do?'

"`That's easy said, your 'oldness,' said the man with the revolver,
good-humouredly; `you've got to put on those clothes,' and he
pointed to a poke-bonnet and a heap of female clothes in the corner
of the room.

"I will not dwell, Mr Swinburne, upon the details of what followed.
I had no choice. I could not fight five men, to say nothing of a
loaded pistol. In five minutes, sir, the Vicar of Chuntsey was
dressed as an old woman--as somebody else's mother, if you
please--and was dragged out of the house to take part in a crime.

"It was already late in the afternoon, and the nights of winter
were closing in fast. On a dark road, in a blowing wind, we set out
towards the lonely house of Colonel Hawker, perhaps the queerest
cortege that ever straggled up that or any other road. To every
human eye, in every external, we were six very respectable old
ladies of small means, in black dresses and refined but antiquated
bonnets; and we were really five criminals and a clergyman.

"I will cut a long story short. My brain was whirling like a
windmill as I walked, trying to think of some manner of escape. To
cry out, so long as we were far from houses, would be suicidal, for
it would be easy for the ruffians to knife me or to gag me and
fling me into a ditch. On the other hand, to attempt to stop
strangers and explain the situation was impossible, because of the
frantic folly of the situation itself. Long before I had persuaded
the chance postman or carrier of so absurd a story, my companions
would certainly have got off themselves, and in all probability