I can tell you, however, that you will be
disappointed, for it was not the gentleman who was accused,
found guilty, and would have suffered the utmost penalty of the
law had he not made his escape. It was not he, I say, who slew
your young master, nor had he any hand in it."
"I never thought he had. But, pray, how do you come to know
this?"
"You shall hear. I had been abandoned in York by an artful and
consummate fiend; and found guilty of being art and part
concerned in the most heinous atrocities, and, in his place,
suffered what I yet shudder to think of I was banished the county,
begged my way with my poor outcast child up to Edinburgh, and
was there obliged, for the second time in my life, to betake
myself to the most degrading of all means to support two
wretched lives. I hired a dress, and betook me, shivering, to the
High Street, too well aware that my form and appearance would
soon draw me suitors enow at that throng and intemperate time of
the Parliament. On my very first stepping out to the street, a party
of young gentlemen was passing. I heard by the noise they made,
and the tenor of their speech, that they were more then mellow,
and so I resolved to keep near them, in order, if possible, to make
some of them my prey.
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