ware that I had better be any body than myself, with my usual invention
and presence of mind I replied, "Not much, madam, thanks be to heaven! I
was stunned, and they left me for dead: I am happy that I am still
alive, to be of service to you:" and I immediately proceeded to cast
loose the ropes by which the father and daughter (as by their
conversation they appeared to be) had been confined to the wheels. The
robbers had stripped them both nearly to the skin, and they were so
numbed with the cold that they could scarcely stand when they were
unbound,--the poor girl especially, who shivered as if suffering under a
tertian ague. I proposed that they should enter the carriage as the best
shelter they could receive from the bitter keen wind which blew, and
they agreed to the prudence of my suggestion.

"If I am not requesting too great a favour, sir," said the old
gentleman, "I wish you would lend my poor daughter that cloak, for she
is perishing with the cold."

"I will with pleasure, sir, as soon as you are both in the carriage,"
replied I; for I had made up my mind how to proceed. I assisted them in,
and, shutting the door, slipped off the cloak and put it in at the
window, saying, "Believe me, madam, I should have offered it to you
before, but the fact is, the rascals served me, as I lay stunned, in the
same manner as they have you, and I must now go in search of something
to cover myself." I then went off at a quick pace, hearing the young
woman exclaim, "Oh, my father, he has stripped himself to cover me!"

I immediately returned to the body of the gentleman whose cloak I had
borrowed, and for whom I had no doubt that I had been mistaken. I
stripped off all the clothes from his rigid limbs, and put them on: they
fitted me exactly, and, what was more fortunate, were not stained with
blood, as he had received his death-wound from a bullet in the brain. I
then dragged the body to the other side of the hedge, where I threw it
into a ditch, and covered it with long grass, that it might not be
discovered. Daylight had made its appearance before I had completed my
toilet; and when I came back to the carriage, the old gentleman was loud
in his thanks. I told him that in returning to strip one of the other
bodies I had found my own clothes in a bundle, which the robbers had
left in their haste to escape from pursuit.

The young lady said nothing, but sat shrouded up in the cloak, in one
corner of the carriage. I now entere