CHAPTER VIII.
HE ENACTS THE PART OF GROOMSMAN.
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire!" This should have been my chosen motto from the beginning.

The performance of the maddening feat indicated in the proverb has been the principal business of my life.

I am always finding myself in the frying-pan, and always flopping out into the fire.

My father's interference saved me from the dreadful old creature into whose net I had stumbled when I fled from my native village, only to return with the certainty that I was unfit to cope with the world outside of it.
"I will never put my foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to my secret soul.

I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the remainder of the winter.