainted with this fatal
+and tremendous name. Astonishment however was not my only sensation. I
+became pale with terror; I rose from my seat; I attempted to sit down
+again; I reeled out of the room, and hastened to bury myself in
+solitude. The unexpectedness of the incident took from me all
+precaution, and overwhelmed my faculties. The penetrating Laura observed
+my behaviour; but nothing further occurred to excite her attention to it
+at that time; and, concluding from my manner that enquiry would be
+painful to me, she humanely suppressed her curiosity.
+
+I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of
+Laura; that he had been acquainted with the story of Count Malvesi, and
+with a number of other transactions redounding in the highest degree to
+the credit of the gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in
+which these transactions were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland
+in the highest terms of panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every
+little relic of her father with a sort of religious veneration; and, by
+this accident, the name of Mr. Falkland was connected in her mind with
+the sentiments of unbounded esteem.
+
+The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me,
+than it would have been to most other persons with my degree of
+intellectual cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and
+bleeding at almost every vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as
+rest and tranquillity. It seemed as if my faculties were, at least for
+the time, exhausted by the late preternatural intensity of their
+exertions, and that they stood indispensably in need of a period of
+comparative suspension.
+
+This was however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been
+active, and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and
+the exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new
+energies. I soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous
+pursuit. In this state of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner
+of the house of one of my neighbours, with a general dictionary of four
+of the northern languages. This incident gave a direction to my
+thoughts. In my youth I had not been inattentive to languages. I
+determined to attempt, at least for my own use, an etymological analysis
+of the English language. I easily perceived, that this pursuit had one
+advantage to a person in my situation, and that a small number of books,
+consulted with this view, would afford employment for a considerable
+time. I procured other dictionaries. In my incidental reading, I noted
+the manner in which words were used, and applied these remarks to the
+illustration of my general enquiry. I was unintermitted in my assiduity,
+and my collections promised to accumulate. Thus I was provided with
+sources both of industry and recreation, the more completely to divert
+my thoughts from the recollection of my past misfortunes.
+
+In this state, so grateful to my feelings, week after week glided away
+without interruption and alarm. The situation in which I was now placed
+had some resemblance to that in which I had spent my earlier years, with
+the advantage of a more attractive society, and a riper judgment. I
+began to look back upon the intervening period as upon a distempered and
+tormenting dream; or rather perhaps my feelings were like those of a
+man recovered from an interval of raging delirium, from ideas of horror,
+confusion, flight, persecution, agony, and despair! When I recollected
+what I had undergone, it was not without satisfaction, as the
+recollection of a thing that was past; every day augmented my hope that
+it was never to return. Surely the dark and terrific menaces of Mr.
+Falkland were rather the perturbed suggestions of his angry mind, than
+the final result of a deliberate and digested system! How happy should I
+feel, beyond the ordinary lot of man, if, after the terrors I had
+undergone, I should now find myself unexpectedly restored to the
+immunities of a human being!
+
+While I was thus soothing my mind with fond imaginations, it happened
+that a few bricklayers and their labourers came over from a distance of
+five or six miles, to work upon some additions to one of the better sort
+of houses in the town, which had changed its tenant. No incident could
+be more trivial than this, had it not been for a strange coincidence of
+time between this circumstance, and a change which introduced itself
+into my situation. This first manifested itself in a sort of shyness
+with which I was treated, first by one person, and then another, of my
+new-formed acquaintance. They were backward to enter into conversation
+with me, and answered my enquiries with an awkward and embarrassed air.
+When they met me in the street or the field, their countenances
+contracted a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun me. My scholars quitted
+me one after another; and I had no longer any employment in my
+mechanical profession. It is impossible to describe the sensations,
+which the gradual but uninterrupted progress of this revolution produced
+in my mind. It seemed as if I had some contagious disease, from which
+every man shrunk with alarm, and left me to perish unassisted and alone.
+I asked one man and another to explain to me the meaning of these
+appearances; but every one avoided the task, and answered in an evasive
+and ambiguous manner. I sometimes supposed that it was all a delusion of
+the imagination; till the repetition of the sensation brought the
+reality too painfully home to my apprehension. There are few things that
+give a greater shock to the mind, than a phenomenon in the conduct of
+our fellow men, of great importance to our concerns, and for which we
+are unable to assign any plausible reason. At times I was half inclined
+to believe that the change was not in other men, but that some
+alienation of my own understanding generated the horrid vision. I
+endeavoured to awaken from my dream, and return to my former state of
+enjoyment and happiness; but in vain. To the same consideration it may
+be ascribed, that, unacquainted with the source of the evil, observing
+its perpetual increase, and finding it, so far as I could perceive,
+entirely arbitrary in its nature, I was unable to ascertain its limits,
+or the degree in which it would finally overwhelm me.
+
+In the midst however of the wonderful and seemingly inexplicable nature
+of this scene, there was one idea that instantly obtruded itself, and
+that I could never after banish from my mind. It is Falkland! In vain I
+struggled against the seeming improbability of the supposition. In vain
+I said, "Mr. Falkland, wise as he is, and pregnant in resources, acts by
+human, not by supernatural means. He may overtake me by surprise, and in
+a manner of which I had no previous expectation; but he cannot produce a
+great and notorious effect without some visible agency, however
+difficult it may be to trace that agency to its absolute author. He
+cannot, like those invisible personages who are supposed from time to
+time to interfere in human affairs, ride in the whirlwind, shroud
+himself in clouds and impenetrable darkness, and scatter destruction
+upon the earth from his secret habitation." Thus it was that I bribed my
+imagination, and endeavoured to persuade myself that my present
+unhappiness originated in a different source from my former. All evils
+appeared trivial to me, in comparison with the recollection and
+perpetuation of my parent misfortune. I felt like a man distracted, by
+the incoherence of my ideas to my present situation, excluding from it
+the machinations of Mr. Falkland, on the one hand; and on the other, by
+the horror I conceived at the bare possibility of again encountering his
+animosity, after a suspension of many weeks, a suspension as I had hoped
+for ever. An interval like this was an age to a person in the calamitous
+situation I had so long experienced. But, in spite of my efforts, I
+could not banish from my mind the dreadful idea. My original conceptions
+of the genius and perseverance of Mr. Falkland had been such, that I
+could with difficulty think any thing impossible to him. I knew not how
+to set up my own opinions of material causes and the powers of the human
+mind, as the limits of existence. Mr. Falkland had always been to my
+imagination an object of wonder, and that which excites our wonder we
+scarcely suppose ourselves competent to analyse.
+
+It may well be conceived, that one of the first persons to whom I
+thought of applying for an explanation of this dreadful mystery was the
+accomplished Laura. My disappointment here cut me to the heart. I was
+not prepared for it. I recollected the ingenuousness of her nature, the
+frankness of her manners, the partiality with which she had honoured me.
+If I were mortified with the coldness, the ruggedness, and the cruel
+mistake of principles with which the village inhabitants repelled my
+enquiries, the mortification I suffered, only drove me more impetuously
+to seek the cure of my griefs from this object of my admiration. "In
+Laura," said I, "I am secure from these vulgar prejudices. I confide in
+her justice. I am sure she will not cast me off unheard, nor without
+strictly examining a question on all sides, in which every thing that is
+valuable to a person she once esteemed, may be involved."
+
+Thus encouraging myself, I turned my steps to the place of her
+residence. As I passed along I called up all my recollection, I summoned
+my faculties. "I may be made miserable," said I, "but it shall not be
+for want of any exertion of mine, that promises to lead to happiness. I
+will be clear, collected, simple in narrative, ingenuous in
+communication. I will leave nothing unsaid that the case may require. I
+will not volunteer any thing that relates to my former transactions with
+Mr. Falkland; but, if I find that my present calamity is connected with
+those transactions, I will not fear but that by an honest explanation I
+shall remove it."
+
+I knocked at the door. A servant appeared, and told me that her mistress
+hoped I would excuse her; she must really beg to dispense with my visit.
+
+I was thunderstruck. I was rooted to the spot. I had been carefully
+preparing my mind for every thing that I supposed likely to happen, but
+this event had not entered into my calculations. I roused myself in a
+partial degree, and walked away without uttering a word.
+
+I had not gone far before I perceived one of the workmen following me,
+who put into my hands a billet. The contents were these:--
+
+"MR. WILLIAMS,
+
+"Let me see you no more. I have a right at least to expect your
+compliance with this requisition; and, upon that condition, I pardon the
+enormous impropriety and guilt with which you have conducted yourself to
+me and my family.
