'Ou then, he just said, "If there comes such a person to inquire
after Mr. Brown, you will say I am gone to look at the skaters on
Loch Creeran, as you call it, and I will be back here to dinner."
But he never came back, though I expected him sae faithfully that
I gae a look to making the friar's chicken mysell, and to the
crappitheads too, and that's what I dinna do for ordinary, Mr.
Glossin. But little did I think what skating wark he was gaun
about--to shoot Mr. Charles, the innocent lamb!'

Mr. Glossin having, like a prudent examinator, suffered his
witness to give vent to all her surprise and indignation, now
began to inquire whether the suspected person had left any
property or papers about the inn.

'Troth, he put a parcel--a sma' parcel--under my charge, and he
gave me some siller, and desired me to get him half-a-dozen
ruffled sarks, and Peg Pasley's in hands wi' them e'en now; they
may serve him to gang up the Lawnmarket [Footnote: The procession
of the criminals to the gallows of old took that direction,
moving, as the school-boy rhyme had it, Up the Lawnmarket, Down
the West Bow, Up the lang ladder, And down the little tow.] in,
the scoundrel!' Mr. Glossin then demanded to see the packet, but
here mine hostess demurred.

'She didna ken--she wad not say but justice should take its
course--but when a thing was trusted to ane in her way, doubtless
they were responsible; but she suld cry in Deacon Bearcliff, and
if Mr. Glossin liked to tak an inventar o' the property, and gie
her a receipt before the Deacon--or, what she wad like muckle
better, an it could be sealed up and left in Deacon Bearcliff's
hands--it wad mak her mind easy. She was for naething but justice
on a' sides.'

Mrs. Mac-Candlish's natural sagacity and acquired suspicion being
inflexible, Glossin sent for Deacon Bearcliff, to speak 'anent the
villain that had shot Mr. Charles Hazlewood.' The Deacon
accordingly made his appearance with his wig awry, owing to the
hurry with which, at this summons of the Justice, he had exchanged
it for the Kilmarnock cap in which he usually attended his
customers. Mrs. Mac-Candlish then produced the parcel deposited
with her by Brown, in which was found the gipsy's purse. On
perceiving the value of the miscellaneous contents, Mrs. Mac-
Candlish internally congratulated herself upon the precautions she
had taken before delivering them up to Glossin, while he, with an
appearance of disinterested candour, was the first to propose they
should be properly inventoried, and deposited with Deacon
Bearcliff, until they should be sent to the Crown-office. 'He did
not,' he observed, 'like to be personally responsible for articles
which seemed of considerable value, and had doubtless been
acquired by the most nefarious practices.'

He then examined the paper in which the purse had been wrapt up.
It was the back of a letter addressed to V. Brown, Esquire, but
the rest of the address was torn away. The landlady, now as eager
to throw light upon the criminal's escape as she had formerly been
desirous of withholding it, for the miscellaneous contents of the
purse argued strongly to her mind that all was not right,--Mrs.
Mac-Candlish, I say, now gave Glossin to understand that her
position and hostler had both seen the stranger upon the ice that
day when young Hazlewood was wounded.

Our readers' old acquaintance Jock Jabos was first summoned, and
admitted frankly that he had seen and conversed upon the ice that
morning with a stranger, who, he understood, had lodged at the
Gordon Arms the night before.

'What turn did your conversation take?' said Glossin.

'Turn? ou, we turned nae gate at a', but just keep it straight
forward upon the ice like.'

'Well, but what did ye speak about?'

'Ou, he just asked questions like ony ither stranger,' answered
the postilion, possessed, as it seemed, with the refractory and
uncommunicative spirit which had left his mistress.

'But about what?' said Glossin.

'Ou, just about the folk that was playing at the curling, and
about auld Jock Stevenson that was at the cock, and about the
leddies, and sic like.'

'What ladies? and what did he ask about them, Jock?' said the
interrogator.

'What leddies? Ou, it was Miss Jowlia Mannering and Miss Lucy
Bertram, that ye ken fu' weel yoursell, Mr. Glossin; they were
walking wi' the young Laird of Hazlewood upon the ice.'

'And what did you tell him about them?' demanded Glossin.

'Tut, we just said that was Miss Lucy Bertram of Ellangowan, that
should ance have had a great estate in the country; and that was
Miss Jowlia Mannering, that was to be married to young Hazlewood,
see as she was hinging on his arm. We just spoke about our country
clashes like; he was a very frank man.'

'Well, and what did he say in answer?'

'Ou, he just stared at the young leddies very keen-like, and asked
if it was for certain that the marriage was to be between Miss
Mannering and young Hazlewood; and I answered him that it was for
positive and absolute certain, as I had an undoubted right to say
sae; for my third cousin Jean Clavers (she's a relation o' your
ain, Mr. Glossin, ye wad ken Jean lang syne?), she's sib to the
houskeeper at Woodbourne, and she's tell'd me mair than ance that
there was naething could be mair likely.'

'And what did the stranger say when you told him all this?' said
Glossin.

'Say?' echoed the postilion, 'he said naething at a'; he just
stared at them as they walked round the loch upon the ice, as if
he could have eaten them, and he never took his ee aff them, or
said another word, or gave another glance at the bonspiel, though
there was the finest fun amang the curlers ever was seen; and he
turned round and gaed aff the loch by the kirkstile through
Woodbourne fir-plantings, and we saw nae mair o' him.'

'Only think,' said Mrs. Mac-Candlish, 'what a hard heart he maun
hae had, to think o' hurting the poor young gentleman in the very
presence of the leddy he was to be married to!'

'O, Mrs. Mac-Candlish,' said Glossin, 'there's been many cases
such as that on the record; doubtless he was seeking revenge where
it would be deepest and sweetest.'

