And then there was rest and security!  He was free from that torturing anxiety and fear of detection which had haunted him night and day for three months.  The ceaseless vigilance and watchful dread he had known since his escape, he could lay aside now.  The rude cabin on the sand dune was to him as the long-sought cave to some hunted animal.  It seemed impossible that any one would seek him there.  He was spared alike the contact of his enemies or the shame of recognizing even a friendly face, until by each he would be forgotten.  From his coign of vantage on that desolate waste, and with the aid of his telescope, no stranger could approach within two or three miles of his cabin without undergoing his scrutiny.  And at the worst, if he was pursued here, before him was the trackless shore and the boundless sea!

And at times there was a certain satisfaction in watching, unseen and in perfect security, the decks of passing ships.  With the aid of his glass he could mingle again with the world from which he was debarred, and gloomily wonder who among those passengers knew their solitary watcher, or had heard of his deeds; it might have made him gloomier had he known that in those eager faces turned towards the golden haven there was little thought of anything but themselves.  He tried to read in faces on board the few outgoing ships the record of their success with a strange envy.  They were returning home!  Home!  For sometimes—­but seldom—­he thought of his own home and his past.  It was a miserable past of forgery and embezzlement that had culminated a career of youthful dissipation and self-indulgence, and shut him out, forever, from the staid old English cathedral town where he was born.  He knew that his relations believed and wished him dead.  He thought of this past with little pleasure, but with little remorse.  Like most of his stamp, he believed it was ill-luck, chance, somebody else’s fault, but never his own responsible action.  He would not repent; he would be wiser only.  And he would not be retaken—­alive!

Two or three months passed in this monotonous duty, in which he partly recovered his strength and his nerves.  He lost his furtive, restless, watchful look; the bracing sea air and the burning sun put into his face the healthy tan and the uplifted frankness of a sailor.  His eyes grew keener from long scanning of the horizon; he knew where to look for sails, from the creeping coastwise schooner to the far-rounding merchantman from Cape Horn.  He knew the faint line of haze that indicated the steamer long before her masts and funnels became visible.  He saw no soul except the solitary boatman of the little “plunger,” who landed his weekly provisions at a small cove hard by.  The boatman thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to whom he brought no letters.  The long nights which wrapped the cabin in sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile’s sense of security, by degrees, however, became monotonous, and incited an odd restlessness, which he was wont to oppose by whiskey,—­allowed as a part of his stores,—­which, while it dulled his sensibilities, he, however, never permitted to interfere with his mechanical duties.