I was now ready to depart; and on my way to the boat, found my two old female companions watching, lest I should pass, and they might miss my company on the way. It was now past three o'clock, and we determined to travel as far as we could that night, as the accommodations were vile in Petigo; and the spokeswoman mentioned a house of entertainment, about twelve miles forward, where, she said, we would find better treatment. When we got on terra firma, the first man I saw was the monosyllabic humorist, sitting on a hillock resting himself--his eyes fixed on the earth, and he evidently in a brown study on what he had gone through. He was drawing in his breath gradually, his cheeks expanding all the while, until they reached the utmost point of distention, when he would all at once let it go with a kind of easy puff, ending in a groan, as he surveyed his naked feet, which were now quite square, and, like my own, out of all shape. I asked him how he liked the station; he gave me one of the old looks, shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing--it was, however, a shrug condemnatory. I then asked him would he ever make another pilgrimage? He answered me by another shrug, a grave look, dryly raising his eye-brows, and a second appeal to his feet, all of which I easily translated into strong negatives. We refreshed ourselves in Petigo. When we were on the way home, I observed that, although the singular and fatal accident which befell the young man in the prison excited very little interest at the time of its occurrence, yet no sooner had they who witnessed it got clear of the island, than it was given with every possible ornament; so that it would be as easy to recognize the plain fact, when decked out by their elucidations, as it would be to understand the sense of an original author, after it has come through the hands of half a hundred commentators. But human nature is a darker enigma than any you could find, in the “Lady's Magazine.” Who would suppose, for instance, that it was the same motive which set their tongues wagging now, that had chained their spirits by the strong force of the marvellous and the terrible, while they were in prison! Yet this was the fact; but their influence hung while there, like the tyrant's sword, over each individual head; and until the danger of falling asleep in the “Prison” was past, they could feel no interest for anything beyond themselves. In both cases, however, they were governed by the force of the marvellous and the terrible.