several times when their husbands were in prison, and had been much
struck with Alice, Ambrose's wife, who held up most bravely; though
Dorothy, poor thing, was prostrated, and indeed her child was born in
the height of the distress, when his father had just been tried for
his life, and sentenced to death.

It was their birth and education that caused them to be treated so
severely; besides, there was no doubt of their having harangued the
people, and stirred them up, and they were seen, as well as
Prometesky, at the fire at what had been Lewthwayte's farm; at least,
so it was declared by men who turned King's evidence, and the proof
to the contrary broke down, because it depended on the wives, whose
evidence was not admissible; indeed that--as the law then stood--was
not the question. Those who had raised the storm were responsible
for all that was done in it, and it was very barely that their lives
were spared.

That was the comfort Miss Woolmer gave. No one else could see any at
all, except a few old women in the parish, who spoke tenderly of poor
Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Eustace; but then they had sons or brothers who
had been out with the rioters, and after these twenty-six years no
one remembered the outrages and terrors of the time with anything but
horror; and the coming of the wild lad from the Bush was looked on as
the end of all comfort.

I meant, as soon as I heard he was on the way, to leave Arghouse,
make visits among friends, and decide on my future home, for, alas!
there was no one who wanted me. I was quite alone in the world; my
mother's cousins were not near, and I hardly knew them; and my only
relations were the bushrangers, as Lady Diana Tracy called them.