Attacks by highwaymen were not uncommon experiences, though scarcely at eight o’clock in the morning, or so near a garrison, but the horsemen, having already heard the shots, galloped forward.  Perhaps Anne could hardly have turned her pony, but it chose to follow the lead of its fellows, and in a few seconds they were in the midst of a scene of utter confusion.  Peregrine was grappling with Burford trying to drag him from his horse.  Both fell together, and as the auxiliaries came in sight there was another shot and two more men rode off headlong.

“Follow them!” said a commanding voice.  “What have we here?”

The two struggling figures both lay still for a moment or two, but as some of the riders drew them apart Peregrine sat up, though blood was streaming down his breast and arm.  “Sir,” he said, “I am Peregrine Oakshott, on whose account young Archfield lies under sentence of death.  If a magistrate will take my affidavit while I can make it, he will be safe.”

Then Anne heard a voice exclaiming:  “Oakshott!  Nay—­why, this is Mistress Woodford!  How came she here?” and she knew Sir Edmund Nutley.  Still it was Peregrine who answered—­

“I captured her, in the hope of marrying her, but that cannot be—­I have brought her back in all safety and honour.”

“Sir!  Sir, indeed he has been very good to me.  Pray let him be looked to.”

“Let him be carried to the castle,” said the commander of the party, a tall man sunburnt to a fiery red.  “Is the other alive?”

“Only stunned, my lord, I think and not much hurt,” was the answer of an attendant officer; “but here is a poor blackamoor dead.”

“Poor Hans!  Best so perhaps,” murmured Peregrine, as he was lifted.  Then in a voice of alarm, “Look to the lady, she is hurt.”

“It is nothing,” cried she.  “O Mr. Oakshott! that this should have happened!”

“My lord, this is the young gentlewoman I told you of, betrothed to poor young Archfield,” said Sir Edmund Nutley.

Lord Cutts, for it was indeed William’s favoured ‘Salamander,’ took off his plumed hat in salutation, and both gentlemen perceiving that she too was bleeding, she was solicitously invited to the castle, to be placed under the charge of the lieutenant-governor’s wife.  She found by this time that she was in a good deal of pain, and thankfully accepted the support Sir Edmund offered her, when he dismounted and walked beside her pony, while explanations passed between them.  The weather had prevented any communication with the mainland, so that he was totally ignorant of her capture, and did not know what had become of Mr. Fellowes.  He himself had been just starting with Lord Cutts, who was going to join the King for his next campaign, and they were to represent the case to the King.  Anne told him in return what she dared to say, but she was becoming so faint and dazed that she was in great fear of not saying what she ought; and indeed she could hardly speak, when after passing under the great gateway, she was lifted off her horse, at the door of the dwelling-house, and helped upstairs to a bedroom, where the wife of the lieutenant-governor, Mrs. Dudley, was very tender over her with essences and strong waters, and a surgeon of the suite almost immediately came to her.