o cut away with a couteau de chasse, which I had
provided in case of necessity.--All was in vain--I was hustled down
under the wheel of the carriage, and, the horses taking fright, it
went over my body.

"Here ends my narrative; for I neither heard not saw more until I
found myself stretched on a sick-bed many miles from the scene of
action, and Solmes engaged in attending on me. In answer to my
passionate enquiries, he briefly informed me, that Master Francis
had sent back the young lady to her own dwelling, and that she
appeared to be extremely ill in consequence of the alarm she had
sustained. My own health, he assured me, was considered as very
precarious, and added, that Tyrrel, who was in the same house, was
in the utmost perturbation on my account. The very mention of his
name brought on a crisis in which I brought up much blood; and it is
singular that the physician who attended me--a grave gentleman, with
a wig--considered that this was of service to me. I know it
frightened me heartily, and prepared me for a visit from Master
Frank, which I endured with a tameness he would not have
experienced, had the usual current of blood flowed in my veins. But
sickness and the lancet make one very tolerant of sermonizing.--At
last, in consideration of being relieved from his accursed presence,
and the sound of his infernally calm voice, I slowly and reluctantly
acquiesced in an arrangement, by which he proposed that we should
for ever bid adieu to each other, and to Clara Mowbray. I would have
hesitated at this last stipulation. 'She was,' I said, 'my wife, and
I was entitled to claim her as such.'

"This drew down a shower of most moral reproaches, and an assurance
that Clara disowned and detested my alliance; and that where there
had been an essential error in the person, the mere ceremony could
never be accounted binding by the law of any Christian country. I
wonder this had not occurred to me; but my ideas of marriage were
much founded on plays and novels, where such devices as I had
practised are often resorted to for winding up the plot, without any
hint of their illegality; besides, I had confided, as I mentioned
before, a little too rashly perhaps, in my own powers of persuading
so young a bride as Clara to be contented with one handsome fellow
instead of another.