After enjoying her agony for a few moments, he handed her the jar, from which she drank greedily and thirstily. "Hechhow!" said Birrel, with a triumphant growl, "now ye drink, cummer, as I drank of the Douglasburn, at the foot of the Cairntable," and, extinguishing their lamp, the three wretches retired, and she was left to her own terrible thoughts. Again and again she drank of the water, but the thrill of delight its coolness and freshness afforded her soon passed away; and setting down the vessel carefully, she gazed at it, and then burst into a passion of tears. The paper she had signed, what could it mean? At that moment the clock of St. Cuthbert's church, which stood in the hollow far down below the Castle, on the west, struck slowly and solemnly the hour of four, and this sound, as it ascended to her ear, recalled her to other thoughts. The morning was shining through the rusty grating of her window--the morning of another day. She thought bitterly of the paper she had signed; and deploring her lack of strength and resolution, buried her lace in her pillow, and gave way at last to a wild paroxysm of despair. CHAPTER XLVII. WHAT THE PAPER CONTAINED. "Oh, misery! While I was dragged by an insidious band Of pyrates--savage bloodhounds--into bondage. But, witness, heaven! witness, ye midnight hours, That heard my ceaseless groans, how her dear image Grew to my very heart!"--_The Desart Island_, 1760. Sleepless, and with the horrible conversation of Birrel and Dobbie still tingling in his ears, Roland passed the night in that frame of mind we have endeavoured to describe, though it can be better conceived. The morning dawned, and the thick gratings of the windows appeared in strong relief against the saffron sky, and sounds of life arose from the waking city below. The bright sun was gilding the vane of St. Giles, the spire of the Dominicans, the square tower of St. Mary-in-the-Fields, and the lofty summits of the town, while, like a golden snake, the Forth was seen winding afar between the wooded mountains of the west. With arms folded, his head sunk upon his breast, and his hollow eyes fixed dreamily on the floor, Roland was immersed in a chaos of gloomy thoughts, when a noise occasioned by a hand raising a window opposite startled him. He looked up, and a letter fell at his feet. He clutched and tore it open. "Jane! from Jane--from my dear Jane?" he exclaimed, huskily, and pressed her signature to his lips. "It is signed by herself (how well I know that dear signature!) but another has written it--St. Bernard, perhaps. Ah, my God! she is too ill to write, and they separate me from her. Jane--Jane!"