me to another land, and to provide me there a soldier's destiny. I should not lose an hour in flight, yet I rush into the nest of my enemies, only for one unavailing word with her; and this too after I have already bade her farewell! Is this fate? if it be so, what matters it? I no longer care for a life, which after all I should reform in vain, if I could not reform it for her: yet—yet, selfish and lost that I am! will it be nothing to think hereafter that I have redeemed her from the disgrace of having loved an outcast and a felon?—If I can obtain honour, will it not, in my own heart at least—will it not reflect, however dimly and distantly, upon her?"
Such, bewildered, unsatisfactory, yet still steeped in the colours of that true love which raises even the lowest, were the midnight meditations of Clifford: they terminated, towards the morning, in an uneasy and fitful slumber. From this he was awakened by a loud yawn from the throat of Long Ned, who was always the earliest riser of his set.
"Hollo!" said he, "it is almost daybreak; and if we want to cash our notes, and to move the old lord's jewels, we should already be on the start."
