s done? Not only murdered a beautiful
lady; but blown up a church and killed half a dozen men!"

A shudder shook the crowd. Could this be true? A score of questions was
put to Bailiff Jones. But he would not stop to answer any one of them.
Calling his coadjutor Smith to help him, they each took an arm of Sybil
and forced her from the scene.

Faint, speechless, powerless under this sudden and awful accumulation of
misery, the wretched young wife was torn from her dying husband and
thrust into a stage-coach, guarded by three other bailiffs, and
immediately started on her return journey.

Resistance was useless, lamentations were in vain. She sat dumb with a
despair never before exceeded, scarcely ever before equalled in the case
of any sufferer under the sun.

There were no other passengers but the sheriff's officers and their one
prisoner.

Of the first part of this terrible homeward journey there is but little
to tell. They stopped at the appointed hours and stations to breakfast,
dine, and sup, and to water and change the horses, but never to sleep.
They travelled day and night; and as no other passenger joined them, it
was probable that the sheriff's officers had engaged all the seats for
themselves and their important charge.

During that whole horrible journey the hapless young wife neither ate,
drank, slumbered, nor spoke; all the faculties of mind and body, all the
functions of nature, seemed to be suspended.

It was on the night of the third day, and they were in the last stage of
the journey.

They were going slowly down that terrible mountain pass, leading to the
village of Blackville. The road was even unusually difficult and
dangerous, and the night was very dark, so that the coachman was driving
slowly and carefully, when suddenly the bits of the leaders were seized
and the coach stopped.

In some alarm the bailiffs thrust their heads out of the side windows to
the right and left, to see what the obstacle might be.

To their horror and amazement they found it surrounded by half a score
of highwaymen, armed to the teeth.

CHAPTER X.

THE NIGHT ATTACK ON THE COACH.

"The sound of hoof, the flash of steel,
The robbers round her coming."

"The road robbers, by all that's devilish!" gasped Jones, falling back
in his seat.

"Good gracious!" cried Smith.

And all the brave "bum-baillies" who had so gallantly bullied and
brow-beaten Sybil and her sole defender, dropped panic-str