The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK. 671
debarred them the means of pursuing the honest labour by which they
might have redeemed their affairs, and maintained their starving and beggared families.
But with this careless and desperate group Julian was not to be numbered, being led, or rather forced, by his conductors, into a low arched door,
which, carefully secured by bolts and bars, opened for his reception on one
side of the archway, and closed, with all its fastenings, the moment after
his hasty entrance. He was then conducted along two or three gloomy
passages, which, where they intersected each other, were guarded by as
many strong wickets, one of iron gates, and the others of stout oak, clenched
with plates, and studded with nails-of the same metal. Hie was not allowed
to pause until he found himself hurried into a little round vaulted room,
which several of these passages opened into, and which seemed, with respect
to the labyrinth through part of which he had passed, to resemble the central point of a spider's web, in which the main lines of that reptile's curious
maze are always found to terminate.
The resemblance did not end here; for in this small vaulted apartment,
the walls of which were hung round with musketoons, pistols, cutlasses,
and other weapons, as well as with many sets of fetters and irons of different
construction, all disposed in great order, and ready for employment, a person sat, who might not unaptly be compared to a huge bloated and bottled
spider, placed there to secure the prey which had fallen into his toils.
This official had originally been a very strong and square-built man, of
large size, but was now so overgrown, from over-feeding, perhaps, and want
of exercise, as to bear the same resemblance to his former self which a
stall-fed ox still retains to a wild bull. The look of no man is so inauspicious as a fat man, upon whose features ill-nature has marked an habitual
stamp. He seems to have reversed the old proverb of " laugh and be fat,"
and to have thriven under the influence of the worst affections of the mind.
Passionate we can allow a jolly mortal to be; but it seems unnatural to his
goodly case to be sulky and brutal. Now this man's features, surly and
tallow-coloured; his limbs, swelled and disproportioned; his huge paunch
and unwieldy carcase, suggested the idea, that, having once found his way
into this central recess, he had there fattened, like the weasel in the fable,
and fed largely and foully, until he had become incapable of retreating
through any of the narrow paths that terminated at his cell; and was thus
compelled to remain, like a toad under the cold stone, fattening amid the
squalid airs of the dungeons by which he was surrounded, which would
have proved pestiferous to any other than such a congenial inhabitant.
Huge iron-clasped books lay before this ominous specimen of pinguitudethe records of the realm of misery, in which office he officiated as prime
minister; and had Peveril come thither as an unconcerned visiter, his heart
would have sunk within him at considering the mass of human wretchedness which must needs be registered in these fatal volumes. But his own
distresses sat too heavy on his mind to permit any general reflections of
this nature.
The constable and this bulky official whispered together, after the formerhad delivered to the latter the warrant of Julian's commitment. The word
whispered is not quite accurate, for their communication was carried on less
by words than by looks and expressive signs; by which, in all such situations, men learn to supply the use of language, and to add mystery to what
is in itself sufficiently terrible to the captive. The only words which could
be heard were those of the Warden, or, as he was called then, the Captain
of the Jail, " Another bird to the cage -?"
" Who will whistle'Pretty Pope of Rome,' with any starling in your
Knight's ward," answered the constable, with a facetious air, checked, however, by the due respect to the superior presence in which he stood.
The Grim Feature relaxed into something like a smile as he heard the