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Under such a warrant had poor Owen been confined to durance on the day preceding that when I was so strangely guided to his prison-house. Thus possessed of the alarming outline of facts, the question remained, what was to be done and it was not of easy determination. I plainly perceived the perils with which we were surrounded, but it was more difficult to suggest any remedy.
This was used as a prison for captured officers of the Patriot forces, and the very first person to greet me as I stepped inside the room was the lively Alzura. "Juan Crawford," cried he, "by all that's wonderful! From the ballroom to the prison-house! There's a splendid subject for the moralist. Where have you been, Juan? your people think you are dead.
Shield my child with thy might; lead him forth from the prison-house by thy serene right hand! I ask not for lordships and earldoms, as the appanage of his father; train him not to be rival to thee: I ask but for freedom, and English air! So counting on thee, O Harold, I turn my face to the wall, and hush my wild heart to peace!" The scroll dropped noiseless from Harold's hand.
With Old File, as I have said, I became quite friendly. Excepting the secrets of our prison-house, he was ready enough to talk on subjects about which I was curious. He had known his present master as a young man, and was perfectly familiar with all the events of his career.
Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Hear what Henry Vaughan says:
Many of the citizens who were loyal to the American cause had fled. Those who were too poor to leave pretended to favor the British, but as little business could be done, they could find no work, and their condition became worse daily. Thousands of American prisoners were brought here, making it a British prison-house, and every building of any size was a guard-house, every cellar a dungeon.
When the jewels of Humanity's memories shall be made up, she who, as it were, bent down to him in his prison-house and put her jewelled hands to the breaking of his fetters, shall stand, with women of the same sympathy, only next to her who broke her box of ointment on the Saviour's feet. The next day made a walk to Helmsdale, a distance of about eighteen miles.
There, in that solemn chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, have been deeply sensible of a feeling of awe and reverence?
Not another word she said or needed to say; it was enough. It is with a sad feeling that one contemplates noble minds and bodies, nobly and grandly formed human beings, that have come to us cramped, scarred, maimed, out of the prison-house of bondage. One longs to know what such beings might have become, if suffered to unfold and expand under the kindly developing influences of education.
Upon the sixth day of his confinement Waverley found himself so well that he began to meditate his escape from this dull and miserable prison-house, thinking any risk which he might incur in the attempt preferable to the stupefying and intolerable uniformity of Janet's retirement. The question indeed occurred, whither he was to direct his course when again at his own disposal.
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