Another touching example of faith presented itself as Creff and I were loading my baggage into a carriage. Limping down the street came a bedraggled figure, its ribs protruding from the rigours of its journey, still scarred from the crash of the flying machine, scarcely recognisable. It was the dog Abel, who – as animals have been reported to do – had made his way over all England's hills and rivers, to return to that home where he was first kindly treated. The warm fire, by which he sleeps even now, and the fattening dish will be his rewards to the end of his days.
My own reward will be to lay down this pen, and pick it up no more. My apologia is finished, for all the good it will do.
Reports have reached my ears, of a lame man with tinted spectacles, in company with a woman, travelling from village to village in the North of England and Scotland. They are said to exhibit a few crude music playing automata, but are soon chased away by the town constables when various gambling and confidence games come to light.
Though I myself have come to this safe harbour – if safety can be found in this life – yet I mourn my former simple days. I have lost my Innocence, in more ways than one. I have seen the gears and furious machinery of the world that lies unreckoned beneath our feet. No longer can I note, as other men do, the passing hours upon the heavens' gilded face, without a vision of a hidden master-spring uncoiling to its final silence. I await the day when all clocks shall stop, including the one that ticks within my breast. Do thou the same, Reader, and profit from my example.