The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

people in the suburbs, which she frequented by stealth—
and her ruin proved an interlude to the tragic scenes in
which I was now deeply engaged. Yet this let me say—
the villany was not premeditated, and I was firmly resolved
to do her all the justice which marriage could do,
so soon as I should be able to extricate myself from my
unhappy course of life, and embrace some one more
suited to my birth. I had wild visions—visions of conducting
her as if to some poor retreat, and introducing
her at once to rank and fortune she never dreamt of. A
friend, at my request, attempted a negotiation with my
father, which was protracted for some time, and renewed
at different intervals. At length, and just when I expected
my father’s pardon, he learned by some means
or other my infamy, painted in even exaggerated colours,
which was, God knows, unnecessary. He wrote me a letter—how
it found me out I know not—enclosing me a
sum of money, and disowning me for ever. I became desperate—I
became frantic—I readily joined Wilson in a
perilous smuggling adventure in which we miscarried,
and was willingly blinded by his logic to consider the
Sir Walter Scott
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robbery of the officer of the customs in Fife as a fair
and honourable reprisal. Hitherto I had observed a certain
line in my criminality, and stood free of assaults
upon personal property, but now I felt a wild pleasure
in disgracing myself as much as possible.
“The plunder was no object to me. I abandoned that
to my comrades, and only asked the post of danger. I
remember well that when I stood with my drawn sword
guarding the door while they committed the felony, I
had not a thought of my own safety. I was only meditating
on my sense of supposed wrong from my family,
my impotent thirst of vengeance, and how it would
sound in the haughty cars of the family of Willingham,
that one of their descendants, and the heir apparent of
their honours, should perish by the hands of the hangman
for robbing a Scottish gauger of a sum not equal to
one-fifth part of the money I had in my pocket-book.
We were taken—I expected no less. We were condemned—that
also I looked for. But death, as he approached
nearer, looked grimly; and the recollection of
your sister’s destitute condition determined me on an