During my time of struggle I had avoided all communication with old Hasluck. He was not a man to sympathise with feelings he did not understand. With boisterous¹ good humour he would have insisted upon helping² me. Why I preferred half starving with Lott and Co. to selling my labour for a fair wage to good-natured old Hasluck, merely because I knew him, I cannot explain. Though the profits may not have been so large, Lott and Co.'s dealings were not one whit⁴ more honest: I do not believe it was that which decided⁵ me. Nor do I think it was because he was Barbara's father. I never connected him, nor that good old soul, his vulgar, homely⁶ wife, in any way with Barbara. To me she was a being apart from all the world. Her true Parents! I should have sought them rather amid the sacred groves⁷ of vanished lands, within the sky-domed shrines⁸ of banished¹⁰ gods. There are instincts in us not easily analysed, not to be explained by reason. I have always preferred the finding—sometimes the losing—of my way according to the map, to the surer and simpler method of vocal¹¹ enquiry; working out a complicated journey, and running the risk of never arriving at my destination, by aid of a Continental¹² Bradshaw, to putting myself into the hands of courteous¹³ officials maintained and paid to assist the

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