CHAPTER V.

BEATRIX GILRUTH.

Her heart was full Of passions which had found no natural scope. She hated men because they loved not her, And hated women because they were beloved, And thus in wrath, in hatred and despair, She tempted hell.---- THE CURSE OF KEHAMA.

Clermistonlee walked hurriedly forward, with his mantle rolled about him, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his sword-hilt ready at hand, for his amorous quarrels and politics had, through life, created him innumerable enemies. He muttered as he went, and his cheek flushed at times, though his nether lip was pale as marble, and under the broad shadow of his Spanish beaver his fierce dark eyes burned like two sparks of fire.

Inflamed by wine and the beauty of Lilian, who had never appeared so enchanting as in her ball-dress, he had determined that very night to make another desperate attempt to obtain possession of her person, at whatever ultimate danger and odium. It was curious how strongly the sentiments of pride, avarice, and revenge, mingled with his love-musings;--his matchless pride was fired by the idea of the woman he loved being given to another--he had revenge to be gratified because, with ill-disguised loathing, she had shrunk from his addresses, and avarice crowned all, as he doubted not if by fair means or foul he obtained her hand, the entail of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes would soon become a dead letter. In effect, it was so already. But once a prisoner in his power, even for a single night, he knew that shame and her injured reputation would compel her to become his wife.

Full of these thoughts, which crowded and chased each other in rapid succession through his unsettled brain, he strode forward at a quick pace, impatient for the triumphant consummation of his projects. The city was silent and dark, for the moon had now become obscured, and there were no lamps to light the narrow ways through which he hurried. In the High Street a few oil lanterns had been suspended about four years before by the Provost, Sir George Drummond, of Milnab, and these at long intervals shed a pale and sickly light; but all the numerous alleys diverging from this great thoroughfare were still involved in Cimmerian darkness. Deserted as they were, the cogitations of Clermistonlee were often interrupted by scraps of conversation from belated passengers, or stair-head gossips, who were making all secure for the night, and maintained at the top of their voices a colloquy with their neighbours opposite.

"Ken ye cummer, at what hour the morn that vile witch is to be worrit?" screamed one.

"When the Tron Kirk bell rings aucht. My Lord Provost, the Baillies and the Captain of the Guard are to eat the deid-chack at Hughie Blair's twa hours thereafter. Fie upon the greedy gleds that meet to revel and roister oure a puir sinner's departure, and to drink Gascony and Rhenish like spring water, though they be eight-pence the quart, and at this time when a puir man's four hours' draught----"

"But gif a' be true, nane hae sae well deservit bridle and faggot, since that monster o' iniquity, Weir, was burnt wi' his staff, whilk my ain faither, as honest a body as ever wore the blue ribbon at his lug, often met stoting down the Bow, for a plack's worth o' snuff for its hellicate master. And mair, cummer----"

But Clermistonlee hurried on, and passing the Porte of the Potter's Row, hurried down the steep College Wynd, where picturesque edifices of vast strength and unknown antiquity towered up on each side of the way, and excluded the pale light of the stars. A single ray from a window revealed the rich dresses of two gentlemen who were slowly ascending.

"I insist upon giving you a Kelso convoy, my Lord," said one.

"A devil of a dark night, Laird, especially for a summer one--but I vow to ye, Libberton, that my Lord Perth's claret has cast a glamour oure me."

"Hold up, Balcarris, or ye'll measure your length in the gutter; and that would be a braw place for the Lord High Treasurer to be found in the morning. Thank God, the gate is no a broad ane. I mind when Cromwell, that's now roasting in a pretty hot place--ahoa! who goes there? Draw, Balcarris--it's some spy o' the States-General--a keeper o' conventicles contrary to proclamation. Stand, ye deil's buckie--for King or Covenant?"

"For the King!" cried Clermistonlee; and, irritated by their stopping the narrow way, he unceremoniously tumbled the inebriated laird of Libberton to the right and the Treasurer to the left, as he broke past and hurried into the Cowgate (the ancient _comunis via_), then the residence of aristocratic exclusives. An old author,* who wrote in the sixteenth century, informs us "that the nobility and chief senators of the city dwell in the Cowgate--_via vaccarum in qua habitant patricii et senatores urbis;_" and that "the palaces of the chief men of the nation are also there; that none of the houses are mean or vulgar, but, on the contrary, all magnificent--_sed omnia magnified_."

