th as my
own. If I changed clothes with him, then Dr. Aloysius Lana would be
found lying dead in his study, and there would be an end of an
unfortunate fellow, and of a blighted career. There was plenty of ready
money in the room, and this I could carry away with me to help me to
start once more in some other land. In my brother's clothes I could
walk by night unobserved as far as Liverpool, and in that great seaport
I would soon find some means of leaving the country. After my lost
hopes, the humblest existence where I was unknown was far preferable,
in my estimation, to a practice, however successful, in Bishop's
Crossing, where at any moment I might come face to face with those whom
I should wish, if it were possible, to forget. I determined to effect
the change.

"And I did so. I will not go into particulars, for the recollection is
as painful as the experience; but in an hour my brother lay, dressed
down to the smallest detail in my clothes, while I slunk out by the
surgery door, and taking the back path which led across some fields, I
started off to make the best of my way to Liverpool, where I arrived
the same night. My bag of money and a certain portrait were all I
carried out of the house, and I left behind me in my hurry the shade
which my brother had been wearing over his eye. Everything else of his
I took with me.

"I give you my word, sir, that never for one instant did the idea occur
to me that people might think that I had been murdered, nor did I
imagine that anyone might be caused serious danger through this
stratagem by which I endeavoured to gain a fresh start in the world.
On the contrary, it was the thought of relieving others from the burden
of my presence which was always uppermost in my mind. A sailing vessel
was leaving Liverpool that very day for Corunna, and in this I took my
passage, thinking that the voyage would give me time to recover my
balance, and to consider the future. But before I left my resolution
softened. I bethought me that there was one person in the world to
whom I would not cause an hour of sadness. She would mourn me in her
heart, however harsh and unsympathetic her relatives might be. She
understood and appreciated the motives upon which I had acted, and if
the rest of her family condemned me, she, at least, would not forget.
And so I sent her a note under the seal of secrecy to save her from a
baseless grief. If under the pressure of events she broke that se