the wire-guard was on the fire, she
hurried to the kind schoolmistress.

One of the fogs that in autumn gather sullenly over London and its
suburbs covered the declining day with premature dimness. It grew darker
and darker as she proceeded, but she reached the house in safety. She
spent a quarter of an hour in timidly consulting her friend about all
kinds of letters except the identical one that she intended to write,
and having had it strongly impressed on her mind that if the letter was
to a gentleman at all genteel, she ought to begin "Dear Sir," and end
with "I have the honour to remain;" and that he would be everlastingly
offended if she did not in the address affix "Esquire" to his name
(that, was a great discovery),--she carried off the precious volume, and
quitted the house. There was a wall that, bounding the demesnes of the
school, ran for some short distance into the main street. The increasing
fog, here, faintly struggled against the glimmer of a single lamp at
some little distance. Just in this spot, her eye was caught by a dark
object in the road, which she could scarcely perceive to be a carriage,
when her hand was seized, and a voice said in her ear:--

"Ah! you will not be so cruel to me, I hope, as you were to my
messenger! I have come myself for you."

She turned in great alarm, but the darkness prevented her recognising
the face of him who thus accosted her. "Let me go!" she cried,--"let me
go!"

"Hush! hush! No--no. Come with me. You shall have a
house--carriage--servants! You shall wear silk gowns and jewels! You
shall be a great lady!"

As these various temptations succeeded in rapid course each new struggle
of Fanny, a voice from the coach-box said in a low tone,--

"Take care, my lord, I see somebody coming--perhaps a policeman!"

Fanny heard the caution, and screamed for rescue.

"Is it so?" muttered the molester. And suddenly Fanny felt her voice
checked--her head mantled--her light form lifted from the ground. She
clung--she struggled it was in vain. It was the affair of a moment: she
felt herself borne into the carriage--the door closed--the stranger was
by her side, and his voice said:--

"Drive on, Dykeman. Fast! fast!"

Two or three minutes, which seemed to her terror as ages, elapsed, when
the gag and the mantle were gently removed, and the same voice (she
still could not see her companion) said in a very mild tone:--

"Do not alarm yourself; there is no cause,--indeed ther