of the dice. Every thing must depend upon speed. How lucky that Mannering has betaken himself to Edinburgh! his knowledge of this young fellow is a most perilous addition to my dangers'-here he suffered his horse to slacken his pace- What if I should try to compound with the heir? It's likely he might be brought to pay a round sum for restitution, and I could give up Hatteraick-but no, no, no! there were too many eyes on me, Hatteraick himself, and the gipsy sailor, and that old hag-No, no! I must stick to my original plain.' And with that he struck his spurs to his horse's flanks, and rode forward at a hard trot to put his machines in motion.

CHAPTER XII.

A prison is a house of care,
A place where none can thrive.
A touchstone true to try a friend,
A grave for one alive.

Sometimes a place of right,

Sometimes a place of wrong,

Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves,

And honest men among.

Inscription on Edinburgh Talbooth.

EARLY on the following morning, the carriage which had brought Bertram to Hazlewood-House, was, with his two silent and surly attendants, appointed to convey him to his place of confinement at Portanferry. This building adjoined to the custom-house established at that little sea-port, and both were established so close to the sea-beach, that

it was necessary to defend the back part with a large and strong rampart, or bulwark of huge stones, disposed in a slope towards the surf, which often reached and broke upon them. The front was surrounded by a high wall, enclosing a small courtyard, within which the miserable inmates of the mansion were occasionally permitted to take exercise and air. The prison was used as a house of correction, and occasionally as a chapel of ease to the county jail, which was old, and far from being conveniently situated with reference to the Kippletringan district of the county. Mac-Guffog, the officer by whom Bertram had at first been apprehended, and who was now in attendence upon him, was keeper of this palace of little ease. He caused the carriage to be drawn close up to the outer gate, and got out himself to summon the warders. The noise of his rap alarmed some twenty or thirty ragged boys, who left off sailing their mimic sloops and frigates in the little pools of salt-water left by the receding tide, and hastily crowded round the carriage to see what luckless being was to be delivered to the prison house out of Glossin's braw new carriage,' The door of the courtyard, after the heavy clanking of many chains and bars, was opened by Mrs. MacGuffog, an awful spectacle, being a woman for strength and resolution capable of maintaining order among her riotous inmates, and of administering the discipline of the house, as it was called, during the absence of her husband, or when he chanced to have taken an over dose of the creature. The growling voice of this amazon, which rivalled in harshness the crashing music of her own bolts and bars, soon dispersed in every direction the little varlets who

had thronged around her threshold, and she next addressed her amiable help-mate.

'Be sharp, man, and get out the swell, can'st thou not?'

'Hold your tongue and be d-d, you

an

swered her loving husband, with two additional epithets of great energy, but which we beg to be excused from repeating. Then addressing Ber

tram:

'Come, will you get out, my handy lad, or must we lend you a lift?'

Bertram came out of the carriage, and, collared by the constables as he put his foot upon the ground, was dragged, though he offered no resistance, across the threshold, amid the continued shouts of the little sans culotes, who looked on at such distance as their fear of Mrs. Mac-Guffog permitted. The instant his foot had crossed the fatal porch, the portress again dropped her chains, drew her bolts, and, turning with both hands an immense key, took it from the luck, and thrust it into a huge side-pocket of red cloth.

Bertram was now in the small court already mentioned. Two or three prisoners were sauntering along the pavement, and deriving, as it were, a feeling of refreshment from the momentary glimpse with which the opening door had extended their prospect to the other side of a dirty street. Nor can this be thought surprising, when it is considered, that unless upon such occasions their view was confined to the grated front of their prison, the high and sable walls of the court-yard, the heaven above them, and the pavement beneath their feet; a sameness of landscape, which, to use the poet's expres

sion, lay like a load on the wearied eye,' and had fostered in some a callous and dull misanthropy, in others that sickness of the heart which induces him who is immured already in a living grave, to wish for a sepulchre yet more calm and sequestered.

Mac-Guffog, when they entered the court-yard, suffered Bertram to pause for a minute, and look upon his companions in affliction. When he had cast his eye around on faces on which guilt, and despondence, and low excess, had fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the 'moping ideot, and the madman gay,' whom a paltry spirit of economy assigned to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the contamination of their society even for a

moment.

'I hope, sir,' he said to the keeper,' you intend to assign me a place of confinement apart?'

' And what should I be the better of that?' "Why, sir, I can but be detained here a day or two, and it would be very disagreeable to me to mix in the sort of company this place affords.'

'And what do I care for that?'

"Why, then, sir, to speak to your feelings, I shall be willing to make a handsome compliment for this indulgence.'

Ay, but when, Captain? when and how? that's the question, or rather the twa questions.'

"When I am delivered, and get my remittances from England.'

Mac-Guffog shook his head incredulously.

"Why, friend, you do not pretend to believe that I am really a malefactor?'

'Why, I no ken,' said the fellow; but if ye are on the account, ye're nae sharp ane, that's the daylight o't.'

' And why do you say I am no sharp one?'

< Why, wha but a crack-brain'd callant wad hae let them keep up the siller that ye left at the Gordon Arms? Deil fetch me, but I wad have had it out o' their wames! ye had nae right to be strippit o' your money and sent to jail without a mark to pay your fees; they might have keepit the rest of the articles for evidence. But why, for a blind bottlehead, did not ye ask the guineas? and I kept winking and nodding a' the time, and the donnert deevil wad never ance look my way!'

"Well, sir, if I have a title to have that property delivered up to me, I shall apply for it, and there is a great deal more than enough to pay any demand you can set up.'

'I dinna ken a bit about that; ye may be here lang eneugh. And then the giving credit maun be considered in the fees. But, however, as ye do seem to be a chap by common, though my wife says I lose by my good nature, if ye gie me an order for my fees upon that money-I dare say Glossin will make it forthcoming-I ken something about an escape from Ellangowan-ay, ay, he'll be glad to carry me through, and be neighbour-like.'

'Well, sir, if I am not furnished in a day or two otherwise, you shall have such an order.'

'Weel, weel, then ye shall be put up like a prince; but mark ye me, friend, that we may have nae collie shangie afterhend, these are the fees that I always charge a swell that must have his lib-ken to himsell-thirty shillings a week for lodgings, and a