I stopped her again with the promised five-pound note, and opened the room door.  “Now, ma’am,” I said, “go to your room; take off your bonnet, and put your hair as tidy as you please.”

Mrs. Baggs raised her eyes and hands to heaven, exclaimed “Disgraceful!” and flounced out of the room in a passion.  Such was my Scotch marriage—­as lawful a ceremony, remember, as the finest family wedding at the largest parish church in all England.

An hour passed; and I had not yet summoned the cruel courage to communicate my real situation to Alicia.  The entry of the shock-headed servant-girl to lay the cloth, followed by Mrs. Baggs, who was never out of the way where eating and drinking appeared in prospect, helped me to rouse myself.  I resolved to go out for a few minutes to reconnoiter, and make myself acquainted with any facilities for flight or hiding which the situation of the house might present.  No doubt the Bow Street runner was lurking somewhere; but he must, as a matter of course, have heard, or informed himself, of the orders I had given relating to our conveyance on to Edinburgh; and, in that case, I was still no more in danger of his avowing himself and capturing me, than I had been at any previous period of our journey.

“I am going out for a moment, love, to see about the chaise,” I said to Alicia.  She suddenly looked up at me with an anxious searching expression.  Was my face betraying anything of my real purpose?  I hurried to the door before she could ask me a single question.

The front of the inn stood nearly in the middle of the principal street of the town.  No chance of giving any one the slip in that direction; and no sign, either, of the Bow Street runner.  I sauntered round, with the most unconcerned manner I could assume, to the back of the house, by the inn yard.  A door in one part of it stood half-open.  Inside was a bit of kitchen-garden, bounded by a paling; beyond that some backs of detached houses; beyond them, again, a plot of weedy ground, a few wretched cottages, and the open, heathery moor.  Good enough for running away, but terribly bad for hiding.

I returned disconsolately to the inn.  Walking along the passage toward the staircase, I suddenly heard footsteps behind me—­turned round, and saw the Bow Street runner (clothed again in his ordinary costume, and accompanied by two strange men) standing between me and the door.

“Sorry to stop you from going to Edinburgh, Mr. Softly,” he said.  “But you’re wanted back at Barkingham.  I’ve just found out what you have been traveling all the way to Scotland for; and I take you prisoner, as one of the coining gang.  Take it easy, sir.  I’ve got help, you see; and you can’t throttle three men, whatever you may have done at Barkingham with one.”

He handcuffed me as he spoke.  Resistance was hopeless.  I could only make an appeal to his mercy, on Alicia’s account.

“Give me ten minutes,” I said, “to break what has happened to my wife.  We were only married an hour ago.  If she knows this suddenly, it may be the death of her.”