'God pity us!' said Deacon Bearcliff, 'we're puir frail creatures
when left to oursells! Ay, he forgot wha said, "Vengeance is mine,
and I will repay it."'

'Weel, aweel, sirs,' said Jabos, whose hard-headed and
uncultivated shrewdness seemed sometimes to start the game when
others beat the bush--'weel, weel, ye may be a' mista'en yet; I'll
never believe that a man would lay a plan to shoot another wi' his
ain gun. Lord help ye, I was the keeper's assistant down at the
Isle mysell, and I'll uphaud it the biggest man in Scotland
shouldna take a gun frae me or I had weized the slugs through him,
though I'm but sic a little feckless body, fit for naething but
the outside o' a saddle and the fore-end o' a poschay; na, na, nae
living man wad venture on that. I'll wad my best buckskins, and
they were new coft at Kirkcudbright Fair, it's been a chance job
after a'. But if ye hae naething mair to say to me, I am thinking
I maun gang and see my beasts fed'; and he departed accordingly.

The hostler, who had accompanied him, gave evidence to the same
purpose. He and Mrs. Mac-Candlish were then reinterrogated whether
Brown had no arms with him on that unhappy morning. 'None,' they
said, 'but an ordinary bit cutlass or hanger by his side.'

'Now,' said the Deacon, taking Glossin by the button (for, in
considering this intricate subject, he had forgot Glossin's new
accession of rank),'this is but doubtfu' after a', Maister
Gilbert; for it was not sae dooms likely that he would go down
into battle wi' sic sma' means.'

Glossin extricated himself from the Deacon's grasp and from the
discussion, though not with rudeness; for it was his present
interest to buy golden opinions from all sorts of people. He
inquired the price of tea and sugar, and spoke of providing
himself for the year; he gave Mrs. Mac-Candlish directions to have
a handsome entertainment in readiness for a party of five friends
whom he intended to invite to dine with him at the Gordon Arms
next Saturday week; and, lastly, he gave a half-crown to Jock
Jabos, whom the hostler had deputed to hold his steed.

'Weel,' said the Deacon to Mrs. Mac-Candlish, as he accepted her
offer of a glass of bitters at the bar, 'the deil's no sae ill as
he's ca'd. It's pleasant to see a gentleman pay the regard to the
business o' the county that Mr. Glossin does.'

'Ay, 'deed is't, Deacon,' answered the landlady; 'and yet I wonder
our gentry leave their ain wark to the like o' him. But as lang as
siller's current, Deacon, folk maunna look ower nicely at what
king's head's on't.'

'I doubt Glossin will prove but shand after a', mistress,' said
Jabos, as he passed through the little lobby beside the bar; 'but
this is a gude half-crown ony way.'




CHAPTER XXXIII

     A man that apprehends death to be no more dreadful but as a
     drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what's
     past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and
     desperately mortal.

          --Measure for Measure.


Glossin had made careful minutes of the information derived from
these examinations. They threw little light upon the story, so far
as he understood its purport; but the better-informed reader has
received through means of this investigation an account of Brown's
proceedings, between the moment when we left him upon his walk to
Kippletringan and the time when, stung by jealousy, he so rashly
and unhappily presented himself before Julia Mannering, and well-
nigh brought to a fatal termination the quarrel which his
appearance occasioned.

Glossin rode slowly back to Ellangowan, pondering on what he had
heard, and more and more convinced that the active and successful
prosecution of this mysterious business was an opportunity of
ingratiating himself with Hazlewood and Mannering to be on no
account neglected. Perhaps, also, he felt his professional
acuteness interested in bringing it to a successful close. It was,
therefore, with great pleasure that, on his return to his house
from Kippletringan, he heard his servants announce hastily, 'that
Mac-Guffog, the thief-taker, and twa or three concurrents, had a
man in hands in the kitchen waiting for his honour.'

He instantly jumped from horseback, and hastened into the house.
'Send my clerk here directly, ye'll find him copying the survey of
the estate in the little green parlour. Set things to rights in my
study, and wheel the great leathern chair up to the writing-table;
set a stool for Mr. Scrow. Scrow (to the clerk, as he entered the
presence-chamber), hand down Sir George Mackenzie "On Crimes";
open it at the section "Vis Publica et Privata," and fold down a
leaf at the passage "anent the bearing of unlawful weapons." Now
lend me a hand off with my muckle-coat, and hang it up in the
lobby, and bid them bring up the prisoner; I trow I'll sort him;
but stay, first send up Mac-Guffog. Now, Mac-Guffog, where did ye
find this chield?'

Mac-Guffog, a stout, bandy-legged fellow, with a neck like a bull,
a face like a firebrand, and a most portentous squint of the left
eye, began, after various contortions by way of courtesy to the
Justice, to tell his story, eking it out by sundry sly nods and
knowing winks, which appeared to bespeak an intimate
correspondence of ideas between the narrator and his principal
auditor. 'Your honour sees I went down to yon place that your
honour spoke o', that's kept by her that your honour kens o', by
the sea-side. So says she, "What are you wanting here? ye'll be
come wi' a broom in your pocket frae Ellangowan?"--So says I,
"Deil a broom will come frae there awa, for ye ken," says I, "his
honour Ellangowan himsell in former times--"'

'Well, well,' said Glossin, 'no occasion to be particular, tell
the essentials.'

'Weel, so we sat niffering about some brandy that I said I wanted,
till he came in.'

'Who?'

