u, sir! Saw him myself, gave him a nod, and good-day.
Rather a gentlemanly personage--Green Circassian hunting coat and
turban--Like a foreigner--Has the power of vanishing in one moment
though--Rather a suspicious circumstance that. Otherwise, his
appearance not much against him."

If the former intelligence thrilled me with grief, this did so with
terror. I perceived who the personage was that had visited the printing
house in order to further the progress of my work; and, at the approach
of every person to our lodgings, I from that instant trembled every
bone, lest it should be my elevated and dreaded friend. I could not say
I had ever received an office at his hand that was not friendly, yet
these offices had been of a strange tendency; and the horror with which
I now regarded him was unaccountable to myself. It was beyond
description, conception, or the soul of man to bear. I took my printed
sheets, the only copy of my unfinished work existing; and, on pretence
of going straight to Mr. Watson's office, decamped from my lodgings at
Portsburgh a little before the fall of evening, and took the road
towards England.

As soon as I got clear of the city, I ran with a velocity I knew not
before I had been capable of. I flew out the way towards Dalkeith so
swiftly that I often lost sight of the ground, and I said to myself,
"Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, that I might fly to the farthest
corners of the earth, to hide me from those against whom I have no
power to stand!"

I travelled all that night and the next morning, exerting myself beyond
my power; and about noon the following day I went into a yeoman's
house, the name of which was Ellanshaws, and requested of the people a
couch of any sort to lie down on, for I was ill, and could not proceed
on my journey. They showed me to a stable-loft where there were two
beds, on one of which I laid me down; and, falling into a sound sleep,
I did not awake till the evening, that other three men came from the
fields to sleep in the same place, one of whom lay down beside me, at
which I was exceedingly glad. They fell all sound asleep, and I was
terribly alarmed at a conversation I overheard somewhere outside the
stable. I could not make out a sentence, but trembled to think I knew
one of the voices at least, and, rather than not be mistaken, I would
that any man had run me through with a sword. I fell into a cold sweat,
and once thought of instantly putting hand to my own li