Guy Mannering or The Astrologer

'Well, Sir Robert,' said the Lawyer, taking the word out of the mouth of the impatient soldier, 'you have told me news. I shall investigate them, and if I find them true, certainly Colonel Mannering and I will not countenance this young man. In the meanwhile, as we are all willing to make him forthcoming to answer all complaints against him, I do assure you, you will act most illegally, and incur heavy responsibility, if you refuse our bail.'

'Why, Mr. Pleydell,' said Sir Robert, who knew the high authority of the Counsellor's opinion, 'as you must know best, and as you promise to give up this young man―'

'If he proves an impostor,' replied the Lawyer, with some emphasis.

'Ay, certainly. Under that condition I will take your bail; though I must say an obliging, well-disposed, and civil neighbour of mine, who was himself bred to the law, gave me a hint or caution this morning against doing so. It was from him I learned that this youth was liberated and had come abroad, or rather had broken prison. But where shall we find one to draw the bail-bond?'

'Here,' said the Counsellor, applying himself to the bell, 'send up my clerk, Mr. Driver; it will not do my character harm if I dictate the needful myself.' It was written accordingly and signed, and, the Justice having subscribed a regular warrant for Bertram alias Brown's discharge, the visitors took their leave.

Each threw himself into his own corner of the post-chariot, and said nothing for some time. The Colonel first broke silence: 'So you intend to give up this poor young fellow at the first brush?'

'Who, I?' replied the Counsellor. 'I will not give up one hair of his head, though I should follow them to the court of last resort in his behalf; but what signified mooting points and showing one's hand to that old ass? Much better he should report to his prompter, Glossin, that we are indifferent or lukewarm in the matter. Besides, I wished to have a peep at the enemies' game.'

'Indeed!' said the soldier. 'Then I see there are stratagems in law as well as war. Well, and how do you like their line of battle?'

'Ingenious,' said Mr. Pleydell, 'but I think desperate; they are finessing too much, a common fault on such occasions.'

During this discourse the carriage rolled rapidly towards Woodbourne without anything occurring worthy of the reader's notice, excepting their meeting with young Hazlewood, to whom the Colonel told the extraordinary history of Bertram's reappearance, which he heard with high delight, and then rode on before to pay Miss Bertram his compliments on an event so happy and so unexpected.

We return to the party at Woodbourne. After the departure of Mannering, the conversation related chiefly to the fortunes of the Ellangowan family, their domains, and their former power. 'It was, then, under the towers of my fathers,' said Bertram, 'that I landed some days since, in circumstances much resembling those of a vagabond! Its mouldering turrets and darksome arches even then awakened thoughts of the deepest interest, and recollections which I was unable to decipher. I will now visit them again with other feelings, and, I trust, other and better hopes.'

'Do not go there now,' said his sister. 'The house of our ancestors is at present the habitation of a wretch as insidious as dangerous, whose arts and villainy accomplished the ruin and broke the heart of our unhappy father.'

'You increase my anxiety,' replied her brother, 'to confront this miscreant, even in the den he has constructed for himself; I think I have seen him.'

'But you must consider,' said Julia, 'that you are now left under Lucy's guard and mine, and are responsible to us for all your motions, consider, I have not been a lawyer's mistress twelve hours for nothing, and I assure you it would be madness to attempt to go to Ellangowan just now. The utmost to which I can consent is, that we shall walk in a body to the head of the Woodbourne avenue, and from that perhaps we may indulge you with our company as far as a rising ground in the common, whence your eyes may be blessed with a distant prospect of those gloomy towers which struck so strongly your sympathetic imagination.'