"Kennel up there, my man. You will find the lodgings we gie to conventiclers and enemies of the king are no just as braw as Gibbie Runlet's, doon at the White Horse. There is a windlan o' gude straw in that corner to sleep on, gif the rottons, and speeders, and asps, will let ye, and a mouthfu' o' caller air can aye be got at the iron grate, and sae my service t'ye."

"And keep up your spirits, Mr. Fenton," added the macer with a mock bow, "for the toun smith, Deacon Macanvil, will be doun in the morning to rivet round your craig the collar o' thrall wi' Craighall's name on't, and sae my service t'ye too."

The sneers of these wretches stung Walter to the soul, and it was with difficulty he restrained an impulse to rush upon them and dash their heads together. But the door was instantly closed; he heard the jarring of the bolts as they were shot into the stonework, the clank of a chain as it was thrown across, and then the retreating footsteps of his jailors growing fainter as they ascended the circular staircase. A door closed in the distance, the echoes died away, and then all became intensely still. He was now left utterly to his own sad and mortifying reflections, amid silence, gloom, and misery.

The darkness was oppressive; not the faintest ray of light could be traced on any side, and he wondered how the chill March wind swept through the vault, until, on groping about, he discovered on a level with his face, a small barred aperture, which opened to the adjoining close. In that high and narrow alley there was but little light even during the day; consequently, by night, it was involved in the deepest obscurity.

The cold, damp wind blew freely upon Walter's flushed face and waving hair, as he moved cautiously round his prison, and feeling the dark slimy walls on every side, discovered that it was a vault about twelve feet square, faced with stone, destitute, damp, frightful, and furnished only by a bundle of straw in a corner. On this he threw himself, and endeavoured to reflect calmly upon the perils by which he was surrounded.

He was naturally of an ardent and impetuous temper, and consequently his reflections failed either to soothe or to console him. His sentiments of hostility to Lord Clermistonlee were equalled only by those of gratitude to the Laird of Claverhouse, by whose influence he had, for a time, been spared a cruel and degrading maltreatment; but that, alas! was yet to be endured, and the contemplation of it was maddening. To be given as a bondsman or serf, girt with a collar of thrall or slavery, to work in the pits and mines of certain landholders, was a mode of punishment not uncommon in those vindictive days.

When the Scottish troops, under Lieutenant-colonel Strachan, defeated the brave cavaliers of Montrose in battle at Kerbister, in Ross, on the 27th of April, 1650, hundreds who were taken captive were disposed of in that manner. Some were given in thrall to Lieutenant-general Lesly, many to the Marquis of Argyle, others to Sir James Hope, to work as slaves in his lead mines, and the residue were all sent to France, to recruit the Scottish regiments of the Lord Angus and Sir Robert Murray.

Had his sentence been banishment to a foreign service, though it would have wrung his heart to leave his native country, and forego for ever the bright hopes and visions that had (though afar off) begun to lighten the horizon of his fortunes, he would have hailed the doom with joy; but to be gifted as a slave to another, to drudge amid the filth, obscurity, and disgrace of a coal mine, O! he looked forward to that with a horror inconceivable......

His mind became filled with dismal forebodings for the future. Though he still remembered with sincere pleasure the services he had rendered to the Napiers of Bruntisfield, his dreams of Lilian's mild blue eyes and glossy ringlets were sadly clouded by the perils to which they had hurried him.

All these proud and high aspirations, those intense longings for fame and distinction, for happiness and power, in which the mind of an ardent and enthusiastic youth is so prone to luxuriate, and which had been for years the day dream of Walter Fenton, now suffered a chill and fatal blight. It is a hard and bitter conviction, that one's dearest prospects are blasted and withered for ever; and to the heart of the young and proud, there is no agony equal to that of unmerited disgrace and humiliation. Misery was Walter's companion, and further miseries and degradations awaited him; but happily, the dark future was involved in obscurity.