the position pricked her. Was she always to be
travelling in dark carriages beside men who mocked her? In her
impatience she shook the man violently. 'Who are you? What are you doing
here?' she cried again.

The unseen roused himself. 'Eh?' he exclaimed. 'Who--who spoke? I--oh,
dear, dear, I must have been dreaming. I thought I heard--'

'Mr. Fishwick!' she cried; her voice breaking between tears and
laughter. 'Mr. Fishwick!' And she stretched out her hands, and found
his, and shook and held them in her joy.

The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see
her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the
post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on
ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped
the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might
see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept
for joy.

'That I should be the one to find you!' he cried. 'That I should be the
one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here!
Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!'

'It was Mr. Dunborough!' she cried with indignation.

'I know, I know,' he said. 'He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir
George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to
accompany us.'

'Compelled him?' she said.

'Ay, with a pistol to his head,' the lawyer answered; and chuckled and
leapt in his seat--for he had re-entered the carriage--at the
remembrance. 'Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two
days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!' he
repeated. 'To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know
that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this
afternoon from the villains who carried you off.'

She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy's house, and taken shelter
there, and--

'You have been there until now?' he said in amazement. 'At a gentleman's
house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were
there no horses? No servants? Didn't you think of sending word to
Marlborough?'

'He was a villain,' she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr.
Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. 'He would not let me go. And
if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and
brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you--'

'But how did h