This eBook was produced by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net 

BOOK II. 

CHAPTER I. 

KENELM CHILLINGLY had quitted the paternal home at daybreak before any
of the household was astir.  "Unquestionably," said he, as he walked
along the solitary lanes,--"unquestionably I begin the world as poets
begin poetry, an imitator and a plagiarist.  I am imitating an
itinerant verse-maker, as, no doubt, he began by imitating some other
maker of verse.  But if there be anything in me, it will work itself
out in original form.  And, after all, the verse-maker is not the
inventor of ideas.  Adventure on foot is a notion that remounts to the
age of fable.  Hercules, for instance; that was the way in which he
got to heaven, as a foot-traveller.  How solitary the world is at this
hour! Is it not for that reason that this is of all hours the most