e loveliness of that serene star from which they received so much.
But the contemplations of the youth were not long permitted to run on in
the gladness of his newly-found liberty. On a sudden, the action of his
companion became animated: he drew up his steed for an instant, then
applying the rowel, exclaimed in a deep but suppressed tone--

"We are pursued--ride, now--for your life, Mr. Colleton; it is three
miles to the river, and our horses will serve us well. They are
chosen--ply the spur, and follow close after me."

Let us return to the village. The situation of the jailer, Brooks, and
of his companions, as the landlord left them, will be readily remembered
by the reader. It was not until the fugitives were fairly on the road,
that the former, who had been pretty well stunned by the severe blow
given him by Munro, recovered from his stupor; and he then laboured
under the difficulty of freeing himself from the bag about his head and
shoulders, and his incarceration in the dwelling of the pedler.

The blow had come nigh to sobering him, and his efforts, accordingly,
were not without success. He looked round in astonishment upon the
condition of all things around him, ignorant of the individual who had
wrested from him his charge, besides subjecting his scull to the heavy
test which it had been so little able to resist or he to repel; and,
almost ready to believe, from the equally prostrate condition of the
pedler and his brother, that, in reality, the assailant by which he
himself was overthrown was no other than the potent bottle-god of his
brother's familiar worship.

Such certainly would have been his impression but for the sack in which
he had been enveloped, and the absence of his keys. The blow, which he
had not ceased to feel, might have been got by a drunken man in a
thousand ways, and was no argument to show the presence of an enemy; but
the sack, and the missing keys--they brought instant conviction, and a
rapidly increasing sobriety, which, as it duly increased his capacity
for reflection, was only so much more unpleasant than his drunkenness.

But no time was to be lost, and the first movement--having essayed,
though ineffectually, to kick his stupid host and snoring brother-in-law
into similar consciousness with himself--was to rush headlong to the
jail, where he soon realized all the apprehensions which assailed him
when discovering the loss of his keys. The prisoner was gone, and the
riotous searc