river. I advanced to meet him, with a feeling as if my fate depended on the result of the interview, so much had my anxiety been wound up by protracted expectation. All that I could remark of the passenger as we advanced towards each other was, that his frame was rather beneath than above the middle size, but apparently strong, thick-set, and muscular; his dress a horseman's wrapping coat. I slackened my pace, and almost paused as I advanced, in expectation that he would address me. But to my inexpressible disappointment, he passed without speaking, and I had no pretence for being the first to address one who, notwithstanding his appearance at the very hour of appointment, might nevertheless be an absolute stranger. I stopped when he had passed me, and looked after him, uncertain whether I ought not to follow him. The stranger walked on till near the northern end of the bridge, then paused, looked back, and turning round, again advanced towards me. I resolved that this time he should not have the apology for silence proper to apparitions, who, it is vulgarly supposed, cannot speak until they are spoken to. "You walk late, sir," said I, as we met a second time.

"I bide tryste," was the reply; "and so I think do you, Mr Osbaldistone."

"You are then the person who requested to meet me here at this unusual hour?"

"I am," he replied. "Follow me, and you shall know my reasons."

"Before following you, I must know your name and purpose," I answered.

"I am a man," was the reply; " and my purpose is friendly to you."

"A man!" I repeated;—" that is a very brief description."

"It will serve for one who has no other to give," said the stranger. "He that is without name, without friends, without coin, without country, is still at least a man; and he that has all these is no more."

"Yet this is still too general an account of yourself, to say the least of it, to establish your credit with a stranger."

"It is all I mean to give, howsoe'er; you may choose to follow me, or to remain without the information I desire to afford you."

"Can you not give me that information here?" 1 demanded.

"You must receive it from your eyes, not from my tongue;-you must follow me, or remain in ignorance of the information which I have to give vou."

There was something short, determined, and even stern, in the man's manner, not certainly well calculated to conciliate undoubting confidence.

"What is it you fear?" he said, impatiently. "To whom, think ye, is your life of such consequence, that they should seek to bereave ye of it?" "I fear nothing," I replied, firmly though somewhat hastily. "Walk on-I attend you."

We proceeded, contrary to my expectation, to re-enter the town, and glided like mute spectres, side by side, up its empty and silent streets. The high and gloomy stone fronts, with the variegated ornaments and pediments of the windows, looked yet taller and more sable by the imperfect moonshine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my conductor spoke.

"Are you

afraid?"

"I retort your own words," I replied: "wherefore should I fear?"

"Because you are with a stranger-perhaps an enemy, in a place where you have no friends and many enemies."

"I neither fear you nor them; I am young, aetive, and armed."

"I am not armed," replied my conductor: "but no matter, a willing hand never lacked weapon. You say you fear nothing; but if you knew who was by your side, perhaps you might underlie a tremor." "I again re

"And why should I?" replied I. peat, I fear nought that you can do." "Nought that I can do?-Be it so. But do you not fear the consequences of being found with one whose very name whispered in this lonely street would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him- -on whose head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar-the sound of whose apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news of a field stricken and won in Flanders?"

"And who then are you, whose name should create so deep a feeling of terror?" I replied.

“No enemy of yours, since I am conveying you to a place, where, were I myself recognised and identified, iron to the heels, and hemp to the craig, would be my brief dooming."

I paused and stood still on the pavement, drawing back so as to have the most perfect view of my companion which the light afforded, and which was sufficient to guard me against any sudden motion of assault.

"You have said," I answered, "either too much or too little-too much to induce me to confide in you as a mere stranger, since you avow yourself a person amenable to the laws of the country in which we are-and too little, unless you could show that you are unjustly subjected to their rigour."

As I ceased to speak, he made a step towards me. I drew back instinctively, and laid my hand on the hilt of my sword.

"What!" said he-" on an unarmed man, and your friend?”

"I am yet ignorant if you are either the one or the other," I replied; "and, to say the truth, your language and manner might well entitle me to doubt both."

"It is manfully spoken," replied my conductor; "and I respect him whose hand can keep his head. -I will be frank and free with you-I am conveying you to prison."

"To prison!" I exclaimed-" by what warrant, or for what offence? -You shall have my life sooner than my liberty-I defy you, and I will not follow you a step farther."

