Peggy hears the shouts as the ungovernable steed lunges, lurches, rears beneath her spurs and still tightly gripped reins; she takes in the situation, but not to its full import, until she now hears the voice of Biggs uplifted.
“Lord Brookwood! Lord Brookwood! mind her heels, My Lord, mind her heels! Leave the takin’ of the damned cut-purse to me and the boys!”
At the word “Brookwood,” Her Ladyship realizes that she is on the domains of Lady Diana’s father! and being mistaken for a Knight of the Road!
The latter she felt she could easily abide, and as easily refute; but the former was more than even her spent spirit could stand. So, as Biggs, His Lordship, the grooms, the stable-boys and ’ostlers and helpers all formed into a ring with whips, canes, stones and halloos to take her prisoner, she plucked up courage from the depths, and, raising herself in her saddle and her head in the air, with one superhuman tug at the bridle and prick with the steels, she made to get off! and away! But Her Ladyship’s nerve was not the equal of Homing Nell’s, nor yet to be pitted with success against the waving arms and jumping legs of a dozen stout men. With the final crack of the head-groom’s lash about her heels, with the pop in the air above her hat of Mr. Biggs’s blunderbuss, caught from the hand of one of the lads, “Homing Nell” was brought to a quivering stand-still, and My Lady Peggy to bay in the stable-yard of Brookwood Castle!
“Ha!” cries the Earl, “my pretty fellow, you’re trapped at last! The night you stole the black mare from me I shouted after you, as well as the gag at my mouth would permit, that she’d bring you no luck, and that muscles of iron wouldn’t hold her the day she made up her mind to get home.”
Peggy, glad of the use of her lungs once more, and now nigh bursting with laughter at being so glibly mistook for one of the most reckless fellows in all England, took off her hat, bowed low, and said:
“My Lord Brookwood, ’tis, I believe, I have the honor of addressing?”
“Ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Biggs, from a survey of the saddle-bow now bursts out in triumphant joyfulness.
“’Od’s blood, My Lord! but here’s luck, here’s justice, here’s what comes of my bein’ here when I am!” and Mr. Biggs now holds aloft upon the point of his stick the black mask of Master Tom Kidde, which the rogue had dropped when he was hit, and which had caught and hung by its riband from that moment to this, unseen by Lady Peg.
“Highwayman! highwayman! highwayman!” yells every lung in the place, while the whole dozen, including His Lordship and the Justice, threaten Lady Peggy with their cudgels, lashes and stones.