two in the morning
not here ! '' Mrs. Johnstone insisted . `` Help me to get away from here ! '' It was two in the morning when the women unlatched the door of the cottage and crept forth across the threshold -- and across the stain of blood which lay thereon , only they could not see it . They took the footpath , each with a heavy bundle beneath her arm , and turning their backs on Givens walked resolutely forward for three miles to the cross-roads where the Glasgow coach would be due to pass in the dawn . Upon the green there beside the sign-post Kirstie believes that she slept while Mrs. Johnstone kept guard over the bundles ; but she remembers little until she found herself , as if by magic , on the coach-top and dozing on a seat behind the driver . From Glasgow , after a day 's halt , they took another coach to Edinburgh , and there found lodgings in a pair of attics high aloft in one of the great houses , or lands , which lie off Parliament Square to the north .