"I do not," he said, "carry you there as a prisoner; I am," he added, drawing himself haughtily up, "neither a messenger nor sheriff's officer. I carry you to see a prisoner from whose lips you will learn the risk in which you presently stand. Your liberty is little risked by the visit; mine is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for I care not for risk, and I love a free young blood, that kens no protector but the cross o' the sword."

While he spoke thus, we had reached the princi

pal street, and were pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I could perceive, with gratings of iron before the windows. "Muckle," said the stranger, whose language became more broadly national as he assumed a tone of colloquial freedom-" Muckle wad the provost and bailies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting with iron garters to his hose within their tolbooth, that now stands wi' his legs as free as the red-deer's on the outside on 't. And little wad it avail them; for an if they had me there wi' a stane's weight o' iron at every ancle, I would show them a toom room and a lost lodger before to-morrow-But come on, what stint ye for?"

As he spoke thus, he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered by a sharp voice, as of one awakened from a dream or reverie,- "Fa's tat?-Wha's that, I wad say?—and fat a deil want ye at this hour at e'en? Clean again rules-clean again rules, as they ca' them."

The protracted tone in which the last words were uttered, betokened that the speaker was again composing himself to slumber. But my guide spoke in a loud whisper-" Dougal, man! hae ye forgotten Ha nun Gregarach?"

"Deil a bit, deil a bit," was the ready and lively response, and I heard the internal guardian of the prison-gate bustle up with great alacrity. A few words were exchanged between my conductor and the turnkey, in a language to which I was an absolute stranger. The bolts revolved, but with a caution which marked the apprehension that the noise might be overheard, and we stood within the vestibule of the prison of Glasgow,-a small, but strong guard-room, from which a narrow staircase led upwards, and one or two low entrances conducted to apartments on the same level with the outward gate, all secured with the jealous strength of wickets, bolts, and bars. The walls, otherwise naked, were not unsuitably garnished with iron fetters, and other uncouth implements, which might be designed for purposes still more inhuman, interspersed with partisans, guns, pistols of antique manufacture, and other weapons of defence and

offence.

At finding myself so unexpectedly, fortuitously, and, as it were, by stealth, introduced within one of the legal fortresses of Scotland, I could not help recollecting my adventure in Northumberland, and fretting at the strange incidents which again, without any demerits of my own, threatened to place me in a dangerous and disagreeable collision with the laws of a country, which I visited only in the capacity of a stranger.

CHAPTER XXII.

"Look round thee, young Astolpho: Here's the place Which men (for being poor) are sent to starve in; — Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease. Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench, Doth Hope's fair torch expire; and at the snuff, Ere yet 'tis quite extinct, rude, wild, and wayward, The desperate revelries of wild despair, Kindling their hell-born cressets, light to deeds That the poor captive would have died ere practis'd, Till bondage sunk his soul to his condition." The Prison, Scene III. Act I. Ar my first entrance I turned an eager glance towards my conductor; but the lamp in the vestibule was too low in flame to give my curiosity any

Vor. I.

No. XXXVIII.

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satisfaction by affording a distinct perusal of his features. As the turnkey held the light in his hand, the beams fell more full on his own scarce less interesting figure. He was a wild shock-headed looking animal, whose profusion of red hair covered and obscured his features, which were otherwise only characterised by the extravagant joy that affected him at the sight of my guide. In my experience I have met nothing so absolutely resembling my idea of a very uncouth, wild, and ugly savage, adoring the idol of his tribe. He grinned, he shivered, he laughed, he was near crying, if he did not actually cry. He had a "Where shall I go?— What can I do for you!" expression of face; the complete, surrendered, and anxious subservience and devotion of which it is difficult to describe, otherwise than by the awkward combination which I have attempted. The fellow's voice seemed choking in his ecstasy, and only could express itself in such interjections as "Oigh! oigh!-Ay! ay!it's lang since she's seen ye!" and other exclamations equally brief, expressed in the same unknown tongue in which he had communicated with my conductor while we were on the outside of the jail door. My guide received all this excess of joyful gratulation much like a prince too early accustomed to the homage of those around him to be much moved by it, yet willing to requite it by the usual forms of royal courtesy. He extended his hand graciously towards the turnkey, with a civil inquiry of "How 's a' wi' you, Dougal?”

