Our travellers were soon at their ease with their new friends. They entered freely into conversation; and the curate was the first to discover that they were persons of no ordinary education. Skink, too, took his chair by the door, as the evening advanced; but except that he sometimes sighed (after a long draught of his own ale), there was nothing which betokened a particularly miserable man.

When ten o'clock came, Cameron and Aston retired to bed, leaving the curate, the attorney, and mine host, deep in the mysteries of free will, Skink having decidedly the best of the argument.

"That fellow has some reading in him, I shrewdly suspect, though he be only a publican, and, peradventure, a sinner,” observed Aston, as he bade his friend good-night.

"Has he?" replied Cameron ; " then has he got it from no other library than his cellar; where, as old Fuller says, his butts have been his folios, his barrels his quartos, and his smaller runlets his octavos."

CHAPTER XIII.

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

*

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,

That I will speak to thee.

Hamlet.

CAMERON was in his first sleep, (as he was accustomed to call a condition of body which consisted of but two distinct acts of consciousness, that of going to bed and getting up,) when he was awakened by a loud crash, resembling the falling of some heavy substance.

He was soon in a perpendicular position. What could it be? He listened. No fresh noise occurred to explain the one already heard. He endeavoured to penetrate the darkness of the room, but could see nothing. Once or twice, indeed, a distant sound, as of low deep groans, struck upon his ear. An atten

tive observation of the quarter whence they proceeded, convinced him it was his friend Aston, who slept in the chamber beneath; but a still more attentive observation further convinced him that Aston was only snoring in every possible variety of that nasal serenade.

He was half inclined to conclude he had been dreaming, and under that impression, to lie down again and finish his night's rest. Still, he could not banish a vague suspicion that some person might be in the room; so, to set it at rest, he sprung out of bed, resolved to ascertain whether he was alone or not.

Groping his way to the window, he drew up the curtain, and admitted a faint glimmer of light from a clear starry sky. He tried the door. It was locked. He poked one leg under the bed, then the other, as far as he could reach; felt along the walls; and was returning to his pillow, satisfied he had nothing to fear, when he thought he perceived something white lying on the ground, in a recess near the window.

He approached it. "There certainly is something white," he whispered to himself: He stooped cautiously; he stretched forth his hand; it rested upon a human face, cold and clammy!

He made but one stride to the table on which lay the loaded pistols he had taken from the holsters over night. He was no coward; but this was a thing to try a man's nerves, let him be as brave as he might. Besides, of one fact he was now thoroughly assured, that some person was in his room; though who he was, what he was, or why he kept himself so quiet, he could not tell. "Who are you?" he exclaimed.

No answer.

He did not wish to shed unnecessary blood; so he repeated the question, adding, “Speak, or I'll fire!"

Still no answer. At that moment, either his eyes deceived him, or he saw the person move. Waiting to ask any more questions would be a wanton trifling with his own life; so he levelled one of his pistols,

fired, then ran to the door, unlocked it, and raised such a clamour, that in a few minutes every inmate of the Black Bull, (with an utter disregard to all decorum,) hastened to the spot where he stood, shouting "Thieves! thieves!"

The first that came tumbling up-stairs, in his shirt, was Aston.

"For God's sake, what is the matter?" he cried. "Are we beset ?"

Before Cameron could explain anything, Jenny, the strapping maid, nearly overturned Aston, as she rushed past in her way to her master's chamber, screaming out not only thieves! thieves! but fire! murder! and every other horrible thing, which she thought suitable to the occasion.

The ostler was roused. He, however, considering "discretion the better part of valour," remained at the bottom of the stairs, inquiring what was the matter at the top.

At length, Peter Skink himself appeared, with a rush-light in one hand, and a naked