+
+"LAURA DENISON."
+
+The sensations with which I read these few lines are indescribable. I
+found in them a dreadful confirmation of the calamity that on all sides
+invaded me. But what I felt most was the unmoved coldness with which
+they appeared to be written. This coldness from Laura, my comforter, my
+friend, my mother! To dismiss, to cast me off for ever, without one
+thought of compunction!
+
+I determined however, in spite of her requisition, and in spite of her
+coldness, to have an explanation with her. I did not despair of
+conquering the antipathy she harboured. I did not fear that I should
+rouse her from the vulgar and unworthy conception, of condemning a man,
+in points the most material to his happiness, without stating the
+accusations that are urged against him, and without hearing him in
+reply.
+
+Though I had no doubt, by means of resolution, of gaining access to her
+in her house, yet I preferred taking her unprepared, and not warmed
+against me by any previous contention. Accordingly, the next morning, at
+the time she usually devoted to half an hour's air and exercise, I
+hastened to her garden, leaped the paling, and concealed myself in an
+arbour. Presently I saw, from my retreat, the younger part of the family
+strolling through the garden, and from thence into the fields; but it
+was not my business to be seen by them. I looked after them however with
+earnestness, unobserved; and I could not help asking myself, with a
+deep and heartfelt sigh, whether it were possible that I saw them now
+for the last time?
+
+They had not advanced far into the fields, before their mother made her
+appearance. I observed in her her usual serenity and sweetness of
+countenance. I could feel my heart knocking against my ribs. My whole
+frame was in a tumult. I stole out of the arbour; and, as I advanced
+nearer, my pace became quickened.
+
+"For God's sake, madam," exclaimed I, "give me a hearing! Do not avoid
+me!"
+
+She stood still. "No, sir," she replied, "I shall not avoid you. I
+wished you to dispense with this meeting; but since I cannot obtain
+that--I am conscious of no wrong; and therefore, though the meeting
+gives me pain, it inspires me with no fear."
+
+"Oh, madam," answered I, "my friend! the object of all my reverence!
+whom I once ventured to call my mother! can you wish not to hear me? Can
+you have no anxiety for my justification, whatever may be the
+unfavourable impression you may have received against me?"
+
+"Not an atom. I have neither wish nor inclination to hear you. That tale
+which, in its plain and unadorned state, is destructive of the character
+of him to whom it relates, no colouring can make an honest one."
+
+"Good God! Can you think of condemning a man when you have heard only
+one side of his story?"
+
+"Indeed I can," replied she with dignity. "The maxim of hearing both
+sides may be very well in some cases; but it would be ridiculous to
+suppose that there are not cases, that, at the first mention, are too
+clear to admit the shadow of a doubt. By a well-concerted defence you
+may give me new reasons to admire your abilities; but I am acquainted
+with them already. I can admire your abilities, without tolerating your
+character."
+
+"Madam! Amiable, exemplary Laura! whom, in the midst of all your
+harshness and inflexibility, I honour! I conjure you, by every thing
+that is sacred, to tell me what it is that has filled you with this
+sudden aversion to me."
+
+"No, sir; that you shall never obtain from me. I have nothing to say to
+you. I stand still and hear you; because virtue disdains to appear
+abashed and confounded in the presence of vice. Your conduct even at
+this moment, in my opinion, condemns you. True virtue refuses the
+drudgery of explanation and apology. True virtue shines by its own
+light, and needs no art to set it off. You have the first principles of
+morality as yet to learn."
+
+"And can you imagine, that the most upright conduct is always superior
+to the danger of ambiguity?"
+
+"Exactly so. Virtue, sir, consists in actions, and not in words. The
+good man and the bad are characters precisely opposite, not characters
+distinguished from each other by imperceptible shades. The Providence
+that rules us all, has not permitted us to be left without a clew in the
+most important of all questions. Eloquence may seek to confound it; but
+it shall be my care to avoid its deceptive influence. I do not wish to
+have my understanding perverted, and all the differences of things
+concealed from my apprehension."
+
+"Madam, madam! it would be impossible for you to hold this language, if
+you had not always lived in this obscure retreat, if you had ever been
+conversant with the passions and institutions of men."
+
+"It may be so. And, if that be the case, I have great reason to be
+thankful to my God, who has thus enabled me to preserve the innocence of
+my heart, and the integrity of my understanding."
+
+"Can you believe then that ignorance is the only, or the safest,
+preservative of integrity?"
+
+"Sir, I told you at first, and I repeat to you again, that all your
+declamation is in vain. I wish you would have saved me and yourself that
+pain which is the only thing that can possibly result from it. But let
+us suppose that virtue could ever be the equivocal thing you would have
+me believe. Is it possible, if you had been honest, that you would not
+have acquainted me with your story? Is it possible, that you would have
+left me to have been informed of it by a mere accident, and with all the
+shocking aggravations you well knew that accident would give it? Is it
+possible you should have violated the most sacred of all trusts, and
+have led me unknowingly to admit to the intercourse of my children a
+character, which if, as you pretend, it is substantially honest, you
+cannot deny to be blasted and branded in the face of the whole world?
+Go, sir; I despise you. You are a monster and not a man. I cannot tell
+whether my personal situation misleads me; but, to my thinking, this
+last action of yours is worse than all the rest. Nature has constituted
+me the protector of my children. I shall always remember and resent the
+indelible injury you have done them. You have wounded me to the very
+heart, and have taught me to what a pitch the villainy of man can
+extend."
+
+"Madam, I can be silent no longer. I see that you have by some means
+come to a hearing of the story of Mr. Falkland."
+
+"I have. I am astonished you have the effrontery to pronounce his name.
+That name has been a denomination, as far back as my memory can reach,
+for the most exalted of mortals, the wisest and most generous of men."
+
+"Madam, I owe it to myself to set you right on this subject. Mr.
+Falkland--"
+
+"Mr. Williams, I see my children returning from the fields, and coming
+this way. The basest action you ever did was the obtruding yourself upon
+them as an instructor. I insist that you see them no more. I command you
+to be silent. I command you to withdraw. If you persist in your absurd
+resolution of expostulating with me, you must take some other time."
+
+I could continue no longer. I was in a manner heart-broken through the
+whole of this dialogue. I could not think of protracting the pain of
+this admirable woman, upon whom, though I was innocent of the crimes she
+imputed to me, I had inflicted so much pain already. I yielded to the
+imperiousness of her commands, and withdrew.
+
+I hastened, without knowing why, from the presence of Laura to my own
+habitation. Upon entering the house, an apartment of which I occupied, I
+found it totally deserted of its usual inhabitants. The woman and her
+children were gone to enjoy the freshness of the breeze. The husband was
+engaged in his usual out-door occupations. The doors of persons of the
+lower order in this part of the country are secured, in the day-time,
+only with a latch. I entered, and went into the kitchen of the family.
+Here, as I looked round, my eyes accidentally glanced upon a paper lying
+in one corner, which, by some association I was unable to explain,
+roused in me a strong sensation of suspicion and curiosity. I eagerly
+went towards it, caught it up, and found it to be the very paper of the
+WONDERFUL AND SURPRISING HISTORY OF CALEB WILLIAMS, the discovery of
+which, towards the close of my residence in London, had produced in me
+such inexpressible anguish.
+
+This encounter at once cleared up all the mystery that hung upon my late
+transactions. Abhorred and intolerable certainty succeeded to the doubts
+which had haunted my mind. It struck me with the rapidity of lightning.
+I felt a sudden torpor and sickness that pervaded every fibre of my
+frame.
+
+Was there no hope that remained for me? Was acquittal useless? Was there
+no period, past or in prospect, that could give relief to my sufferings?
+Was the odious and atrocious falsehood that had been invented against
+me, to follow me wherever I went, to strip me of character, to deprive
+me of the sympathy and good-will of mankind, to wrest from me the very
+bread by which life must be sustained?