"Oigh! oigh!" exclaimed Dougal, softening the sharp exclamations of his surprise as he looked around with an eye of watchful alarm-"Oigh! to see you here-to see you here!- Oigh! what will come o' ye gin the bailies suld come to get witting -ta filthy, gutty hallions, tat they are?"

My guide placed his finger on his lip, and said, "Fear nothing, Dougal; your hands shall never draw a bolt on me."

"Tat sall they no," said Dougal; "she suldshe wad-that is, she wishes them hacked aff by the elbows first-But when are ye gaun yonder again? and ye'll no forget to let her ken—she's your puir cousin, God kens, only seven times removed."

"I will let you ken, Dougal, as soon as my plans are settled."

"And, by her sooth, when you do, an it were twal o' the Sunday at e'en, she'll fling her keys at the provost's head or she gie them anither turn, and that or ever Monday morning begins-see if she winna."

My mysterious stranger cut his acquaintance's ecstasies short by again addressing him, in what I afterwards understood to be the Irish, Earse, or Gaelic, explaining, probably, the services which he required at his hand. The answer, "Wi' a' her heart-wi' a' her soul," with a good deal of indistinct muttering in a similar tone, intimated the turnkey's acquiescence in what he proposed. The fellow trimmed his dying lamp, and made a sign to me to follow him.

"Do you not go with us?" said I, looking to myconductor.

"It is unnecessary," he replied; my company may be inconvenient for you, and I had better remain to secure our retreat."

"I do not suppose you mean to betray me to danger," said I.

2 P

"To none but what I partake in doubly," answered the stranger, with a voice of assurance which it was impossible to mistrust.

I followed the turnkey, who, leaving the inner wicket unlocked behind him, led me up a turnpike (so the Scotch call a winding stair), then along a narrow gallery-then opening one of several doors which led into the passage, he ushered me into a small apartment, and casting his eye on the pallet bed which occupied one corner, said with an under voice, as he placed the lamp on a little deal table, "She's sleeping."

"She!-who-can it be Diana Vernon in this abode of misery?"

I turned my eye to the bed, and it was with a mixture of disappointment oddly mingled with pleasure, that I saw my first suspicion had deceived me. I saw a head neither young nor beautiful, garnished with a grey beard of two days' growth, and accommodated with a red nightcap. The first glance put me at ease on the score of Diana Vernon; the second, as the slumberer awoke from a heavy sleep, yawned, and rubbed his eyes, presented me with features very different indeed-even those of my poor friend Owen. I drew back out of view an instant, that he might have time to recover himself; fortunately recollecting that I was but an intruder on these cells of sorrow, and that any alarm might be attended with unhappy consequences.

Meantime, the unfortunate formalist, raising himself from the pallet-bed with the assistance of one hand, and scratching his cap with the other, exclaimed, in a voice in which as much peevishness as he was capable of feeling, contended with drowsiness, "I'll tell you what, Mr Dugwell, or whatever your name may be, the sum-total of the matter is, that if my natural rest is to be broken in this manner, I must complain to the lord mayor."

"Shentlemans to speak wi' her," replied Dougal, resuming the true dogged sullen tone of a turnkey, in exchange for the shrill clang of Highland congratulation with which he had welcomed my mysterious guide; and, turning on his heel, he left the apartment.

It was some time before I could prevail upon the unfortunate sleeper awakening to recognise me; and when he did so, the distress of the worthy creature was extreme, at supposing, which he naturally did, that I had been sent thither as a partner of his captivity.

"O, Mr Frank, what have you brought yourself and the house to?-I think nothing of myself, that am a mere cipher, so to speak; but you, that was your father's sum-total-his omnium,-you that might have been the first man in the first house in the first city, to be shut up in a nasty Scotch jail, where one cannot even get the dirt brushed off their clothes!"

He rubbed, with an air of peevish irritation, the once stainless brown coat, which had now shared some of the impurities of the floor of his prisonhouse, his habits of extreme punctilious neatness acting mechanically to increase his distress.-"O Heaven be gracious to us!" he continued. "What news this will be on 'Change! There has not the like come there since the battle of Almanza, where the total of the British loss was summed up to five thousand men killed and wounded, besides a floating balance of missing-but what will that be to the news that Osbaldistone and Tresham have stopped!"

