“No, Sir!” shouts Peg, “I ain’t and haven’t, and I’m not! ’Slife, My Lord Brookwood,” cries she in a terrible way, twisting her tied hands together. “For God’s sake, send up to town post-haste, and find out Mr. Brummell, Mr. Vane, Mr. Chalmers, Lord Escombe, Sir Lovell Wyatt!” But His Lordship has turned up the path toward the Castle and met Mr. Frewen, to whom he is explaining the necessities of the situation. ’Tis such a fair May day, with bud and blossom, bough and bird; fowls, men, beasts, all free of tether, and My Lady is like to weep; cry out her sex, her very name and estate, as she feels the gall upon her wrists and ankles, and knows what fate awaits her. She even, for one weak moment, thinks she will implore Lord Brookwood to send up to London for her rival, his own daughter, Lady Diana, and let her come down and tell him who is Sir Robin McTart—for Lady Peggy believes Lady Di to be in town and has no knowledge to the contrary. Yet, there in the stable-yard, with imprisonment as she supposes, and even death dangling for her at no great loss of time, with her liberty gone; her word no better than a thief’s; with no earthly hand upraised to sustain her, My Lady Peggy’s stout heart does not flutter to dismay. For that one brief instant ’tis, without doubt, in her mind to confess and fling herself upon the mercy of the Earl and the Curate, who now draw nigh; but when she reflects upon the monstrous tissue of her deceits, and the unutterable shame of the exposure of the cause of them, ’tis then she is like to whimper, but for naught else. Mr. Frewen approaches; ’tis a young man of a pale cadaverous countenance, whose first bow to a highwayman is indeed, though he find him in durance vile, a timid one. The supposed Tom Kidde gives the man of the cloth eye for eye, so that this one quails and stumbles in his speech; and finally, leaving in the rear all his preconceived plans for a hasty reformation, he promptly remarks, opening his prayer-book to the riband: “You know your doom, Mr. Kidde; shall I pray for you here?” “Faith!” says Lady Peggy, plucking up heart, once her resolution is taken not to reveal her secret, come what may. “I do not know my doom, Sir! It seems sufficient ‘doom’ for an honest English gentleman, who has met with a mishap, to be brought to a nobleman’s threshold and get foul treatment rather than welcome. Pray for me, Sir, an you will, there’s none so much deserves or needs it. Pray on!” “Frewen!” beckons His Lordship, as he watches the ’ostlers rubbing down the restored Homing Nell, and confers with Mr. Biggs as to the plunder and the meting out of justice. “Frewen, gain the wretch’s confidence an you can, the whereabouts of all the gold and jewels he has stolen; my watch. And also, if he have wife or child, it might not be amiss, eh, Biggs? to inquire if he have any message for them?”