+
+For the space perhaps of half an hour the agony I felt from this
+termination to my tranquillity, and the expectation it excited of the
+enmity which would follow me through every retreat, was such as to
+bereave me of all consistent thinking, much more of the power of coming
+to any resolution. As soon as this giddiness and horror of the mind
+subsided, and the deadly calm that invaded my faculties was no more, one
+stiff and master gale gained the ascendancy, and drove me to an instant
+desertion of this late cherished retreat. I had no patience to enter
+into further remonstrance and explanation with the inhabitants of my
+present residence. I believed that it was in vain to hope to recover the
+favourable prepossession and tranquillity I had lately enjoyed. In
+encountering the prejudices that were thus armed against me, I should
+have to deal with a variety of dispositions, and, though I might succeed
+with some, I could not expect to succeed with all. I had seen too much
+of the reign of triumphant falsehood, to have that sanguine confidence
+in the effects of my innocence, which would have suggested itself to the
+mind of any other person of my propensities and my age. The recent
+instance which had occurred in my conversation with Laura might well
+contribute to discourage me. I could not endure the thought of opposing
+the venom that was thus scattered against me, in detail and through its
+minuter particles. If ever it should be necessary to encounter it, if I
+were pursued like a wild beast, till I could no longer avoid turning
+upon my hunters, I would then turn upon the true author of this
+unprincipled attack; I would encounter the calumny in its strong hold; I
+would rouse myself to an exertion hitherto unessayed; and, by the
+firmness, intrepidity, and unalterable constancy I should display, would
+yet compel mankind to believe Mr. Falkland a suborner and a murderer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+I hasten to the conclusion of my melancholy story. I began to write soon
+after the period to which I have now conducted it. This was another
+resource that my mind, ever eager in inventing means to escape from my
+misery, suggested. In my haste to withdraw myself from the retreat in
+Wales, where first the certainty of Mr. Falkland's menaces was confirmed
+to me, I left behind me the apparatus of my etymological enquiries, and
+the papers I had written upon the subject. I have never been able to
+persuade myself to resume this pursuit. It is always discouraging, to
+begin over again a laborious task, and exert one's self to recover a
+position we had already occupied. I knew not how soon or how abruptly I
+might be driven from any new situation; the appendages of the study in
+which I had engaged were too cumbrous for this state of dependence and
+uncertainty; they only served to give new sharpness to the enmity of my
+foe, and new poignancy to my hourly-renewing distress.
+
+But what was of greatest importance, and made the deepest impression
+upon my mind, was my separation from the family of Laura. Fool that I
+was, to imagine that there was any room for me in the abodes of
+friendship and tranquillity! It was now first, that I felt, with the
+most intolerable acuteness, how completely I was cut off from the whole
+human species. Other connections I had gained, comparatively without
+interest; and I saw them dissolved without the consummation of agony. I
+had never experienced the purest refinements of friendship, but in two
+instances, that of Collins, and this of the family of Laura. Solitude,
+separation, banishment! These are words often in the mouths of human
+beings; but few men except myself have felt the full latitude of their
+meaning. The pride of philosophy has taught us to treat man as an
+individual. He is no such thing. He holds necessarily, indispensably, to
+his species. He is like those twin-births, that have two heads indeed,
+and four hands; but, if you attempt to detach them from each other, they
+are inevitably subjected to miserable and lingering destruction.
+
+It was this circumstance, more than all the rest, that gradually gorged
+my heart with abhorrence of Mr. Falkland. I could not think of his name
+but with a sickness and a loathing that seemed more than human. It was
+by his means that I suffered the loss of one consolation after another,
+of every thing that was happiness, or that had the resemblance of
+happiness.
+
+The writing of these memoirs served me as a source of avocation for
+several years. For some time I had a melancholy satisfaction in it. I
+was better pleased to retrace the particulars of calamities that had
+formerly afflicted me, than to look forward, as at other times I was too
+apt to do, to those by which I might hereafter be overtaken. I conceived
+that my story, faithfully digested, would carry in it an impression of
+truth that few men would be able to resist; or, at worst, that, by
+leaving it behind me when I should no longer continue to exist,
+posterity might be induced to do me justice; and, seeing in my example
+what sort of evils are entailed upon mankind by society as it is at
+present constituted, might be inclined to turn their attention upon the
+fountain from which such bitter waters have been accustomed to flow. But
+these motives have diminished in their influence. I have contracted a
+disgust for life and all its appendages. Writing, which was at first a
+pleasure, is changed into a burthen. I shall compress into a small
+compass what remains to be told.
+
+I discovered, not long after the period of which I am speaking, the
+precise cause of the reverse I had experienced in my residence in Wales,
+and, included in that cause, what it was I had to look for in my future
+adventures. Mr. Falkland had taken the infernal Gines into his pay, a
+man critically qualified for the service in which he was now engaged, by
+the unfeeling brutality of his temper, by his habits of mind at once
+audacious and artful, and by the peculiar animosity and vengeance he had
+conceived against me. The employment to which this man was hired, was
+that of following me from place to place, blasting my reputation, and
+preventing me from the chance, by continuing long in one residence, of
+acquiring a character for integrity, that should give new weight to any
+accusation I might at a future time be induced to prefer. He had come to
+the seat of my residence with the bricklayers and labourers I have
+mentioned; and, while he took care to keep out of sight so far as
+related to me, was industrious in disseminating that which, in the eye
+of the world, seemed to amount to a demonstration of the profligacy and
+detestableness of my character. It was no doubt from him that the
+detested scroll had been procured, which I had found in my habitation
+immediately prior to my quitting it. In all this Mr. Falkland, reasoning
+upon his principles, was only employing a necessary precaution. There
+was something in the temper of his mind, that impressed him with
+aversion to the idea of violently putting an end to my existence; at the
+same time that unfortunately he could never deem himself sufficiently
+secured against my recrimination, so long as I remained alive. As to the
+fact of Gines being retained by him for this tremendous purpose, he by
+no means desired that it should become generally known; but neither did
+he look upon the possibility of its being known with terror. It was
+already too notorious for his wishes, that I had advanced the most
+odious charges against him. If he regarded me with abhorrence as the
+adversary of his fame, those persons who had had occasion to be in any
+degree acquainted with our history, did not entertain less abhorrence
+against me for my own sake. If they should at any time know the pains he
+exerted in causing my evil reputation to follow me, they would consider
+it as an act of impartial justice, perhaps as a generous anxiety to
+prevent other men from being imposed upon and injured, as he had been.
+
+What expedient was I to employ for the purpose of counteracting the
+meditated and barbarous prudence, which was thus destined, in all
+changes of scene, to deprive me of the benefits and consolations of
+human society? There was one expedient against which I was absolutely
+determined--disguise. I had experienced so many mortifications, and such
+intolerable restraint, when I formerly had recourse to it; it was
+associated in my memory with sensations of such acute anguish, that my
+mind was thus far entirely convinced: life was not worth purchasing at
+so high a price! But, though in this respect I was wholly resolved,
+there was another point that did not appear so material, and in which
+therefore I was willing to accommodate myself to circumstances. I was
+contented, if that would insure my peace, to submit to the otherwise
+unmanly expedient of passing by a different name.
+
+But the change of my name, the abruptness with which I removed from
+place to place, the remoteness and the obscurity which I proposed to
+myself in the choice of my abode, were all insufficient to elude the
+sagacity of Gines, or the unrelenting constancy with which Mr. Falkland
+incited my tormentor to pursue me. Whithersoever I removed myself it was
+not long before I had occasion to perceive this detested adversary in my
+rear. No words can enable me to do justice to the sensations which this
+circumstance produced in me. It was like what has been described of the
+eye of Omniscience, pursuing the guilty sinner, and darting a ray that
+awakens him to new sensibility, at the very moment that, otherwise,
+exhausted nature would lull him into a temporary oblivion of the
+reproaches of his conscience. Sleep fled from my eyes. No walls could
+hide me from the discernment of this hated foe. Every where his industry
+was unwearied to create for me new distress. Rest I had none; relief I
+had none: never could I count upon an instant's security; never could I
+wrap myself in the shroud of oblivion. The minutes in which I did not
+actually perceive him, were contaminated and blasted with the certain
+expectation of his speedy interference. In my first retreat I had passed
+a few weeks of delusive tranquillity, but never after was I happy enough
+to attain to so much as that shadowy gratification. I spent some years
+in this dreadful vicissitude of pain. My sensations at certain periods
+amounted to insanity.
+
+I pursued in every succeeding instance the conduct I had adopted at
+first. I determined never to enter into a contest of accusation and
+defence with the execrable Gines. If I could have submitted to it in
+other respects, what purpose would it answer? I should have but an
+imperfect and mutilated story to tell. This story had succeeded with
+persons already prepossessed in my favour by personal intercourse; but
+could it succeed with strangers? It had succeeded so long as I was able
+to hide myself from my pursuers; but could it succeed now, that this
+appeared impracticable, and that they proceeded by arming against me a
+whole vicinity at once?
