te journey I have mentioned.

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for
ever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, of
course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general
all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually
found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of
the Temple! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, as
if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; the
bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers,
trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and
warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such
customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the
wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face
like a steel whip.

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The
Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool,
weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the
intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and
had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on
the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having
first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was
gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my
expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before
my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried into
full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner,
lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars
by-and-by--took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were
stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some
other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a
very serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of
these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my
portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington,
where I was to join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, who
carried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, told me about