Fortune favoured us, for what should come along but an empty coach and four that had taken one of the minor gentry out to his country seat and was returning to the city. The coachman was sufficiently astonished at the sight of a King's officer, his head bound up in a bloody rag, and a pale slip of a boy in disordered guise by his side. He halted instantly on being hailed, and when Sir Hugh disclosed his name and rank, and required the use of a coach to take us to Musselburgh in the name of the King, he made no demur, especially as his conscience was quieted and any resentment mitigated by a guinea which the soldier flung to him with a prodigal hand. At his gesture, I preceded my captor into the coach, and sank back in the thick cushions of the seat with a great feeling of relief. Sir Hugh clambered in after me, shut the door, and sat down by my side. "I should relieve you of the annoyance of my presence," he said, "by riding on the box were it not for this unseemly appearance." He pointed to his head, and my heart really smote me. I would have killed him I suppose to secure the warrant, if it were necessary, but I had no wish to see him suffer, thereafter. I was ever an impetuous woman, and at once I spoke my thought. "Sir, you must be holding me strangely indifferent to one who hath so delicately entreated me, but I am ashamed to say that I quite forgot your wound." "I forgot it, too," said Sir Hugh, "and, indeed, 'tis nothing to worry about. Had I water and a towel, save for a raw scar for a few days, there would be no evidence of it. I have had bullets into me and through me seriously and often enough to make nothing whatever of a trifling scratch like this." "I thank God," I said fervently, "that it was only a scratch." "Madam," he rejoined promptly, "you cannot be more grateful to Providence for that than I am that my inadvertent bullet merely grazed your shoulder." "Yet, sir, had you stricken me down, I had been saved from a worse fate." Sir Hugh said nothing. The pause was almost unbearable. I broke it. He seemed to be waiting for me to do so. "What ... what is the punishment for treason?" I asked. "The block, madam," was the sepulchral answer. Now I was willing to die. Indeed, if my father had to die, I was more than willing. At least I had been until now. But there was something so sinister and horrible in the prospect my imagination conjured before me at his word that I went white and shuddered. "'Tis a hard fate," said Sir Hugh swiftly, "hard fate for a brave man and harder for a sweet woman. There must be some way of avoiding it." There was nothing that I could think of to say, no way that I could see for avoiding it, so I perforce kept silence, biting my lip, clenching my hands, and fighting back the tears that brimmed in my eyes in spite of myself. "Madam," asked Sir Hugh, at last looking at me very hard, "have I not used you gently since the affair of this morning?"