for that purpose sufficient to prevent them from
engaging with a vehemence, which permitted neither of making use of
much skill: it was however the chance of Natura to give his adversary
a wound, which made him fall, as he imagined, dead; on which the
disinterested person made the best of his way, as being afraid of
being taken up by the watch, who were then just coming by:--Natura did
the same, and thinking it improper to go home, went to the house of a
friend, in whom he could confide, and who, on enquiry the next day,
brought him an account, that the person with whom he had fought was
dead, but had lived long enough to acquaint those who took him up, by
whom he had received his hurt; and that warrants were already out for
apprehending the murderer, as he was now called.

What now was to be done! Natura found himself under the necessity of
going directly out of the way, and by that means endanger the loss of
his employment, and also of his intended bride; or by staying expose
himself to a shameful trial at the Old Bailey, which, he had reason to
fear, would not end in his favour, the deceased having many friends
and relations at the bar; and the very person who had been witness of
their combat, somewhat a-kin to him:--it was therefore his own
inclination, as well as the advice of his friends, that prevailed on
him to make his escape into some foreign part, while they were looking
for him at home; which he accordingly did that same hour, taking post
for Harwich, where, through the goodness of his horse, he arrived that
night, and immediately embarked in a fishing-smack, which carried him
into Holland.

He had leisure now to reflect on his late adventure, which afforded
the most melancholly retrospect; the happy situation he had been in,
and the almost assured hopes of being continued in for life, made his
present one appear yet worse, than in reality it was: he now looked on
himself as doomed to be a vagrant all his days, driven from his native
country for ever, and the society of all his friends, and torn beyond
even a possibility of recovering, from a lady, to whom he was so near
being united for ever, whom he loved, and whose fortune and kindred
had given him just expectation of advancement in the world.

These gloomy thoughts took him wholly up for some days, but he was not
yet arrived at those years, in which misfortunes sink too deeply on
the soul; these vexatious accidents by degrees lost much of their
feroc