'He!' pointing with his thumb inverted to the kitchen, where the
prisoner was in custody. 'So he had his griego wrapped close round
him, and I judged he was not dry-handed; so I thought it was best
to speak proper, and so he believed I was a Manks man, and I kept
ay between him and her, for fear she had whistled. And then we
began to drink about, and then I betted he would not drink out a
quartern of Hollands without drawing breath, and then he tried it,
and just then Slounging Jock and Dick Spur'em came in, and we
clinked the darbies on him, took him as quiet as a lamb; and now
he's had his bit sleep out, and is as fresh as a May gowan, to
answer what your honour likes to speir.' This narrative, delivered
with a wonderful quantity of gesture and grimace, received at the
conclusion the thanks and praises which the narrator expected.

'Had he no arms?' asked the Justice.

'Ay, ay, they are never without barkers and slashers.'

'Any papers?'

'This bundle,' delivering a dirty pocket-book.

'Go downstairs then, Mac-Guffog, and be in waiting.' The officer
left the room.

The clink of irons was immediately afterwards heard upon the
stair, and in two or three minutes a man was introduced,
handcuffed and fettered. He was thick, brawny, and muscular, and
although his shagged and grizzled hair marked an age somewhat
advanced, and his stature was rather low, he appeared,
nevertheless, a person whom few would have chosen to cope with in
personal conflict. His coarse and savage features were still
flushed, and his eye still reeled under the influence of the
strong potation which had proved the immediate cause of his
seizure. But the sleep, though short, which Mac-Guffog had allowed
him, and still more a sense of the peril of his situation, had
restored to him the full use of his faculties. The worthy judge
and the no less estimable captive looked at each other steadily
for a long time without speaking. Glossin apparently recognised
his prisoner, but seemed at a loss how to proceed with his
investigation. At length he broke silence.--'Soh, Captain, this is
you? you have been a stranger on this coast for some years.'

'Stranger?' replied the other. 'Strange enough, I think; for hold
me der deyvil, if I been ever here before.'

'That won't pass, Mr. Captain.'

'That MUST pass, Mr. Justice, sapperment!'

'And who will you be pleased to call yourself, then, for the
present,' said Glossin, 'just until I shall bring some other folks
to refresh your memory concerning who you are, or at least who you
have been?'

'What bin I? donner and blitzen! I bin Jans Jansen, from Cuxhaven;
what sall Ich bin?'

Glossin took from a case which was in the apartment a pair of
small pocket pistols, which he loaded with ostentatious care. 'You
may retire,' said he to his clerk, 'and carry the people with you,
Scrow; but wait in the lobby within call.'

The clerk would have offered some remonstrances to his patron on
the danger of remaining alone with such a desperate character,
although ironed beyond the possibility of active exertion, but
Glossin waved him off impatiently. When he had left the room the
Justice took two short turns through the apartment, then drew his
chair opposite to the prisoner, so as to confront him fully,
placed the pistols before him in readiness, and said in a steady
voice, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick of Flushing, are you not?'

The prisoner turned his eye instinctively to the door, as if he
apprehended some one was listening. Glossin rose, opened the door,
so that from the chair in which his prisoner sate he might satisfy
himself there was no eavesdropper within hearing, then shut it,
resumed his seat, and repeated his question, 'You are Dirk
Hatteraick, formerly of the Yungfrauw Haagenslaapen, are you not?'

'Tousand deyvils! and if you know that, why ask me?' said the
prisoner.

'Because I am surprised to see you in the very last place where
you ought to be, if you regard your safety,' observed Glossin,
coolly.

'Der deyvil! no man regards his own safety that speaks so to me!'

'What? unarmed, and in irons! well said, Captain!' replied
Glossin, ironically. 'But, Captain, bullying won't do; you'll
hardly get out of this country without accounting for a little
accident that happened at Warroch Point a few years ago.'

Hatteraick's looks grew black as midnight.

'For my part,' continued Glossin, 'I have no particular wish to be
hard upon an old acquaintance; but I must do my duty. I shall send
you off to Edinburgh in a post-chaise and four this very day.'

'Poz donner! you would not do that?' said Hatteraick, in a lower
and more humbled tone; 'why, you had the matter of half a cargo in
bills on Vanbeest and Vanbruggen.'

'It is so long since, Captain Hatteraick,' answered Glossin,
superciliously, 'that I really forget how I was recompensed for my
trouble.'

'Your trouble? your silence, you mean.'

'It was an affair in the course of business,' said Glossin, 'and I
have retired from business for some time.'

'Ay, but I have a notion that I could make you go steady about and
try the old course again,' answered Dirk Hatteraick. 'Why, man,
hold me der deyvil, but I meant to visit you and tell you
something that concerns you.'

'Of the boy?' said Glossin, eagerly.

'Yaw, Mynheer,' replied the Captain, coolly.

'He does not live, does he?'

'As lifelich as you or I,' said Hatteraick.

'Good God! But in India?' exclaimed Glossin.

'No, tousand deyvils, here! on this dirty coast of yours,'
rejoined the prisoner.

'But, Hatteraick, this,--that is, if it be true, which I do not
believe,--this will ruin us both, for he cannot but remember your
neat job; and for me, it will be productive of the worst
consequences! It will ruin us both, I tell you.'

'I tell you,' said the seaman, 'it will ruin none but you; for I
am done up already, and if I must strap for it, all shall out.'

'Zounds,' said the Justice impatiently, 'what brought you back to
this coast like a madman?'

'Why, all the gelt was gone, and the house was shaking, and I
thought the job was clayed over and forgotten,' answered the
worthy skipper.

'Stay; what can be done?' said Glossin, anxiously. 'I dare not
discharge you; but might you not be rescued in the way? Ay sure! a
word to Lieutenant Brown, and I would send the people with you by
the coast-road.'

'No, no! that won't do. Brown's dead, shot, laid in the locker,
man; the devil has the picking of him.

