wink as hard on your share of
the business as my duty will permit. There's a thousand merks on the
murdering whigamore's head, an I could but light on it--Come, out with
it--where did you part with him?"

"You will excuse my answering that question, sir," said Morton; "the same
cogent reasons which induced me to afford him hospitality at considerable
risk to myself and my friends, would command me to respect his secret,
if, indeed, he had trusted me with any."

"So you refuse to give me an answer?" said Bothwell.

"I have none to give," returned Henry.

"Perhaps I could teach you to find one, by tying a piece of lighted match
betwixt your fingers," answered Bothwell.

"O, for pity's sake, sir," said old Alison apart to her master, "gie them
siller--it's siller they're seeking--they'll murder Mr Henry, and
yoursell next!"

Milnwood groaned in perplexity and bitterness of spirit, and, with a tone
as if he was giving up the ghost, exclaimed, "If twenty p--p--punds would
make up this unhappy matter"--"My master," insinuated Alison to the
sergeant, "would gie twenty punds sterling"--"Punds Scotch, ye b--h!"
interrupted Milnwood; for the agony of his avarice overcame alike his
puritanic precision and the habitual respect he entertained for his
housekeeper.

"Punds sterling," insisted the housekeeper, "if ye wad hae the gudeness
to look ower the lad's misconduct; he's that dour ye might tear him to
pieces, and ye wad ne'er get a word out o' him; and it wad do ye little
gude, I'm sure, to burn his bonny fingerends."

"Why," said Bothwell, hesitating, "I don't know--most of my cloth would
have the money, and take off the prisoner too; but I bear a conscience,
and if your master will stand to your offer, and enter into a bond to
produce his nephew, and if all in the house will take the test-oath, I do
not know but"--"O ay, ay, sir," cried Mrs Wilson, "ony test, ony oaths ye
please!" And then aside to her master, "Haste ye away, sir, and get the
siller, or they will burn the house about our lugs."

Old Milnwood cast a rueful look upon his adviser, and moved off, like a
piece of Dutch clockwork, to set at liberty his imprisoned angels in this
dire emergency. Meanwhile, Sergeant Bothwell began to put the test-oath
with such a degree of solemn reverence as might have been expected, being
just about the same which is used to this day in his majesty's
custom-house.

"You--what's your name, woman?"

"Alison Wilson, sir."