‘Why, where do you come from?’ replied the man.

‘I am a traveller, sir,’ said I, ’and a total stranger in this part of the country.  I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and came by chance on this—­this incredible scene.  Who was the man?’

‘A suicide,’ said he.  ‘Ay, he was a bad one, was Johnnie Green.’

It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand.  And the nightmare at the crossroads was the regular punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue!  Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it’s a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority—­and take a thimbleful of brandy for the stomach’s sake.

I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid.  We had a good many pleasant passages as she waited table or warmed my bed for me with a devil of a brass warming pan, fully larger than herself; and as she was no less pert than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather better than she took.  I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of her saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was attached to a young lady in Scotland, and received the encouragement of her sympathy, mingled and connected with a fair amount of rustic wit.  While I slept the down-mail stopped for supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left behind a copy of the Edinburgh COURANT, and the next morning my pretty chambermaid set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that there was some news from my lady-love.  I took it eagerly, hoping to find some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I was about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph immediately concerning me.  Faa was in hospital, grievously sick, and warrants were out for the arrest of Sim and Candlish.  These two men had shown themselves very loyal to me.  This trouble emerging, the least I could do was to be guided by a similar loyalty to them.  Suppose my visit to my uncle crowned with some success, and my finances re-established, I determined I should immediately return to Edinburgh, put their case in the hands of a good lawyer, and await events.  So my mind was very lightly made up to what proved a mighty serious matter.  Candlish and Sim were all very well in their way, and I do sincerely trust I should have been at some pains to help them, had there been nothing else.  But in truth my heart and my eyes were set on quite another matter, and I received the news of their tribulation almost with joy.  That is never a bad wind that