The Gordon then his bugle¹ blew,

And said, awa, awa;

The House of Rhodes is all on flame,

I hauld it time to ga’.

OLD BALLAD².

When Julian awaked the next morning, all was still and vacant in the apartment. The rising sun, which shone through the half-closed shutters³, showed some relics⁴ of the last night’s banquet, which his confused and throbbing⁵ head assured him had been carried into a debauch⁶.

Without being much of a boon⁷ companion, Julian, like other young men of the time, was not in the habit of shunning⁸ wine, which was then used in considerable quantities; and he could not help being surprised, that the few cups he had drunk over night had produced on his frame the effects of excess. He rose up, adjusted his dress, and sought in the apartment for water to perform his morning ablutions, but without success. Wine there was on the table; and beside it one stool stood, and another lay, as if thrown down in the heedless riot of the evening. “Surely,” he thought to himself, “the wine must have been very powerful, which rendered me insensible to the noise my companions must have made ere they finished their carouse¹⁰.”

With momentary¹¹ suspicion he examined his weapons, and the packet which he had received from the Countess, and kept in a secret pocket of his upper coat, bound close about his person. All was safe; and the very operation reminded him of the duties which lay before him. He left the apartment where they had supped, and went into another, wretched enough, where, in a truckle-bed, were stretched two bodies, covered with a rug, the heads belonging to which were

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