the two doors being
successively locked left the prisoner in total darkness.

CHAPTER XIII.

Whatever stranger visits here,
We pity his sad case,
Unless to worship he draw near
The King of Kings--his Grace.
--BURNS'S EPIGRAM ON A VISIT TO INVERARY.

The Captain, finding himself deprived of light in the manner we have
described, and placed in a very uncertain situation, proceeded to
descend the narrow and broken stair with all the caution in his power,
hoping that he might find at the bottom some place to repose himself.
But with all his care he could not finally avoid making a false step,
which brought him down the four or five last steps too hastily to
preserve his equilibrium. At the bottom he stumbled over a bundle of
something soft, which stirred and uttered a groan, so deranging the
Captain's descent, that he floundered forward, and finally fell upon his
hands and knees on the floor of a damp and stone-paved dungeon.

When Dalgetty had recovered, his first demand was to know over whom he
had stumbled.

"He was a man a month since," answered a hollow and broken voice.

"And what is he now, then," said Dalgetty, "that he thinks it fitting
to lie upon the lowest step of the stairs, and clew'd up like a hurchin,
that honourable cavaliers, who chance to be in trouble, may break their
noses over him?"

"What is he now?" replied the same voice; "he is a wretched trunk,
from which the boughs have one by one been lopped away, and which cares
little how soon it is torn up and hewed into billets for the furnace."

"Friend," said Dalgetty, "I am sorry for you; but PATIENZA, as the
Spaniard says. If you had but been as quiet as a log, as you call
yourself, I should have saved some excoriations on my hands and knees."

"You are a soldier," replied his fellow-prisoner; "do you complain on
account of a fall for which a boy would not bemoan himself?"

"A soldier?" said the Captain; "and how do you know, in this cursed dark
cavern, that I am a soldier?"

"I heard your armour clash as you fell," replied the prisoner, "and now
I see it glimmer. When you have remained as long as I in this darkness,
your eyes will distinguish the smallest eft that crawls on the floor."

"I had rather the devil picked them out!" said Dalgetty; "if this be the
case, I shall wish for a short turn of the rope, a soldier's prayer, and
a leap from a ladder. But what sort of provant have you got here--what
food,