tion. He was so ill received that I declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!
"Miss Dorothy," said I, "you wish to be delivered from this man?"
"O, if it were possible!" she cried. "But not by violence."
"Not in the least, ma'am," I replied. "The simplest thing in life. We are in a civilized country; the man's a malefactor"
"O, never!" she cried. "Do not even dream it! with all his faults, I know he is not that."
"Anyway, he's in the wrong in this affair—on the wrong side of the law, call it what you please," said I; and with that, our four horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest magistrate and where he lived. Arch-deacon Clitheroe, he told me, a prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road. I showed him the king's medallion.
"Take the lady there, and at full gallop," I cried.
"Right, sir! Mind yourself," says the postilion. And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage to the right-about and we were galloping south.
Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manœuvre, and came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment
