s. I fell among brambles. I was torn and
breathless and bleeding. My tongue was like leather, my feet like lead,
and my heart beating like a kettle-drum. Still I ran, and I ran, and I
ran.

But I had not lost my head, my friends. Everything was done with a
purpose. Our fugitives always made for the coast. I was determined to go
inland, and the more so as I had told Beaumont the opposite. I would fly
to the north, and they would seek me in the south. Perhaps you will ask
me how I could tell which was which on such a night. I answer that it
was by the wind. I had observed in the prison that it came from the
north, and so, as long as I kept my face to it, I was going in the right
direction.

Well, I was rushing along in this fashion when, suddenly, I saw two
yellow lights shining out of the darkness in front of me. I paused for a
moment, uncertain what I should do. I was still in my hussar uniform,
you understand, and it seemed to me that the very first thing that I
should aim at was to get some dress which should not betray me. If these
lights came from a cottage, it was probable enough that I might find
what I wanted there. I approached, therefore, feeling very sorry that I
had left my iron bar behind; for I was determined to fight to the death
before I should be retaken.

But very soon I found that there was no cottage there. The lights were
two lamps hung upon each side of a carriage, and by their glare I saw
that a broad road lay in front of me. Crouching among the bushes, I
observed that there were two horses to the equipage, that a small
post-boy was standing at their heads, and that one of the wheels was
lying in the road beside him. I can see them now, my friends: the
steaming creatures, the stunted lad with his hands to their bits, and
the big, black coach, all shining with the rain, and balanced upon its
three wheels. As I looked, the window was lowered, and a pretty little
face under a bonnet peeped out from it.

'What shall I do?' the lady cried to the post-boy, in a voice of
despair. 'Sir Charles is certainly lost, and I shall have to spend the
night upon the moor.'

'Perhaps I can be of some assistance to madame,' said I, scrambling out
from among the bushes into the glare of the lamps. A woman in distress
is a sacred thing to me, and this one was beautiful. You must not forget
that, although I was a colonel, I was only eight-and-twenty years of
age.

My word, how she screamed, and how the post-boy s