"Never."
"Look well to yourself then."
"And why?"
"The gallows is high, my bonny lad; and they don't stand much upon ceremony."
"What is it then you take me for? Am I like a thief or a robber?"
"I know not: but you've a wicked look of one that I know well; and he's doomed to the gallows, if there's a gallows in England."
The old woman now relapsed into her moody silence, or answered only by peevish monosyllables: and, despairing of gaining any further information from her, Bertram contented himself with requesting that she would acquaint him with the first opportunity which might offer for quitting his present abode; upon which his hostess muttered something in no very cordial or acquiescing tone; and Bertram, drawing the blankets about him, resigned himself to the consideration of his present prospects. He was now so much recovered from his late suffering and exhaustion, that he felt prepared to set his hostess and her wolf-dog at defiance: but the scene, which he had just witnessed, suggested another kind of dangers. He feared that he had been thrown on a nest of smugglers, or worse: some piratical attempts had recently been made on the Belgian flag off Antwerp: the parties concerned were said to be smugglers occupying some rock or islet off the coast of Wales: and into their hands Bertram began to fear that he had fallen. Closing his eyes, he continued to ruminate on these possibilities, until at length he dropped into a slumber.
From this he was awakened in the middle of the night by a hand laid roughly on his shoulder. He stared up and beheld the old woman at his bed-side.
"Get up," said she, "or it will be too late. Yonder's a French captain taking water aboard: make haste, and he'll give you a passage."
Bertram sprang from his couch; recompensed his hostess; and hastily prepared for departure. In the midst of this hurry however his thoughts had leisure to revert to those anxieties which had occupied him as he was falling asleep. Who was this French captain? Whither bound? What was his connexion with those in whose hands he now found himself? On what terms, and with what motives, had they treated for his passage? When all is darkness however, the benighted traveller surrenders himself to the guidance of any light--though possibly no more than a wildering ignis fatuus--in the hope that it may lead him out of his perplexities. And fortunately Bertram had little time to pursue any train of anxious deliberations: for at this moment two seamen appeared at the door with a summons to follow them; the French captain having taken his water aboard, and being on the point of weighing his anchor.