got the breeze now-would to heaven it were a tempest, to sink him to the bottom !" After this last cordial wish, he continued watching the progress of the boat as it stood away towards the Point of Warroch, until he could no longer distinguish the dusky sail from the gloomy waves over which it glided. Satisfied then that the immediate danger was averted, he retired with somewhat more composure to his guilty pillow. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURTH. Why dost not comfort me and help me out TITUS ANDRONICUS. ON the next morning, great was the alarm and confusion of the officers when they discovered the escape of their prisoner. Mac-Guffog appeared before Glossin with a head perturbed with brandy and fear, and incurred a most severe reprimand for neglect of duty. The resentment of the Justice appeared only to be suspended by his anxiety to recover possession of the prisoner, and the thief-takers, glad to escape from his awful and incensed presence, were sent off in every direction (except the right one) to recover their prisoner, if possible. Glossin particularly recommended a careful search at the Kaim of Derncleugh, which was occasionally occupied under night by vagrants of different descriptions. Having thus dispersed his myrmidons in various directions, he himself hastened by devious paths through the wood of Warroch, to his appointed interview with Hatteraick, from whom he hoped to learn at more leisure than last night's conference admitted, the circumstances attending the return of the heir of Ellangowan to his native country. With manœuvres like those of a fox when he doubles to avoid the pack, Glossin strove to approach the place of appointment in a manner which should leave no distinct track of his course.. "Would to Heaven it would snow," he said, looking upward, "And hide these foot-prints. Should one of the officers light upon them, he would run the scent up like a blood-hound, and surprise us. I must get down upon the sea beach, and contrive to creep along beneath the rocks." And accordingly he descended from the cliffs with some difficulty, and scrambled along between the rocks and the advancing tide; now looking up to see if his motions were watched from the rocks above him, now casting a jealous glance to mark if any boat appeared upon the sea, from which his course might be discovered. But even the feelings of selfish apprehension were for a time superseded, as Glossin passed the spot where Kennedy's body had been found. It was marked by the fragment of a rock which had been precipitated from the cliff above, either with the body or after it. The mass was now encrusted with small shell-fish, and tasselled with tangle and sea-weed; but still its shape and substance were different from those of the other rocks which lay scattered around. His voluntary walks, it will readily be believed, had never led to this spot; so that finding himself now there for the first time after the terrible catastrophe, the scene at once recurred to his mind with all its accompaniments of horror. He remembered how, like a guilty thing, gliding from the neighbouring place of concealment, he had mingled with eagerness, yet with caution, among the terrified group who surrounded the corpse, dreading lest any one should ask from whence he came. He remembered, too, with what conscious fear he had avoided gazing upon that ghastly spectacle. The wild scream of his patron, "My bairn! my bairn!" again rang in his ears. "Good God!" he exclaimed, " and is all I have gained worth the agony of that moment, and the thousand anxious fears and horrors which have since embittered my life! -O how I wish that I lay where that wretched man lies, and that he stood here in life and health! But these regrets are all too late." Stifling, therefore, his feelings, he crept forward to the cave, which was so near the spot where the body was found, that the smugglers might have heard from their hiding-place the various conjectures of the bystanders concerning the fate of their victim. But nothing could be more completely concealed than the entrance to their asylum. The opening, not larger than that of a fox-earth, lay in the face of the cliff directly behind a large black rock, or rather upright stone, which served at once to conceal it from strangers, and as a mark to point out its situation to those who used it as a place of retreat. The space between the stone and the cliff was exceedingly narrow, and being heaped with sand and other rubbish, the most minute search would not have discovered the mouth of the cavern, without removing those substances which the tide had drifted before it. For the purpose of farther concealment, it was usual with the contraband traders who frequented this haunt, after they had entered, to stuff the mouth with withered sea-weed, loosely piled together, as if carried there by the waves. Dirk Hatteraick had not forgotten this precaution. Glossin, though a bold and hardy man, felt his heart throb, and his knees knock together, when he prepared to enter this den of secret iniquity, in order to hold conference with a felon, whom he justly accounted one of the most desperate and depraved of men. "But he has no interest to injure me," was his consolatory reflection. He examined his pocket pistols, however, before removing the weeds and entering the cavern, which he did upon hands and knees. The passage, which at first was low and narrow, just admitting entrance to a man in a creeping posture, expanded after a few yards into a high arched vault of considerable width. The bottom, ascending gradually, was covered with the purest sand. Ere Glossin had got upon his feet, the hoarse yet suppressed voice of Hatteraick growled through the recesses of the cave. 66 Hagel and donner!