(10 o’clock.)—­I have lit my candle for the last time in this cottage, to add a few lines to my journal.  The hamlet is quiet; I hear no footstep outside—­and yet, can I be certain that Mannion is not lurking near my door at this moment?

I must go when the morning comes; I must leave this quiet retreat, in which I have lived so calmly until now.  There is no hope that I can reinstate myself in the opinions of my poor neighbours.  He has arrayed against me the pitiless hostility of their superstition.  He has found out the dormant cruelties, even in the hearts of these simple people; and has awakened them against me, as he said he would.  The evil work must have been begun within the last three weeks, while I was much within doors, and there was little chance of meeting me in my usual walks.  How that work was accomplished it is useless to inquire; my only object now, must be to prepare myself at once for departure.

(11 o’clock.)—­While I was putting up my few books, a minute ago, a little embroidered marker fell out of one of them, which I had not observed in the pages before; and which I recognised as having been worked for me by Clara.  I have a memorial of my sister in my possession, after all!  Trifling as it is, I shall preserve it about me, as a messenger of consolation in the time of adversity and peril.

(1 o’clock.)—­The wind sweeps down on us, from off the moorland, in fiercer and fiercer gusts; the waves dash heavily against our rock promontory; the rain drifts wildly past my windows; and the densest darkness overspreads the whole sky.  The storm which has been threatening for some days, is gathering fast.

(Village of Treen, October 22nd.)—­The events of this one day have changed the whole future of my life.  I must force myself to write of them at once.  Something warns me that if I delay, though only till to-morrow, I shall be incapable of relating them at all.

It was still early in the morning—­I think about seven o’clock—­when I closed my cottage door behind me, never to open it again.  I met only one or two of my neighbours as I left the hamlet.  They drew aside to let me advance, without saying a word.  With a heavy heart, grieved more than I could have imagined possible at departing as an enemy from among the people with whom I had lived as a friend, I passed slowly by the last cottages, and ascended the cliff path which led to the moor.

The storm had raged at its fiercest some hours back.  Soon after daylight the wind sank; but the majesty of the mighty sea had lost none of its terror and grandeur as yet.  The huge Atlantic waves still hurled themselves, foaming and furious, against the massive granite of the Cornish cliffs.  Overhead, the sky was hidden in a thick white mist, now hanging, still and dripping, down to the ground; now rolling in shapes like vast smoke-wreaths before the light wind which still blew at intervals.  At a distance of more than a few yards, the largest objects were totally invisible.  I had nothing to guide me, as I advanced, but the ceaseless roaring of the sea on my right hand.