the ancient philosopher, he expected to find truth. Sometimes he struck his foot against a stone, and started and looked up, as if awakened from a dream; but he was too intent on his study to take the pains to make a complete turn of his wise head, to see if there was any one behind him. During all this time, a regular course of signals was in progress among Will and his friends who were coming up behind him, the horses being kept far back, in case the sound of their hoofs might reach the ear of the day-dreamer. He had now reached the most retired and lonely part of the common, where, at that time, there stood a small clump of trees at a little distance from the whin-road that gave the place its singular name. His study still continued, for his head was still bent, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left. In a single instant, he was muffled up in a large cloak, a hood thrown over his face, and his hands firmly bound by a cord. The operation was that of a moment--finished before the prisoner's astonishment had left him power to open his mouth. A whistle brought up the horses; he was placed on one of them with the same rapidity; a cord was passed round his loins and bound to the saddle; and, in a few minutes, the party was in rapid motion to get to the back part of the city.[E] [E] This famous abduction was reported by Lord Fountainhall. Every circumstance is literally true.--ED. During all this extraordinary operation, not a single word passed between the three rievers, to whom the proceeding was, in a great degree, perfectly familiar. Through the folds of the hood of the cloak in which the President's head was much more snugly lodged than it ever was in his senatorial wig, he contrived to send forth some muffled sounds, indicating, not unnaturally, a wish to know what was the meaning and object of so extraordinary a manoeuvre. At that time, be it understood, the belief in the power of witches was general, and Durie himself had been accessary to the condemnation of many a wise woman who was committed to the flames; but though he had, to a great extent, emancipated his strong mind from the thraldom of the prevailing prejudice, the mode in which he was now seized--in broad day, in the midst of a legal study, without seeing a single individual (his head being covered first), and without hearing the sound of man's voice--would have been sufficient to bring him back to the general belief, and force the conviction that he was now in the hands of the agents of the Devil. It is, indeed, a fact (afterwards ascertained), that the learned judge did actually conceive that he was now in the power of those he had helped to persecute; and his fears--bringing up before him the burning tar-barrels, the paid prickers, the roaring crowds, and the expiring victim--completed the delusion, and bound up his energies, till he was speechless and motionless. There was, therefore, no cause of apprehension from the terror-struck prisoner