* * * * *

What was essential to me was to know, with certainty, whether I was
really alone: for some instinct began to whisper me: 'Find that out: be
sure, be sure: for without the assurance you can never be--yourself.'

I passed into the great Midland Canal, and went northward, leisurely
advancing, for I was in no hurry. The weather remained very warm, and
great part of the country was still dressed in autumn leaves. I have
written, I think, of the terrific character of the tempests witnessed in
England since my return: well, the calms were just as intense and novel.
This observation was forced upon me: and I could not but be surprised.
There seemed no middle course now: if there was a wind, it was a storm:
if there was not a storm, no leaf stirred, not a roughening zephyr ran
the water. I was reminded of maniacs that laugh now, and rave now--but
never smile, and never sigh.

On the fourth afternoon I passed by Leicester, and the next morning left
my pleasant boat, carrying maps and compass, and at a small station took
engine, bound for Yorkshire, where I loitered and idled away two foolish
months, sometimes travelling by steam-engine, sometimes by automobile,
sometimes by bicycle, and sometimes on foot, till the autumn was quite
over.

* * * * *

There were two houses in London to which especially I had thought to
go: one in Harley Street, and one in Hanover Square: but when it came to
the point, I would not; and there was a little embowered home in
Yorkshire, where I was born, to which I thought to go: but I would not,
confining myself for many days to the eastern half of the county.

One morning, while passing on foot along the coast-wall from Bridlington
to Flambro', on turning my eyes from the sea, I was confronted by a
thing which for a moment or two struck me with the most profound
astonishment. I had come to a mansion, surrounded by trees, three
hundred yards from the cliffs: and there, on a path at the bottom of the
domain, right before me, was a board marked: 'Trespassers will be
Prosecuted.' At once a mad desire--the first which I had had--to laugh,
to roar with laughter, to send wild echoes of merriment clapping among
the chalk gullies, and abroad on the morning air, seized upon me: but I
kept it under, though I could not help smiling at this poor man, with
his little delusion that a part of the earth was his.

Here the cliffs are, I should