to that conclusion. O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would
have thought that I could have been such a blind, wicked donkey!"

I should have said before--only that I really do not know when it came
in--that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley and Mr.
Bellamy, which was the hawbuck's name, bestriding the four post-horses;
and that these seemed a sort of cavalry escort, riding now before, now
behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally posturing at the window and
obliging us with some of his conversation. 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 civilised 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.
Archdeacon 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 postillion.

And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage
to the rightabout and we were galloping south.

Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, 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 back, was transformed, in the twinkling of an eye into the
image of a noisy fox-chase. The two postillions and my own saucy rogue
were, of course, disinterested actors in the comedy; they rode for the
mere sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving