Without a farthing in my pocket, for I had given the last sou to her, and was determined to forage my own way home the best way I could, I again set off for Calais, where I arrived in much distress. Here fortune was favourable to me. A brother mason kindly befriended me, and gave me a free passage to Dover. Had it not been for this kind assistance, I know not how I should have crossed the Straits. At Dover nothing could exceed my wretchedness; I had struggled with difficulties in a foreign country, but I was now returned to my own as if I had been an outcast upon earth, without a friend or farthing in the world. The thought maddened me. For a day and a night I walked the streets of Dover, and scarcely tasted food. A thousand times I asked myself “What can I do? How shall I act?” Begging was out of the question—a _soldier_ could not beg. More fitted in this state of mind for a highwayman than a beggar, I said to myself, “Can I not rob?” I had no fire-arms. Thus, pondering how I should proceed, I walked slowly along the road that leads to Canterbury, and on a sudden espied a number of hop-poles in an adjoining field. The thought flashed like lightning on my brain, that I would seize one of these, and knock down the first man who came past. Clearing the hedge at a jump, and pulling one of the poles out of the pile, and snapping it off at the butt-end, and retiring to my position on the road, I resolutely glanced about in search of the first passenger, and as quickly at some distance, observed two men walking smartly towards me. I squeezed my cudgel firm in my hand, and awaited their approach; but ere I could bring myself to a proper sense of what I was about, one of the men suddenly shot himself beside me, saying, “What, Ned! is that you, my boy? How are you?” shaking me by the hand at the same time. In an instant I recognized him to be a man of my own regiment, named Jem Conner, but I could scarcely answer him; he noticed my confusion, and in the same breath, while he still held my hand, insisted on my returning with him to Dover. Little dreaming the true cause of my agitation, I returned with him, where he informed me he was married. I have often thought that the circumstance of a friend being the person on whom I thus alighted, was a providential interference that prevented my committing an act which would ever have embittered my future life. Perhaps, by similar interposition, however imperceptible to man, many are saved from the commission of crime.