CHAPTER XIII. Why dost not comfort me, and help me out, 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 reco ver 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 manovres like those of a fox when he doubles to avoid the pack, Glossin strove to approach the place of appoint ment in a manner which should leave no distinct track of his course. "Would to Heaven it would snow," said he, looking upward," and hide these foot-prints. Should one of the officers light upon them, he would run the scent up like a bloodhound, 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 But even the feelings of selfish apprehension were for a time superseded, as Glossin passed the spot where Kennedy's body had been found.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 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 by-standers concerning the fate of their vic. tim. 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 heaped before it. For the purpose of farther concealment, it was usual with the contraband traders who used this haunt, after they had entered, to stuff the mouth with withered sea-weed, loosely piled together as if drifted there by the |