More and more did the feeling grow upon him that he was entering into a new world where he must leave behind the customs, the grooves, the habits of fifteen long years of his life. “There’s one thing,” he thought to himself, while a sudden chilliness struck his face as their road drew nearer the course of the river, “that I’ll never give up⁠ ⁠… not even for the sake of the slenderest ‘peeled willow-wand’ in Dorset.” As this thought crossed his mind he actually tightened his two bony hands tenaciously over his legs just above his knees, as if he were fortifying himself against some unknown threat to his treasured vice. And then in a kind of self-protective reassembling of his memories, as if by the erection of a great barrier of mental earthworks he could ward off any attack upon his secret, he set himself to recall certain notable landmarks among his experiences of the world up to the hour of this exciting plunge into the unknown.