"Ay is there, sir; my uncle the constable ance kept a man there for
three days in auld Ellangowan's time. But there was an unco dust
about it--it was tried in the Inner House afore the Feifteen."
"I know all that, but this person will not stay there very
long--it's only a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till
further examination. There is a small room through which it opens,
you may light a fire for yourselves there, and I'll send you plenty
of stuff to make you comfortable. But be sure you lock the door
upon the prisoner; and, hark ye, let him have a fire in the
strongroom too, the season requires it. Perhaps he'll make a clean
breast to-morrow."
With these instructions, and with a large allowance of food and
liquor, the justice dismissed his party to keep guard for the night
in the old castle, under the full hope and belief that they would
neither spend the night in watching, nor prayer.
There was little fear that Glossin himself should that night sleep
over-sound. His situation was perilous in the extreme, for the
schemes of a life of villainy seemed at once to be crumbling around
and above him. He laid himself to rest, and tossed upon his pillow
for a long time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only
to dream of his patron,--now, as he had last seen him, with the
paleness of death upon his features, then again transformed into
all the vigour and comeliness of youth, approaching to expel him
from the mansion-house of his fathers. Then he dreamed, that after
wandering long over a wild heath, he came at length to an inn, from
which sounded the voice of revelry; and that when he entered, the
first person he met was Frank Kennedy, all smashed and gory, as he
had lain on the beach at Warroch Point, but with a reeking
punch-bowl in his hand. Then the scene changed to a dungeon, where
he heard Dirk Hatteraick, whom he imagined to be under sentence of
death, confessing his crimes to a clergyman.--"After the bloody
deed was done," said the penitent, "we retreated into a cave close
beside, the secret of which was known but to one man in the
country; we were debating what to do with the child, and we thought
of--giving it up to the gipsies, when we heard the cries of the
pursuers hallooing to each other. One man alone came straight to
our cave, and it was that man who knew the secret--but we made him
our friend at the expense of half the value of the goods saved. By
his, advice we carried off the child to Holland in our consort,
which came the following night to take us from the coast. That man
was--"
"No, I deny it!--it was not I!" said Glossin, in half-uttered
accents; and, struggling in his agony to express his denial more
distinctly, he awoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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