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t, and he may walk past Tam Halliday, who is half blind with his ale, and I can tell him a canny way to get out o' the Tower, and your leddyship will gang quietly to your ain room, and I'll row mysell in his grey cloak, and pit on his hat, and play the prisoner till the coast's clear, and then I'll cry in Tam Halliday, and gar him let me out." "Let you out?" said Morton; "they'll make your life answer it." "Ne'er a bit," replied Jenny; "Tam daurna tell he let ony body in, for his ain sake; and I'll gar him find some other gate to account for the escape." "Will you, by G--?" said the sentinel, suddenly opening the door of the apartment; "if I am half blind, I am not deaf, and you should not plan an escape quite so loud, if you expect to go through with it. Come, come, Mrs Janet--march, troop--quick time--trot, d--n me!--And you, madam kinswoman,--I won't ask your real name, though you were going to play me so rascally a trick,--but I must make a clear garrison; so beat a retreat, unless you would have me turn out the guard." "I hope," said Morton, very anxiously, "you will not mention this circumstance, my good friend, and trust to my honour to acknowledge your civility in keeping the secret. If you overheard our conversation, you must have observed that we did not accept of, or enter into, the hasty proposal made by this good-natured girl." "Oh, devilish good-natured, to be sure," said Halliday. "As for the rest, I guess how it is, and I scorn to bear malice, or tell tales, as much as another; but no thanks to that little jilting devil, Jenny Dennison, who deserves a tight skelping for trying to lead an honest lad into a scrape, just because he was so silly as to like her good-for-little chit face." Jenny had no better means of justification than the last apology to which her sex trust, and usually not in vain; she pressed her handkerchief to her face, sobbed with great vehemence, and either wept, or managed, as Halliday might have said, to go through the motions wonderfully well. "And now," continued the soldier, somewhat mollified, "if you have any thing to say, say it in two minutes, and let me see your backs turned; for if Bothwell take it into his drunken head to make the rounds half an hour too soon, it will be a black business to us all." "Farewell, Edith," whispered Morton, assuming a firmness he was far from possessing; "do not remain here--leave me to my fate--it cannot be beyond endurance sinc
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