of Mrs. Logan, who sat pining and longing for the
relation that follows.

"Now I know, Mrs. Logan, that you are expecting a detail of the
circumstances relating to the death of Mr. George Colwan; and, in
gratitude for your unbounded generosity and disinterestedness, I will
tell you all that I know, although, for causes that will appear obvious
to you, I had determined never in life to divulge one circumstance of
it. I can tell you, however, that you will be disappointed, for it was
not the gentleman who was accused, found guilty, and would have
suffered the utmost penalty of the law had he not made his escape. It
was not he, I say, who slew your young master, nor had he any hand in
it."

"I never thought he had. But, pray, how do you come to know this?"

"You shall hear. I had been abandoned in York by an artful and
consummate fiend; and found guilty of being art and part concerned in
the most heinous atrocities, and, in his place, suffered what I yet
shudder to think of I was banished the county, begged my way with my
poor outcast child up to Edinburgh, and was there obliged, for the
second time in my life, to betake myself to the most degrading of all
means to support two wretched lives. I hired a dress, and betook me,
shivering, to the High Street, too well aware that my form and
appearance would soon draw me suitors enow at that throng and
intemperate time of the Parliament. On my very first stepping out to
the street, a party of young gentlemen was passing. I heard by the
noise they made, and the tenor of their speech, that they were more
then mellow, and so I resolved to keep near them, in order, if
possible, to make some of them my prey. But, just as one of them began
to eye me, I was rudely thrust into a narrow close by one of the
guardsmen. I had heard to what house the party was bound, for the men
were talking exceedingly loud, and making no secret of it: so I hasted
down the close, and round below to the one where their rendezvous was
to be; but I was too late, they were all housed and the door bolted. I
resolved to wait, thinking they could not all stay long; but I was
perishing with famine, and was like to fall down. The moon shone as
bright as day, and I perceived, by a sign at the bottom of the close,
that there was a small tavern of a certain description up two stairs
there. I went up and called, telling the mistress of the house my plan.
She approved of it mainly, and offered me her best apartment, p