passionately, "but you must go!"—at the same time seizing Johnny by the collar, and drawing a pistol from his bosom.
In utter amazement at this extraordinary treatment, Johnny Armstrong imploringly called on the captain and the other passengers for protection; but, as none of them were in the least acquainted with him, and therefore did not know whether he was John Jones or not, they all declined interfering—the captain saying that it would be more than his ship and situation were worth to aid any one in resisting the laws of the country—that he could not, dare not do it. His appeals, therefore, to those around him being vain, he was eventually bundled into the cutter and conveyed on shore, placed in a temporary place of confinement for the night, and next day carried before a magistrate to be identified. To effect this, several witnesses were called, when one and all of them, after examining Johnny pretty narrowly, pronounced, to the great disappointment of the officers who had apprehended him, that he was not the man! They, however, asserted that the resemblance between the real and supposed John Jones was very remarkable. On the discovery being made that the prisoner was not Jones, the magistrate apologized to Johnny in the most polite terms for the trouble he had been put to, and expressed great regret for the mistake of the officers; but said that, as the witnesses had stated there was a strong resemblance—an unfortunate one, he must call it—between him and the real defaulter, and seeing, moreover, that they were both natives of Britain, the officers were perfectly justified in doing what they had done, however much the hardship of the case might be matter of regret. The magistrate having thus delivered himself, Johnny Armstrong was dismissed with great civility, and wished, by all present, safe home to his own country—a wish in which he most heartily concurred, but
which seemed to him more easily entertained than gratified. On regaining his liberty, the first thing he did was to endeavour to find out when the next ship sailed for Scotland; he having, of course, lost that in which he had first embarked, and, to his great consternation and dismay, learned that there would be no vessel for a fortnight. This was sad intelligence to Johnny; for, to add to his other distresses, his funds were now waxing low, and he felt that it would require the utmost economy to enable him to spin out the time and leave sufficient to pay his passage to his native land. This economy he could very easily have practised at home, for he had a natural tendency that way; but he did not know how to set about it in a foreign country. His unhappiness and anxiety, therefore, on this point were very great. In this dilemma, he bethought him of again seeking out and quartering on his friend Vander Dunder, of Slootzsloykin, till the vessel should sail; but not having, of course, a word of Dutch, he could make no inquiries on the subject of his route, or indeed of anything regarding his friend at all. This idea, therefore, he ultimately abandoned, principally through a fear that he should, by some mistake, be despatched upon a wrong scent, a species of disaster to which he was now so sensitively alive, that he would neither turn to the right nor to the left without having made himself perfectly sure that he was about to take the right course; and, as to conveyances of all kinds, of which he now entertained an especial suspicion, he had prudently determined that he would know every particular about them and their destinations before he would put a foot in one of them, for he had found, from dear-bought experience, that if he did not take this precaution, the chance was that he would never reach the place he desired to get at, and might be whisked away to some unknown country, where he would never more be heard of.
Under this wholesome terror, Johnny made no attempt to find out his friend Vander Dunder; but chance effected, in part at least, what his limited knowledge of Dutch put it out of his power, with set purpose, to accomplish. On turning the corner of a street, who should he have the good fortune to meet with but Vander Dunder. The astonishment of the good Dutchman on seeing Johnny was great, so great, indeed, as to overcome the natural phlegm of his constitution. Holding up his hands in amazement—
"Mine Got, my freend! are you shipwrack agen?" he exclaimed.
"No, no," quoth Johnny—"bad aneuch, but no just sae bad as that." And he proceeded to inform his friend of the real state of the case.
The good-natured Dutchman was shocked at the recital, and felt ten times more than ever for Johnny's unhappy situation and complicated misfortunes. When he had concluded his affecting story—
"I tell you what you do, mine goot freend," said Vander Dunder—"you go vith me to Slootzsloykin, and you remain vith me dere till your ship sail. You do dat, mine goot freend."
"Wi' a' my heart," said Johnny, "and muckle obleeged to ye for yer kindness."