, was already at the ledger of their firm, and deeply engaged in
the very bowels of the multitudinous accounts between their house and
that of Osbaldistone and Tresham, for the purpose of discovering on which
side the balance lay. Alas! the scale depressed considerably against the
English firm; and the faces of MacVittie and MacFin, hitherto only blank
and doubtful, became now ominous, grim, and lowering. They met Mr. Owen's
request of countenance and assistance with a counter-demand of instant
security against imminent hazard of eventual loss; and at length,
speaking more plainly, required that a deposit of assets, destined for
other purposes, should be placed in their hands for that purpose. Owen
repelled this demand with great indignation, as dishonourable to his
constituents, unjust to the other creditors of Osbaldistone and Tresham,
and very ungrateful on the part of those by whom it was made.

The Scotch partners gained, in the course of this controversy, what is
very convenient to persons who are in the wrong, an opportunity and
pretext for putting themselves in a violent passion, and for taking,
under the pretext of the provocation they had received, measures to which
some sense of decency, if not of conscience, might otherwise have
deterred them from resorting.

Owen had a small share, as I believe is usual, in the house to which he
acted as head-clerk, and was therefore personally liable for all its
obligations. This was known to Messrs. MacVittie and MacFin; and, with a
view of making him feel their power, or rather in order to force him, at
this emergency, into those measures in their favour, to which he had
expressed himself so repugnant, they had recourse to a summary process of
arrest and imprisonment,--which it seems the law of Scotland (therein
surely liable to much abuse) allows to a creditor, who finds his
conscience at liberty to make oath that the debtor meditates departing
from the realm. Under such a warrant had poor Owen been confined to
durance on the day preceding that when I was so strangely guided to his
prison-house.

Thus possessed of the alarming outline of facts, the question remained,
what was to be done and it was not of easy determination. I plainly
perceived the perils with which we were surrounded, but it was more
difficult to suggest any remedy. The warning which I had already received
seemed to intimate, that my own personal liberty might be endangered by
an open appearance in Ow