* Munster Cosmograph, p, 52.

The troubles of Clermistonlee were not yet over. On issuing into the High Street a crowd of tipsy roisterers, young bucks, students, and Life Guards, burst out of Hugh Blair's tavern, with shouts of laughter and drawn swords, ripe for mischief. They beat back the axes of the watch, and joining hands in one long line, danced down the broad street, vociferously chaunting the merry old ditty--

"Now let us drinke, Till we nod and winke, Even as good fellows should do; We shall not misse To have the blisse Good wine doth bring men to!"

"Hold fast, my brethren," cried one whom his lordship recognised to be the Reverend Mr. Joram, the famous cavalier chaplain of Dunbarton's Foot. "Hold fast--and every lass we meet must kiss us all from right to left--ay, d--me! or drink a pint of hot sack at one gulp."

"Bravo!" shouted the rest. "Once, twice, thrice, and away!"--and onward they came, hand in hand, dancing and singing with stentorian voices that made the whole street ring. Clermistonlee drew his rapier, and shrunk under the carved arches of those stone arcades which supported the houses on both sides of the way; and, without perceiving him, this crowd of merry fellows passed on to beat the watch and terrify the sleepy denizens of other quarters. Glad of his escape--for he had confidently expected a dangerous brawl--Clermistonlee hurried down Mary King's Close.

Debauched and roué as he was, he felt an involuntary shudder on descending into the gloomy precincts of that deserted street, a locality shunned by all since the plague had swept off its entire inhabitants. For a hundred years its houses remained closed, and gradually it became a place of mystery and horror, the abode of a thousand spectres and nameless terrors. Superstition peopled it with inhabitants, whom all feared, and none cared to succeed.

Those who had been foolhardy enough to peep through the windows after nightfall, saw within the spectres of the long-departed denizens engaged in their wonted occupations--headless forms danced through the moonlit apartments, and on one occasion a godly minister and two pious elders were scared out of their senses, by the terrible vision of a raw head and blood-dripping arm, which protruded from the wall in this terrible street, and flourished a sword above their heads, and many other terrors which are duly chronicled in that old calender of diablerie, _Satan's Invisible World_.

Scarcely a foot's space from his elbows on either hand, the tall mansions rose up to a great height, empty, dark, and desolate, with their iron-barred and shadowy windows decaying and rattling in the gusts that swept through the mouldering chambers. Who Mary King was, is now unknown; but though the alley is roofless and ruined, with weeds, wallflowers, and grass, and even little trees, flourishing luxuriantly among the falling walls, her name may still be seen painted on the street corner. Clermistonlee was not without a strong share of the superstition incident to the time and country, and he certainly quickened his pace as he turned down the steep alley towards the dark loch, the waters of which rippled in little wavelets against the bank, then named Warriston Brae. The eastern sluice was shut, for there was a whisper abroad of coming strife, in which the city might require all the strength of its fortifications; and thus in a few weeks the loch had risen many feet above its usual margin. The ferry boat was chained to a stake, against which it jarred heavily, as the west wind swept over the darkened water.

It was down this steep bank that the Earl of Arran and his son rushed, after being defeated in their famous feudal battle in the High Street; and finding a collier's horse at the edge of the loch, leaped upon its back, and though both were sheathed in complete armour, forced it to swim them over to the opposite bank. And down the same place, the wild young master of Gray dragged the fair mistress Carnegie, whom, sword in hand, he had torn from her fathers house, and boated over the loch, attended by twelve men-at-arms.

Lustily the impatient Lord thundered at the door of the ferryman's cottage; but it was long ere the unwilling Charon of the passage attended his summons.

"Hallo, boatmen! Harkee, fellow, truss your points and come forth," he cried in his usual overbearing manner. All cavaliers of the time spoke thus towards inferiors; but Clermistonlee carried it to an outrageous extent. "Come forth, rascal, or I will chastise thee so tremendously, that thou wilt never pull paddle again, in this world at least."

"Awa, ye impudent limmer, awa!" replied a voice from the profundity of a box-bed. "Is that the way to ding at a douce man's yett? Awa, ye misleared loon, or I tak' my dag frae the brace, and send a bullet through your cracked harnpan."

A terrible oath burst from Clermistonlee, for he was frenzied by wine, passion, and delay. "Insolent runnion! attend me, or by ---- I will beat down the door, and twist thy whaisling hause! Beware thee, fool," he added in a low tone; "I am the Lord Clermistonlee!"

