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252 back. I would that you would fly the place again. Ye are too well known here. Anywhere else would be safer. I will remain with you till Margaret gets back; I will tell her my fears. Then I would beg her to lose no time, but to fly this very night to some place of greater safety."

But, alas!—already it was too late. Soon their straining ears caught the sound of measured tramping. Agnes gave a faint cry, Archie sprang to the door, and an oath leapt to his lips.

"They have got Margaret, and the old woman too! God in heaven have mercy!—they are coming hither for thee, Agnes. Fly!—fly by yonder door into the coppice behind! I will detain them by any story I can invent. Fly ere it be too late!"

But the news of her sister's capture seemed suddenly to brace the nerves of the younger girl. She darted out of the open door and flung herself upon Margaret's neck—Margaret, who was being led along by the officers, her hands bound behind her, though upon her beautiful face there was an expression of almost ecstatic exaltation of spirit.

"Here is the third of them!" cried the men, as Agnes appeared; and, ignoring Archie's indignant reproaches of cowardice and cruelty, they bound her hands, and set her beside her sister, and drove them on towards the Gaol of Wigton, as men drive cattle into market.