Dropping on her knee beside him, she said coaxingly:  “Don’t give up; you are a man; you must not surrender, and let me, a girl, prove the stronger.  Shame upon you when I look up to you so much and expect you to help me be brave.  I will go.  I will arrange myself in some way.  Oh! why am I not different; I wish I were as straight as the queen,” and for that first time in her life she bewailed her beauty, because it stood between her and Brandon.

She soon coaxed him out of his despondency, and we began again to plan the matter in detail.

The girls sat on Brandon’s cloak and he and I on the camp-stool and a box.

Mary’s time was well occupied in vain attempts to keep herself covered with the cloak, which seemed to have a right good will toward Brandon and me, but she kept track of our plans, which, in brief, were as follows:  As to her costume, we would substitute long trunks and jack-boots for shoes and hose, and as to doublet, Mary laughed and blushingly said she had a plan which she would secretly impart to Jane, but would not tell us.  She whispered it to Jane, who, as serious as the Lord Chancellor, gave judgment, and “thought it would do.”  We hoped so, but were full of doubts.

This is all tame enough to write and read about, but I can tell you it was sufficiently exciting at the time.  Three of us at least were playing with that comical old fellow, Death, and he gave the game interest and point to our hearts’ content.

Through the thick time-layers of all these years, I can still see the group as we sat there, haloed by a hazy cloud of tear-mist.  The figures rise before my eyes, so young and fair and rich in life and yet so pathetic in their troubled earnestness that a great flood of pity wells up in my heart for the poor young souls, so danger-bound and suffering, and withal so daring and so recklessly confident in the might and right of love, and the omnipotence of youth.  Ah!  If God had seen fit in his infinite wisdom to save just one treasure from the wreck of Eden, what a race of thankful hearts this earth would bear, had he saved us youth alone therewith to compensate us for every other ill.

As to the elopement, it was determined that Brandon should leave London the following day for Bristol, and make all arrangements along the line.  He would carry with him two bundles, his own and Mary’s clothing, and leave them to be taken up when they should go a-shipboard.  Eight horses would be procured; four to be left as a relay at an inn between Berkeley Castle and Bristol, and four to be kept at the rendezvous some two leagues the other side of Berkeley for the use of Brandon, Mary and the two men from Bristol who were to act as an escort on the eventful night.  There was one disagreeable little feature that we could not provide against nor entirely eliminate.  It was the fact that Jane and I should be suspected as accomplices before the fact of Mary’s elopement; and, as you know, to assist in the abduction of a