On hearing that terrible name the affrighted boatman sprang from bed; an exclamation of fear and much anxious whispering followed. The door was immediately opened by a lean and withered old man, whose face was a mass of wrinkles. Scarcely daring to raise his grey twinkling eyes, he stood lamp in hand, cringing and bowing his bald head with the most abject humility before Clermistonlee, who cut short his muttered apologies by saying,

"Unmoor, dyvour loon, and pull me across the loch, if you would be spared the beating I owe you."

The old ferryman hurriedly dragged his leather galligaskins over his hodden grey breeches, donned his skyblue coat and broad bonnet, and bowing at every step of the way, though inwardly cursing the summons from his cosy nest and gudewife's side, led the proud Baron towards the little boat, for the use of which he paid a yearly rental to the city. They stepped on board; he unlocked the mooring-chain and shoved off.

Fed by the springs of the castle-rock and the rivulets that gurgled down its northern bank, the loch had of late become considerably swollen, and now rose high upon the bastions of the Well-house-tower. It was without current, and, save the ripple raised by the soft west wind, was still and motionless as a lake of ink.

Clermistonlee, with his rocquelaure rolled around him, and his broad beaver with its heavy plumage shading his face, lounged silently in the stern, watching the gigantic features of the city as they rose in sable outline behind him, towering up from the lake like a vast array of castles, or a barrier of splintered rock, a forest of gables and chimnies, whose summits shot upwards in a thousand fantastic shapes.

To the westward, from a cliff of perpendicular rock, three hundred feet in height, rose the towers of the castle. Beneath the gloomy shadow of this basaltic mass the loch vanished away into obscurity; but from under its impending brow there gleamed a light that tremulously shed one long red ray across the dark bosom of the water. It shone from the guard-fire in the Well-house-tower. Save the measured dash of the oars, and the creaking of the boat, all was so still that Clermistonlee heard the pulsations of his own evil heart.

Suddenly the moon gushed forth a glorious blaze of light between the flying clouds. Magnificent was the effect of that silver splendour, and wondrous was the beauty it lent to that romantic scene. High over the jagged outline of the tall city it streamed aslant, and its thousand points and pinnacles became tipped with instant light. The great stone turrets, the massive towers and angular bastions of the Castle and its perpendicular cliffs were thrown forward, some in silver light, while others remained in sombre shadow. To its base the still loch rolled like a silver mirror, while the dewy alders, the waving osiers and bending willows that fringed its northern bank, shone like fairy trees of gleaming crystal.

Even the old boatman paused for a moment and looked around him. City, rock, wood, and water, all shone in the magnificent moonlight, but once more the gathering vapours obscured the shining source, and the whole faded like a vision. The varied masses of the city and its stupendous fortress sank again into darkness, and once more the sheet of water rolled to their base a black and foetid lake. At that moment the boat grounded, the passenger sprang ashore, and addressed the boatmen in his usual style:--

"Peril of thy life, knave, tarry till my return, or thy fee will contain more cudgel-blows than bonnet-pieces."

"Yes, my Lord, yes," stammered the poor man, whose teeth chattered with cold and fear: meanwhile his imperious employer sprang up the bank, and hurried on, till, reaching the Lang Dykes, a road which led westward, and which he traversed until he gained the Kirk-brae-head, where on one hand the road branched off towards the castle rock, and on the other plunged down between thick copsewood towards the secluded village of the Dean, which lay at the bottom of a deep dell overhung by the richest foliage.

By the margin of the Loch, and surrounded by an ample churchyard, where the long grass waved and the yew-trees cast their solemn shadows on many an ancient grave, where the moss-grown headstones, half sunk in earth and obliterated by time, marked the resting-place of the dead of other days, the old cross kirk of St. Cuthbert reared up its dark façade with a gloomy square tower and pointed spire surmounting its nave and transept. There slept all the ancestors of Clermistonlee; he cast but a glance at its vast outline and hurried on. The occasional stars alone gleamed through its mullioned windows, for the tapers of the midnight votary had long since been quenched on the altars of Cuthbert and St. Anne the mother of the Virgin.

Under a mouldering gateway, where two stone wyverns with forked tails and outspread wings, reared up on their mossy columns, Clermistonlee paused for a moment--for a host of strange fancies and burning thoughts, the memories of other days, crowded fast upon his mind as he surveyed the long gloomy vista beyond.

