nd with this assistance I accomplished the walk with
comparative ease. I was so anxious to get home, that I almost felt as if
I could have walked the whole way, though I do not suppose that I could
really have done so, my home being rather more than five miles off.
Arrived at the town, I sent my companion for medical assistance, and
myself made my way to the Crown Inn. I could discern large objects
sufficiently to find my way along the street, though all was blurred and
indistinct, and the admission of light to my eyes was beginning to cause
me extreme pain. I ordered a fly immediately to take me as far as
possible on my road home. No vehicle of any description had been along
the turnpike road that day, and it was very doubtful how far a fly could
go, so it was arranged that we should be accompanied by a man on a saddle
horse, that I might ride when the fly could go no further, as I knew
that, under the most favourable circumstances, the last mile and a half
of the road to Wolstaston would be inaccessible to wheels.

Of course my adventure excited great interest at the Crown Hotel, when it
was fully understood what had happened to me. It was just two o'clock in
the afternoon when I reached that place, and as I had left Ratlinghope at
four o'clock on the previous afternoon, I had been walking
uninterruptedly for twenty-two hours, excepting the quarter of an hour I
had rested at the Carding Mill. My good friends at the hotel discovered
that my clothes were very wet, for they had been frozen before and were
now thawed, so I was dressed up in the landlord's garments. The effect
must have been very ludicrous, for he was a much stouter man than I was
at any time, and now I had shrunk away to nothing. It will not therefore
be wondered at that people when they saw me declared they should not have
known who I was.

The surgeon having come and dressed my finger, and warned me to keep away
from the fire and hot water, and having prescribed some hot brandy and
water, I started in my fly on my homeward journey. Very slow was our
progress. We had taken spades with us, and many times the driver and the
man who accompanied him had to dig a way for the fly to get through. Most
trying was the long delay thus caused to a man who knew that in his own
home he must probably be reckoned among the dead; but there was no help
for it, and at last Leebotwood was reached, the place where the lane to
Wolstaston turned off from the main r