horror, to observe Glossin's body lying doubled across
the iron bar, in a posture that excluded all idea of his being alive.
Hatteraick was quietly stretched upon his pallet within a yard of his
victim. On lifting Glossin it was found he had been dead for some hours.
His body bore uncommon marks of violence. The spine where it joins the
skull had received severe injury by his first fall. There were distinct
marks of strangulation about the throat, which corresponded with the
blackened state of his face. The head was turned backward over the
shoulder, as if the neck had been wrung round with desperate violence. So
that it would seem that his inveterate antagonist had fixed a fatal gripe
upon the wretch's throat, and never quitted it while life lasted. The
lantern, crushed and broken to pieces, lay beneath the body.

Mac-Morlan was in the town, and came instantly to examine the corpse.
'What brought Glossin here?' he said to Hatteraick.

'The devil!' answered the ruffian.

'And what did you do to him?'

'Sent him to hell before me!' replied the miscreant.

'Wretch,' said Mac-Morlan, 'you have crowned a life spent without a
single virtue with the murder of your own miserable accomplice!'

'Virtue?' exclaimed the prisoner. 'Donner! I was always faithful to my
shipowners--always accounted for cargo to the last stiver. Hark ye! let
me have pen and ink and I'll write an account of the whole to our house,
and leave me alone a couple of hours, will ye; and let them take away
that piece of carrion, donnerwetter!'

Mac-Morlan deemed it the best way to humour the savage; he was furnished
with writing materials and left alone. When they again opened the door it
was found that this determined villain had anticipated justice. He had
adjusted a cord taken from the truckle-bed, and attached it to a bone,
the relic of his yesterday's dinner, which he had contrived to drive into
a crevice between two stones in the wall at a height as great as he could
reach, standing upon the bar. Having fastened the noose, he had the
resolution to drop his body as if to fall on his knees, and to retain
that posture until resolution was no longer necessary. The letter he had
written to his owners, though chiefly upon the business of their trade,
contained many allusions to the younker of Ellangowan, as he called him,
and afforded absolute confirmation of all Meg Merrilies and her nephew
had told.

To dismiss the catastrophe of these two wretched m