to be
the previous night, as it was still dark and raining. But I had lost
twenty-four hours.

'I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights
that I lay recovering in that public-house. Let me see. Yes. I am sure
it was while I lay in that bed there, that the thought entered my head
of turning the danger I had passed through, to the account of being
for some time supposed to have disappeared mysteriously, and of proving
Bella. The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating
the fate that seemed to have fallen on my father's riches--the fate that
they should lead to nothing but evil--was strong upon the moral timidity
that dates from my childhood with my poor sister.

'As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where I
recovered the shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was
ensnared, I shall never understand it now. Even at this moment, while I
leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot conceive that it rolls
between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But this is
not thinking it out; this is making a leap to the present time.

'I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof
belt round my body. Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the
inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand! But it was enough. Without it I
must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never have gone to that
Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs Wilfer's lodgings.

'Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the
corpse of Radfoot at the Police Station. The inexpressible mental horror
that I laboured under, as one of the consequences of the poison, makes
the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it cannot have been longer.
That suffering has gradually weakened and weakened since, and has only
come upon me by starts, and I hope I am free from it now; but even now,
I have sometimes to think, constrain myself, and stop before speaking,
or I could not say the words I want to say.

'Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end. It is not so far
to the end that I need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight!

'I examined the newspapers every day for tidings that I was missing, but
saw none. Going out that night to walk (for I kept retired while it was
light), I found a crowd assembled round a placard posted at Whitehall.
It described myself, John Harmon, as found dead and mutilated in the
river under circum