CHAPTER XVI.
But if thou shouldst be dragg'd in scorn To yonder ignominious tree, Thou shall not want one faithful friend To share the cruel fates' decree.
SHENSTONE.
Plunged in the gloomy reflections which were naturally excited by his dismal reading and disconsolate situation, Bertram for the first time in his life felt himself affected with a disposition to low spirits.

'I have been in worse situations than this too,' he said; 'more dangerous, for here is no danger; more dismal in prospect, for my present confinement must necessarily be short; more intolerable for the time, for here, at least, I have fire, food, and shelter.

Yet, with reading these bloody tales of crime and misery in a place so corresponding to the ideas which they excite, and in listening to these sad sounds, I feel a stronger disposition to melancholy than in my life I ever experienced.

But I will not give way to it.

Begone, thou record of guilt and infamy!' he said, flinging the book upon the spare bed; 'a Scottish jail shall not break, on the very first day, the spirits which have resisted climate, and want, and penury, and disease, and imprisonment in a foreign land.