'Dead? shot? At Woodbourne, I suppose?' replied Glossin.

'Yaw, Mynheer.'

Glossin paused; the sweat broke upon his brow with the agony of
his feelings, while the hard-featured miscreant who sat opposite
coolly rolled his tobacco in his cheek and squirted the juice into
the fire-grate. 'It would be ruin,' said Glossin to himself,
'absolute ruin, if the heir should reappear; and then what might
be the consequence of conniving with these men? Yet there is so
little time to take measures. Hark you, Hatteraick; I can't set
you at liberty; but I can put you where you may set yourself at
liberty, I always like to assist an old friend. I shall confine
you in the old castle for to-night, and give these people double
allowance of grog. MacGuffog will fall in the trap in which he
caught you. The stancheons on the window of the strong room, as
they call it, are wasted to pieces, and it is not above twelve
feet from the level of the ground without, and the snow lies
thick.'

'But the darbies,' said Hatteraick, looking upon his fetters.

'Hark ye,' said Glossin, going to a tool chest, and taking out a
small file,'there's a friend for you, and you know the road to the
sea by the stairs.' Hatteraick shook his chains in ecstasy, as if
he were already at liberty, and strove to extend his fettered hand
towards his protector. Glossin laid his finger upon his lips with
a cautious glance at the door, and then proceeded in his
instructions. 'When you escape, you had better go to the Kaim of
Derncleugh.'

'Donner! that howff is blown.'

'The devil! well, then, you may steal my skiff that lies on the
beach there, and away. But you must remain snug at the Point of
Warroch till I come to see you.'

'The Point of Warroch?' said Hatteraick, his countenance again
falling; 'what, in the cave, I suppose? I would rather it were
anywhere else; es spuckt da: they say for certain that he walks.
But, donner and blitzen! I never shunned him alive, and I won't
shun him dead. Strafe mich helle! it shall never be said Dirk
Hatteraick feared either dog or devil! So I am to wait there till
I see you?'

'Ay, ay,' answered Glossin, 'and now I must call in the men.' He
did so accordingly.

'I can make nothing of Captain Jansen, as he calls himself, Mac-
Guffog, and it's now too late to bundle him off to the county
jail. Is there not a strong room up yonder in the old castle?'

'Ay is there, sir; my uncle the constable ance kept a man there
for three days in auld Ellangowan's time. But there was an unco
dust about it; it was tried in the Inner House afore the
Feifteen.'

'I know all that, but this person will not stay there very long;
it's only a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till
farther examination. There is a small room through which it opens;
you may light a fire for yourselves there, and I 'll send you
plenty of stuff to make you comfortable. But be sure you lock the
door upon the prisoner; and, hark ye, let him have a fire in the
strong room too, the season requires it. Perhaps he'll make a
clean breast to-morrow.'

With these instructions, and with a large allowance of food and
liquor, the Justice dismissed his party to keep guard for the
night in the old castle, under the full hope and belief that they
would neither spend the night in watching nor prayer.

There was little fear that Glossin himself should that night sleep
over-sound. His situation was perilous in the extreme, for the
schemes of a life of villainy seemed at once to be crumbling
around and above him. He laid himself to rest, and tossed upon his
pillow for a long time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it
was only to dream of his patron, now as he had last seen him, with
the paleness of death upon his features, then again transformed
into all the vigour and comeliness of youth, approaching to expel
him from the mansion-house of his fathers. Then he dreamed that,
after wandering long over a wild heath, he came at length to an
inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry; and that when he
entered the first person he met was Frank Kennedy, all smashed and
gory, as he had lain on the beach at Warroch Point, but with a
reeking punch-bowl in his hand. Then the scene changed to a
dungeon, where he heard Dirk Hatteraick, whom he imagined to be
under sentence of death, confessing his crimes to a clergyman.
'After the bloody deed was done,' said the penitent, 'we retreated
into a cave close beside, the secret of which was known but to one
man in the country; we were debating what to do with the child,
and we thought of giving it up to the gipsies, when we heard the
cries of the pursuers hallooing to each other. One man alone came
straight to our cave, and it was that man who knew the secret; but
we made him our friend at the expense of half the value of the
goods saved. By his advice we carried off the child to Holland in
our consort, which came the following night to take us from the
coast. That man was--'

'No, I deny it! it was not I!' said Glossin, in half-uttered
accents; and, struggling in his agony to express his denial more
distinctly, he awoke.

It was, however, conscience that had prepared this mental
phantasmagoria. The truth was that, knowing much better than any
other person the haunts of the smugglers, he had, while the others
were searching in different directions, gone straight to the cave,
even before he had learned the murder of Kennedy, whom he expected
to find their prisoner. He came upon them with some idea of
mediation, but found them in the midst of their guilty terrors,
while the rage which had hurried them on to murder began, with all
but Hatteraick, to sink into remorse and fear. Glossin was then
indigent and greatly in debt, but he was already possessed of Mr.
Bertram's ear, and, aware of the facility of his disposition, he
saw no difficulty in enriching himself at his expense, provided
the heir-male were removed, in which case the estate became the
unlimited property of the weak and prodigal father. Stimulated by
present gain and the prospect of contingent advantage, he accepted
the bribe which the smugglers offered in their terror, and
connived at, or rather encouraged, their intention of carrying
away the child of his benefactor who, if left behind, was old
enough to have described the scene of blood which he had
witnessed. The only palliative which the ingenuity of Glossin
could offer to his conscience was, that the temptation was great,
and came suddenly upon him, embracing as it were the very
advantages on which his mind had so long rested, and promising to
relieve him from distresses which must have otherwise speedily
overwhelmed him. Besides, he endeavoured to think that self-
preservation rendered his conduct necessary. He was, in some
degree, in the power of the robbers, and pleaded hard with his
conscience that, had he declined their offers, the assistance
which he could have called for, though not distant, might not have
arrived in time to save him from men who, on less provocation, had
just committed murder.

