s. Whether he meant to aid Robertson's escape, or to assist his
pursuers, may be very doubtful; perhaps he did not himself know but had
resolved to be guided by circumstances. He had no opportunity, however,
of doing either; for he had no sooner surmounted the steep ascent, and
entered under the broken arches of the rains, than a pistol was presented
at his head, and a harsh voice commanded him, in the king's name, to
surrender himself prisoner. "Mr. Sharpitlaw!" said Ratcliffe, surprised,
"is this your honour?"

"Is it only you, and be d--d to you?" answered the fiscal, still more
disappointed--"what made you leave the woman?"

"She told me she saw Robertson go into the ruins, so I made what haste I
could to cleek the callant."

"It's all over now," said Sharpitlaw; "we shall see no more of him
to-night; but he shall hide himself in a bean-hool, if he remains on
Scottish ground without my finding him. Call back the people, Ratcliffe."

Ratcliffe hollowed to the dispersed officers, who willingly obeyed the
signal; for probably there was no individual among them who would have
been much desirous of a rencontre, hand to hand, and at a distance from
his comrades, with such an active and desperate fellow as Robertson.

"And where are the two women?" said Sharpitlaw.

"Both made their heels serve them, I suspect," replied Ratcliffe, and he
hummed the end of the old song--

"Then hey play up the rin-awa bride,
For she has taen the gee."

"One woman," said Sharpitlaw,--for, like all rogues, he was a great
calumniator of the fair sex,*--"one woman is enough to dark the fairest
ploy that was ever planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect
to carry through a job that had two in it?

* Note L. Calumniator of the Fair Sex.

But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that's one good
thing."

Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his
discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night.

The next morning early, he was under the necessity of making his report
to the sitting magistrate of the day. The gentleman who occupied the
chair of office on this occasion (for the bailies, _Anglice',_ aldermen,
take it by rotation) chanced to be the same by whom Butler was committed,
a person very generally respected among his fellow-citizens. Something he
was of a humorist, and rather deficient in general education; but acute