It led to his mansion of Drumsheugh.

The avenue was long and dark; thick oaks and beeches, clothed with the most luxuriant foliage of summer, formed a leafy arcade, which seemed dark and impervious as if hewn through the bowels of a mountain.

"Long, long it is," thought he, "since the hoof of the trooper's horse, or the blast of the hunter's horn, the voice of mirth, or the merry voice of a woman awoke these lonely echoes. Alison--Alison--pshaw! I am another man now," he added aloud, and endeavoured to whistle a fashionable couranto, as he walked up the grass-grown avenue, at a pace which soon brought him to the door of the house, where again he made a brief pause.

The mansion was a high and narrow edifice, built on the very verge of a cliff overhanging the water of Leith, that struggled through a deep and wooded gorge a hundred feet below, and the rock was so abrupt that a plumb-line could have reached without impediment from one of the turrets to the rocky bed of the river.

The house had the usual Scottish gablets, turrets at the angles and machecoulis between. Its windows were all thickly barred, dark, silent, and in many places broken. The vanes creaked mournfully in concert with the rooks and the wind that sighed through the ancient oaks. All else was silent as the grave. There came no sound from the mansion; none from the empty stalls of the stable court, and none from the tenantless perches of the Falconry.

On the door-lintel, notwithstanding the darkness, Clermistonlee could decypher _I fear God onlye_, 1506, a legend placed there by his pious forefathers to exclude witches and evil spirits, on whom it was supposed that the name of the Deity would act as a spell of potence. The present Lord was as evil a spirit as the city contained; but the legend neither affected him or his purpose, and he furiously tirled at the risp and kicked at the door till the whole house rang to the noise. A ray of light streamed through the key-hole, and vizzying slit of the door, on the green leaves and dewy grass, and the approach of a slip-shod female was heard.

"Who knocks so late?" asked a shrill voice. "A proper hour and a pleasant to disturb folk. Marry, Deil stick the visitor," she added, withdrawing the ponderous bolts, and opening the door.

"As of old, good Beatrix, you are still without fear," said Clermistonlee.

"Why? because I am without hope," she rejoined in a fierce tone. "Fear! what should I fear? Did I not know it was thee? But what fool's errand or knavish purpose brings thee here now?"

"Silence, Mistress Malapert!"

There was a momentary pause, and a terrible glance--one at least of intense expression passed between these two. A sentence will explain it.

When Clermistonlee was but a youth, Beatrix though ten years his senior, was among the first of his loves, and by her own futile endeavours to ensnare the heir of a powerful Baron, became one of the first victims of his gallantry; she was then a beautiful and artful woman; but gradually her beauty faded, her arts failed, and her spirits sank: abandoned by her friends, and despised by her betrayer, she had long, long since lost sight of every hope of marriage, or of regaining an honourable position in life, and now she had sunk so low as to be a mere abject dependant, a vile panderer to the amours of her early lover--an entrapper of others; and when the old mansion was abandoned to the crows and spiders, she had remained there, a half-forgotten pensioner on his bounty--a creature only to be remembered when her vile services were required. Now she was old, wrinkled, and hideous; but Clermistonlee in his fortieth year seemed as gay and as young, as in the days when first he pressed her to his bosom. Beatrix was now fifty!

These ten years made a world of difference between them.

He felt all her eagle glance conveyed, but uttering a very cavalier-like malediction, strode along the passage or ambulatory with his bright spurs clanking, and his white plumes waving as gallantly as they had done twenty years before. How different was the aspect of Beatrix! Crime, mental misery, and a life of disease and dissipation made her seem many years older than she was. She stooped much at times, and was poorly clad in garments that like herself had seen better days. Her head was covered by a dirty long-eared linen cap, beneath which a few grizzled hairs escaped to wander over a face that, like her hands and neck, had by the use of lotions and essences become a mass of saffron wrinkles. Her eyes were grey, hollow, keen, and unpleasant in expression; her lips thin and colourless, and grey hairs were appearing on her chin.

"Zounds!" thought Clermistonlee, as he loathingly gazed upon her; "can this old kite be the creature I once loved?"

