urtyard, suffered Bertram to pause
for a minute and look upon his companions in affliction. When he had cast
his eye around on faces on which guilt and despondence and low excess had
fixed their stigma--upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the
thief, the bankrupt debtor, the 'moping idiot, and the madman gay,' whom
a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation,
he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the
contamination of their society even for a moment.

'I hope, sir,' he said to the keeper, 'you intend to assign me a place of
confinement apart?'

'And what should I be the better of that?'

'Why, sir, I can but be detained here a day or two, and it would be very
disagreeable to me to mix in the sort of company this place affords.'

'And what do I care for that?'

'Why then, sir, to speak to your feelings,' said Bertram, 'I shall be
willing to make you a handsome compliment for this indulgence.'

'Ay, but when, Captain? when and how? that's the question, or rather the
twa questions,' said the jailor.

'When I am delivered, and get my remittances from England,' answered the
prisoner.

Mac-Guffog shook his head incredulously.

'Why, friend, you do not pretend to believe that I am really a
malefactor?' said Bertram.

'Why, I no ken,' said the fellow; 'but if you ARE on the account, ye're
nae sharp ane, that's the daylight o't.'

'And why do you say I am no sharp one?'

'Why, wha but a crack-brained greenhorn wad hae let them keep up the
siller that ye left at the Gordon Arms?' said the constable. 'Deil fetch
me, but I wad have had it out o' their wames! Ye had nae right to be
strippit o' your money and sent to jail without a mark to pay your fees;
they might have keepit the rest o' the articles for evidence. But why,
for a blind bottle-head, did not ye ask the guineas? and I kept winking
and nodding a' the time, and the donnert deevil wad never ance look my
way!'

'Well, sir,' replied Bertram, 'if I have a title to have that property
delivered up to me, I shall apply for it; and there is a good deal more
than enough to pay any demand you can set up.'

'I dinna ken a bit about that,' said Mac-Guffog; 'ye may be here lang
eneugh. And then the gieing credit maun be considered in the fees. But,
however, as ye DO seem to be a chap by common, though my wife says I lose
by my good-nature, if ye gie me an order for my fees upon that money I
daresay Glossin