“Ah! a plan for me to escape? What is it, my brave Betsey?”
“You’re to take my cloak. It’s a long one; and will reach nigh down to your feet. But, for fear it wouldn’t, I brought an extra skirt along with me. Here it is.”
Saying this, the girl whipped the cloak from her shoulders—disclosing at the same time a skirt of some kind of coarse stuff, which she had been carrying under her arm.
“Now, sir!” she continued, in a tone of urgency, “on with them as quick as you can: for he may get impatient, and want to come in.”
“What!” exclaimed Holtspur, whose surprise at the proposal was only equalled by admiration of her who had made it. “And do you mean that I am to pass out—disguised in your garments—and leave you here?”
“Of course I do. What other way is there? We can’t both go out. He’d stop you for a certainty; and me too, may be, for trying to get you away. You must go out alone.”
“And leave you behind—to be punished for aiding me to escape? No, generous girl! I had rather die, than do that.”
“Oh, sir! don’t talk in that foolish way. Pray go as I tell you to. Have no fear for me! They can’t do much to a girl that’s got nothing to lose. Besides, I don’t feel much afeerd of getting him to pass me out afterwards. It’ll be no good his keeping me in. That won’t save him, from whatever they may do to him.”
The him thus pointedly alluded to, was the amorous sentry; who was just then heard passing to and fro upon his round, with a step that denoted impatience.
“O, sir, go! I beg of you go—or—I—we may never see you again.”