By the course of time and desertion, the house seemed as much dilapidated as its occupant; but an air of desolate grandeur pervaded its lofty chambers and echoing corridors. Masses of the frescoed ceiling had in many places fallen down; in others the wainscoting had given way, revealing the rough masonry behind. The once gaudy tapestry hung mouldering on its tenter-hooks, and a dreary air of dusky dampness was everywhere apparent. A thousand spiders spun their nets undisturbed across the unopened windows and unentered doorways; and through the rattling casements the hurrying clouds were seen afar off chasing each other in masses across the pale-faced moon and paler stars, that twinkled through the tossing trees.

Traversing an ambulatory, on the discolored walls of which old pictures and older trophies hung decaying, Clermistonlee was about to enter the hall; but its vast space rang so hollowly to his tread, and its gloom so much resembled that of a church at midnight, that he drew back overpowered by some superstitious feeling, and entered a small apartment which adjoined it, and had in earlier days been named the Lady's Bower.

A fire burned cheerily on the hearth; the furniture and the tapestry were fresh; the gilding and scarlet marquise of the high-backed chairs unfaded; a large mirror gleamed over the carved buffet, which two grotesque imps sustained on their heads; and several old portraits in the warm glow looked complacently out of their round oak frames.

"And 'tis here you have made your lair!" said Clermistonlee, throwing himself into a chair.

"Yea: it was her boudoir--her bower. Hast thou forgotten that too?" responded the woman, setting down her lamp, and surveying him with a malicious eye.

"Well! old dame, and what recks it thee?" asked the Lord, impatiently. "Art alone--of course--eh?"

"Alone!" reiterated the woman, bitterly--"when am I ever otherwise? Alone--and why! Because I am old and hideous now. Yet there was a time when it was otherwise. Yea--I am ever alone, save when the knave and the fool (on whose scanty bounty I am too often dependant), prompted by the devil, come hither to visit me."

"Dependant? have I not given thee a fee of four hundred pounds Scots per year, and what the devil more?"

"Between your own necessities and your butler's villany, not a plack of it have I seen since Lammas-tide."

"This shall be seen to. Come, come, Beatrix, my merry old lass, thou art as petulant as when I led you into this chamber twenty years ago. You want gold, I know; but, faith! I have devilish little of that." He spread a few French crowns on the table.

"'Tis but white money," said the hag, her eyes sparkling as, with clutching hands, she swept the coins into her lap.

"Greedy Gled! if thou art faithful, the gold will come in bushels anon."

"On what ill errand come ye now? Is there any one to be poisoned--hah! any poor flower to be torn from its stem, and trod under foot when its perfume is gone?"

"Harkee! Lucky Gilruth," said the Lord, striking his clenched hand on the table; "thou knowest me well, I think."

"O would to Heaven I had never, never known thee!" said Beatrix, with a tearless sob. "I know little of thee that is good."

"What know ye that is bad?"

She gave him a glance of scorn and fear.

"Say forth, old Barebones--I care not. I am one----"

"Who never spared a man in his hatred or a woman in his lust! A renegade covenanter!--a relentless persecutor of the pious and the holy!--a perjured lover!--a faithless husband!--a false friend!--one to whom Lord Solis of old, and the Marquis de Laval, were as saints in comparison. Randal Clermont, thou art a fiend in the form of a man!"

"With a heigh lillilu and a how lo lan! ha! ha!" laughed Clermistonlee, shaking back his feathers and long cavalier locks, while regarding Beatrix with a sardonic glance, for her words stung him deeply. "And I know thee for one whom the tar-barrels and thumb-screws await, if ye prove false to me. Ay, woman, I doubt not my learned gossip Mersington would soon find the devil's mark on that poor hide of thine. But I came to arrange, not to quarrel with thee--ha! ha! I want my fortune read."

Beatrix gave him a long steady glance; her bleared eyes were glaring with insanity, and a certain degree of intoxication; but she quailed before the dark basilisk eye of her former lover, for the ferocity of her expression relaxed, and she burst into a horrid laugh.

"Thy fortune? ho! ho! I tell thee, Randal, that the blade is forged and tempered that will drink thy heart's blood!"

"Gadzooks! likely enough; for I do not expect to die in bed," replied Clermistonlee, calmly, yet nevertheless exasperated by her reply, as he knew from old experience the value of her prophecies. "But I trifle. I know, good Beatrix, you can be faithful, and will serve me as of old. Here is my hand--shall I be fortunate in love?"

