"Beloved!" I whispered. "Little flower of the heather." Oh the rapture of that long embrace for which my heart had hungered through so many weary months! "Dear heart," I whispered, with my lips set close to her little ear, "I have come to save you. Be brave, do what I bid you and all will be well."
"To save me?" she said. "Oh, it's no' possible."
"Yes," I answered, "all things are possible to love."
Quickly, in whispers, for the minutes were rapidly fleeing, I explained my plans to her. Wrapped in the great shawl with which I had disguised myself, she was to impersonate the old woman who had come to visit her, and, when the jailer returned, to quit the dungeon with him and make her way to freedom and to safety.
"Once you are out of the Tolbooth," I said, "hurry to the Townhead Port. By the side of the Moat Hill you will find an old man waiting for you. He will be smoking a pipe. Trust him; and he will take you to a place of safety."
I wrapped the shawl about her. It covered her, from head to foot. Then she clung to me once more while I hurriedly whispered the little words of love with which my heart was full, and heard her sweet whispers in return. Suddenly she disengaged herself from my arms, and seizing me by the hand, said:
"My love, my love, it canna be. Why did I no' think o' it afore. I am escaping, and you are to be left behin'. No, I wunna, I canna dae it."
"What a foolish little Mary you are!" I murmured, as I clasped her to me once again. "Feel this," and I guided her fingers along the rough edge of a file I had concealed about me. "Within an hour of your escape I shall be with you. There is only one iron bar to file." I turned her head and made her look at the little window set in the wall high up near the roof of the cell, through which the uncertain light of the moon sent a faint beam. "I knew all about this cell before I came into it. The friend to whom I am sending you has been here himself. He remembered that there was but one bar to the window. He it was who told me how I should escape. So, sweetheart, be brave. On you all depends. If you love me, do what I ask and we shall both soon be free."
She gave her promise as the silence was broken by the sound of the approaching footsteps of the jailer.
"Be brave," I whispered, as I kissed her lips. She clung to me in a brief storm of sobbing, but let her arms fall as the key grated in the lock. The door was thrown open, and the light of a lamp trembled athwart the darkness.