Smeaton mounted in silence amongst a number of horses, and with eight or ten men flitting round, but apparently taking not the least notice of him. They suffered him to ride away after his servant, without even a word in answer to a question he addressed to one of them. Everything was conducted in profound silence; and, in a few minutes, the young nobleman was over the brow of the hill, and out of sight of the house. The servant rode on before, leaving his master to follow, and soon left the high Exeter road on which the inn was situated, for the downs which extended nearly to Mount Place on the one side, and to Ale Manor on the other. It may be necessary, before I proceed, to take some brief notice of the various thoughts which had crossed Smeaton's mind during the last few minutes, as his conduct was greatly affected thereby. It must be recollected, that in the whole transaction he was taken entirely by surprise. He was not, indeed, often found unprepared for any event; but all which had occurred had passed so rapidly, that impulse might well act in the place of reason. Though not without a thorough conviction that, if he did not interfere, another moment would terminate poor Van Noost's life, it was upon impulse that he knocked down Captain Smallpiece, and he much regretted the necessity of so doing to save the poor statuary. The consequences of that act presented themselves to his mind the moment after. He saw that it compromised him in a very serious manner, and that a little skilful torturing of evidence, by an experienced lawyer, would connect the fact of his taking part in the active struggle for his liberation, with his having ordered the ale with which the soldiers besotted themselves, and that again with the well-organised plan for his rescue, which he doubted not had been executed by his own tenantry. To all this, moreover, would be joined the lead-melting at Keanton, and the words which Van Noost had spoken, and which General C---- and the soldiers had only partly heard. The whole of the above incidents would indeed form a chain of evidence tending to the one conclusion, that, notwithstanding his promise to Lord Stair, he had taken active measures to promote the insurrection against the government. He knew well, too, that persons made prisoners in the first outbreak of a rebellion are sure to receive little mercy, and sometimes little justice. Party violence demands victims, and examples must be made to deter the wavering by fear; so that both passion and policy combine for their destruction. If he neglected the means of escape, there was no prospect before him but long imprisonment, or death on a scaffold.