+
+It is inconceivable the mischiefs that this kind of existence included.
+Why should I insist upon such aggravations as hunger, beggary, and
+external wretchedness? These were an inevitable consequence. It was by
+the desertion of mankind that, in each successive instance, I was made
+acquainted with my fate. Delay in such a moment served but to increase
+the evil; and when I fled, meagreness and penury were the ordinary
+attendants of my course. But this was a small consideration. Indignation
+at one time, and unconquerable perseverance at another, sustained me,
+where humanity, left to itself, would probably have sunk.
+
+It has already appeared that I was not of a temper to endure calamity,
+without endeavouring, by every means I could devise, to elude and disarm
+it. Recollecting, as I was habituated to do, the various projects by
+which my situation could be meliorated, the question occurred to me,
+"Why should I be harassed by the pursuits of this Gines? Why, man to
+man, may I not, by the powers of my mind, attain the ascendancy over
+him? At present he appears to be the persecutor, and I the persecuted:
+is not this difference the mere creature of the imagination? May I not
+employ my ingenuity to vex him with difficulties, and laugh at the
+endless labour to which he will be condemned?"
+
+Alas, this is a speculation for a mind at ease! It is not the
+persecution, but the catastrophe which is annexed to it, that makes the
+difference between the tyrant and the sufferer! In mere corporal
+exertion the hunter perhaps is upon a level with the miserable animal he
+pursues! But could it be forgotten by either of us, that at every stage
+Gines was to gratify his malignant passions, by disseminating charges of
+the most infamous nature, and exciting against me the abhorrence of
+every honest bosom, while I was to sustain the still-repeated
+annihilation of my peace, my character, and my bread? Could I, by any
+refinement of reason, convert this dreadful series into sport? I had no
+philosophy that qualified me for so extraordinary an effort. If, under
+other circumstances, I could even have entertained so strange an
+imagination, I was restrained in the present instance by the necessity
+of providing for myself the means of subsistence, and the fetters which,
+through that necessity, the forms of human society imposed upon my
+exertions.
+
+In one of those changes of residence, to which my miserable fate
+repeatedly compelled me, I met, upon a road which I was obliged to
+traverse, the friend of my youth, my earliest and best beloved friend,
+the venerable Collins. It was one of those misfortunes which served to
+accumulate my distress, that this man had quitted the island of Great
+Britain only a very few weeks before that fatal reverse of fortune which
+had ever since pursued me with unrelenting eagerness. Mr. Falkland, in
+addition to the large estate he possessed in England, had a very
+valuable plantation in the West Indies. This property had been greatly
+mismanaged by the person who had the direction of it on the spot; and,
+after various promises and evasions on his part, which, however they
+might serve to beguile the patience of Mr. Falkland, had been attended
+with no salutary fruits, it was resolved that Mr. Collins should go over
+in person, to rectify the abuses which had so long prevailed. There had
+even been some idea of his residing several years, if not settling
+finally, upon the plantation. From that hour to the present I had never
+received the smallest intelligence respecting him.
+
+I had always considered the circumstance of his critical absence as one
+of my severest misfortunes. Mr. Collins had been one of the first
+persons, even in the period of my infancy, to conceive hopes of me, as
+of something above the common standard; and had contributed more than
+any other to encourage and assist my juvenile studies. He had been the
+executor of the little property of my father, who had fixed upon him for
+that purpose in consideration of the mutual affection that existed
+between us; and I seemed, on every account, to have more claim upon his
+protection than upon that of any other human being. I had always
+believed that, had he been present in the crisis of my fortune, he would
+have felt a conviction of my innocence; and, convinced himself, would,
+by means of the venerableness and energy of his character, have
+interposed so effectually, as to have saved me the greater part of my
+subsequent misfortunes.
+
+There was yet another idea in my mind relative to this subject, which
+had more weight with me, than even the substantial exertions of
+friendship I should have expected from him. The greatest aggravation of
+my present lot was, that I was cut off from the friendship of mankind. I
+can safely affirm, that poverty and hunger, that endless wanderings,
+that a blasted character and the curses that clung to my name, were all
+of them slight misfortunes compared to this. I endeavoured to sustain
+myself by the sense of my integrity, but the voice of no man upon earth
+echoed to the voice of my conscience. "I called aloud; but there was
+none to answer; there was none that regarded." To me the whole world was
+unhearing as the tempest, and as cold as the torpedo. Sympathy, the
+magnetic virtue, the hidden essence of our life, was extinct. Nor was
+this the sum of my misery. This food, so essential to an intelligent
+existence, seemed perpetually renewing before me in its fairest colours,
+only the more effectually to elude my grasp, and to mock my hunger. From
+time to time I was prompted to unfold the affections of my soul, only to
+be repelled with the greater anguish, and to be baffled in a way the
+most intolerably mortifying.
+
+No sight therefore could give me a purer delight than that which now
+presented itself to my eyes. It was some time however, before either of
+us recognised the person of the other. Ten years had elapsed since our
+last interview. Mr. Collins looked much older than he had done at that
+period; in addition to which, he was, in his present appearance, pale,
+sickly, and thin. These unfavourable effects had been produced by the
+change of climate, particularly trying to persons in an advanced period
+of life. Add to which, I supposed him to be at that moment in the West
+Indies. I was probably as much altered in the period that had elapsed as
+he had been. I was the first to recollect him. He was on horseback; I on
+foot. I had suffered him to pass me. In a moment the full idea of who he
+was rushed upon my mind; I ran; I called with an impetuous voice; I was
+unable to restrain the vehemence of my emotions.
+
+The ardour of my feelings disguised my usual tone of speaking, which
+otherwise Mr. Collins would infallibly have recognised. His sight was
+already dim; he pulled up his horse till I should overtake him; and then
+said, "Who are you? I do not know you."
+
+"My father!" exclaimed I, embracing one of his knees with fervour and
+delight, "I am your son; once your little Caleb, whom you a thousand
+times loaded with your kindness!"
+
+The unexpected repetition of my name gave a kind of shuddering emotion
+to my friend, which was however checked by his age, and the calm and
+benevolent philosophy that formed one of his most conspicuous habits.
+
+"I did not expect to see you!" replied he: "I did not wish it!"
+
+"My best, my oldest friend!" answered I, respect blending itself with my
+impatience, "do not say so! I have not a friend any where in the whole
+world but you! In you at least let me find sympathy and reciprocal
+affection! If you knew how anxiously I have thought of you during the
+whole period of your absence, you would not thus grievously disappoint
+me in your return!"
+
+"How is it," said Mr. Collins, gravely, "that you have been reduced to
+this forlorn condition? Was it not the inevitable consequence of your
+own actions?"
+
+"The actions of others, not mine! Does not your heart tell you that I am
+innocent?"
+
+"No. My observation of your early character taught me that you would be
+extraordinary; but, unhappily, all extraordinary men are not good men:
+that seems to be a lottery, dependent on circumstances apparently the
+most trivial."
+
+"Will you hear my justification? I am as sure as I am of my existence,
+that I can convince you of my purity."
+
+"Certainly, if you require it, I will hear you. But that must not be
+just now. I could have been glad to decline it wholly. At my age I am
+not fit for the storm; and I am not so sanguine as you in my expectation
+of the result. Of what would you convince me? That Mr. Falkland is a
+suborner and murderer?"
+
+I made no answer. My silence was an affirmative to the question.
+
+"And what benefit will result from this conviction? I have known you a
+promising boy, whose character might turn to one side or the other as
+events should decide. I have known Mr. Falkland in his maturer years,
+and have always admired him, as the living model of liberality and
+goodness. If you could change all my ideas, and show me that there was
+no criterion by which vice might be prevented from being mistaken for
+virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my
+interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what?
+What is it you propose? The death of Mr. Falkland by the hands of the
+hangman."
+
+"No; I will not hurt a hair of his head, unless compelled to it by a
+principle of defence. But surely you owe me justice?"
+
+"What justice? The justice of proclaiming your innocence? You know what
+consequences are annexed to that. But I do not believe I shall find you
+innocent. If you even succeed in perplexing my understanding, you will
+not succeed in enlightening it. Such is the state of mankind, that
+innocence, when involved in circumstances of suspicion, can scarcely
+ever make out a demonstration of its purity; and guilt can often make us
+feel an insurmountable reluctance to the pronouncing it guilt.
