"You had better bid them bring down a chaise for the gentleman and lady from Stroud," said the landlord. "That will save me from sending some one on the gentleman's horse." "No, no, landlord, no, no!" answered Byerly, "you are not up to a stratagem. Send your ostler with me on Mr. Brown's horse. We'll go clattering along the street like the devil, if we can but get off before the justices come down, and they'll take it into their wise noddles that one of us is the gentleman who has just gone. Come, Wicks, there's no time to spare. We shall meet again, Mr. Brown; good night, good night. I shall tell the Colonel that we've done the business much more tidily than I could have expected." And without further ceremony he quitted the room. Another pause ensued, during which but a few words passed between Wilton and Lady Laura, who sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire. Wilton stood by the window and listened, thinking he heard some distant sounds as of persons speaking, and loud tongues at the further end of the street. A minute after, however, there came the clatter of horses' feet upon the pavement of the yard; and in another instant Byerly's voice was heard, saying, "Come, put to your spurs," and two horses galloped away from the inn as hard as they could go. CHAPTER XXVIII. IT is wonderful how scenes of danger and difficulty--it is wonderful how scenes of great excitement of any kind, indeed--draw heart to heart, and bind together, in bonds indissoluble, the beings that have passed through them side by side. They are never to be broken, those bonds; for between us and the persons with whom we have trod such paths there is established a partnership in powerful memories, out of which we can never withdraw our interest. But it is not alone that they are permanent which renders them different from all lighter ties; it is that they bring us closer, more entirely to each other; that instead of sharing the mere thoughts of what we may call the outward heart, we enter into the deepest recesses, we see all the hidden treasures, we know the feelings and the ideas that are concealed from the general eye of day, we are no longer kept in the porch, but admitted into the temple itself. Wilton was left alone in the small parlour of the inn with Lady Laura; and as soon as he heard the horses' feet gallop away, he turned towards her with a glad smile. But when he did so, he found that her beautiful eyes were now fixed upon him with a gaze deep and intense--a gaze which showed that the whole thoughts and feelings of her heart were abstracted from everything else on earth to meditate on all that she owed to him, and on the things alone that were connected therewith.