attempted to defend himself; but the officer cut him short by directing Archy to mount the box and keep his pistol ready. The Oxonian gave the bagman a kick.

"Get up, you great calf! the danger's past, and you can now boast more of the prowess of that stick of yours."

The bagman very meekly scrambled up, but[Pg 30] showed, when least expected, a capacity to make himself useful. The young woman had continued screaming in spite of the earnest assurances of all the passengers that the danger was over, and the obvious fact that only one highwayman remained, and he was tied hand and foot.

[Pg 30]

"Thee has nothing to fear, young woman," cried the Quakeress, leaning out of the coach.

"Murder! murder!" was the answer yelled at the top of a pair of stout lungs.

"If it is disappointment, madam, that no attempt was made to kiss you—" began the Oxonian, with grave impertinence.

"I'll shut her potato trap," suddenly remarked the bagman. And, seizing her by the back of her neck, he shouted in her ear:

"Be quiet, hussy! You haven't no sister married to an alderman's cousin in Carlisle, and now I remembers I heerd you last month cryin' 'Eyesters' in Carlisle streets, and that's where you got that fine voice o' yourn, and it's enough to wake the dead."

The young woman responded by giving the bagman a clip over the ear; but she was effectually silenced, and climbed in the coach to the accompaniment of a general smile, the bagman [Pg 31]thrusting his tongue into his cheek and winking all around.

[Pg 31]

The coach now started, the coachman maintaining a frightened silence, and, after travelling a few miles more, reached the village of Bellingham, where the officer handed him and the captured robber over to the constables. A crowd of people surrounded the coach, the bagman and the young woman volubly describing the dangers through which they had passed, while the Oxonian, engaging a chaise, soon disappeared on his way to his destination, and the Quakeress retired to her room at the inn. But the first to be out of the way were the officer and Archy Baskerville. As soon as the constables had taken charge of the prisoners, the officer came up to Archy, and, pointing to a huge, dark, unlighted stone pile on a hill, set in the midst of a great 

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