hunters.
    The town they had chosen for their next stage, the name of which I had thus
caught in the market-place, was the town to which, but for this intimation, I
should have immediately proceeded. As it was, I determined to take a road as
wide of it as possible. In the first place to which I came, in which it was
practicable to do so, I bought a great coat which I drew over my beggar's weeds,
and a better hat. The hat I slouched over my face, and covered one of my eyes
with a green silk shade. The handkerchief, which I had hitherto worn about my
head, I now tied about the lower part of my visage, so as to cover my mouth. By
degrees I discarded every part of my former dress, and wore for my upper garment
a kind of carman's frock, which, being of the better sort, made me look like the
son of a reputable farmer of the lower class. Thus equipped, I proceeded on my
journey, and, after a thousand alarms, precautions, and circuitous deviations
from the direct path, arrived safely in London.
 

                                  Chapter VIII

Here then was the termination of an immense series of labours, upon which no man
could have looked back without astonishment, or forward without a sentiment
bordering on despair. It was at a price which defies estimation that I had
purchased this resting place; whether we consider the efforts it had cost me to
escape from the walls of my prison, or the dangers and anxieties to which I had
been a prey from that hour to the present.
    But why do I call the point at which I was now arrived a resting place?
Alas, it was diametrically the reverse! It was my first and immediate business,
to review all the projects of disguise I had hitherto conceived, to derive every
improvement I could invent from the practice to which I had been subjected, and
to manufacture a veil of concealment more impenetrable than ever. This was an
effort to which I could see no end. In ordinary cases the hue and cry after a
supposed offender is a matter of temporary operation; but ordinary cases formed
no standard for the colossal intelligence of Mr. Falkland. For the same reason,
London, which appears an inexhaustible reservoir of concealment to the majority
of mankind, brought no such consolatory sentiment to my mind. Whether life were
worth accepting on such terms I cannot pronounce. I only know that I persisted
in this exertion of my faculties, through a sort of parental love that men are
accustomed to entertain for