er a man are we jealous,
And never a man against us will he speak
For who can be hard on a set of poor fellows
Who only see Saturday once a week!

You chorus the last two lines.

That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in
singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved. He
believed in her virtue to the very last.

'The ravished wife of my bosom,' he calls her all through the latter
half of the play. It is a real tragedy. The songs of that day have lost
their effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and
to hear the poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear
stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully, while he joins
the song of Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but
handkerchiefs out all over the theatre. What it is that has gone from
our drama, I cannot tell: I am never affected now as I was then; and
people in a low station of life could affect me then, without being
flung at me, for I dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were
simpler in our habits and ways of thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according
to report, was a woman to make better men than Ralph Thorkill act
evilly--as to good looks, I mean. She was not entirely guiltless, I am
afraid; though in the last scene, Mrs. Kempson, who played the part (as,
alas, she could do to the very life!), so threw herself into the pathos
of it that there were few to hold out against her, and we felt that
Elizabeth had been misled. So much for morality in those days!

And now for the elopement.

CHAPTER II. MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE COUNTESS OF
CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION
CONDUCTING THEM, AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY

The twenty-first of June was the day appointed by Captain Kirby to carry
off Countess Fanny, and the time midnight: and ten minutes to the stroke
of twelve, Countess Fanny, as if she scorned to conceal that she was in
a conspiracy with her grey-haired lover, notwithstanding that she was
watched and guarded, left the Marchioness of Arpington's ball-room and
was escorted downstairs by her brother Lord Levellier, sworn to baffle
Kirby. Present with him in the street and witness to the shutting of the
carriage-door on Countess Fanny, were brother officers of his, General
Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir Upton Tomber.

The door fast shut, Countess Fanny kissed her hand