“Come,” he said, “submit quietly to be bound and I pledge myself the girl shall go away unmolested.”
“Oh, Robbie, Robbie!” was all poor Rosette could say, her whole frame shaking with sobs.
When the yeos were ready to march with Grierson they first had a look round for the man of the house. But he fled when Robbie discovered himself, and had run where he could not be found. The yeos, by way of revenge, set fire to the thatch. Rosette begged to be allowed to accompany the prisoner. Ordering the yeos to fall back from the latter, the captain brought Rosette up to him.
“I would grant your request,” he said kindly, “but if you take my advice you will go to your home. I might be able to protect you from insult, but we shall transfer our prisoner to other hands.”
Robbie urged her to act on this suggestion—and she, promising that she would visit him in prison, bringing Mr. —— with her, on the following day, took a heartbroken farewell, striving to appear strong so as not to give sport to the yeos.
She went to a little hill that commanded the road for nearly a mile, down which the yeos and their prisoner went. As she watched him further and further away, the life-blood seemed to ebb from her heart, and when at last they rounded a curve that shut them out from view, poor Rosette utterly broke down and fell fainting to the ground.
A week later the scaffold found a fresh victim in Robert Grierson. Poor Rosette’s love story was over. Her darkest dream had proved true.