as trusted, to make their
application, and she boldly determined to execute a plan, whereby the
arrival of the death-warrant would be retarded.

At that time horses were used as a mode of conveyance so much more than
carriages that almost every gentlewoman had her own steed, and Miss
Cochrane, being a skilful rider, was possessed of a well-managed
palfrey, on whose speed and other good qualities she had been accustomed
to depend. One morning after she had bidden her father farewell, long
ere the inhabitants of Edinburgh were astir, she found herself many
miles on the road to the borders. She had taken care to attire herself
in a manner which corresponded with the design of passing herself off
for a young serving-woman journeying on a borrowed horse to the house of
her mother in a distant part of the country; and by only resting at
solitary cottages, where she generally found the family out at work,
save perhaps an old woman or some children, she had the good fortune, on
the second day after leaving Edinburgh, to reach in safety the abode of
her old nurse, who lived on the English side of the Tweed, four miles
beyond the town of Berwick. In this woman she knew she could place
implicit confidence, and to her, therefore, revealed her secret. She had
resolved, she said, to make an attempt to save her father's life, by
stopping the postman, an equestrian like herself, and forcing him to
deliver up his bags, in which she expected to find the fatal warrant. In
pursuance of this design she had brought with her a brace of small
pistols, together with a horseman's cloak, tied up in a bundle, and hung
on the crutch of her saddle, and now borrowed from her nurse the attire
of her foster-brother, which, as he was a slight-made lad, fitted her
reasonably well.

She had, by means which it is unnecessary here to detail, possessed
herself of the most minute information with regard to the places at
which the postmen rested on their journey, one of which was a small
public-house, kept by a widow woman, on the outskirts of the little town
of Belford. There the man who received the bag at Durham was accustomed
to arrive about six o'clock in the morning, and take a few hours' repose
before proceeding farther on his journey. In pursuance of the plan laid
down by Miss Cochrane, she arrived at this inn about an hour after the
man had composed himself to sleep, in the hope of being able, by the
exercise of her wit and dexterity, to ease him of