-be'st du !" "Are you in the dark?" "Dark? der deyvil! ay," said Dirk Hatteraick; "where should I have a glim ?" "I have brought light;" and Glossin accordingly produced a tinder-box, and lighted a small lantern. "You must kindle some fire too, for hold mich der deyvil, Ich bin ganz gefrorne!" "It is a cold place, to be sure," said Glossin, gathering together some decayed staves of barrels and pieces of wood, which had perhaps lain in the cavern since Hatteraick was there last. "Cold? Snow-wasser and hagel!—it's perdition-I could only keep myself alive by rambling up and down this d-d vault, and thinking about the merry rouses we have had in it." The flame then began to blaze brightly, and Hatteraick hung his bronzed visage, and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it, with an avidity resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food is exposed. The light showed his savage and stern features, and the smoke, which in his agony of cold he seemed to endure almost to suffocation, after circling round his head, rose to the dim and rugged roof of the cave, through which it escaped by some secret rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless that afforded air to the cavern when the tide was in, at which time the aperture to the sea was filled with water. "And now I have brought you some breakfast," said Glossin, producing some cold meat and a flask of spirits. The latter Hatteraick eagerly seized upon, and applied to his mouth; and after a hearty draught, he exclaimed with great rapture, "Das schmeckt; that is good-that warms the liver!" Then broke into the fragment of a High-Dutch song, "Saufen Bier, und Brante-wein, Schmeissen alle die Fenstern ein Du bist liederlich ; Sind wir nicht liederlich Leute a!" "Well said, my hearty Captain !" cried Glossin, endeavouring to catch the tone of revelry, "Gin by pailfuls, wine in rivers, Dash the window-glass to shivers ! For three wild lads were we, brave boys, Thou on the land, and I on the sand, That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now! And now let us talk about our business." "Your business, if you please," said Hatteraick; "hagel and donner!—mine was done when I got out of the bilboes." “Have patience, my good friend ;-I'll convince you our interests are just the same." Hatteraick gave a short dry cough, and Glossin, after a pause, proceeded. "How came you to let the boy escape?" "Why, fluch and blitzen! he was no charge of mine. Lieutenant Brown gave him to his cousin that's in the Middleburgh House of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about his being taken in a skirmish with the land-sharks he gave him for a foot-boy. Me let him escape! -the bastard kinchin should have walked the plank ere I troubled myself about him." 66 "Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?" 66 "Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he gave him his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then sent him to India-I believe he would have packed him back here, but his nephew told him it would do up the free trade for many a day, if the youngster got back to Scotland." "Do you think the younker knows much of his own origin now?" "Deyvil!" replied Hatteraick, "how should I tell what he knows now? But he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten years old, he persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard like himself to steal my lugger's kahn-boat -what do you call it-to return to his country, as he called it -fire him! Before we could overtake them, they had the skiff out of channel as far as the Deurloo-the boat might have been lost." "I wish to Heaven she had—with him in her!" ejaculated Glossin. "Why, I was so angry myself, that, sapperment! I did give him a tip over the side-but split him—the comical little devil swam like a duck; so I made him swim astern for a mile to teach him manners, and then took him in when he was sinking. By the knocking Nicholas! he'll plague you, now he's come over the herring-pond! When he was so high he had the spirit of thunder and lightning." "How did he get back from India?" "Why, how should I know ?-the house there was done up, and that gave us a shake at Middleburgh, I think so they sent me again to see what could be done among my old acquaintances here for we held old stories were done away and forgotten. So I had got a pretty trade on foot within the last two trips; but that stupid houndsfoot schelm, Brown, has knocked it on the head again, I suppose, with getting himself shot by the colonel-man?" 66 Why were not you with them?" "Why, you see-sapperment! I fear nothing-but it was too far within land, and I might have been scented." "True. But to return to this youngster " |