.

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 pro