But it was
a plan agreeable to the facts of the case, that narrative should pass
into description at the point where the stream of our little history,
after descending the rapid of alarms and difficulties, abrupt resolves
and swift action, fell quietly again into the smooth channel of a new
routine. Not that the story of the succeeding months was really
uneventful. If our readers suppose that from this point onward we led a
prosperous untroubled existence, it will be due to the illusion, which,
in fiction, makes us cheerful over the woes of the struggling hero,
because we have glanced at the end of the book, and view the present
trouble in the light of the successful issue: what the end would be we
did not know, nor when it would come. And if, to resume our metaphor,
the current of the enterprise flowed for the most part smoothly, there
were rocks underneath which those who saw them could not forget, though
they seldom raised an eddy on the surface. Here, however, we must ask
the reader to believe us that it was so, without demanding explanations,
which at this date would be inconvenient.
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