+Meanwhile, for the purchase of this uncertainty, I must sacrifice all
+the remaining comforts of my life. I believe Mr. Falkland to be
+virtuous; but I know him to be prejudiced. He would never forgive me
+even this accidental parley, if by any means he should come to be
+acquainted with it."
+
+"Oh, argue not the consequences that are possible to result!" answered
+I, impatiently, "I have a right to your kindness; I have a right to your
+assistance!"
+
+"You have them. You have them to a certain degree; and it is not likely
+that, by any process of examination, you can have them entire. You know
+my habits of thinking. I regard you as vicious; but I do not consider
+the vicious as proper objects of indignation and scorn. I consider you
+as a machine; you are not constituted, I am afraid, to be greatly useful
+to your fellow men: but you did not make yourself; you are just what
+circumstances irresistibly compelled you to be. I am sorry for your ill
+properties; but I entertain no enmity against you, nothing but
+benevolence. Considering you in the light in which I at present consider
+you, I am ready to contribute every thing in my power to your real
+advantage, and would gladly assist you, if I knew how, in detecting and
+extirpating the errors that have misled you. You have disappointed me,
+but I have no reproaches to utter: it is more necessary for me to feel
+compassion for you, than that I should accumulate your misfortune by my
+censures."
+
+What could I say to such a man as this? Amiable, incomparable man! Never
+was my mind more painfully divided than at that moment. The more he
+excited my admiration, the more imperiously did my heart command me,
+whatever were the price it should cost, to extort his friendship. I was
+persuaded that severe duty required of him, that he should reject all
+personal considerations, that he should proceed resolutely to the
+investigation of the truth, and that, if he found the result terminating
+in my favour, he should resign all his advantages, and, deserted as I
+was by the world, make a common cause, and endeavour to compensate the
+general injustice. But was it for me to force this conduct upon him, if,
+now in his declining years, his own fortitude shrank from it? Alas,
+neither he nor I foresaw the dreadful catastrophe that was so closely
+impending! Otherwise, I am well assured that no tenderness for his
+remaining tranquillity would have withheld him from a compliance with my
+wishes! On the other hand, could I pretend to know what evils might
+result to him from his declaring himself my advocate? Might not his
+integrity be browbeaten and defeated, as mine had been? Did the
+imbecility of his grey hairs afford no advantage to my terrible
+adversary in the contest? Might not Mr. Falkland reduce him to a
+condition as wretched and low as mine? After all, was it not vice in me
+to desire to involve another man in my sufferings? If I regarded them as
+intolerable, this was still an additional reason why I should bear them
+alone.
+
+Influenced by these considerations, I assented to his views. I assented
+to be thought hardly of by the man in the world whose esteem I most
+ardently desired, rather than involve him in possible calamity. I
+assented to the resigning what appeared to me at that moment as the last
+practicable comfort of my life; a comfort, upon the thought of which,
+while I surrendered it, my mind dwelt with undescribable longings. Mr.
+Collins was deeply affected with the apparent ingenuousness with which I
+expressed my feelings. The secret struggle of his mind was, "Can this be
+hypocrisy? The individual with whom I am conferring, if virtuous, is one
+of the most disinterestedly virtuous persons in the world." We tore
+ourselves from each other. Mr. Collins promised, as far as he was able,
+to have an eye upon my vicissitudes, and to assist me, in every respect
+that was consistent with a just recollection of consequences. Thus I
+parted as it were with the last expiring hope of my mind; and
+voluntarily consented, thus maimed and forlorn, to encounter all the
+evils that were yet in store for me.
+
+This is the latest event which at present I think it necessary to
+record. I shall doubtless hereafter have further occasion to take up the
+pen. Great and unprecedented as my sufferings have been, I feel
+intimately persuaded that there are worse sufferings that await me. What
+mysterious cause is it that enables me to write this, and not to perish
+under the horrible apprehension!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+It is as I foreboded. The presage with which I was visited was
+prophetic. I am now to record a new and terrible revolution of my
+fortune and my mind.
+
+Having made experiment of various situations with one uniform result, I
+at length determined to remove myself, if possible, from the reach of my
+persecutor, by going into voluntary banishment from my native soil. This
+was my last resource for tranquillity, for honest fame, for those
+privileges to which human life is indebted for the whole of its value.
+"In some distant climate," said I, "surely I may find that security
+which is necessary to persevering pursuit; surely I may lift my head
+erect, associate with men upon the footing of a man, acquire
+connections, and preserve them!" It is inconceivable with what ardent
+Teachings of the soul I aspired to this termination.
+
+This last consolation was denied me by the inexorable Falkland.
+
+At the time the project was formed I was at no great distance from the
+east coast of the island, and I resolved to take ship at Harwich, and
+pass immediately into Holland. I accordingly repaired to that place, and
+went, almost as soon as I arrived, to the port. But there was no vessel
+perfectly ready to sail. I left the port, and withdrew to an inn, where,
+after some time, I retired to a chamber. I was scarcely there before the
+door of the room was opened, and the man whose countenance was the most
+hateful to my eyes, Gines, entered the apartment. He shut the door as
+soon as he entered.
+
+"Youngster," said he, "I have a little private intelligence to
+communicate to you. I come as a friend, and that I may save you a
+labour-in-vain trouble. If you consider what I have to say in that
+light, it will be the better for you. It is my business now, do you see,
+for want of a better, to see that you do not break out of bounds. Not
+that I much matter having one man for my employer, or dancing attendance
+after another's heels; but I have special kindness for you, for some
+good turns that you wot of, and therefore I do not stand upon
+ceremonies! You have led me a very pretty round already; and, out of the
+love I bear you, you shall lead me as much further, if you will. But
+beware the salt seas! They are out of my orders. You are a prisoner at
+present, and I believe all your life will remain so. Thanks to the
+milk-and-water softness of your former master! If I had the ordering of
+these things, it should go with you in another fashion. As long as you
+think proper, you are a prisoner within the rules; and the rules with
+which the soft-hearted squire indulges you, are all England, Scotland,
+and Wales. But you are not to go out of these climates. The squire is
+determined you shall never pass the reach of his disposal. He has
+therefore given orders that, whenever you attempt so to do, you shall be
+converted from a prisoner at large to a prisoner in good earnest. A
+friend of mine followed you just now to the harbour; I was within call;
+and, if there had been any appearance of your setting your foot from
+land, we should have been with you in a trice, and laid you fast by the
+heels. I would advise you, for the future, to keep at a proper distance
+from the sea, for fear of the worst. You see I tell you all this for
+your good. For my part, I should be better satisfied if you were in
+limbo, with a rope about your neck, and a comfortable bird's eye
+prospect to the gallows: but I do as I am directed; and so good night to
+you!"
+
+The intelligence thus conveyed to me occasioned an instantaneous
+revolution in both my intellectual and animal system. I disdained to
+answer, or take the smallest notice of the fiend by whom it was
+delivered. It is now three days since I received it, and from that
+moment to the present my blood has been in a perpetual ferment. My
+thoughts wander from one idea of horror to another, with incredible
+rapidity. I have had no sleep. I have scarcely remained in one posture
+for a minute together. It has been with the utmost difficulty that I
+have been able to command myself far enough to add a few pages to my
+story. But, uncertain as I am of the events of each succeeding hour, I
+determined to force myself to the performance of this task. All is not
+right within me. How it will terminate, God knows. I sometimes fear that
+I shall be wholly deserted of my reason.
+
+What--dark, mysterious, unfeeling, unrelenting tyrant!--is it come to
+this? When Nero and Caligula swayed the Roman sceptre, it was a fearful
+thing to offend these bloody rulers. The empire had already spread
+itself from climate to climate, and from sea to sea. If their unhappy
+victim fled to the rising of the sun, where the luminary of day seems to
+us first to ascend from the waves of the ocean, the power of the tyrant
+was still behind him. If he withdrew to the west, to Hesperian darkness,
+and the shores of barbarian Thule, still he was not safe from his
+gore-drenched foe.--Falkland! art thou the offspring, in whom the
+lineaments of these tyrants are faithfully preserved? Was the world,
+with all its climates, made in vain for thy helpless unoffending victim?
+
+Tremble!