"How often these twenty years hath that question been asked of me; and where now are those anent whom ye asked it? Fortunate? I doubt not ye will be more so than she whose portrait is there;" and suddenly withdrawing a veil from a panel, she displayed the portrait of a pale young lady, in a rich dress and high ruff. Her features were soft and beautiful; her hair fair and in great profusion; and her parted lips appeared to smile with inexpressible sweetness. Clermistonlee turned pale, and averted his face, for the portrait seemed full of life and expression.

"Cover it!" said he, in a husky voice; "Cover it!--dost hear me? or must I blow the panel to pieces with my pistols, that these upbraiding eyes may look on me no more?"

"Wretch--ye dare not!" said Beatrix, scornfully, while gazing with something like pity on the fair face the pencil of Vandyke had traced in other times. "Yes, Lady Alison, I hated thee in life, but in death I can respect thee. Oh! Randal, she shared thy wedded love; but was it more fortunate than mine? It was--it was; for she is at rest in her grave, while I still linger here."

"Pity you are not there too! Enough! I am tired of these eternal complaints; and were ye fair as Venus----but look to my hand--what say its lines to-night?"

In her long, lean, and wrinkled fingers she took his ungloved hand, and he half withdrew it, with ill-concealed disgust.

"Ha!" screamed Beatrix, in a terrible voice; "you shrink from my touch now! Oh! Randal, Randal!" she added, in a tone of intense bitterness, "to kiss these faded hands was once a boon of love to thee. Oh! Randal Clermont, have you so quite forgotten these days as to feel no pity for the being you once loved so well?"

"Hum!" muttered the Lord, impatiently.

"How different was I then from what I am now!" she exclaimed, pressing her hands upon her breast, as if it would burst.

"The deuce!" Clermistonlee whistled.

"Yes, base and ungrateful! the hand that now ye loathe was then white as the new fallen snow, and these grey locks were like the dewy wing of the raven. My eyes could then look love to thine, that flashed with the youth, the joy, and the brightness of twenty summers. Who that saw us then, would dream that we are the same? I am no longer young, no longer lovely, and thou--art still a man."

"Crush me if this is not ridiculous! art nearly done, old lady?"

"No--there is a rival in thy way!"

"S'Death, I know that too well. 'Tis that spawn of the Covenant, young Fenton of Dunbarton's Foot. But I am still trifling. Listen, Beldame, and lay my words to heart. A brisk young damsel will be here in an hour hence. See that the turret that overhangs the rocks is prepared for her reception, for I swear by all that is holy! she shall never leave this roof until she is mine--yea, as much as----"

"As I once was, and many more have been, hah!"

Clermistonlee laughed loudly. "I have arled thee, Beatrix, and woe if thou failest or playest me false, for the hemp is twisted that shall strangle, and the faggots oiled that shall consume thee. Yet more. The eyes of the Council have long been on thee for suspected sorcery, and dealing in love potions and medicinal charms--the red hand of Rosehaugh is over thee, wretched Beatrix, and ere long thou mayest know the full value of the protection I afford thee. Enough! we know each other, I think."

"Not quite," replied Beatrix, with an air that startled her proud tormentor: "Vain fool! ye know not that by a word I could crush thee to nothing--yea, to the dust beneath my feet. Randal Clermont, I could reveal that, would smite thee like the scorching lightning. But no! my lips shall remain sealed, until----"

"When?"

"When the measure of my wrongs and my vengeance _is full_!"

"Pshaw! thou art but a woman--a fool," replied Clermistonlee, jerking on his buff gloves carelessly, but feeling somewhat surprised by her manner.

"When will this new victim be here?" asked Beatrix, with a ghastly grin.

"I have said in an hour, if all goes well. Prepare the old turret for her--that cage hath held a wilder bird ere now; nay, nay, none of that kind of work," said he, changing colour as Beatrix took a poniard from the mantelpiece; "nothing of that sort will be required--once in a life-time--tush! I will be back anon--till then, adieu." He hurried away with evident confusion, and rushing down the avenue without looking once behind him, leaped into the boat and was pulled over to the city.

"Will your Lordship be crossing the water again this nicht?" asked the boatman, with the utmost humility.

"That is as may be--what recks it to such as thee, fellow?" rejoined the passenger haughtily, as he tossed a few coins into the extended bonnet of the ferryman, sprang up Mary King's Close, and hurried towards Bristo.