Galled with the anxious forebodings of a guilty conscience,
Glossin now arose and looked out upon the night. The scene which
we have already described in the third chapter of this story, was
now covered with snow, and the brilliant, though waste, whiteness
of the land gave to the sea by contrast a dark and livid tinge. A
landscape covered with snow, though abstractedly it may be called
beautiful, has, both from the association of cold and barrenness
and from its comparative infrequency, a wild, strange, and
desolate appearance. Objects well known to us in their common
state have either disappeared, or are so strangely varied and
disguised that we seem gazing on an unknown world. But it was not
with such reflections that the mind of this bad man was occupied.
His eye was upon the gigantic and gloomy outlines of the old
castle, where, in a flanking tower of enormous size and thickness,
glimmered two lights, one from the window of the strong room,
where Hatteraick was confined, the other from that of the adjacent
apartment, occupied by his keepers. 'Has he made his escape, or
will he be able to do so? Have these men watched, who never
watched before, in order to complete my ruin? If morning finds him
there, he must be committed to prison; Mac-Morlan or some other
person will take the matter up; he will be detected, convicted,
and will tell all in revenge!'

While these racking thoughts glided rapidly through Glossin's
mind, he observed one of the lights obscured, as by an opaque body
placed at the window. What a moment of interest! 'He has got clear
of his irons! he is working at the stancheons of the window! they
are surely quite decayed, they must give way. O God! they have
fallen outward, I heard them clink among the stones! the noise
cannot fail to wake them. Furies seize his Dutch awkwardness! The
light burns free again; they have torn him from the window, and
are binding him in the room! No! he had only retired an instant on
the alarm of the falling bars; he is at the window again, and the
light is quite obscured now; he is getting out!'

A heavy sound, as of a body dropped from a height among the snow,
announced that Hatteraick had completed his escape, and shortly
after Glossin beheld a dark figure, like a shadow, steal along the
whitened beach and reach the spot where the skiff lay. New cause
for fear! 'His single strength will be unable to float her,' said
Glossin to himself; 'I must go to the rascal's assistance. But no!
he has got her off, and now, thank God, her sail is spreading
itself against the moon; ay, he has got the breeze now; would to
heaven it were a tempest, to sink him to the bottom!'

After this last cordial wish, he continued watching the progress
of the boat as it stood away towards the Point of Warroch, until
he could no longer distinguish the dusky sail from the gloomy
waves over which it glided. Satisfied then that the immediate
danger was averted, he retired with somewhat more composure to his
guilty pillow.




CHAPTER XXXIV

     Why dost not comfort me, and help me out
     From this unhallowed and blood-stained hole?

          Titus Andronicus.



On the next morning, great was the alarm and confusion of the
officers when they discovered the escape of their prisoner. Mac-
Guffog appeared before Glossin with a head perturbed with brandy
and fear, and incurred a most severe reprimand for neglect of
duty. The resentment of the Justice appeared only to be suspended
by his anxiety to recover possession of the prisoner, and the
thief-takers, glad to escape from his awful and incensed presence,
were sent off in every direction (except the right one) to recover
their prisoner, if possible. Glossin particularly recommended a
careful search at the Kaim of Derncleugh, which was occasionally
occupied under night by vagrants of different descriptions. Having
thus dispersed his myrmidons in various directions, he himself
hastened by devious paths through the wood of Warroch to his
appointed interview with Hatteraick, from whom he hoped to learn
at more leisure than last night's conference admitted the
circumstances attending the return of the heir of Ellangowan to
his native country.

With manoeuvres like those of a fox when he doubles to avoid the
pack, Glossin strove to approach the place of appointment in a
manner which should leave no distinct track of his course. 'Would
to Heaven it would snow,' he said, looking upward, 'and hide these
foot-prints. Should one of the officers light upon them, he would
run the scent up like a bloodhound and surprise us. I must get
down upon the sea-beach, and contrive to creep along beneath the
rocks.'

And accordingly he descended from the cliffs with some difficulty,
and scrambled along between the rocks and the advancing tide; now
looking up to see if his motions were watched from the rocks above
him, now casting a jealous glance to mark if any boat appeared
upon the sea, from which his course might be discovered.

But even the feelings of selfish apprehension were for a time
superseded, as Glossin passed the spot where Kennedy's body had
been found. It was marked by the fragment of rock which had been
precipitated from the cliff above, either with the body or after
it. The mass was now encrusted with small shell-fish, and
tasselled with tangle and seaweed; but still its shape and
substance were different from those of the other rocks which lay
scattered around. His voluntary walks, it will readily be
believed, had never led to this spot; so that, finding himself now
there for the first time after the terrible catastrophe, the scene
at once recurred to his mind with all its accompaniments of
horror. He remembered how, like a guilty thing, gliding from the
neighbouring place of concealment, he had mingled with eagerness,
yet with caution, among the terrified group who surrounded the
corpse, dreading lest any one should ask from whence he came. He
remembered, too, with what conscious fear he had avoided gazing
upon that ghastly spectacle. The wild scream of his patron, 'My
bairn! my bairn!' again rang in his ears. 'Good God!' he
exclaimed, 'and is all I have gained worth the agony of that
moment, and the thousand anxious fears and horrors which have
since embittered my life! O how I wish that I lay where that
wretched man lies, and that he stood here in life and health! But
these regrets are all too late.'