+
+Tyrants have trembled, surrounded with whole armies of their
+Janissaries! What should make thee inaccessible to my fury? No, I will
+use no daggers! I will unfold a tale!--I will show thee to the world for
+what thou art; and all the men that live, shall confess my truth!--Didst
+thou imagine that I was altogether passive, a mere worm, organised to
+feel sensations of pain, but no emotion of resentment? Didst thou
+imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains however
+great, miseries however dreadful? Didst thou believe me impotent,
+imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive thy ruin,
+and no energy to perpetrate it?
+
+I will tell a tale--! The justice of the country shall hear me! The
+elements of nature in universal uproar shall not interrupt me! I will
+speak with a voice more fearful than thunder!--Why should I be supposed
+to speak from any dishonourable motive? I am under no prosecution now! I
+shall not now appear to be endeavouring to remove a criminal indictment
+from myself, by throwing it back on its author!--Shall I regret the ruin
+that will overwhelm thee? Too long have I been tender-hearted and
+forbearing! What benefit has ever resulted from my mistaken clemency?
+There is no evil thou hast scrupled to accumulate upon me! Neither will
+I be more scrupulous! Thou hast shown no mercy; and thou shalt receive
+none!--I must be calm! bold as a lion, yet collected!
+
+This is a moment pregnant with fate. I know--I think I know--that I will
+be triumphant, and crush my seemingly omnipotent foe. But, should it be
+otherwise, at least he shall not be every way successful. His fame shall
+not be immortal as he thinks. These papers shall preserve the truth;
+they shall one day be published, and then the world shall do justice on
+us both. Recollecting that, I shall not die wholly without consolation.
+It is not to be endured that falsehood and tyranny should reign for
+ever.
+
+How impotent are the precautions of man against the eternally existing
+laws of the intellectual world! This Falkland has invented against me
+every species of foul accusation. He has hunted me from city to city.
+He has drawn his lines of circumvallation round me that I may not
+escape. He has kept his scenters of human prey for ever at my heels. He
+may hunt me out of the world.--In vain! With this engine, this little
+pen, I defeat all his machinations; I stab him in the very point he was
+most solicitous to defend!
+
+Collins! I now address myself to you. I have consented that you should
+yield me no assistance in my present terrible situation. I am content to
+die rather than do any thing injurious to your tranquillity. But
+remember, you are my father still! I conjure you, by all the love you
+ever bore me, by the benefits you have conferred on me, by the
+forbearance and kindness towards you that now penetrates my soul, by my
+innocence--for, if these be the last words I shall ever write, I die
+protesting my innocence!--by all these, or whatever tie more sacred has
+influence on your soul, I conjure you, listen to my last request!
+Preserve these papers from destruction, and preserve them from Falkland!
+It is all I ask! I have taken care to provide a safe mode of conveying
+them into your possession: and I have a firm confidence, which I will
+not suffer to depart from me, that they will one day find their way to
+the public!
+
+The pen lingers in my trembling fingers! Is there any thing I have left
+unsaid?--The contents of the fatal trunk, from which all my misfortunes
+originated, I have never been able to ascertain. I once thought it
+contained some murderous instrument or relic connected with the fate of
+the unhappy Tyrrel. I am now persuaded that the secret it encloses, is a
+faithful narrative of that and its concomitant transactions, written by
+Mr. Falkland, and reserved in case of the worst, that, if by any
+unforeseen event his guilt should come to be fully disclosed, it might
+contribute to redeem the wreck of his reputation. But the truth or the
+falsehood of this conjecture is of little moment. If Falkland shall
+never be detected to the satisfaction of the world, such a narrative
+will probably never see the light. In that case this story of mine may
+amply, severely perhaps, supply its place.
+
+I know not what it is that renders me thus solemn. I have a secret
+foreboding, as if I should never again be master of myself. If I succeed
+in what I now meditate respecting Falkland, my precaution in the
+disposal of these papers will have been unnecessary; I shall no longer
+be reduced to artifice and evasion. If I fail, the precaution will
+appear to have been wisely chosen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+All is over. I have carried into execution my meditated attempt. My
+situation is totally changed; I now sit down to give an account of it.
+For several weeks after the completion of this dreadful business, my
+mind was in too tumultuous a state to permit me to write. I think I
+shall now be able to arrange my thoughts sufficiently for that purpose.
+Great God! how wondrous, how terrible are the events that have
+intervened since I was last employed in a similar manner! It is no
+wonder that my thoughts were solemn, and my mind filled with horrible
+forebodings!
+
+Having formed my resolution, I set out from Harwich, for the
+metropolitan town of the county in which Mr. Falkland resided. Gines, I
+well knew, was in my rear. That was of no consequence to me. He might
+wonder at the direction I pursued, but he could not tell with what
+purpose I pursued it. My design was a secret, carefully locked up in my
+own breast. It was not without a sentiment of terror that I entered a
+town which had been the scene of my long imprisonment. I proceeded to
+the house of the chief magistrate the instant I arrived, that I might
+give no time to my adversary to counterwork my proceeding.
+
+I told him who I was, and that I was come from a distant part of the
+kingdom, for the purpose of rendering him the medium of a charge of
+murder against my former patron. My name was already familiar to him. He
+answered, that he could not take cognizance of my deposition; that I was
+an object of universal execration in that part of the world; and he was
+determined upon no account to be the vehicle of my depravity.
+
+I warned him to consider well what he was doing. I called upon him for
+no favour; I only applied to him in the regular exercise of his
+function. Would he take upon him to say that he had a right, at his
+pleasure, to suppress a charge of this complicated nature? I had to
+accuse Mr. Falkland of repeated murders. The perpetrator knew that I was
+in possession of the truth upon the subject; and, knowing that, I went
+perpetually in danger of my life from his malice and revenge. I was
+resolved to go through with the business, if justice were to be obtained
+from any court in England. Upon what pretence did he refuse my
+deposition? I was in every respect a competent witness. I was of age to
+understand the nature of an oath; I was in my perfect senses; I was
+untarnished by the verdict of any jury, or the sentence of any judge.
+His private opinion of my character could not alter the law of the land.
+I demanded to be confronted with Mr. Falkland, and I was well assured I
+should substantiate the charge to the satisfaction of the whole world.
+If he did not think proper to apprehend him upon my single testimony, I
+should be satisfied if he only sent him notice of the charge, and
+summoned him to appear.
+
+The magistrate, finding me thus resolute, thought proper a little to
+lower his tone. He no longer absolutely refused to comply with my
+requisition, but condescended to expostulate with me. He represented to
+me Mr. Falkland's health, which had for some years been exceedingly
+indifferent; his having been once already brought to the most solemn
+examination upon this charge; the diabolical malice in which alone my
+proceeding must have originated; and the ten-fold ruin it would bring
+down upon my head. To all these representations my answer was short. "I
+was determined to go on, and would abide the consequences." A summons
+was at length granted, and notice sent to Mr. Falkland of the charge
+preferred against him.
+
+Three days elapsed before any further step could be taken in this
+business. This interval in no degree contributed to tranquillise my
+mind. The thought of preferring a capital accusation against, and
+hastening the death of, such a man as Mr. Falkland, was by no means an
+opiate to reflection. At one time I commended the action, either as just
+revenge (for the benevolence of my nature was in a great degree turned
+to gall), or as necessary self-defence, or as that which, in an
+impartial and philanthropical estimate, included the smallest evil. At
+another time I was haunted with doubts. But, in spite of these
+variations of sentiment, I uniformly determined to persist! I felt as if
+impelled by a tide of unconquerable impulse. The consequences were such
+as might well appal the stoutest heart. Either the ignominious execution
+of a man whom I had once so deeply venerated, and whom now I sometimes
+suspected not to be without his claims to veneration; or a confirmation,
+perhaps an increase, of the calamities I had so long endured. Yet these
+I preferred to a state of uncertainty. I desired to know the worst; to
+put an end to the hope, however faint, which had been so long my
+torment; and, above all, to exhaust and finish the catalogue of
+expedients that were at my disposition. My mind was worked up to a state
+little short of frenzy. My body was in a burning fever with the
+agitation of my thoughts. When I laid my hand upon my bosom or my head,
+it seemed to scorch them with the fervency of its heat. I could not sit
+still for a moment. I panted with incessant desire that the dreadful
+crisis I had so eagerly invoked, were come, and were over.
