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the persons whom she meant to fly, in a manner still more dangerous than that of awaiting their return to their own abode; whence she hoped she might proceed quietly on her way the next morning, as an object not worth detention or examination; her homely attire and laborious manner of travelling alike announcing profitless poverty.
Her doubts of the nature of what she had to apprehend, were as full of perplexity as of inquietude. Would robbers thus eagerly have caught at half-a-crown? Would they be residents in a fixed abode, with a family of children? Surely not. Yet the whispers, the cautions, the examination whether she slept, evinced clearly something clandestine; and their looks and appearance were so darkly in their disfavour, that, ultimately, she could only judge, that, if they were not actual robbers, they were the occasional harbourers, and miserable accomplices of those who, to similar want of principle, joined the necessary
