The hatch of St. Andrew’s watch-house--a sort of outer-door, only breast-high, but furnished with a row of iron spikes which would bid defiance to Harlequin himself--was closed--and, a very unusual occurrence at that late hour, all within the house of durance was quiet. Peter Bradley, the captain of the hold, was seated on a wooden bench in his accustomed corner, with a little table before him, on which was awfully displayed the fatal book in which delinquencies were chronicled, flanked by a pewter vessel full charged with Sweetman’s XXX. Three guardians of the night, who formed the jail-guard, sate round the fire “drawing” a comfortable _dudheine_, and casting, from time to time, a longing eye at the battered quart deposited beside the elbow of the commander. There were other occupants--for occasionally melancholy faces peeped through a grated wicket in the door, which separated the dungeon-keep from the guard-room,--and from their place of captivity looked anxiously at the great man seated in the corner, whose nod could loose or bind. Indeed the task of watch and ward was easy, for the prisoners were comprised in one solitary group, namely--a drunken sailor, a fiddler with one leg, and “a maid who loved the moon,” brought there for fading through a shop-window and making _smithereens_ of divers panes of glass, for which, as, from a lack of the king’s currency, they could make no proper compensation, they were safely incarcerated. Peter Bradley nibbed his pen, laid down his spectacles, gave a heavy sigh, and then, as if to kill care, took a long and steady pull from the pewter. “Business,” said the commander, addressing himself to his myrmidons at the fire, “business is gone to the dogs.’Tis twelve o’clock!” he continued, as the wooden time-piece above his head announced the “witching hour.” “Twelve o’clock! and not a sowl picked up but devils who couldn’t muster, if it saved them from the gallows, turnpike-money for a walking-stick. Out with them varmint in the black-hole, Barney Casey; what use in shuttin’ up craters without a _scultogue_, * and lumbrin the place wid people who can’t stand a pint of beer.” * “_Seultogue_, is a monetary phrase, used generally in the kingdom of Connaught. Its metallic value not being clearly ascertained, I have doubts whether it would be a legal tender.”--_Extract from an opinion of Mr. Richard Dunn, the eminent barrister_.