Stifling, therefore, his feelings, he crept forward to the cave,
which was so near the spot where the body was found that the
smugglers might have heard from their hiding-place the various
conjectures of the bystanders concerning the fate of their victim.
But nothing could be more completely concealed than the entrance
to their asylum. The opening, not larger than that of a fox-earth,
lay in the face of the cliff directly behind a large black rock,
or rather upright stone, which served at once to conceal it from
strangers and as a mark to point out its situation to those who
used it as a place of retreat. The space between the stone and the
cliff was exceedingly narrow, and, being heaped with sand and
other rubbish, the most minute search would not have discovered
the mouth of the cavern without removing those substances which
the tide had drifted before it. For the purpose of further
concealment, it was usual with the contraband traders who
frequented this haunt, after they had entered, to stuff the mouth
with withered seaweed, loosely piled together as if carried there
by the waves. Dirk Hatteraick had not forgotten this precaution.

Glossin, though a bold and hardy man, felt his heart throb and his
knees knock together when he prepared to enter this den of secret
iniquity, in order to hold conference with a felon, whom he justly
accounted one of the most desperate and depraved of men. 'But he
has no interest to injure me,' was his consolatory reflection. He
examined his pocket-pistols, however, before removing the weeds
and entering the cavern, which he did upon hands and knees. The
passage, which at first was low and narrow, just admitting
entrance to a man in a creeping posture, expanded after a few
yards into a high arched vault of considerable width. The bottom,
ascending gradually, was covered with the purest sand. Ere Glossin
had got upon his feet, the hoarse yet suppressed voice of
Hatteraick growled through the recesses of the cave:--

'Hagel and donner! be'st du?'

'Are you in the dark?'

'Dark? der deyvil! ay,' said Dirk Hatteraick; 'where should I have
a glim?'

'I have brought light'; and Glossin accordingly produced a tinder-
box and lighted a small lantern.

'You must kindle some fire too, for hold mich der deyvil, Ich bin
ganz gefrorne!'

'It is a cold place, to be sure,' said Glossin, gathering together
some decayed staves of barrels and pieces of wood, which had
perhaps lain in the cavern since Hatteraick was there last.

'Cold? Snow-wasser and hagel! it's perdition; I could only keep
myself alive by rambling up and down this d--d vault, and thinking
about the merry rouses we have had in it.'

The flame then began to blaze brightly, and Hatteraick hung his
bronzed visage and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it,
with an avidity resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food
is exposed. The light showed his savage and stern features, and
the smoke, which in his agony of cold he seemed to endure almost
to suffocation, after circling round his head, rose to the dim and
rugged roof of the cave, through which it escaped by some secret
rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless that afforded air
to the cavern when the tide was in, at which time the aperture to
the sea was filled with water.

'And now I have brought you some breakfast,' said Glossin,
producing some cold meat and a flask of spirits. The latter
Hatteraick eagerly seized upon and applied to his mouth; and,
after a hearty draught, he exclaimed with great rapture, 'Das
schmeckt! That is good, that warms the liver!' Then broke into the
fragment of a High-Dutch song,--

     Saufen Bier und Brantewein,
     Schmeissen alle die Fenstern ein;
     Ich bin liederlich,
     Du bist liederlich;
     Sind wir nicht liederlich Leute a?

'Well said, my hearty Captain!' cried Glossin, endeavouring to
catch the tone of revelry,--

     'Gin by pailfuls, wine in rivers,
     Dash the window-glass to shivers!
        For three wild lads were we, brave boys,
        And three wild lads were we;
        Thou on the land, and I on the sand,
        And Jack on the gallows-tree!

That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now! And now let
us talk about our business.'

'YOUR business, if you please,' said Hatteraick. 'Hagel and
donner! mine was done when I got out of the bilboes.'

'Have patience, my good friend; I'll convince you our interests
are just the same.'

Hatteraick gave a short dry cough, and Glossin, after a pause,
proceeded.

'How came you to let the boy escape?'

'Why, fluch and blitzen! he was no charge of mine. Lieutenant
Brown gave him to his cousin that's in the Middleburgh house of
Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about
his being taken in a skirmish with the land-sharks; he gave him
for a footboy. Me let him escape! the bastard kinchin should have
walked the plank ere I troubled myself about him.'

'Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?'

'Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he
gave him his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then
sent him to India; I believe he would have packed him back here,
but his nephew told him it would do up the free trade for many a
day if the youngster got back to Scotland.'

'Do you think the younker knows much of his own origin now?'

'Deyvil!' replied Hatteraick, 'how should I tell what he knows
now? But he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten
years old he persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard
like himself to steal my lugger's khan--boat--what do you call it?
to return to his country, as he called it; fire him! Before we
could overtake them they had the skiff out of channel as far as
the Deurloo; the boat might have been lost.'

'I wish to Heaven she had, with him in her!' ejaculated Glossin.

'Why, I was so angry myself that, sapperment! I did give him a tip
over the side; but split him! the comical little devil swam like a
duck; so I made him swim astern for a mile to teach him manners,
and then took him in when he was sinking. By the knocking Nicholas
I he'll plague you, now he's come over the herring-pond! When he
was so high he had the spirit of thunder and lightning.'

'How did he get back from India?'

'Why, how should I know? The house there was done up; and that
gave us a shake at Middleburgh, I think; so they sent me again to
see what could be done among my old acquaintances here, for we
held old stories were done away and forgotten. So I had got a
pretty trade on foot within the last two trips; but that stupid
hounds-foot schelm, Brown, has knocked it on the head again, I
suppose, with getting himself shot by the colonel-man.'

'Why were not you with them?'

'Why, you see, sapperment! I fear nothing; but it was too far
within land, and I might have been scented.'

'True. But to return to this youngster--'

'Ay, ay, donner and blitzen! HE'S your affair,' said the Captain.

'How do you really know that he is in this country?'

