beyond your control.'

'Oh, I can read the book,' he said, 'without opening the leaves. But I
would recommend to you to make no rash attempt, and it will be my
care to see that you have no power to make any that is likely to
be effectual. Linen, and all other necessaries for one in your
circumstances, are amply provided, Cristal Nixon will act as your
valet,--I should rather, perhaps, say, your FEMME DE CHAMBRE. Your
travelling dress you may perhaps consider as singular; but it is such
as the circumstances require; and, if you object to use the articles
prepared for your use, your mode of journeying will be as personally
unpleasant as that which conducted you hither.--Adieu--We now know each
other better than we did--it will not be my fault if the consequences of
further intimacy be not a more favourable mutual opinion.'

He then left me, with a civil good night, to my own reflections,
and only turned back to say that we should proceed on our journey
at daybreak next morning, at furthest; perhaps earlier, he said; but
complimented me by supposing that, as I was a sportsman, I must always
be ready for a sudden start.

We are then at issue, this singular man and myself. His personal views
are to a certain point explained. He has chosen an antiquated and
desperate line of politics, and he claims, from some pretended tie of
guardianship or relationship, which he does not deign to explain but
which he seems to have been able to pass current on a silly country
Justice and his knavish clerk, a right to direct and to control my
motions. The danger which awaited me in England, and which I might have
escaped had I remained in Scotland, was doubtless occasioned by the
authority of this man. But what my poor mother might fear for me as a
child--what my English friend, Samuel Griffiths, endeavoured to guard
against during my youth and nonage, is now, it seems, come upon me;
and, under a legal pretext, I am detained in what must be a most illegal
manner, by a person, foe, whose own political immunities have been
forfeited by his conduct. It matters not--my mind is made up neither
persuasion nor threats shall force me into the desperate designs which
this man meditates. Whether I am of the trifling consequence which my
life hitherto seems to intimate, or whether I have (as would appear from
my adversary's conduct) such importance, by birth or fortune, as may
make me a desirable acquisition to a political faction, my resolution
is