+
+After an interval of three days, I met Mr. Falkland in the presence of
+the magistrate to whom I had applied upon the subject. I had only two
+hours' notice to prepare myself; Mr. Falkland seeming as eager as I to
+have the question brought to a crisis, and laid at rest for ever. I had
+an opportunity, before the examination, to learn that Mr. Forester was
+drawn by some business on an excursion on the continent; and that
+Collins, whose health when I saw him was in a very precarious state, was
+at this time confined with an alarming illness. His constitution had
+been wholly broken by his West Indian expedition. The audience I met at
+the house of the magistrate consisted of several gentlemen and others
+selected for the purpose; the plan being, in some respects, as in the
+former instance, to find a medium between the suspicious air of a
+private examination, and the indelicacy, as it was styled, of an
+examination exposed to the remark of every casual spectator.
+
+I can conceive of no shock greater than that I received from the sight
+of Mr. Falkland. His appearance on the last occasion on which we met
+had been haggard, ghost-like, and wild, energy in his gestures, and
+frenzy in his aspect. It was now the appearance of a corpse. He was
+brought in in a chair, unable to stand, fatigued and almost destroyed by
+the journey he had just taken. His visage was colourless; his limbs
+destitute of motion, almost of life. His head reclined upon his bosom,
+except that now and then he lifted it up, and opened his eyes with a
+languid glance; immediately after which he sunk back into his former
+apparent insensibility. He seemed not to have three hours to live. He
+had kept his chamber for several weeks; but the summons of the
+magistrate had been delivered to him at his bed-side, his orders
+respecting letters and written papers being so peremptory that no one
+dared to disobey them. Upon reading the paper he was seized with a very
+dangerous fit; but, as soon as he recovered, he insisted upon being
+conveyed, with all practicable expedition, to the place of appointment.
+Falkland, in the most helpless state, was still Falkland, firm in
+command, and capable to extort obedience from every one that approached
+him.
+
+What a sight was this to me! Till the moment that Falkland was presented
+to my view, my breast was steeled to pity. I thought that I had coolly
+entered into the reason of the case (passion, in a state of solemn and
+omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be coolness to him in whom it
+domineers), and that I had determined impartially and justly. I believed
+that, if Mr. Falkland were permitted to persist in his schemes, we must
+both of us be completely wretched. I believed that it was in my power,
+by the resolution I had formed, to throw my share of this wretchedness
+from me, and that his could scarcely be increased. It appeared therefore
+to my mind, to be a mere piece of equity and justice, such as an
+impartial spectator would desire, that one person should be miserable in
+preference to two; that one person rather than two should be
+incapacitated from acting his part, and contributing his share to the
+general welfare. I thought that in this business I had risen superior to
+personal considerations, and judged with a total neglect of the
+suggestions of self-regard. It is true, Mr. Falkland was mortal, but,
+notwithstanding his apparent decay, he might live long. Ought I to
+submit to waste the best years of my life in my present wretched
+situation? He had declared that his reputation should be for ever
+inviolate; this was his ruling passion, the thought that worked his soul
+to madness. He would probably therefore leave a legacy of persecution to
+be received by me from the hands of Gines, or some other villain equally
+atrocious, when he should himself be no more. Now or never was the time
+for me to redeem my future life from endless woe.
+
+But all these fine-spun reasonings vanished before the object that was
+now presented to me. "Shall I trample upon a man thus dreadfully
+reduced? Shall I point my animosity against one, whom the system of
+nature has brought down to the grave? Shall I poison, with sounds the
+most intolerable to his ears, the last moments of a man like Falkland?
+It is impossible. There must have been some dreadful mistake in the
+train of argument that persuaded me to be the author of this hateful
+scene. There must have been a better and more magnanimous remedy to the
+evils under which I groaned."
+
+It was too late: the mistake I had committed was now gone past all power
+of recall. Here was Falkland, solemnly brought before a magistrate to
+answer to a charge of murder. Here I stood, having already declared
+myself the author of the charge, gravely and sacredly pledged to support
+it. This was my situation; and, thus situated, I was called upon
+immediately to act. My whole frame shook. I would eagerly have consented
+that that moment should have been the last of my existence. I however
+believed, that the conduct now most indispensably incumbent on me was to
+lay the emotions of my soul naked before my hearers. I looked first at
+Mr. Falkland, and then at the magistrate and attendants, and then at Mr.
+Falkland again. My voice was suffocated with agony. I began:--
+
+"Why cannot I recall the last four days of my life? How was it possible
+for me to be so eager, so obstinate, in a purpose so diabolical? Oh,
+that I had listened to the expostulations of the magistrate that hears
+me, or submitted to the well-meant despotism of his authority! Hitherto
+I have been only miserable; henceforth I shall account myself base!
+Hitherto, though hardly treated by mankind, I stood acquitted at the bar
+of my own conscience. I had not filled up the measure of my
+wretchedness!
+
+"Would to God it were possible for me to retire from this scene without
+uttering another word! I would brave the consequences--I would submit to
+any imputation of cowardice, falsehood, and profligacy, rather than add
+to the weight of misfortune with which Mr. Falkland is overwhelmed. But
+the situation, and the demands of Mr. Falkland himself, forbid me. He,
+in compassion for whose fallen state I would willingly forget every
+interest of my own, would compel me to accuse, that he might enter upon
+his justification. I will confess every sentiment of my heart.
+
+"No penitence, no anguish, can expiate the folly and the cruelty of this
+last act I have perpetrated. But Mr. Falkland well knows--I affirm it in
+his presence--how unwillingly I have proceeded to this extremity. I
+have reverenced him; he was worthy of reverence: I have loved him; he
+was endowed with qualities that partook of divine.
+
+"From the first moment I saw him, I conceived the most ardent
+admiration. He condescended to encourage me; I attached myself to him
+with the fulness of my affection. He was unhappy; I exerted myself with
+youthful curiosity to discover the secret of his woe. This was the
+beginning of misfortune.
+
+"What shall I say?--He was indeed the murderer of Tyrrel; he suffered
+the Hawkinses to be executed, knowing that they were innocent, and that
+he alone was guilty. After successive surmises, after various
+indiscretions on my part, and indications on his, he at length confided
+to me at full the fatal tale!
+
+"Mr. Falkland! I most solemnly conjure you to recollect yourself! Did I
+ever prove myself unworthy of your confidence? The secret was a most
+painful burthen to me; it was the extremest folly that led me
+unthinkingly to gain possession of it; but I would have died a thousand
+deaths rather than betray it. It was the jealousy of your own thoughts,
+and the weight that hung upon your mind, that led you to watch my
+motions, and to conceive alarm from every particle of my conduct.
+
+"You began in confidence; why did you not continue in confidence? The
+evil that resulted from my original imprudence would then have been
+comparatively little. You threatened me: did I then betray you? A word
+from my lips at that time would have freed me from your threats for
+ever. I bore them for a considerable period, and at last quitted your
+service, and threw myself a fugitive upon the world, in silence. Why did
+you not suffer me to depart? You brought me back by stratagem and
+violence, and wantonly accused me of an enormous felony! Did I then
+mention a syllable of the murder, the secret of which was in my
+possession?
+
+"Where is the man that has suffered more from the injustice of society
+than I have done? I was accused of a villainy that my heart abhorred. I
+was sent to jail. I will not enumerate the horrors of my prison, the
+lightest of which would make the heart of humanity shudder. I looked
+forward to the gallows! Young, ambitious, fond of life, innocent as the
+child unborn, I looked forward to the gallows! I believed that one word
+of resolute accusation against my patron would deliver me; yet I was
+silent, I armed myself with patience, uncertain whether it were better
+to accuse or to die. Did this show me a man unworthy to be trusted?
+
+"I determined to break out of prison. With infinite difficulty, and
+repeated miscarriages, I at length effected my purpose. Instantly a
+proclamation, with a hundred guineas reward, was issued for apprehending
+me. I was obliged to take shelter among the refuse of mankind, in the
+midst of a gang of thieves. I encountered the most imminent peril of my
+life when I entered this retreat, and when I quitted it. Immediately
+after, I travelled almost the whole length of the kingdom, in poverty
+and distress, in hourly danger of being retaken and manacled like a
+felon. I would have fled my country; I was prevented. I had recourse to
+various disguises; I was innocent, and yet was compelled to as many arts
+and subterfuges as could have been entailed on the worst of villains. In
+London I was as much harassed and as repeatedly alarmed as I had been in
+my flight through the country. Did all these persecutions persuade me to
+put an end to my silence? No: I suffered them with patience and
+submission; I did not make one attempt to retort them upon their author.
