e allowing the young lady to
act as she wishes, I will not be so rude as to hint that--as she is of
age--she may walk out of this house with me, whenever she likes, without
your having the power to prevent her; but, I will politely ask instead,
what you would propose to do with her, in the straitened position as to
money in which she and you are likely to be placed? You can't find
her father to give her to; and, if you could, who would be the best
protector for her? The doctor, who is the principal criminal in the eye
of the law, or I, who am only the unwilling accomplice? He is known to
the Bow Street runners--I am not. There is a reward for the taking of
him, and none for the taking of me. He has no respectable relatives
and friends, I have plenty. Every way my chances are the best; and
consequently I am, every way, the fittest person to trust her to. Don't
you see that?"

Mrs. Baggs did not immediately answer. She snatched the bottle out of
my hands--drank off another dram, shook her head at me, and ejaculated
lamentably: "My nerves, my nerves! what a heart of stone he must have to
presume on my poor nerves!"

"Give me one minute more," I went on. "I propose to take you and Alicia
to-morrow morning to Scotland. Pray don't groan! I only suggest the
journey with a matrimonial object. In Scotland, Mrs. Baggs, if a man and
woman accept each other as husband and wife, before one witness, it is a
lawful marriage; and that kind of wedding is, as you see plainly enough,
the only safe refuge for a bridegroom in my situation. If you consent to
come with us to Scotland, and serve as witness to the marriage, I shall
be delighted to acknowledge my sense of your kindness in the eloquent
language of the Bank of England, as expressed to the world in general on
the surface of a five-pound note."

I cautiously snatched away the brandy bottle as I spoke, and was in the
drawing-room with it in an instant. As I suppose, Mrs. Baggs tried to
follow me, for I heard the door rattle, as if she had got out of her
chair, and suddenly slipped back into it again. I felt certain of her
deciding to help us, if she was only sober enough to reflect on what I
had said to her. The journey to Scotland was a tedious, and perhaps a
dangerous, undertaking. But I had no other alternative to choose.

In those uncivilized days, the Marriage Act had not been passed, and
there was no convenient hymeneal registrar in England to change a
vagabond runaway coup