Salute to Adventurers | Page 9

the sins of Gib were visited upon the more silent prisoners. We were hurried along at a cruel pace, so that I had often to run to avoid the dragging at my wrists, and behind us bumped the cart full of wailful women. I was sick from fatigue and lack of food, and the South Port of Edinburgh was a welcome sight to me. Welcome, and yet shameful, for I feared at any moment to see the face of a companion in the jeering crowd that lined the causeway. I thought miserably of my pleasant lodgings in the Bow, where my landlady, Mistress Macvittie, would be looking at the boxes the Lanark carrier had brought, and be wondering what had become of their master. I saw no light for myself in the business. My father's ill-repute with the Government would tell heavily in my disfavour, and it was beyond doubt that I had assaulted a dragoon. There was nothing before me but the plantations or a long spell in some noisome prison.
The women were sent to the House of Correction to be whipped and dismissed, for there was little against them but foolishness; all except one, a virago called Isobel Bone, who was herded with the men. The Canongate Tolbooth was our portion, the darkest and foulest of the city prisons; and presently I found myself forced through a gateway and up a narrow staircase, into a little chamber in which a score of beings were already penned. A small unglazed window with iron bars high up on one wall gave us such light and air as was going, but the place reeked with human breathing, and smelled as rank as a kennel. I have a delicate nose, and I could not but believe on my entrance that an hour of such a hole would be the death of me. Soon the darkness came, and we were given a tallow dip in a horn lantern hung on a nail to light us to food. Such food I had never dreamed of. There was a big iron basin of some kind of broth, made, as I judged, from offal, from which we drank in pannikins; and with it were hunks of mildewed rye-bread. One mouthful sickened me, and I preferred to fast. The behaviour of the other prisoners was most seemly, but not so that of my company. They scrambled for the stuff like pigs round a trough, and the woman Isobel threatened with her nails any one who would prevent her. I was black ashamed to enter prison with such a crew, and withdrew myself as far distant as the chamber allowed me.
I had no better task than to look round me at those who had tenanted the place before our coming. There were three women, decent-looking bodies, who talked low in whispers and knitted. The men were mostly countryfolk, culled, as I could tell by their speech, from the west country, whose only fault, no doubt, was that they had attended some field-preaching. One old man, a minister by his dress, sat apart on a stone bench, and with closed eyes communed with himself. I ventured to address him, for in that horrid place he had a welcome air of sobriety and sense.
He asked me for my story, and when he heard it looked curiously at Muckle John, who was now reciting gibberish in a corner.
"So that is the man Gib," he said musingly. "I have heard tell of him, for he was a thorn in the flesh of blessed Mr. Cargill. Often have I heard him repeat how he went to Gib in the moors to reason with him in the Lord's name, and got nothing but a mouthful of devilish blasphemies. He is without doubt a child of Belial, as much as any proud persecutor. Woe is the Kirk, when her foes shall be of her own household, for it is with the words of the Gospel that he seeks to overthrow the Gospel work. And how is it with you, my son? Do you seek to add your testimony to the sweet savour which now ascends from moors, mosses, peat-bogs, closes, kennels, prisons, dungeons, ay, and scaffolds in this distressed land of Scotland? You have not told me your name."
When he heard it he asked for my father, whom he had known in old days at Edinburgh College. Then he inquired into my religious condition with so much fatherly consideration that I could take no offence, but told him honestly that I was little of a partisan, finding it hard enough to keep my own feet from temptation without judging others. "I am weary," I said, "of all covenants and resolutions and excommunications and the constraining of men's conscience either by Government or sectaries. Some day,