Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/398

390 to keep me close, without allowing me to stir from my lodgings upon any pretence whatsoever: but when another regiment came to relieve that which was before upon duty, I bribed him who had been my keeper, at his going off, that he should tell the first who came in his place, that his orders were to "walk with me to any part of the town I pleased." This was accordingly done, and thenceforward I used to take my sentry along with me, and visit my old fellow prisoners, the Gillicrankymen, and sometimes stay with them all night; at other times, my friends would do the same at my lodgings; among whom the lord William Douglas often did me that honour: nay, sometimes, in company of some gentlemen, I would leave the sentry drinking with the footmen in an alehouse, at the back of the town wall, while we rambled nine or ten miles in the country, to visit some acquaintance or others still taking care to return before two in the afternoon, which was the hour of parade, to save the sentry from danger.

Thus I spent above two months, till the day the government had filled the castle and the Tolbooth again, as I have mentioned already. As soon as I was told of my lord Kilsyth's imprisonment, I knew the danger I was in, and had just time to run with the sentry to a cellar, where I found twelve officers got together for shelter likewise from the storm, a little before me. We staid there close till night, and then dispatched my sentry, with captain Mair's footman, to the lady Lockhart's (who was married to the captain) four miles out of town, to let her know, that her husband would be at home that night, with twelve other cavaliers (for so in those days we ed