"I deny it, sir!" exclaimed the Doctor. "I am no man's prisoner!"
"That we will soon ascertain," replied Mr. Lupton, as he rapped loudly on the table, while the Doctor used his best endeavours to force his way out.
Before he could resort to any violence in order to effect this object, the door was thrown back, and two servants of the law entered. A warrant, which Mr. Lupton had taken care to have prepared beforehand, was produced by one of them, and in the course of a very comfortable space of time the Doctor was placed in a coach, and driven on his way to certain particularly appropriate lodgings, which the country has provided for ladies and gentlemen who chance to have been so unlucky as to be inveigled into the commission of offences of a criminal nature.
The removal of James Woodruff from the Doctor's establishment at Nabbfield has been before briefly alluded to; while the declaration made by that worthy to Mr. Lupton that he had no such person confined on his premises, has borne evidence to the fact.
It was quite true. For, after the attempt which Colin had so unsuccessfully made to effect Mr. Woodruff's escape, Doctor Rowel became convinced--as the secret was out--that his troublesome charge would no longer be safe within the precincts of the asylum at Nabbfield. He therefore seized the earliest opportunity that the needful arrangements would permit, to convey him secretly by night from thence to the residence of the Doctor's own brother,--an old-fashioned brick mansion of very ample dimensions, which stood upon the borders of a heathy waste, which formerly constituted one of the finest portions of the old forest of Sherwood, in the northern part of Nottinghamshire.
It was even still studded with the dying remains of ancient oaks, which had sheltered many a bold archer in times gone by, but which now sufficed only to give additional dreariness to the solitary landscape, that stretched in picturesque undulations, but open as the ocean north and eastwards for many miles.