I had no cause to dread the Bow Street runners, for not one of them had seen me; but I had the strongest possible reasons for distrusting a meeting with my enemy, Screw.  He would certainly be made use of by the officers for the purpose of identifying the companions whom he had betrayed; and I had the best reasons in the world to believe that he would rather assist in the taking of me than in the capture of all the rest of the coining gang put together—­the doctor himself not excepted.  My present costume was of the dandy sort—­rather shabby, but gay in color and outrageous in cut.  I had not altered it for an artisan’s suit in the doctor’s house, because I never had any intention of staying there a day longer than I could possibly help.  The apron in which I had wrapped the writing-desk was the only approach I had made toward wearing the honorable uniform of the workingman.

Would it be wise now to make my transformation complete, by adding to the apron a velveteen jacket and a sealskin cap?  No:  my hands were too white, my manners too inveterately gentleman-like, for all artisan disguise.  It would be safer to assume a serious character—­to shave off my whiskers, crop my hair, buy a modest hat and umbrella, and dress entirely in black.  At the first slopshop I encountered in the suburbs of the town, I got a carpet-bag and a clerical-looking suit.  At the first easy shaving-shop I passed, I had my hair cropped and my whiskers taken off.  After that I retreated again to the country—­walked back till I found a convenient hedge down a lane off the highroad—­changed my upper garments behind it, and emerged, bashful, black, and reverend, with my cotton umbrella tucked modestly under my arm, my eyes on the ground, my head in the air, and my hat off my forehead.  When I found two laborers touching their caps to me on my way back to the town, I knew that it was all right, and that I might now set the vindictive eyes of Screw himself safely at defiance.

I had not the most distant notion where I was when I reached the High Street, and stopped at The Green Bull Hotel and Coach-office.  However, I managed to mention my modest wishes to be conveyed at once in the direction of Wales, with no more than a becoming confusion of manner.

The answer was not so encouraging as I could have wished.  The coach to Shrewsbury had left an hour before, and there would be no other public conveyance running in my direct ion until the next morning.  Finding myself thus obliged to yield to adverse circumstances, I submitted resignedly, and booked a place outside by the next day’s coach, in the name of the Reverend John Jones.  I thought it desirable to be at once unassuming and Welsh in the selection of a traveling name; and therefore considered John Jones calculated to fit me, in my present emergency, to a hair.

After securing a bed at the hotel, and ordering a frugal curate’s dinner (bit of fish, two chops, mashed potatoes, semolina pudding, half-pint of sherry), I sallied out to look at the town.