CHAPTER TENTH.
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us--Oh!--and is all forgot?
Midsummer Night's Dream.
We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage
at St. Leonard's; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding
narrative does not exceed in length that which he actually spent on
Salisbury Crags on the morning which succeeded the execution done upon
Porteous by the rioters. For this delay he had his own motives. He wished
to collect his thoughts, strangely agitated as they were, first by the
melancholy news of Effie Deans's situation, and afterwards by the
frightful scene which he had witnessed. In the situation also in which he
stood with respect to Jeanie and her father, some ceremony, at least some
choice of fitting time and season, was necessary to wait upon them. Eight
in the morning was then the ordinary hour for breakfast, and he resolved
that it should arrive before he made his appearance in their cottage.
Never did hours pass so heavily. Butler shifted his place and enlarged
his circle to while away the time, and heard the huge bell of St.
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