My aunt was very loath I should return; but my spirits, by the various
incidents of the night, were much too active to suffer me to feel
either hunger, weariness, or want of sleep; and Mr. Elford recollected
I might be useful, in preventing the terrors of poor Mary at our
approach; for which reason he suffered me to run before, and inform
her that help was coming.

When I came to the barn, the moment I set my foot over the threshold,
my terrors of murder and of her having expired all returned. After a
short pause, I called with a trembling voice, 'Mary! Are you alive?'
and my heart bounded with joy to hear her, though dolefully, answer,
'yea.'

Mr. Elford and his attendants soon came up; and the remainder of
the story of poor Mary was, that, being removed and put to bed, her
wounds though deep and dangerous were found not to be mortal; that
she recovered in a few weeks, and by the influence of Mr. Elford was
retained in my aunt's service; to the great scandal of the place,
where it was affirmed that such hussies and their bastards ought to be
whipped from parish to parish, and so, as I suppose, whipped out of
the world; that in two months time she was delivered of a fine boy,
whom, when my uncle left the country, she maintained by her own hard
earnings; and that in the extremity of her distress, when she thought
herself at the point of death, she obstinately refused to declare who
was her intended murderer; and though, by his having been known to be
her _sweetheart_, and his flight from the country where he never more
appeared, people were sufficiently convinced who the man was, yet her
pertinacious theme was--_she would never be his accuser: if God could
pardon him, she could_.