This last was, of course, what Bertram at once proceeded to do, as perhaps the young lady both hoped and anticipated.
So once more the heir of Ellangowan was set ashore beneath the old castle which had been built by his forefathers. He had worked his passage manfully, and it was with regret that the sailors put him ashore in the bay directly beneath the Auld Place of Ellangowan. Some remembrance came across him, drifting fitfully over his mind, that somehow he was familiar with these ruins. When he had entered and looked about him, this became almost a certainty. It chanced that lawyer Glossin had entered the castle at about the same time, coming, as he said aloud, to see "what could be made of it as a quarry of good hewn stone," and adding that it would be better to pull it down at any rate, than to preserve it as a mere haunt of smugglers and evil-doers.
"And would you destroy this fine old ruin?" said Bertram, who had overheard the last part of Glossin's remarks. The lawyer was struck dumb, so exactly were the tone and attitude those of Harry Bertram's father in his best days. Indeed, coming suddenly face to face with the young man there within the ancient castle of Ellangowan, it seemed to Glossin as if Godfrey Bertram had indeed risen from the dead to denounce and punish his treachery.
But the lawyer soon recovered himself. The scheme he had worked out together with Dirk Hatteraick matured in his mind, and this seemed as good a time as any for carrying it out. So he waited only for the coming of two of his thief-takers to lay hands on Bertram, and to send word to the father of Charles Hazlewood that he held the would-be murderer of his son at his disposition.
Now Sir Robert Hazlewood was a formal old dunderhead, who was of opinion that his family, and all connected with it, were the only really important things in the universe. Still when the prisoner was brought before him, he was a good deal startled by Bertram's quiet assurance, and, in spite of Glossin's sneers, could not help being influenced by the information that Colonel Guy Mannering could speak to the fact of his being both an officer and a gentleman. But Glossin pointed out that Mannering was in Edinburgh, and that they could not let a possible malefactor go merely because he said that he was known to an absent man. It was, therefore, arranged that, pending the arrival of the Colonel, Harry Bertram (or Captain Vanbeest Brown) should be confined in the custom-house at Portanferry, where there was a guard of soldiers for the purpose of guarding the goods taken from the smugglers.
Happy that his schemes were prospering so well, Glossin went off to arrange with Dirk Hatteraick for the attack, and also as to the removal of the soldiers, in such a way that no suspicion might fall upon that honourable gentleman, Mr. Gilbert Glossin, Justice of the Peace and present owner of Ellangowan.
Meanwhile, however, the emissaries of Meg Merrilies were not idle. They brought her the earliest information that the heir of Ellangowan was in the custom-house at Portanferry, and in imminent danger of his life. Far on the hills of Liddesdale one Gibbs Faa, a gipsy huntsman, warned Dandie Dinmont that if he wished his friend well, he had better take horse and ride straight for Portanferry—where, if he found Brown in confinement, he was to stay by him night and day. For if he did not, he would only regret it once—and that would be for his whole life.
Glossin's plan was to work on the fears of the stupid pompous Sir Robert Hazlewood, so that he would summon all the soldiers for the defence of Hazlewood House, in the belief that it was to be assaulted by the gipsies and smugglers. But Meg Merrilies herself sent young Charles Hazlewood to order the soldiers back, in which mission he would have succeeded but for the dull persistence of his father. However, Mr. Mac-Morlan, as Sheriff-Substitute of the county, was able to do that in spite of Sir Robert's protest which the good sense of his son had been powerless to effect. The soldiers left Hazlewood House, and took the direct road back to Portanferry in spite of Sir Robert's threats and remonstrances.
