brought with them, and tasted of the wine that Provost Reid's lady
had sent, we heard the bolts of the door drawn, and the clanking of
keys, at which Willie Sutherland came forward from the corner where he
had stood during the whole time, and lifting the lamp from the floor,
and wetting his fore-finger with spittle as he did so, he trimmed the
wick, and said, "The time's come when a' persons not prisoners must
depart forth the tolbooth for the night; but, Master Gilhaize, be none
discomforted thereat, your wife and your little one will come back in
the morning, and your lot is a lot of pleasure; for is it not written in
the book of Ecclesiastes, fourth and eighth, 'There is one alone, and
there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother?' and such
an one am I."

The inner door was thrown open, and Mungo Robeson, looking in, said, "I
wae to molest you, but ye'll hae to come out, Mrs Gilhaize." So that
night we were separated; and when Sarah Lochrig was gone, I could not
but offer thanksgiving that my lines had fallen in so pleasant a place,
compared with the fate of my poor brother, suffering among strangers in
the doleful prison of Glasgow, under the ravenous eyes of the prelate of
that city, then scarcely less hungry for the bodies of the faithful and
the true, than even the apostate James Sharp himself.

CHAPTER LXII

The deep sleep into which I had fallen when Sarah Lochrig and my son
were admitted to see me, and during the season of which they had sat in
silence beside me till revived nature again unsealed my eyes, was so
refreshing, that after they were gone away I was enabled to consider my
condition with a composed mind, and free from the heats of passion and
anxiety wherewith I had previously been so greatly tossed. And calling
to mind all that had taken place, and the ruthless revenge with which
the cruel prelates were actuated, I saw, as it were written in a book,
that for my part and conduct I was doomed to die. I felt not, however,
the sense of guilt in my conscience; and I said to myself, that this
sore thing ought not to be, and that, as an innocent man and the head of
a family, I was obligated by all expedient ways to escape, if it were
possible, from the grasps of the tyranny. So from that time, the first
night of my imprisonment, I set myself to devise the means of working
out my deliverance; and I was not long without an encouraging glimmer of
hope.

It seemed to me, that in th