Three months later, I myself met with an accident which not only entailed great suffering upon me, but almost cost me my life. It was in the month of May, when, after the severe exertions imposed upon me by the General Election--of which I shall speak fully later on--I had left Leeds for a few days' rest and change. Sir George Wombwell, of Balaclava fame, had invited a small party--of whom I was one--to join him on a driving tour among the abbeys and ruins of the East Riding. The other members of the party were William Black, Bret Harte, who had not long before taken up his residence in England, and C. O. Shepard, the American Consul at Bradford. Our rendezvous was at York, on a certain Saturday, and we had agreed to spend that afternoon in visiting the battlefield of Marston Moor. We drove out to the field in the highest spirits. I, in particular, was elated at the thought of my escape from the drudgery of my office, as well as by the prospect of the agreeable companionship of Black and Harte, not to speak of Shepard, who was an admirable teller of American stories, of which he possessed an inexhaustible fund. We were crossing the battlefield on foot when we found our way stopped by a hedge. It was a long way round to the gate of the field, and the hedge did not seem very formidable. At all events, Black and Shepard cleared it at a bound, and laughingly challenged Harte and me to follow their example. But we were prudent men, and openly congratulated ourselves upon that fact when we discovered a gap, through which it seemed possible to pass quite easily. Harte passed through without difficulty, and I followed his example. I had to jump about eighteen inches from the bank of the hedge into the field. Nothing seemed simpler. Yet when I landed on my feet one of them was caught in some mysterious way in a hole in the ground, and whilst it was held as in a vice, my body was wrenched round on the axis of my knee. To this day I do not understand how it happened. All I knew at the moment was that something had given way in the knee-joint, and that when I attempted to put my foot to the ground after extricating it from the hole in which it had been caught "the pains of hell gat hold upon me." I suppose I must, up to that time, have been fairly free from physical torments of any kind. I had certainly no conception, before that moment, that it was possible for a human being to suffer such torture as I had then to endure.