'Why, Gabriel saw him up among the hills.'

'Gabriel! who is he?'

'A fellow from the gipsies, that, about eighteen years since, was
pressed on board that d--d fellow Pritchard's sloop-of-war. It was
he came off and gave us warning that the Shark was coming round
upon us the day Kennedy was done; and he told us how Kennedy had
given the information. The gipsies and Kennedy had some quarrel
besides. This Gab went to the East Indies in the same ship with
your younker, and, sapperment! knew him well, though the other did
not remember him. Gab kept out of his eye though, as he had served
the States against England, and was a deserter to boot; and he
sent us word directly, that we might know of his being here,
though it does not concern us a rope's end.'

'So, then, really, and in sober earnest, he is actually in this
country, Hatteraick, between friend and friend?' asked Glossin,
seriously.

'Wetter and donner, yaw! What do you take me for?'

'For a bloodthirsty, fearless miscreant!' thought Glossin
internally; but said aloud, 'And which of your people was it that
shot young Hazlewood?'

'Sturmwetter!' said the Captain, 'do ye think we were mad? none of
US, man. Gott! the country was too hot for the trade already with
that d-d frolic of Brown's, attacking what you call Woodbourne
House.'

'Why, I am told,' said Glossin, 'it was Brown who shot Hazlewood?'

'Not our lieutenant, I promise you; for he was laid six feet deep
at Derncleugh the day before the thing happened. Tausend deyvils,
man! do ye think that he could rise out of the earth to shoot
another man?'

A light here began to break upon Glossin's confusion of ideas.
'Did you not say that the younker, as you call him, goes by the
name of Brown?'

'Of Brown? yaw; Vanbeest Brown. Old Vanbeest Brown, of our
Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, gave him his own name, he did.'

'Then,' said Glossin, rubbing his hands, 'it is he, by Heaven, who
has committed this crime!'

'And what have we to do with that?' demanded Hatteraick.

Glossin paused, and, fertile in expedients, hastily ran over his
project in his own mind, and then drew near the smuggler with a
confidential air. 'You know, my dear Hatteraick, it is our
principal business to get rid of this young man?'

'Umph!' answered Dirk Hatteraick.

'Not,' continued Glossin--'not that I would wish any personal harm
to him--if--if--if we can do without. Now, he is liable to be
seized upon by justice, both as bearing the same name with your
lieutenant, who was engaged in that affair at Woodbourne, and for
firing at young Hazlewood with intent to kill or wound.'

'Ay, ay,' said Dirk Hatteraick; 'but what good will that do you?
He'll be loose again as soon as he shows himself to carry other
colours.'

'True, my dear Dirk; well noticed, my friend Hatteraick! But there
is ground enough for a temporary imprisonment till he fetch his
proofs from England or elsewhere, my good friend. I understand the
law, Captain Hatteraick, and I'll take it upon me, simple Gilbert
Glossin of Ellangowan, justice of peace for the county of---, to
refuse his bail, if he should offer the best in the country, until
he is brought up for a second examination; now where d'ye think
I'll incarcerate him?'

'Hagel and wetter! what do I care?'

'Stay, my friend; you do care a great deal. Do you know your goods
that were seized and carried to Woodbourne are now lying in the
custom-house at Portanferry? (a small fishing-town). Now I will
commit this younker--'

'When you have caught him.'

'Ay, ay, when I have caught him; I shall not be long about that. I
will commit him to the workhouse, or bridewell, which you know is
beside the custom-house.'

'Yaw, the rasp-house; I know it very well.'

'I will take care that the redcoats are dispersed through the
country; you land at night with the crew of your lugger, receive
your own goods, and carry the younker Brown with you back to
Flushing. Won't that do?'

'Ay, carry him to Flushing,' said the Captain, 'or--to America?'

'Ay, ay, my friend.'

'Or--to Jericho?'

'Psha! Wherever you have a mind.'

'Ay, or--pitch him overboard?'

'Nay, I advise no violence.'

'Nein, nein; you leave that to me. Sturmwetter! I know you of old.
But, hark ye, what am I, Dirk Hatteraick, to be the better of
this?'

'Why, is it not your interest as well as mine?' said Glossin;
'besides, I set you free this morning.'

'YOU set me free! Donner and deyvil! I set myself free. Besides,
it was all in the way of your profession, and happened a long time
ago, ha, ha, ha!'

'Pshaw! pshaw! don't let us jest; I am not against making a
handsome compliment; but it's your affair as well as mine.'

'What do you talk of my affair? is it not you that keep the
younker's whole estate from him? Dirk Hatteraick never touched a
stiver of his rents.'

'Hush! hush! I tell you it shall be a joint business.'

'Why, will ye give me half the kitt?'

'What, half the estate? D'ye mean we should set up house together
at Ellangowan, and take the barony ridge about?'

'Sturmwetter, no! but you might give me half the value--half the
gelt. Live with you? nein. I would have a lusthaus of mine own on
the Middleburgh dyke, and a blumengarten like a burgomaster's.'

'Ay, and a wooden lion at the door, and a painted sentinel in the
garden, with a pipe in his mouth! But, hark ye, Hatteraick, what
will all the tulips and flower-gardens and pleasure-houses in the
Netherlands do for you if you are hanged here in Scotland?'

Hatteraick's countenance fell. 'Der deyvil! hanged!'

'Ay, hanged, mein Herr Captain. The devil can scarce save Dirk
Hatteraick from being hanged for a murderer and kidnapper if the
younker of Ellangowan should settle in this country, and if the
gallant Captain chances to be caught here reestablishing his fair
trade! And I won't say but, as peace is now so much talked of,
their High Mightinesses may not hand him over to oblige their new
allies, even if he remained in faderland.'

