I am aware that this mode of escape, this walking through a window and running off unmolested, sounds bald and commonplace; and that if I could import into my story some touch of romance or womanish disguise, such as--to compare great things with small--marked my Lord Nithsdale's escape from the Tower three years ago, I should cut a better figure. Whereas in the flight across the fields on a quiet afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows on the meadows, and for my most instant alarms, the sudden whirring up before me of partridge or plover, few will find anything heroic. But let them place themselves for a moment in my skin, and remember that as I sweated and panted and stumbled and rose again, as I splashed in reckless haste through sloughs and ditches, and tore my way through great blackthorns, I had death always at my heels! Let them remember that in the long shadows that crossed my path I saw the gallows, and again the gallows, and once more the gallows; and fled more quickly; and that it needed but the distant bark of a dog, or the shout of a boy scaring birds, to persuade me that the hue and cry was coming, and to fill me with the last extremity of fear. I believe that the adventurer, and the knight of the road, when it falls to their lot to be so hunted--as must often happen, though more commonly such an one is taken _securus et ebrius_ in the arms of his mistress--find some mitigation of their pains in the anticipation of conflict, and in the stern joy which the resolve to sell life dearly imparts to the man of action. But I was unarmed, and worn out with my exertions; no soldier, and with no heart to fight. My flight therefore across the quiet fields was pure terror, the torture of unmitigated fear. Fear spurred me and whipped me; and yet, had I known it, I might have spared my terror. For darkness found me, weak and exhausted, but still free, in the neighbourhood of Epping in Essex, where I passed the night in the Forest; and before noon next day, believing that they would watch for me on the Tottenham Road, I had found courage to slink in to London by way of Chingford, and in the heart of that great city, whose magnitude exceeded all my expectations, had safely and effectually lost myself. CHAPTER X