The suspicion and pursuit being directed towards those people must naturally facilitate Brown's escape, and I trust has ere this ensured it.

But patrols of horse and foot traverse the country in all directions, and I am tortured by a thousand confused and unauthenticated rumours of arrests and discoveries.
'Meanwhile my greatest source of comfort is the generous candour of Hazlewood, who persists in declaring that, with whatever intentions the person by whom he was wounded approached our party, he is convinced the gun went off in the struggle by accident, and that the injury he received was undesigned.

The groom, on the other hand, maintains that the piece was wrenched out of Hazlewood's hands and deliberately pointed at his body, and Lucy inclines to the same opinion; I do not suspect them of wilful exaggeration, yet such is the fallacy of human testimony, for the unhappy shot was most unquestionably discharged unintentionally.

Perhaps it would be the best way to confide the whole secret to Hazlewood; but he is very young, and I feel the utmost repugnance to communicate to him my folly.

I once thought of disclosing the mystery to Lucy, and began by asking what she recollected of the person and features of the man whom we had so unfortunately met; but she ran out into such a horrid description of a hedgeruffian, that I was deprived of all courage and disposition to own my attachment to one of such appearance as she attributed to him.