In this endeavor I had no personal vanity to serve; it was simply that I recognized the mischief of living an idle life. I would have no more wasted days. If I did not succeed with the pen I would bring my muscles into play. I laughed as the idea occurred to me that I might eventually become a market gardener, a cultivator of fruits. Straightway my thoughts traveled gaily in that direction. Towards the end of the voyage I became impatient. The nearer we got to England the greater was my eagerness to see Ellen. I was on the threshold of a new existence, and I was in a fever to cross it. This uncontrollable desire burnt within me to the exclusion of every other topic. I became restless and abstracted, and I withdrew from cordial relationship with my fellow-passengers. This mood--for which I cannot account except on the grounds of pure selfishness--lasted a week, and then I took myself to task and endeavored to make myself companionable; but I was not regarded with the same favor, and my society was not courted. It taught me a lesson, and I inwardly reproached myself with ingratitude. It is perhaps necessary to mention that I still retained the name I had adopted, and that I appeared on the passenger list as John Fletcher. Time enough, I thought, to resume my own name when Ellen and I were married. But my principal reason for retaining the name of Fletcher was the fear that some of the passengers might have read the account of the fire in which Barbara perished. Newspapers nowadays deal largely in horrors, and accounts of the fire had been published in the Melbourne journals. Naturally I shrank from identification. The date of my arrival in Liverpool was the 30th of November, and I landed late at night in the midst of a snowstorm. From a railway guide on board ship I noted that a train for London started from Lime Street at midnight, and by this train I had decided to travel to London. Fatal decision! Had I been struck down dead in the streets, my fate would have been the happier! CHAPTER XXIV. It is at this point of my story that I cannot entirely trust my memory. I am, however, sufficiently clear-minded as to the course of events up to the moment when, in a street, the name of which is unknown to me, an attack was made upon my life. That a watch had been kept upon my movements, and that the attack was premeditated, I have no reason to doubt; but it is almost incredible that hatred could be so far-seeing and vindictive.