"Be sure and take good care of her," cried she to the guard, as he
lifted me into the inside.
"Ay, ay!" was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed
"All right," and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and
Gateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed,
remote and mysterious regions.
I remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day
seemed to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to
travel over hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several
towns, and in one, a very large one, the coach stopped; the horses
were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried
into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as
I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace
at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red
gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments.
Here I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and
mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me; for
I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured
in Bessie's fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned; once
more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own
seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the "stony
street" of L-.
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