+
+"I fell at last into the hands of the miscreants that are nourished with
+human blood. In this terrible situation I, for the first time,
+attempted, by turning informer, to throw the weight from myself. Happily
+for me, the London magistrate listened to my tale with insolent
+contempt.
+
+"I soon, and long, repented of my rashness, and rejoiced in my
+miscarriage.
+
+"I acknowledge that, in various ways, Mr. Falkland showed humanity
+towards me during this period. He would have prevented my going to
+prison at first; he contributed towards my subsistence during my
+detention; he had no share in the pursuit that had been set on foot
+against me; he at length procured my discharge, when brought forward for
+trial. But a great part of his forbearance was unknown to me; I supposed
+him to be my unrelenting pursuer. I could not forget that, whoever
+heaped calamities on me in the sequel, they all originated in his forged
+accusation.
+
+"The prosecution against me for felony was now at an end. Why were not
+my sufferings permitted to terminate then, and I allowed to hide my
+weary head in some obscure yet tranquil retreat? Had I not sufficiently
+proved my constancy and fidelity? Would not a compromise in this
+situation have been most wise and most secure? But the restless and
+jealous anxiety of Mr. Falkland would not permit him to repose the least
+atom of confidence. The only compromise that he proposed was that, with
+my own hand, I should sign myself a villain. I refused this proposal,
+and have ever since been driven from place to place, deprived of peace,
+of honest fame, even of bread. For a long time I persisted in the
+resolution that no emergency should convert me into the assailant. In an
+evil hour I at last listened to my resentment and impatience, and the
+hateful mistake into which I fell has produced the present scene.
+
+"I now see that mistake in all its enormity. I am sure that if I had
+opened my heart to Mr. Falkland, if I had told to him privately the tale
+that I have now been telling, he could not have resisted my reasonable
+demand. After all his precautions, he must ultimately have depended upon
+my forbearance. Could he be sure that, if I were at last worked up to
+disclose every thing I knew, and to enforce it with all the energy I
+could exert, I should obtain no credit? If he must in every case be at
+my mercy, in which mode ought he to have sought his safety, in
+conciliation, or in inexorable cruelty?
+
+"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature. Yes; in spite of the catastrophe of
+Tyrrel, of the miserable end of the Hawkinses, and of all that I have
+myself suffered, I affirm that he has qualities of the most admirable
+kind. It is therefore impossible that he could have resisted a frank and
+fervent expostulation, the frankness and the fervour in which the whole
+soul is poured out. I despaired, while it was yet time to have made the
+just experiment; but my despair was criminal, was treason against the
+sovereignty of truth.
+
+"I have told a plain and unadulterated tale. I came hither to curse, but
+I remain to bless. I came to accuse, but am compelled to applaud. I
+proclaim to all the world, that Mr. Falkland is a man worthy of
+affection and kindness, and that I am myself the basest and most odious
+of mankind! Never will I forgive myself the iniquity of this day. The
+memory will always haunt me, and embitter every hour of my existence.
+In thus acting I have been a murderer--a cool, deliberate, unfeeling
+murderer.--I have said what my accursed precipitation has obliged me to
+say. Do with me as you please! I ask no favour. Death would be a
+kindness, compared to what I feel!"
+
+Such were the accents dictated by my remorse. I poured them out with
+uncontrollable impetuosity; for my heart was pierced, and I was
+compelled to give vent to its anguish. Every one that heard me, was
+petrified with astonishment. Every one that heard me, was melted into
+tears. They could not resist the ardour with which I praised the great
+qualities of Falkland; they manifested their sympathy in the tokens of
+my penitence.
+
+How shall I describe the feelings of this unfortunate man? Before I
+began, he seemed sunk and debilitated, incapable of any strenuous
+impression. When I mentioned the murder, I could perceive in him an
+involuntary shuddering, though it was counteracted partly by the
+feebleness of his frame, and partly by the energy of his mind. This was
+an allegation he expected, and he had endeavoured to prepare himself for
+it. But there was much of what I said, of which he had had no previous
+conception. When I expressed the anguish of my mind, he seemed at first
+startled and alarmed, lest this should be a new expedient to gain credit
+to my tale. His indignation against me was great for having retained all
+my resentment towards him, thus, as it might be, to the last hour of his
+existence. It was increased when he discovered me, as he supposed, using
+a pretence of liberality and sentiment to give new edge to my hostility.
+But as I went on he could no longer resist. He saw my sincerity; he was
+penetrated with my grief and compunction. He rose from his seat,
+supported by the attendants, and--to my infinite astonishment--threw
+himself into my arms!
+
+"Williams," said he, "you have conquered! I see too late the greatness
+and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault and not
+yours, that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my
+bosom, that I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious
+accusation you might have brought against me. But I see that the artless
+and manly story you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer.
+All my prospects are concluded. All that I most ardently desired, is for
+ever frustrated. I have spent a life of the basest cruelty, to cover one
+act of momentary vice, and to protect myself against the prejudices of
+my species. I stand now completely detected. My name will be consecrated
+to infamy, while your heroism, your patience, and your virtues will be
+for ever admired. You have inflicted on me the most fatal of all
+mischiefs; but I bless the hand that wounds me. And now,"--turning to
+the magistrate--"and now, do with me as you please. I am prepared to
+suffer all the vengeance of the law. You cannot inflict on me more than
+I deserve. You cannot hate me, more than I hate myself. I am the most
+execrable of all villains. I have for many years (I know not how long)
+dragged on a miserable existence in insupportable pain. I am at last, in
+recompense for all my labours and my crimes, dismissed from it with the
+disappointment of my only remaining hope, the destruction of that for
+the sake of which alone I consented to exist. It was worthy of such a
+life, that it should continue just long enough to witness this final
+overthrow. If however you wish to punish me, you must be speedy in your
+justice; for, as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I
+feel that death and infamy must seize me together."
+
+I record the praises bestowed on me by Falkland, not because I deserved
+them, but because they serve to aggravate the baseness of my cruelty. He
+survived this dreadful scene but three days. I have been his murderer.
+It was fit that he should praise my patience, who has fallen a victim,
+life and fame, to my precipitation! It would have been merciful in
+comparison, if I had planted a dagger in his heart. He would have
+thanked me for my kindness. But, atrocious, execrable wretch that I have
+been! I wantonly inflicted on him an anguish a thousand times worse than
+death. Meanwhile I endure the penalty of my crime. His figure is ever in
+imagination before me. Waking or sleeping, I still behold him. He seems
+mildly to expostulate with me for my unfeeling behaviour. I live the
+devoted victim of conscious reproach. Alas! I am the same Caleb Williams
+that, so short a time ago, boasted that, however great were the
+calamities I endured, I was still innocent.
+
+Such has been the result of a project I formed, for delivering myself
+from the evil that had so long attended me. I thought that, if Falkland
+were dead, I should return once again to all that makes life worth
+possessing. I thought that, if the guilt of Falkland were established,
+fortune and the world would smile upon my efforts. Both these events are
+accomplished; and it is now only that I am truly miserable.
+
+Why should my reflections perpetually centre upon myself?--self, an
+overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland,
+I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh
+nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear I will
+consecrate to thy ashes! A nobler spirit lived not among the sons of
+men. Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned
+with a god-like ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in
+the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil,
+from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a
+happier field and a purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate
+into usefulness, is thus concerted into henbane and deadly nightshade.
+
+Falkland! thou enteredst upon thy career with the purest and most
+laudable intentions. But thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy
+earliest youth; and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy
+return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
+madness. Soon, too soon, by this fatal coincidence, were the blooming
+hopes of thy youth blasted for ever. From that moment thou only
+continuedst to live to the phantom of departed honour. From that moment
+thy benevolence was, in a great part, turned into rankling jealousy and
+inexorable precaution. Year after year didst thou spend in this
+miserable project of imposture; and only at last continuedst to live,
+long enough to see, by my misjudging and abhorred intervention, thy
+closing hope disappointed, and thy death accompanied with the foulest
+disgrace!
+
+I began these memoirs with the idea of vindicating my character. I have
+now no character that I wish to vindicate: but I will finish them that
+thy story may be fully understood; and that, if those errors of thy life
+be known which thou so ardently desiredst to conceal, the world may at
+least not hear and repeat a half-told and mangled tale.
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
+
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