The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 223: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XIX THE JOURNEY WE must now return to Lady Bess, whom we left at the moment when, seated on her gallant steed, she fled from her cottage in the manner already described. Making the best of her way into London, she crossed Blackfriar’s Bridge, and proceeded straight for the Kent Road. In an hour and a quarter from the time she had quitted the cottage she entered upon Blackheath. ‘There she walked her horse, although the noble animal, as if instinctively aware of its mistress’s need, appeared impatient to career onward again. The dauntless Amazon was in the highest possible spirits, not only at the achievement she had already performed in effecting her escape from the lawyers, but lkewise at the measures she had taken to disentangle herself in the long run from the meshes of the law and be able to turn around and laugh in their faces. She thought of Turpin’s memorable ride to York, an exploit which had saved him from the strong arm of justice on that occasion, it being held impossible for a man who appeared at York at daybreak to have com- mitted a crime in London on the preceding evening, the distance being close on two hundred miles. But Lady Bess’s stratagem, as she had devised it, was if possible still more ingenious, and the evidence to be eventually given in her favour would be still more conclusive, as the reader will presently see. It was now three o’clock in the morning, and she had sixty-four miles to ride. But this distance she was confident of being able to achieve within a very few hours, although it formed no part of her plan to imitate Dick Turpin in the astounding feat of accomplishing the journey with the same horse. 206 (E(0) CONNIE OO KS