Nothing remained, therefore, but to summon his brother away. Thus it
happened that the landlady, though mangled, escaped with life, and
eventually recovered. The landlord owed his safety to the stupefying
potion. And the baffled murderers had the misery of knowing that their
dreadful crime had been altogether profitless. The road, indeed, was now
open to the club-room; and, probably, forty seconds would have sufficed to
carry off the box of treasure, which afterwards might have been burst open
and pillaged at leisure. But the fear of intercepting enemies was too
strongly upon them; and they fled rapidly by a road which carried them
actually within six feet of the lurking boy. That night they passed
through Manchester. When daylight returned, they slept in a thicket twenty
miles distant from the scene of their guilty attempt. On the second and
third nights, they pursued their march on foot, resting again during the
day. About sunrise on the fourth morning, they were entering some village
near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland. They must have designedly quitted
the direct line of route; for their object was Ayrshire, of which county
they were natives; and the regular road would have led them through Shap,
Penrith, Carlisle. Probably they were seeking to elude the persecution of
the stage-coaches, which, for the last thirty hours, had been scattering
at all the inns and road-side _cabarets_ hand-bills describing their
persons and dress. It happened (perhaps through design) that on this
fourth morning they had separated, so as to enter the village ten minutes
apart from each other. They were exhausted and footsore. In this condition
it was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silently reconnoitred them, and
compared their appearance with the description of the hand-bills. They
were then easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial and
condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and in those days it
followed, of course, that they were executed. Otherwise their case fell so
far within the sheltering limits of what would _now_ be regarded as
extenuating circumstances--that, whilst a murder more or less was not to