The String of Pearls (1850), p. 700

down comfortably enough, as far as regarded the softness of the place, right at the bottom of the ditch, and had only, in the midst of a thick growth of rank weeds, kept his face above the water.
"This is horrible," he said; "and they will be back soon, too. What on earth am I to do?"
He heard a loud shout at this moment, and he raised his head sufficiently to see along the road to observe the actions of the officers. He found that they had paused, and were talking to a man on horseback, who was pointing in the very direction where he (Todd) stood, or rather crouched. The idea that this man had from some eminence, he being mounted, too, seen him (Todd) hide m the ditch, at once crossed his mind, and from that moment he felt that he was not in the safety that he had fondly hoped he was.
To remain where he was, with such an idea prevailing in his mind, would have been madness and, accordingly, crawling down close to the hedge, he ran along, splashing, like some gigantic water-fowl, in the ditch, until he came to a thickly-planted fence, at right angles with the hedge that bordered the road. There he was forced to come to a stand-still.
The fence was composed of the common privet, so that there would have been neither difficulty nor danger in forcing his way through it; but what he might encounter upon the other side was a subject of consideration well worth his attention.
Through the interstices of the foliage he could see that there was a pretty and well-kept mixed garden on the other side. Roses and other flowers grew in quite loving companionship with all kinds of culinary vegetables, and the little plot of ground was well shadowed by some half-dozen fruit trees. A part of the ground was made into a kind of lawn, and upon that lawn was a child about one year old crawling about, and amusing itself by making weak efforts to pull up the grass.
While Todd was observing these things, a woman came out of a little white-washed cottage that was at the farther end of the garden, with some clothes to hang up to dry. The woman spoke to the child, and from the tone in which she did so, it was quite evident she was the mother of it.
Todd waited until she had hung the clothes up that she had brought out into the garden, and then when she went into the house for more, he burst his way through the hedge, and with a resolution and firmness that nothing but the exigencies of his situation could possibly have endowed him with, he took the child up in his arms and walked slowly across the lawn towards the cottage.
The woman, with another heap of wet clothes in her arms, met him, and uttered a loud scream.
"Peace," said Todd. "Peace, I say. There is no danger unless you make some. Listen to me, and I will tell you how you can do a service to me, and spare your child."
"Help! help! Murder! Thieves!" cried the woman.
Todd took one of his pistols from his pocket, and held it to the head of the child.
"Another word," he said, "and I fire!"
The woman fell upon her knees, and holding up her hands in the attitude of prayer, she said—
"Oh, have mercy! Kill me, if you must take a life, but spare the child!"
"The child's life," said Todd, "is in your own hands. Why do you seek to destroy me?"
"I do not—I do not, indeed.*
"Then, peace, and do not cry out for help. Do not shout that dreadful word 'Murder!' for that will destroy me. I am hunted by my fellow- men. I am a poor proscribed wretch, and all I ask of you is that you will not betray me."
"You will spare my child?"
"I will. Why should I harm the little innocent? I was once myself a little child, and considered to be rather a beauty."