I have won, by a new crime, enough to bear 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.
"Hullo!" 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." "A plague on you!" said Tomlinson, from under cover of his woollen nightcap; "it was but this instant that I was dreaming you were going to be hanged, and now you wake me in the pleasantest part of the dream!" "You be shot!" said Ned, turning one leg out of bed; "by the by, you took more than your share last night, for you owed me three guineas for our last game at cribbage! You'll please to pay me before we part to-day: short accounts make long friends!" "However true that maxim may be," returned Tomlinson, "I know one much truer,--namely, long friends will make short accounts! You must ask Jack Ketch this day month if I'm wrong!" "That's what you call wit, I suppose!" retorted Ned, as he now, struggling into his inexpressibles, felt his way into the outer cave.
"What, ho, Mac!" cried he, as he went, "stir those bobbins of thine, which thou art pleased to call legs; strike a light, and be d---d to you!" "A light for you," said Tomlinson, profanely, as he reluctantly left his couch, "will indeed be a 'light to lighten the Gentiles!'" "Why, Mac, Mac!" shouted Ned, "why don't you answer?
faith, I think the Scot's dead!" "Seize your men!--Yield, sirs!" cried a stern, sudden voice from the gloom; and at that instant two dark lanterns were turned, and their light streamed full upon the astounded forms of Tomlinson and his gaunt comrade! In the dark shade of the background four or five forms were also indistinctly visible; and the ray of the lanterns glimmered on the blades of cutlasses and the barrels of weapons still less easily resisted.
Tomlinson was the first to recover his self-possession.

The light just gleamed upon the first step of the stairs leading to the stables, leaving the rest in shadow.

He made one stride to the place beside the cart, where, we have said, lay some of the robbers' weapons; he had been anticipated,--the weapons were gone.