e door the sign of the Red man"--

"And being on the whole," resumed the counsellor interrupting his friend
in his turn, "a sort of place where misfortune is happily confounded with
guilt, where all who are in wish to get out"--

"And where none who have the good luck to be out, wish to get in," added
his companion.

"I conceive you, gentlemen," replied I; "you mean the prison."

"The prison," added the young lawyer--"You have hit it--the very reverend
Tolbooth itself; and let me tell you, you are obliged to us for
describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with whatever
amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject, you lay
entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our city have
decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain in existence
to confirm or to confute its."

"Then the Tolbooth of Edinburgh is called the Heart of Mid-Lothian?" said
I.

"So termed and reputed, I assure you."

"I think," said I, with the bashful diffidence with which a man lets slip
a pun in presence of his superiors, "the metropolitan county may, in that
case, be said to have a sad heart."

"Right as my glove, Mr. Pattieson," added Mr. Hardie; "and a close heart,
and a hard heart--Keep it up, Jack."

"And a wicked heart, and a poor heart," answered Halkit, doing his best.

"And yet it may be called in some sort a strong heart, and a high heart,"
rejoined the advocate. "You see I can put you both out of heart."

"I have played all my hearts," said the younger gentleman.

"Then we'll have another lead," answered his companion.--"And as to the
old and condemned Tolbooth, what pity the same honour cannot be done to
it as has been done to many of its inmates. Why should not the Tolbooth
have its 'Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words?' The old stones would
be just as conscious of the honour as many a poor devil who has dangled
like a tassel at the west end of it, while the hawkers were shouting a
confession the culprit had never heard of."

"I am afraid," said I, "if I might presume to give my opinion, it would
be a tale of unvaried sorrow and guilt."

"Not entirely, my friend," said Hardie; "a prison is a world within
itself, and has its own business, griefs, and joys, peculiar to its
circle. Its inmates are sometimes short-lived, but so are soldiers on
service; they are poor relatively to the world without, but there are
degrees of wealth and poverty among them, and so some are rel