"I am a Cochrane, my father."
Early next morning, before the world was up, Grizel Cochrane was mounted on horseback and riding towards the border. She had dressed herself—this girl of eighteen—as a young serving-woman, and when she drew rein at a wayside cottage for food and drink, professed herself journeying on a borrowed horse to visit her mother's house across the Tweed.
By noon Edinburgh was some leagues behind, but she pressed on through that day and most of the following night.
On the second day after leaving Edinburgh she crossed the Tweed, and came in safety to the home of an old nurse, on the English side, four miles beyond the town of Berwick.
"Gude sakes!" cried the old woman, who was standing at her cottage door and was rather astonished to find the horsewoman draw rein, leap to the ground, and plant a kiss on either cheek—"Gude sakes! if it isna Miss Grizel!"
"Quickly, into the house!" commanded her young mistress; "I have somewhat to tell that will not wait an hour."
She knew the old nurse was to be trusted, and therefore told her story and her secret. "Even now," she said at the end of her story, "the postman is riding from London with the warrant in his bag. I must stop him and make him give it up to me, or my father's head is the penalty.
"But what use to talk o' this, when the postman is a stout rider, and armed to boot? How is a mere girl, saving your presence, to do this at all?"
"Look here."
Grizel unrolled a bundle which she had brought on her saddle-crutch from Edinburgh; it held a horseman's cloak and a brace of pistols.