were visited upon the more silent prisoners. We were hurried along at a
cruel pace, so that I had often to run to avoid the dragging at my
wrists, and behind us bumped the cart full of wailful women. I was sick
from fatigue and lack of food, and the South Port of Edinburgh was a
welcome sight to me. Welcome, and yet shameful, for I feared at any
moment to see the face of a companion in the jeering crowd that lined
the causeway. I thought miserably of my pleasant lodgings in the Bow,
where my landlady, Mistress Macvittie, would be looking at the boxes
the Lanark carrier had brought, and be wondering what had become of
their master. I saw no light for myself in the business. My father's
ill-repute with the Government would tell heavily in my disfavour, and
it was beyond doubt that I had assaulted a dragoon. There was nothing
before me but the plantations or a long spell in some noisome prison.

The women were sent to the House of Correction to be whipped and
dismissed, for there was little against them but foolishness; all
except one, a virago called Isobel Bone, who was herded with the men.
The Canongate Tolbooth was our portion, the darkest and foulest of the
city prisons; and presently I found myself forced through a gateway and
up a narrow staircase, into a little chamber in which a score of beings
were already penned. A small unglazed window with iron bars high up on
one wall gave us such light and air as was going, but the place reeked
with human breathing, and smelled as rank as a kennel. I have a
delicate nose, and I could not but believe on my entrance that an hour
of such a hole would be the death of me. Soon the darkness came, and we
were given a tallow dip in a horn lantern hung on a nail to light us to
food. Such food I had never dreamed of. There was a big iron basin of
some kind of broth, made, as I judged, from offal, from which we drank
in pannikins; and with it were hunks of mildewed rye-bread. One
mouthful sickened me, and I preferred to fast. The behaviour of the