While Sir Charles was busy in helping the bruised wretches on their feet, the seventh man came up to the others, followed by Sir Hargrave’s chaise.  The assailants had retired to some distance, and, after a consultation together, they all advanced towards Sir Charles; who, bidding his servants be on their guard, leapt on his horse, with that agility and presence of mind, for which, Mr. Beauchamp says, he excels most men; and leading towards them, Do you advance, gentlemen, said he, as friends, or otherwise?—­Mr. Lowther took a pistol in each hand, and held himself ready to support him; and the servants disposed themselves to obey their master’s orders.

Our enmity, answered one of them, is only to these two inhospitable villains:  murder, as we told you, was not our design.  They know where we are to be found; and that they are the vilest of men, and have not been punished equal to their demerits.  Let them on their knees ask this gentleman’s pardon; pointing to the husband of the insulted lady.  We insist upon this satisfaction; and upon their promise, that they never more will come within two leagues of Abbeville; and we will leave them to your protection.  I fancy, Harriet, that these women-frightening heroes needed not to have been urged to make this promise.

Sir Charles, turning towards them, said, If you have done wrong, gentlemen, you ought not to scruple asking pardon.  If you know yourselves to be innocent, though I should be loath to risk the lives of my friend and servants, yet shall not my countrymen make so undue a submission.

The wretches kneeled; and the seven men, civilly saluting Sir Charles and Mr. Lowther, rode off; to the joy of the two delinquents, who kneeled again to their deliverer, and poured forth blessings upon the man whose life, so lately, one of them sought; and whose preservation he had now so much reason to rejoice in, for the sake of his own safety.

My brother himself could not but be well pleased that he was not obliged to come to extremities, which might have ended fatally on both sides.

By this time Sir Hargrave’s post-chaise was come up.  He and his colleague were with difficulty lifted into it.  My brother and Mr. Lowther went into theirs; and being but a small distance from Paris, they proceeded thither in company; the poor wretches blessing them all the way; and at Paris found their other servants waiting for them.

Sir Charles and Mr. Lowther saw them in bed in the lodgings that had been taken for them.  They were so stiff with the bastinado they had met with, that they were unable to help themselves.  Mr. Merceda had been more severely (I cannot call it more cruelly) treated than the other; for he, it seems, was the greatest malefactor in the attempt made upon the lady:  and he had, besides, two or three gashes, which, but for his struggles, would have been but one.

As you, my dear, always turn pale when the word masquerade is mentioned; so, I warrant, will Abbeville be a word of terror to these wretches, as long as they live.