'Colonel Guy Mannering, late of the---regiment, in which, as I told you,
I have a troop.'

'Colonel Guy Mannering!' thought Glossin, 'who the devil could have
guessed this?'

'Colonel Guy Mannering?' echoed the Baronet, considerably shaken in his
opinion. 'My good sir,' apart to Glossin, 'the young man with a
dreadfully plebeian name and a good deal of modest assurance has
nevertheless something of the tone and manners and feeling of a
gentleman, of one at least who has lived in good society; they do give
commissions very loosely and carelessly and inaccurately in India. I
think we had better pause till Colonel Mannering shall return; he is now,
I believe, at Edinburgh.'

'You are in every respect the best judge, Sir Robert,' answered
Glossin--'in every possible respect. I would only submit to you that we
are certainly hardly entitled to dismiss this man upon an assertion which
cannot be satisfied by proof, and that we shall incur a heavy
responsibility by detaining him in private custody, without committing
him to a public jail. Undoubtedly, however, you are the best judge, Sir
Robert; and I would only say, for my own part, that I very lately
incurred severe censure by detaining a person in a place which I thought
perfectly secure, and under the custody of the proper officers. The man
made his escape, and I have no doubt my own character for attention and
circumspection as a magistrate has in some degree suffered. I only hint
this: I will join in any step you, Sir Robert, think most advisable.' But
Mr. Glossin was well aware that such a hint was of power sufficient to
decide the motions of his self-important but not self-relying colleague.
So that Sir Robert Hazlewood summed up the business in the following
speech, which proceeded partly upon the supposition of the prisoner being
really a gentleman, and partly upon the opposite belief that he was a
villain and an assassin:--

'Sir, Mr. Vanbeest Brown--I would call you Captain Brown if there was the
least reason or cause or grounds to suppose that you are a captain, or
had a troop in the very respectable corps you mention, or indeed in any
other corps in his Majesty's service, as to which circumstance I beg to
be understood to give no positive, settled, or unalterable judgment,
declaration, or opinion,--I say, therefore, sir, Mr. Brown, we have
determined, considering the unpleasant predicament in which you now
stand, having been robbed, as you say, an assertion a