Though so many thousand souls were densely packed within the fortifications of Edinburgh, and every house was like a beehive or a tower of Babel, at that hour the city was still as the grave. Walter heard only the throbbing of his heart. The last dweller in the close had long since traversed the lofty stair that ascended to his home; the heavy door at the foot of the Prison turnpike stair had long since been closed, and its sentinel had withdrawn to smoke a pipe or sip a can of twopenny by the gudeman's well-sanded ingle. From the hollow recesses of its great rood spire St. Giles's bell tolled eleven. "Another night!--another--another!" exclaimed Walter, as he threw himself upon the straw, and wrung his hands in rage, in bitterness, and unavailing agony. "Another night!--Oh, to be taught patience, or to be free!" From a sleepy stupor that had sunk upon him, the very torpidity of desperation, he was roused by a noise at the grating: a face appeared dimly without, and a well known voice said, "Harkee, Fenton,--art asleep, my boy?" "_Me voila_--I am here!" he exclaimed, as he sprang to the grating and pressed the hand of his friend. "You forget, Walter, that I am not calling the roll," laughed the officer; "but _me voila_ is very old fashioned, my lad, and hath not been used by us these two hundred years, since the battle of Banje en Anjou. By all the devils, 'tis a deuced unpleasant malheur this!" "I thought you had forgotten me, Finland." "You did me great injustice; but, lackaday, with Wemyss and my party I have been for these three days worrying all the old wives and bonnetted carles on the Bruntisfield barony, to take certain obnoxious tests under terror of thumbscrews and gunmatch. By my honour, I would rather that my lord, the Earl of Perth, would march with his mace on shoulder, anent such dirty work, for I aver that it is altogether unbecoming the dignity and profession of a soldier. And mark me, Walter, all this tyranny will end in a storm such as the land hath not seen, since our father's days, when the banner of the covenant was unfurled on the hill of Dunse." "And are there no tidings of Dunbarton, our commander?" "The deuce, no! there hath been no mail from London these fourteen days; the rascal who brought the bag had only one letter, and getting drunk, lost it in the neutral grounds, somewhere on the borders. The earl was to have taken horse at Whitehall for the north, on the first of this month; 'tis now the penult day only, and he cannot be here for a week yet, so patience, Walter." Walter sighed. "There are others here who have not forgotten thee, my dear Mr. Fenton," said a soft voice, as a pretty female face, lighted by two bright eyes, stooped down to that hideous grating. "But, forsooth, our good friend the Laird of Finland, seems resolved to talk for us all, which is not to be borne. I think he has acquired all the loquacity of the French chevaliers, without an atom of their gallantry."