I enforced to spend many hours daily in idleness, I find the time hang
very heavy; for I cannot, like Althea, entertain any longer the hopes
that brought us hither. She continues daily to make great exertions in
pursuing them, but does not often admit my help; and, being afraid that
I may fall into mere desperation, I have bethought me how to amuse some
hours daily by setting down the manner of our present troubles and the
beginnings that led to them. May I live to write of their happy end! but
my fears are very great, and almost forbid me to pray thus.

Having thus resolved how to beguile the heavy time, I began spying about
for paper and pens and ink; and finding in a kind of lumber room a great
many sheets of coarse paper, I stitched them together; then with much
trembling I peeped into the study of the late poor master of the house,
and there found a bundle of quills and some ink; and, leaving money in
his desk to the full value of the things I took, I carried my
writing-tools into the great front parlour, and set myself to the work.

Now while I sat considering how to begin, Althea comes softly behind me,
and, looking over my shoulder, asks me what I would be at; and when I
told her, 'What, child,' says she, 'art going to turn historian? Thy
spirits are more settled than mine, if thou canst sit quietly down to
such work, with sights like these daily before thine eyes,' pointing
with her hand to the window. Now I had pulled the table into a corner
well out of sight from the street, wishing not to be discerned; for as
yet but one knows of our being hidden in this house, and we would fain
keep it a secret still. But rising and following with my eyes her
pointing hand, I could behold a sight common enough, but too dismal to
be looked on without fresh apprehension each time: in the middle of the
street, which is quite grown with grass, a horse and cart standing, no
driver in sight near it, and the cart as we too well knew being that