CHAPTER X.
HOPE.
Thou art most fair; but could thy lovely face
Make slavery look more comely? could the touch
Of thy soft hand convey delight to mine
With servile fetters on.
BOADICEA, ACT IV.
Three days passed away. Three, and still there was no appearance of the dreaded Deacon Macanvil with his hammer and rivets, and collar of thrall.
The monotony of the prison had been unbroken save, each morning, by the entrance of the gudeman of the Tolbooth and a soldier of the Townguard, bearing a wooden luggie of fresh water and a slice of coarse bread, or coarser oaten cake on a tin trencher, and to these poor viands, the gudewife of the keeper, moved with pity for "such a winsome young man," added a cutlet or two on the third day. For the first four-and-twenty hours this mean fare remained untouched, but anon, the cravings of a youthful appetite compelled him to regale on it.
In a retired, or rather, a darker corner of this miserable place, he reclined on his truss of damp straw, listening to the lively hum of the city without, and the deep ding-dong of the Cathedral bells as they marked the passing hours.
Slowly the interminable day wore on.
Shadows passed and repassed the wretched aperture which was level with the pavement, and served for a window. Feet cased in white funnel boots garnished with scarlet turnovers, gold spurs and red morocco spur leathers, in clumsy Cromwellian calf-skins, or in brogues of more humble pretensions, appeared and disappeared as the passengers strode up and down the close; and many pretty feet and taper ancles in tight stockings of green or scarlet silk set up on "cork-heeled shoon," tripped past, the fair owners thereof displaying, by their uplifted trains, rather more than they might have done, if aware that a pair of curious eyes were looking upward from the Cimmerian depth of that ghastly vault. Bare-footed children gambolled about in the spring sunshine; with ruddy and laughing faces they peeped fearfully into the dark hole, and on discerning a human face through the gloom, cried "a bogle, a ghaist!" and fled away with a shout.
Propped on his staff, the toiling water-carrier passed hourly, conveying limpid water from the public wells, even to the lofty "sixteenth story," for a bodle the measure. Lumbering sedans were borne past by liveried carriers at a Highland trot; and the voices that rang perpetually in the narrow alley, though enlivening the prison of Walter, only served to make his sense of degradation and captivity more acute.
Anon, all those sounds ceased one by one; the bells of evening tolled, the ten o'clock drum was beat around the ancient royalty, and died away in the depths of Close and Wynd, and night and silence stole together over the dense and lofty city. The last wayfarer had gone to his home, and a desolate sense of loneliness fell upon the heart of Walter Fenton.