other," I replied;
"and to say the truth, your language and manner might well entitle me to
doubt both."

"It is manfully spoken," replied my conductor; "and I respect him whose
hand can keep his head.--I will be frank and free with you--I am
conveying you to prison."

"To prison!" I exclaimed--"by what warrant or for what offence?--You
shall have my life sooner than my liberty--I defy you, and I will not
follow you a step farther."

"I do not," he said, "carry you there as a prisoner; I am," he added,
drawing himself haughtily up, "neither a messenger nor sheriff's officer.
I carry you to see a prisoner from whose lips you will learn the risk in
which you presently stand. Your liberty is little risked by the visit;
mine is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for
I care not for risk, and I love a free young blood, that kens no
protector but the cross o' the sword."

While he spoke thus, we had reached the principal street, and were
pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I
could perceive, with gratings of iron before the windows.

"Muckle," said the stranger, whose language became more broadly national
as he assumed a tone of colloquial freedom--"Muckle wad the provost and
bailies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting with iron garters to his hose
within their tolbooth that now stands wi' his legs as free as the
red-deer's on the outside on't. And little wad it avail them; for an if
they had me there wi' a stane's weight o' iron at every ankle, I would
show them a toom room and a lost lodger before to-morrow--But come on,
what stint ye for?"

As he spoke thus, he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered by a sharp
voice, as of one awakened from a dream or reverie,--"Fa's tat?--Wha's
that, I wad say?--and fat a deil want ye at this hour at e'en?--Clean
again rules--clean again rules, as they ca' them."

The protracted tone in which the last words were uttered, betokened that
the speaker was again composing himself to slumber. But my guide spoke in
a loud whisper--"Dougal, man! hae ye forgotten Ha nun Gregarach?"

"Deil a bit, deil a bit," was the ready and lively response, and I heard
the internal guardian of the prison-gate bustle up with great alacrity. A
few words were exchanged between my conductor and the turnkey in a
language to which I was an absolute stranger. The bolts revolved, but
with a caution which marked the apprehension that the noise might be