It was too late when he did perceive them—too late, either for flight or defence.
He sprang to one side; but only to be caught in the grasp of the stalwart corporal of the guard.
The latter might have been shaken off; but the sentry Withers—compromised by the prisoner’s escape, and therefore deeply interested in his detention—had closed upon him from the opposite side; and in quick succession, the others of the cuirassier guard had flung themselves around him.
Holtspur was altogether unarmed. Resistance could only end in his being thrust through by their swords, or impaled upon their halberts; and once more the gallant cavalier, who could not have been vanquished by a single antagonist, was forced to yield to that fate which may befall the bravest. He had to succumb to the strength of superior numbers.
Marched afoot between a double file of his captors, he was conducted back along the road, towards the prison from which he had so recently escaped.
The mingled groans and laughter, still continued to wake up the echoes of Wapsey’s Wood.
To Holtspur they were only intelligible, so far as that the laughing part in the duet was being performed by the ex-footpad—Gregory Garth. The soldiers, intent upon retaining their prisoner, gave no further heed to them, than to remark upon their strangeness. But for the merry peals at intervals interrupting the more lugubrious utterance, they might have supposed that a foul murder was being committed. But the laughter forbade this supposition; and Holtspur’s guard passed out of hearing of the strange noises, under the impression that they came from a camp of gipsies, who, in their nocturnal orgies, were celebrating some ceremony of their vagrant ritual.
She who had been the instrument of Holtspur’s delivery, had also played the chief part in his recapture. Following his captors under the shadow of the trees, unseen by him and them, she had continued a spectator to all that passed; for a time giving way to the joy of her jealous vengeance.
Soon, however, on seeing the rude treatment to which her victim was subjected—when she witnessed the jostling, and heard the jeers of his triumphant captors, her spirit recoiled from the act she had committed; and, when, at length, the courtyard gate was closed upon the betrayed patriot, the daughter of Dick Dancey fell prostrate upon the sward, and bedewed the grass with tears of bitter repentance!