I broke in on his lamentations to acquaint him, that I was no prisoner, though scarce able to account for my being in that place at such an hour. I could only silence his inquiries by persisting in those which his own situation suggested; and at length obtained from him such information as he was able to give me. It was none of the most distinct; for, however clear-headed in his own routine of commercial business, Owen, you are well aware, was not very acute in comprehending what lay beyond that sphere.

The sum of his information was, that of two correspondents of my father's firm at Glasgow, where, owing to engagements in Scotland formerly alluded to, he transacted a great deal of business, both my father and Owen had found the house of MacVittie, MacFin, and Company, the most obliging and accommodating. They had deferred to the great English house on every possible occasion; and in their bargains and transactions acted, without repining, the part of the jackall, who only claims what the lion is pleased to leave him. However small the share of profit allotted to them, it was always, as they expressed it, " enough for the like of them;" however large the portion of trouble, "they were sensible they could not do too much to deserve the continued patronage and good opinion of their honoured friends in Crane Alley."

66

The dictates of my father were to MacVittie and MacFin the laws of the Medes and Persians, not to be altered, innovated, or even discussed; and the punctilios exacted by Owen in their business transactions, for he was a great lover of form, more especially when he could dictate it ex cathe dra, seemed scarce less sanctimonious in their eyes. This tone of deep and respectful observance went all currently down with Owen: but my father looked a little closer into men's bosoms, and whether suspicious of this excess of deference, or, as a lover of brevity and simplicity in business, tired with these gentlemen's long-winded professions of regard, he had uniformly resisted their desire to become his sole agents in Scotland. On the contrary, he transacted many affairs through a correspondent of a character perfectly different,—a man whose good opinion of himself amounted to self-conceit, and who, disliking the English in general as much as my father did the Scotch, would hold no communication but on a footing of absolute equality; jealous, moreover; captious occasionally; as tenacious of his own opinions in point of form as Owen could be of his; and totally indifferent though the authority of all Lombard-Street had stood against his own private opinion.

As these peculiarities of temper rendered it difficult to transact business with Mr Nicol Jarvie,— as they occasioned at times disputes and coldness between the English house and their correspondent, which were only got over by a sense of mutual interest,-as, moreover, Owen's personal vanity sometimes suffered a little in the discussions to which they gave rise, you cannot be surprised, Tresham, that our old friend threw at all times the weight of his influence in favour of the civil, discreet, accommodating_concern of MacVittie and MacFin, and spoke of Jarvie as a petulant, conceited Scotch pedlar, with whom there was no dealing.

It was also not surprising, that in these circumstances, which I only learned in detail some time afterwards, Owen, in the difficulties to which the

those who should appear when the doors opened, and forcing his way through all opposition into the street;-and such was the appearance of strength and agility displayed in his frame, and of determination in his look and manner, that I did not doubt a moment but that he might get clear through his opponents, unless they employed fatal means to stop his purpose.

It was a period of awful suspense betwixt the opening of the outward gate and that of the door of the apartment, when there appeared-no guard with bayonets fixed, or watch with clubs, bills, or partisans, but a good-looking young woman, with grogram petticoats, tucked up for trudging through the streets, and holding a lantern in her hand. This female ushered in a more important personage, in form stout, short, and somewhat corpulent; and by dignity, as it soon appeared, a magistrate, bobwigged, bustling, and breathless with peevish impatience. My conductor, at his appearance, drew back as if to escape observation; but he could not elude the penetrating twinkle with which this dignitary reconnoitered the whole apartment.

"A bonny thing it is, and a beseeming, that I should be kept at the door half an hour, Captain Stanchells," said he, addressing the principal jailor, who now showed himself at the door as if in attendance on the great man, "knocking as hard to get into the tolbooth as onybody else wad to get out of it, could that avail them, poor fallen creatures! And how's this?-how's this?-strangers in the jail after lock-up hours, and on the Sabbath evening! I shall look after this, Stanchells, you may depend on 't-Keep the door locked, and I'll speak to these gentlemen in a gliffing-But first I maun hae a crack wi' an auld acquaintance here.— Mr Owen, Mr Owen, how 's a' wi' ye, man?"

-

"Pretty well in body, I thank you, Mr Jarvie," drawled out poor Owen," but sore afflicted in spirit."

