It is not my purpose to trace my future progress through life. I
had extricated myself, or rather had been freed by my friends,
from the brambles and thickets of the law; but, as befell the
sheep in the fable, a great part of my fleece was left behind me.
Something remained, however: I was in the season for exertion,
and, as my good mother used to say, there was always life for
living folk. Stern necessity gave my manhood that prudence which
my youth was a stranger to. I faced danger, I endured fatigue, I
sought foreign climates, and proved that I belonged to the nation
which is proverbially patient of labour and prodigal of life.
Independence, like liberty to Virgil's shepherd, came late, but
came at last, with no great affluence in its train, but bringing
enough to support a decent appearance for the rest of my life,
and to induce cousins to be civil, and gossips to say, "I wonder
whom old Croft will make his heir? He must have picked up
something, and I should not be surprised if it prove more than
folk think of."
My first impulse when I returned home was to rush to the house of
my benefactor, the only man who had in my distress interested
himself in my behalf.
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