e to see what luckless being was to be delivered to the
prison-house out of 'Glossin's braw new carriage.' The door of the
courtyard, after the heavy clanking of many chains and bars, was opened
by Mrs. Mac-Guffog--an awful spectacle, being a woman for strength and
resolution capable of maintaining order among her riotous inmates, and of
administering the discipline of the house, as it was called, during the
absence of her husband, or when he chanced to have taken an overdose of
the creature. The growling voice of this Amazon, which rivalled in
harshness the crashing music of her own bolts and bars, soon dispersed in
every direction the little varlets who had thronged around her threshold,
and she next addressed her amiable helpmate:--

'Be sharp, man, and get out the swell, canst thou not?'

'Hold your tongue and be d-d, you--,' answered her loving husband, with
two additional epithets of great energy, but which we beg to be excused
from repeating. Then addressing Bertram--'Come, will you get out, my
handy lad, or must we lend you a lift?'

Bertram came out of the carriage, and, collared by the constable as he
put his foot on the ground, was dragged, though he offered no resistance,
across the threshold, amid the continued shouts of the little
sansculottes, who looked on at such distance as their fear of Mrs.
Mac-Guffog permitted. The instant his foot had crossed the fatal porch,
the portress again dropped her chains, drew her bolts, and, turning with
both hands an immense key, took it from the lock and thrust it into a
huge side-pocket of red cloth.

Bertram was now in the small court already mentioned. Two or three
prisoners were sauntering along the pavement, and deriving as it were a
feeling of refreshment from the momentary glimpse with which the opening
door had extended their prospect to the other side of a dirty street. Nor
can this be thought surprising, when it is considered that, unless on
such occasions, their view was confined to the grated front of their
prison, the high and sable walls of the courtyard, the heaven above them,
and the pavement beneath their feet--a sameness of landscape which, to
use the poet's expression, 'lay like a load on the wearied eye,' and had
fostered in some a callous and dull misanthropy, in others that sickness
of the heart which induces him who is immured already in a living grave
to wish for a sepulchre yet more calm and sequestered.

Mac-Guffog, when they entered the co