d
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 minu