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
conce