There was something in the passion of Grierson that seemed to win the sympathy of the yeoman captain, who had been acquainted with Grierson.
"Come," he said, "submit quietly to be bound and I pledge myself the girl shall go away unmolested."
"Oh, Robbie, Robbie!" was all poor Rosette could say, her whole frame shaking with sobs.
When the yeos were ready to march with Grierson they first had a look round for the man of the house. But he fled when Robbie discovered himself, and had run where he could not be found. The yeos, by way of revenge, set fire to the thatch. Rosette begged to be allowed to accompany the prisoner. Ordering the yeos to fall back from the latter, the captain brought Rosette up to him.
"I would grant your request," he said kindly, "but if you take my advice you will go to your home. I might be able to protect you from insult, but we shall transfer our prisoner to other hands."
Robbie urged her to act on this suggestion--and she, promising that she would visit him in prison, bringing Mr. ---- with her, on the following day, took a heartbroken farewell, striving to appear strong so as not to give sport to the yeos.
She went to a little hill that commanded the road for nearly a mile, down which the yeos and their prisoner went. As she watched him further and further away, the life-blood seemed to ebb from her heart, and when at last they rounded a curve that shut them out from view, poor Rosette utterly broke down and fell fainting to the ground.
A week later the scaffold found a fresh victim in Robert Grierson. Poor Rosette's love story was over. Her darkest dream had proved true.
Nature was a little unkind to Danton Martin when it encased a great soul in a small body; and Love, which can also play fantastic tricks, had mated him with a wife fully a head over him and otherwise of ample proportions, of whom, not without reason, he was very proud. She was uncommonly handsome, had a fine figure, and knew how to make the most of it; and if at times he felt rebuked by Madame's superior size, there was, by way of compensation, their only child, Lucille, who was just home from the convent, and who was no taller than her father, and was a perfect copy of her mother's beauty. Her little face was as bright as a summer day without its sameness, and its sparkling vivacity had turned the heads of all the young fellows of Merploer; and when Monsieur Martin was seated with his little Lucille beside him on the Place, on the days on which the band played, and saw the many admiring glances cast in her direction, he felt as proud as a king on his throne.