After a full discussion
and the airing of her ideas and mine, we agreed that there was little or
no likelihood of the road-constables returning or of anyone else
approaching her carriage before full daylight. As soon as there was
sufficient light for it to be safe, I would open the panels enough for us
to keep watch up and down the highway and in the direction the constables
had taken. When we saw them returning I was to wait till they were near
enough to assure her safety and then, at the last moment, I was to slip
out on the other side of the coach. That was next the swamp and I could be
out of sight among the willows and alders when less than two score yards
from the road; also I knew the path across the swamp and could cross it
and go off home through the meadows and pastures beyond it. This was our
plan.
She said she would, whenever the road-constables returned, behave as if
she had been alone in the coach all night. She had no doubt that the
police would give her every assistance in their power.
"Of course," she said, "my intendant galloped off somewhere, somehow and
the coachman and outrider and mule-drivers ran away; you couldn't expect
any or all of them to make a stand against all those armed brigands.
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