I repeated, I think, fifteen paters and aves more; and as the bods decreased in circumference, the prayers decreased in length, until a short circuit and three paters and aves finished the last and innermost of these blessed couches.  I really forgot how many times each day the prison and these beds are to be surrounded, and how many hundred prayers are to be repeated during the circuit, though each circuit is in fact making the grand tour of the island; but I never shall forget that I was the best part of a July day at it, when the soles of my feet were flayed, and the stones hot enough to broil a beefsteak!  When the first day’s station was over, it is necessary to say that a little rest would have been agreeable?  But no, this would not suit the policy of the place; here it may be truly said that there is no rest for the wicked.  The only luxury allowed me was the privilege of feasting upon one of my cakes (having not tasted food that blessed day until then); upon one of my cakes, I say, and a copious supply of the water of the lake, which, to render the repast more agreeable, was made lukewarm!  This was to keep my spirits up after the delicate day’s labor I had gone through, and to cheer me against the pleasant prospect of a hard night’s praying without sleep, which lay in the back ground!  But when I saw everyone at this refreshing meal with a good, thick, substantial bannock, and then looked at the immateriality of my own, I could not help reverting to the woman who made them for me, with a degree of vivacity not altogether in unison with the charity of a Christian.  The knavish creature defrauded me of one-half of the oatmeal, although I had purchased it myself in Petigo for the occasion; being determined that as I was only to get two meals in the three days, they should be such as a person could fast upon.  Never was there a man more bitterly disappointed; for they were not thicker than crown-pieces, and I searched for them in my mouth to no purpose—­the only thing like substance I could feel there was the warm water.  At last, night came; but here to describe the horrors of what I suffered I hold myself utterly inadequate.  I was wedged in a shake-down bed with seven others, one of whom was a Scotch Papist—­another a man with a shrunk leg, who wore a crutch—­all afflicted with that disease which northern men that feed on oatmeal are liable to; and then the swarms that fell upon my poor young skin, and probed, and stung, and fed on me! it was pressure and persecution almost insupportable, and yet such was my fatigue that sleep even here began to weigh down my eyelids.

I was just on the point of enjoying a little rest, when a man ringing a large hand-bell, came round crying out in a low, supernatural growl, which could be heard double the distance of the loudest shout—­“Waken up, waken up, and come to the prison!” The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than there was a sudden start, and a general scramble in the dark for our respective garments.  When we got dressed,