Bolts were drawn, whispers passed in Gaelic, and presently Frank and his companion stood both of them in the vestibule of the tolbooth or public prison of Glasgow. It was a small but strong guard-room, from which passages led away to the right and left, and staircases ascended to the cells of the prisoners. Iron fetters fitly adorned the walls. Muskets, pistols, and partizans stood about, ready alike for defence or offence. Still more strange was the jailer who greeted them. This man was a wild, shock-headed savage with a brush of red hair, but he knelt and almost worshipped Frank's guide. He could not take his eyes off him. "Oich--oich," grunted Dougal, for that was the turnkey's name, "to see ye here! What would happen to ye if the bailies should come to get witting of it?" The guide, still wrapped in his cloak, placed his finger on his lip. "Fear nothing, Dougal," he said, "your hands shall never draw a bolt on me." "That shall they no," said Dougal, emphatically, "she wishes them hacked off by the elbows first. And when are ye gaun yonder again? When you return, you will not forget to tell your poor cousin--only seven times removed." "I will let you know, Dougal," said the man, "as soon as my plans are settled." "And by my sooth," cried Dougal, "when you do, I will fling my keys at the provost's head, and never gie them anither turn--see if I winna!" But Frank's guide, who had listened to all this rhapsody very much with the air of a prince accustomed to royal service and thinking little of it, interrupted Dougal with some words in Gaelic. Whereupon the turnkey, taking a lantern, led the young man up the winding stair and introduced him to a cell, where, lying on a bed, he recognised--no other than Owen, the head clerk of his father's house. At first the good Owen could only bemoan the hardness of fate, thinking that Frank also had met with the same treatment as himself, by being sent to prison. He had, it seemed, as in duty bound, gone at once to Messrs. MacVittie, MacFin, and Company and exposed to them his case, stating the difficulty in which the house were placed by Rashleigh's disappearance. Hitherto they had been most smooth and silver-tongued, but at the first word of difficulty as to payment, they had clapped poor Owen into prison on the charge of meditating flight out of the country. He had, he continued, sent a note to Bailie Nicol Jarvie, the other correspondent of the house in Glasgow. But, as he said, "If the civil house in the Gallowgate used him thus, what was to be expected from the cross-grained old crab-stock in the Salt Market?" It had fallen out even as he had expected. Bailie Nicol Jarvie had not so much as answered his letter, though it had been put into his hand as he was on his way to church that morning. Hardly were the words out of Owen's mouth, when from below came the voice of Dougal the turnkey, evidently urging Frank's guide to conceal himself.