abandon me at once.

Meanwhile the chaise rolled along, and the road being better and the pace
faster, my sleep became more easy; thus, about an hour and a half after I
had fallen asleep, passed rapidly over, when the sharp turning of an
angle distended me from my leaning position, and I awoke. I started up
and rubbed my eyes; several seconds elapsed before I could think where I
was or whither going. Consciousness at last came, and I perceived that
we were driving up a thickly planted avenue. Why, confound it, they
can't have mistaken it, thought I, or are we really going up to the
house, instead of waiting at the lodge? I at once lowered the sash, and
stretching out my head, cried out, "Do you know what ye are about, lads;
is this all right?" but unfortunately, amid the rattling of the gravel
and the clatter of the horses, my words were unheard; and thinking I was
addressing a request to go faster, the villains cracked their whips, and
breaking into a full gallop, before five minutes flew over, they drew up
with a jerk at the foot of a long portico to a large and spacious
cut-stone mansion. When I rallied from the sudden check, which had nearly
thrown me through the window, I gave myself up for lost: here I was vis a
vis to the very hall-door of the man whose daughter I was about to elope
with, whether so placed by the awkwardness and blundering of the wretches
who drove me, or delivered up by their treachery, it mattered not, my
fate seemed certain; before I had time to determine upon any line of
acting in this confounded dilemma, the door was jerked open by a servant
in a sombre livery; who, protruding his head and shoulders into the
chaise, looked at me steadily for a moment, and said, "Ah! then, doctor
darlin', but ye're welcome." With the speed with which sometimes the bar
of an air long since heard, or the passing glance of an old familiar fact
can call up the memory of our very earliest childhood, bright and vivid
before us, so that one single phrase explained the entire mystery of my