"Nae doubt, nay doubt-ay, ay-it's an awfu' whummle-and for ane that held his head sae high too-human nature, human nature-Ay, ay, we're a' subject to a downcome. Mr Osbaldistone is a gude honest gentleman; but I aye said he was ane o' them wad make a spune or spoil a horn, as my father the worthy deacon used to say. The deacon used to say to me, Nick-young Nick,' (his name was Nicol as weel as mine; sae folk ca'd us in their daffin', young Nick and auld Nick)—' Nick,' said he, never put out your arm farther than ye can draw it easily back again.' I hae said sae to Mr Osbaldistone, and he didna seem to take it a'thegether sae kind as I wished-but it was weel meant -weel meant."

This discourse, delivered with prodigious volubility, and a great appearance of self-complacency, as he recollected his own advice and predictions, gave little promise of assistance at the hands of Mr Jarvie. Yet it soon appeared rather to proceed from a total want of delicacy than any deficiency of real kindness; for when Owen expressed himself somewhat hurt that these things should be recalled to memory in his present situation, the Glaswegian took him by the hand, and bade him "Cheer up a gliff! D'ye think I wad hae comed out at twal o'clock at night, and amaist broken the Lord's-day, just to tell a fa'en man o' his backslidings? Na, na, that's no Bailie Jarvie's gate, nor was 't his worthy father's the deacon afore him. Why, man! it's

my rule never to think on warldly business on the Sabbath, and though I did a' I could to keep your note that I gat this morning out o' my head, yet I thought mair on it a' day, than on the preachingAnd it's my rule to gang to my bed wi' the yellow curtains preceesely at ten o'clock-unless I were eating a haddock wi' a neighbour, or a neighbour wi' me ask the lass-quean there, if it isna a fundamental rule in my household; and here hae I sitten up reading gude books, and gaping as if I wad swallow St Enox Kirk, till it chappit twal, whilk was a lawfu' hour to gie a look at my ledger, just to see how things stood between us; and then, as time and tide wait for no man, I made the lass get the lantern, and came slipping my ways here to see what can be dune anent your affairs. Bailie Jarvie can command entrance into the tolbooth at ony hour, day or night;-sae could my father the deacon in his time, honest man, praise to his memory."

Although Owen groaned at the mention of the ledger, leading me grievously to fear that here also the balance stood in the wrong column; and although the worthy magistrate's speech expressed much self-complacency, and some ominous triumph in his own superior judgment, yet it was blended with a sort of frank and blunt good-nature, from which I could not help deriving some hopes. He requested to see some papers he mentioned, snatched them hastily from Owen's hand, and sitting on the bed, to "rest his shanks," as he was pleased to express the accommodation which that posture afforded him, his servant girl held up the lantern to him, while, pshawing, muttering, and sputtering, now at the imperfect light, now at the contents of the packet, he ran over the writings it contained.

Seeing him fairly engaged in this course of study, the guide who had brought me hither seemed disposed to take an unceremonious leave. He made a sign to me to say nothing, and intimated, by his change of posture, an intention to glide towards the door in such a manner as to attract the least possible observation. But the alert magistrate (very different from my old acquaintance Mr Justice Inglewood) instantly detected and interrupted his purposes. "I say, look to the door, Stanchellsshut and lock it, and keep watch on the outside.”

The stranger's brow darkened, and he seemed for an instant again to meditate the effecting his retreat by violence; but ere he had determined, the door closed, and the ponderous bolt revolved. He muttered an exclamation in Gaelic, strode across the floor, and then, with an air of dogged resolution, as if fixed and prepared to see the scene to an end, sate himself down on the oak table, and whistled a strathspey.

Mr Jarvie, who seemed very alert and expeditious in going through business, soon showed himself master of that which he had been considering, and addressed himself to Mr Owen in the following strain: "Weel, Mr Owen, weel-your house are awin' certain sums to Messrs MacVittie and MacFin (shame fa' their souple snouts! they made that and mair out o' a bargain about the aik-woods at Glen-Cailziechat, that they took out atween my teeth-wi' help o' your gude word, I maun needs say, Mr Owen-but that makes nae odds now.)-Weel, sir, your house awes them this siller; and for this, and relief of other engagements they stand in for you, they hae putten a double turn o' Stanchells' muckle key on ye.-Weel, sir, ye awe this