"Who d'ye mean? What is it, you baggage?" cried out her ladyship.
"Seize him!—there he goes!" cries miss again, leaping from the coach in a state of excitement; and to her ladyship: "Why, the other, my lady!—the man that assisted—Creech, was it not?"
In an instant I saw how it was and what she intended, and I believe her ladyship, in her quickness, saw it just after me; for in the confusion the throng swayed, and some ran this way and others that, and there were my two jailers gaping into the darkness like moping owls.
'Twas but the work of a moment to wrench free an arm from one and deliver t'other a rap with a pistol on his skull; and at the same time I wheeled Calypso about and broke a third that stood there in the wind. The three thus scattered, with a whistle to the mare I dropped low in the saddle, and breaking out of the circle thundered down the road at a gallop, while all behind me arose cries and shouts, and above all her ladyship's shrill voice, screaming with fury.
I rode till I reached the first turning on the left, and then went up a black lane for some distance; after which I paused and listened. Sounds still came to me, sailing on the night, and I stood awhile, chuckling to think how deeply her ladyship was cursing, and how smartly I had evaded her. And upon that comes the thought of miss.
"Why," thinks I, "she's a heart o' gold, is miss; and that wild cat will be flying in her face with her claws;" and, the devil being in me, as I have said, all through that business, I turned about and came back into the road.
I jogged along comfortably until I was within a hundred yards of the inn, and here was the same confusion that I had left.
"What's this?" said I to a fellow that passed me.
"Oh," says he, "'tis a highwayman that has robbed a lady and is got off."
"Stab me!" says I, "what fools these traps be!" and I moved on, until I came by the coach, where I stood in the darkness.