The Broad Highway

Justly to narrate all that befell me during my flight and journey to London, would fill many pages, and therefore, as this book of mine is already of a magnitude far beyond my first expectations, I shall hurry on to the end of my story.

Acting upon the advice of the saturnine Jeremy, I lay hidden by day, and traveled by night, avoiding the highway. But in so doing I became so often involved in the maze of cross-roads, bylanes, cow-paths, and cart-tracks, that twice the dawn found me as completely lost as though I had been set down in the midst of the Sahara. I thus wasted much time, and wandered many miles out of my way; wherefore, to put an end to these futile ramblings, I set my face westward, hoping to strike the highroad somewhere between Tonbridge and Sevenoaks; determined rather to run the extra chance of capture than follow haphazard these tortuous and interminable byways.