Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott (reading an ebook .txt) 📕

the moment to a charge which the basest of mankind seem ready to establish by perjury.’

‘My advice,’ said the Counsellor, ‘would be regulated by my opinion of your innocence or guilt. In your case, I believe you take the wisest course; but you are aware you must stand committed?’

‘Committed? for what, sir?’ replied Glossin. ‘Upon a charge of murder?’

‘No; only as art and part of kidnapping the child.’

‘That is a bailable offence.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Pleydell, ‘it is plagium, and plagium is felony.’

‘Forgive me, Mr. Pleydell, there is only one case upon record, Torrence and Waldie. They were, you remember, resurrection-women, who had promised to procure a child’s body for some young surgeons. Being upon honour to their employers, rather than disappoint the evening lecture of the students, they stole a live child, murdered it, and sold the body for three shillings and sixpence. They were hanged, but for the murder, not for the plagium [Footnote: This is, in its circumstances and issue, actually a case tried and reported.]--Your civil law has carried you a little too far.’

‘Well, sir, but in the meantime Mr. Mac-Morlan must commit you to the county jail, in case this young man repeats the same story. Officers, remove Mr. Glossin and Hatteraick, and guard them in different apartments.’

Gabriel, the gipsy, was then introduced, and gave a distinct account of his deserting from Captain Pritchard’s vessel and joining the smugglers in the action, detailed how Dirk Hatteraick set fire to his ship when he found her disabled, and under cover of the smoke escaped with his crew, and as much goods as they could save, into the cavern, where they proposed to lie till nightfall. Hatteraick himself, his mate Vanbeest Brown, and three others, of whom the declarant was one, went into the adjacent woods to communicate with some of their friends in the neighbourhood. They fell in with Kennedy unexpectedly, and Hatteraick and Brown, aware that he was the occasion of their disasters, resolved to murder him. He stated that he had seen them lay violent hands on the officer and drag him through the woods, but had not partaken in the assault nor witnessed its termination; that he returned to the cavern by a different route, where he again met Hatteraick and his accomplices; and the captain was in the act of giving an account how he and Brown had pushed a huge crag over, as Kennedy lay groaning on the beach, when Glossin suddenly appeared among them. To the whole transaction by which Hatteraick purchased his secrecy he was witness. Respecting young Bertram, he could give a distinct account till he went to India, after which he had lost sight of him until he unexpectedly met with him in Liddesdale. Gabriel Faa farther stated that he instantly sent notice to his aunt Meg Merrilies, as well as to Hatteraick, who he knew was then upon the coast; but that he had incurred his aunt’s displeasure upon the latter account. He concluded, that his aunt had immediately declared that she would do all that lay in her power to help young Ellangowan to his right, even if it should be by informing against Dirk Hatteraick; and that many of her people assisted her besides himself, from a belief that she was gifted with supernatural inspirations. With the same purpose, he understood his aunt had given to Bertram the treasure of the tribe, of which she had the custody. Three or four gipsies, by the express command of Meg Merrilies, mingled in the crowd when the custom-house was attacked, for the purpose of liberating Bertram, which he had himself effected. He said, that in obeying Meg’s dictates they did not pretend to estimate their propriety or rationality, the respect in which she was held by her tribe precluding all such subjects of speculation. Upon farther interrogation, the witness added, that his aunt had always said that Harry Bertram carried that round his neck which would ascertain his birth. It was a spell, she said, that an Oxford scholar had made for him, and she possessed the smugglers with an opinion that to deprive him of it would occasion the loss of the vessel.

Bertram here produced a small velvet bag, which he said he had worn round his neck from his earliest infancy, and which he had preserved, first from superstitious reverence, and latterly from the hope that it might serve one day to aid in the discovery of his birth. The bag, being opened, was found to contain a blue silk case, from which was drawn a scheme of nativity. Upon inspecting this paper, Colonel Mannering instantly admitted it was his own composition; and afforded the strongest and most satisfactory evidence that the possessor of it must necessarily be the young heir of Ellangowan, by avowing his having first appeared in that country in the character of an astrologer.

‘And now,’ said Pleydell, ‘make out warrants of commitment for Hatteraick and Glossin until liberated in due course of law. Yet,’ he said, ‘I am sorry for Glossin.’

‘Now, I think,’ said Mannering, ‘he’s incomparably the least deserving of pity of the two. The other’s a bold fellow, though as hard as flint.’

‘Very natural, Colonel,’ said the Advocate, ‘that you should be interested in the ruffian and I in the knave, that’s all professional taste; but I can tell you Glossin would have been a pretty lawyer had he not had such a turn for the roguish part of the profession.’

‘Scandal would say,’ observed Mannering, ‘he might not be the worse lawyer for that.’

‘Scandal would tell a lie, then,’ replied Pleydell, ‘as she usually does. Law’s like laudanum: it’s much more easy to use it as a quack does than to learn to apply it like a physician.’

CHAPTER XXVIII

Unfit to live or die--O marble heart! After him, fellows, drag him to the block. Measure for Measure.

The jail at the county town of the shire of----was one of those old-fashioned dungeons which disgraced Scotland until of late years. When the prisoners and their guard arrived there, Hatteraick, whose violence and strength were well known, was secured in what was called the condemned ward. This was a large apartment near the top of the prison. A round bar of iron,[Footnote: See Note 9.] about the thickness of a man’s arm above the elbow, crossed the apartment horizontally at the height of about six inches from the floor; and its extremities were strongly built into the wall at either end. Hatteraick’s ankles were secured within shackles, which were connected by a chain, at the distance of about four feet, with a large iron ring, which travelled upon the bar we have described. Thus a prisoner might shuffle along the length of the bar from one side of the room to another, but could not retreat farther from it in any other direction than the brief length of the chain admitted. When his feet had been thus secured, the keeper removed his handcuffs and left his person at liberty in other respects. A pallet-bed was placed close to the bar of iron, so that the shackled prisoner might lie down at pleasure, still fastened to the iron bar in the manner described.

Hatteraick had not been long in this place of confinement before Glossin arrived at the same prison-house. In respect to his comparative rank and education, he was not ironed, but placed in a decent apartment, under the