of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation.  The vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man.  Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to know the progress of matters at home—­how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and, briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he was a central object will be affected by his removal.  A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair.  But how is he to attain his ends?  Not, certainly, by keeping close in this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach had been whirling him away all night.  Yet should he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head.  His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his forsaken domicile.  Habit—­for he is a man of habits—­takes him by the hand and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the step.—­Wakefield, whither are you going?

At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot.  Little dreaming of the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his head at the distant corner.  Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?  Will not the whole household—­the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid-servant and the dirty little footboy—­raise a hue-and-cry through London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master?  Wonderful escape!  He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old.  In ordinary cases this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality.  In Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because in that brief period a great moral change has been effected.  But this is a secret from himself.  Before leaving the spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife passing athwart the front window with her face turned toward the head of the street.  The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea that among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must have detected him.  Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings.