master-rogue turned detective. {77a} It has been suggested by Dr
Knapp that he went to Paris, and thence on foot to Bayonne and
Madrid, after which he tramped to Pamplona, where he gets into
trouble, is imprisoned, and is released on condition that he leave
the country; he proceeds towards Marseilles and Genoa, where he takes
ship and is landed safely in London. The data, however, upon which
this itinerary is constructed are too frail to be convincing. There
is every probability that he roamed about the Continent and met with
adventures--he was a man to whom adventures gravitated quite
naturally--but the fact of his saying that he had been imprisoned on
three occasions, and there being only two instances on record at the
time, cannot in itself be considered as conclusive evidence of his
having been arrested at Pamplona. {77b}

In the spring of 1827 Borrow was unquestionably at Norwich, for he
saw the famous trotting stallion Marshland Shales on the Castle Hill
(12th April), and did for that grand horse "what I would neither do
for earl or baron, doffed my hat." {78a} Borrow apparently remained
with his mother for some months, to judge from certain entries (29th
September to 19th November) in his hand that appear in her account
books.

In December 1829 he was back again in London at 77 Great Russell
Street, W.C. He was as usual eager to obtain some sort of work. He
wrote to "the Committee of the Honourable and Praiseworthy
Association, known by the name of the Highland Society . . . a body
animate with patriotism, which, guided by philosophy, produces the
noblest results, and many of whose members stand amongst the very
eminent in the various departments of knowledge."