So, a day or two after Will and I had come to a thorough understanding and everything was arranged so far as human foresight could provide, I sent my maid downstairs to request Mr. Stanford to see me. He came, and I opened my business with him at once without any needless civilities. ‘I am going abroad, Mr. Stanford,’ said I. ‘I am going to leave England, and I make you an offer of this whole house, furnished,’ and I named a price by the year. He wished to question me as to where I was going and how long I would be absent; but my behaviour soon forced him to swallow his curiosity and to confine himself to the question of the hire of the house. It ended in his agreeing to take the house off my hands on my own terms, and that same day I got Mr. Woolfe to draw up an agreement which Mr. Stanford and I signed. I then wrote to my trustees to inform them that I was about to leave the country and gave them instructions as to the receipt of the rent from Mr. Stanford and the payment of my income. The plate and many cherished objects which had come to me from my father and mother were packed and sent to my bank. I recount all this in a plain, sober-headed way, but let me tell you, it was a time of wild and frightful excitement to me. I had a hundred things to think of, a hundred stratagems to practise. I gave money to Will to procure a stock of food for hiding warily by degrees in the black lodging I was to occupy under the forecastle. He found he could not manage single-handed. Though he was an apprentice in the ship and had a right to go on board whenever he thought proper, his services were not required until the vessel was equipped and ready to drop down to Woolwich. He feared he would be noticed and then watched, if he was seen frequently to enter the forecastle, and it ended in his bribing a rigger, who was a brother of one of the crew of the _Childe Harold_ during her last voyage, to help him to store water bottled for me to drink whilst I was in hiding. The man asked no questions, my cousin told me; he merely grinned when he said that the stowaway was an old schoolfellow of his, whose father had failed in business, and he grinned again when Will tipped him two sovereigns.