Laud was now smuggling on a large scale. He was deeply concerned with an affair in which two preventive men were beaten and thrown into the sea at Southwold for reporting that they had seen forty carts and horses ready to take a cargo which was to be “run” near Dunwich. A reward of £100 for his apprehension was offered in the newspapers on March 2d, 1799. Shortly after this 880 gallons of gin were seized and the guilt of smuggling it brought home to Laud. All his property was confiscated and he was given a year’s imprisonment and sentenced to pay £100. He was committed to Ipswich gaol, and would have to stay there after his sentence had expired till the fine was paid. Of course Margaret, whose good conduct had made her practically free of the prison, discovered that her lover was an inmate; and, as she had kept intact the prize money he had given her, she was able to give him the means of obtaining his liberation at the end of his year’s imprisonment. Laud persuaded her to try to escape and join him, and the way she did this is one of the most extraordinary in her romantic career. The wall of the prison was twenty-five feet high and protected at the top with iron spikes. Margaret succeeded in getting a flower stand, which placed endways raised her to within thirteen feet of the top. She had made herself a garment like a shepherd’s smock and a pair of trousers so as to be unincumbered in her movements. By casting a clothes-line over the _chevaux-de-frise_ on the top of the wall she managed to climb up to the iron spikes. Then, lowering the line on the other side, she turned over between the revolving spikes and let herself down on the opposite side. She and Laud made for a place called Sudbourn; but were overtaken on the beach where, after a desperate fight, Laud was killed by Edward Barry, and Margaret arrested and taken back to the gaol. It was one of the strange anomalies of the cruel law of that age that whereas ruffians like Cook, and desperados like Laud escaped the capital sentence, comparatively innocent persons were hanged without mercy. For a reprieved person to escape from prison was death, and, though Margaret was ignorant of the terrible penalty which she had incurred, there seemed no hope of her meeting with any further leniency. She was again brought before the same judge, Lord Chief Baron Sir Archibald Macdonald, who had condemned her in August, 1797, on the third day of the same month in 1800. Again she pleaded guilty, and when the judge condemned her in very stern language she made a short speech accepting his sentence, which impressed everyone present in the court house. Her eloquence and her whole demeanour profoundly impressed the judge, and again he obtained power to respite her, sentencing her this time to lifelong transportation.