So, I neither turned aside from the straight direction, nor hurried my steps, nor looked back any more.  At the time I had resolved on, I left London for Cornwall, without making any attempt to conceal my departure.  And though I knew that he must surely be following me, still I never saw him again:  never discovered how close or how far off he was on my track.

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Two months have passed since that period; and I know no more about him now than I knew then.

JOURNAL.

October 19th—­My retrospect is finished.  I have traced the history of my errors and misfortunes, of the wrong I have done and the punishment I have suffered for it, from the past to the present time.

The pages of my manuscript (many more than I thought to write at first) lie piled together on the table before me.  I dare not look them over:  I dare not read the lines which my own hand has traced.  There may be much in my manner of writing that wants alteration; but I have no heart to return to my task, and revise and reconsider as I might if I were intent on producing a book which was to be published during my lifetime.  Others will be found, when I am no more, to carve, and smooth, and polish to the popular taste of the day this rugged material of Truth which I shall leave behind me.

But now, while I collect these leaves, and seal them up, never to be opened again by my hands, can I feel that I have related all which it is necessary to tell?  No!  While Mannion lives—­while I am ignorant of the changes that may yet be wrought in the home from which I am exiled—­there remains for me a future which must be recorded, as the necessary sequel to the narrative of the past.  What may yet happen worthy of record, I know not:  what sufferings I may yet undergo, which may unfit me for continuing the labour now terminated for a time, I cannot foresee.  I have not hope enough in the future, or in myself; to believe that I shall have the time or the energy to write hereafter, as I have written already, from recollection.  It is best, then, that I should note down events daily as they occur; and so ensure, as far as may be, a continuation of my narrative, fragment by fragment, to the very last.

But, first, as a fit beginning to the Journal I now propose to keep, let me briefly reveal something, in this place, of the life that I am leading in my retirement on the Cornish coast.

The fishing hamlet in which I have written the preceding pages, is on the southern shore of Cornwall, not more than a few miles distant from the Land’s End.  The cottage I inhabit is built of rough granite, rudely thatched, and has but two rooms.  I possess no furniture but my bed, my table, and my chair; and some half-dozen fishermen and their families are my only neighbours.  But I feel neither the want of luxuries, nor the want of society:  all that I wished for in coming here, I have—­the completest seclusion.