'Poz hagel, blitzen, and donner! I--I doubt you say true.'

'Not,' said Glossin, perceiving he had made the desired
impression, 'not that I am against being civil'; and he slid into
Hatteraick's passive hand a bank-note of some value.

'Is this all?' said the smuggler. 'You had the price of half a
cargo for winking at our job, and made us do your business too.'

' But, my good friend, you forget: In this case you will recover
all your own goods.'

'Ay, at the risk of all our own necks; we could do that without
you.'

'I doubt that, Captain Hatteraick,' said Glossin, drily;' because
you would probably find a-'dozen'redcoats at the custom-house,
whom it must be my business, if we agree about this matter, to
have removed. Come, come, I will be as liberal as I can, but you
should have a conscience.'

'Now strafe mich der deyfel! this provokes me more than all the
rest! You rob and you murder, and you want me to rob and murder,
and play the silver-cooper, or kidnapper, as you call it, a dozen
times over, and then, hagel and windsturm! you speak to me of
conscience! Can you think of no fairer way of getting rid of this
unlucky lad?'

'No, mein Herr; but as I commit him to your charge-'

'To my charge! to the charge of steel and gunpowder! and--well, if
it must be, it must; but you have a tolerably good guess what's
like to come of it.'

'O, my dear friend, I trust no degree of severity will be
necessary,' replied Glossin.

'Severity!' said the fellow, with a kind of groan, 'I wish you had
had my dreams when I first came to this dog-hole, and tried to
sleep among the dry seaweed. First, there was that d-d fellow
there, with his broken back, sprawling as he did when I hurled the
rock over a-top on him, ha, ha! You would have sworn he was lying
on the floor where you stand, wriggling like a crushed frog, and
then--'

'Nay, my friend,' said Glossin, interrupting him, 'what signifies
going over this nonsense? If you are turned chicken-hearted, why,
the game's up, that's all; the game's up with us both.'

'Chicken-hearted? no. I have not lived so long upon the account to
start at last, neither for devil nor Dutchman.'

'Well, then, take another schnaps; the cold's at your heart still.
And now tell me, are any of your old crew with you?'

'Nein; all dead, shot, hanged, drowned, and damned. Brown was the
last. All dead but Gipsy Gab, and he would go off the country for
a spill of money; or he'll be quiet for his own sake; or old Meg,
his aunt, will keep him quiet for hers.'

'Which Meg?'

'Meg Merrilies, the old devil's limb of a gipsy witch.'

'Is she still alive?'

'Yaw.'

'And in this country?'

'And in this country. She was at the Kaim of Derncleugh, at
Vanbeest Brown's last wake, as they call it, the other night, with
two of my people, and some of her own blasted gipsies.'

'That's another breaker ahead, Captain! Will she not squeak, think
ye?'

'Not she! she won't start; she swore by the salmon, [Footnote: The
great and invoidable oath of the strolling tribes.] if we did the
kinchin no harm, she would never tell how the gauger got it. Why,
man, though I gave her a wipe with my hanger in the heat of the
matter, and cut her arm, and though she was so long after in
trouble about it up at your borough-town there, der deyvil! old
Meg was as true as steel.'

'Why, that's true, as you say,' replied Glossin. 'And yet if she
could be carried over to Zealand, or Hamburgh, or--or--anywhere
else, you know, it were as well.'

Hatteraick jumped upright upon his feet, and looked at Glossin
from head to heel. 'I don't see the goat's foot,' he said, 'and
yet he must be the very deyvil! But Meg Merrilies is closer yet
with the kobold than you are; ay, and I had never such weather as
after having drawn her blood. Nein, nein, I 'll meddle with her no
more; she's a witch of the fiend, a real deyvil's kind,--but
that's her affair. Donner and wetter! I'll neither make nor
meddle; that's her work. But for the rest--why, if I thought the
trade would not suffer, I would soon rid you of the younker, if
you send me word when he's under embargo.'

In brief and under tones the two worthy associates concerted their
enterprise, and agreed at which of his haunts Hatteraick should be
heard of. The stay of his lugger on the coast was not difficult,
as there were no king's vessels there at the time.




CHAPTER XXXV

     You are one of those that will not serve God if the devil
     bids you. Because we come to do you service, you think we are
     ruffians.

          --Othello.


When Glossin returned home he found, among other letters and
papers sent to him, one of considerable importance. It was signed
by Mr. Protocol, an attorney in Edinburgh, and, addressing him as
the agent for Godfrey Bertram, Esq., late of Ellangowan, and his
representatives, acquainted him with the sudden death of Mrs.
Margaret Bertram of Singleside, requesting him to inform his
clients thereof, in case they should judge it proper to have any
person present for their interest at opening the repositories of
the deceased. Mr. Glossin perceived at once that the letter-writer
was unacquainted with the breach which had taken place between him
and his late patron. The estate of the deceased lady should by
rights, as he well knew, descend to Lucy Bertram; but it was a
thousand to one that the caprice of the old lady might have
altered its destination. After running over contingencies and
probabilities in his fertile mind, to ascertain what sort of
personal advantage might accrue to him from this incident, he
could not perceive any mode of availing himself of it, except in
so far as it might go to assist his plan of recovering, or rather
creating, a character, the want of which he had already
experienced, and was likely to feel yet more deeply. 'I must place
myself,' he thought, 'on strong ground, that, if anything goes
wrong with Dirk Hatteraick's project, I may have prepossessions in
my favour at least.' Besides, to do Glossin justice, bad as he
was, he might feel some desire to compensate to Miss Bertram in a
small degree, and in a case in which his own interest did not
interfere with hers, the infinite mischief which he had occasioned
to her family. He therefore resolved early the next morning to
ride over to Woodbourne.