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.

496 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
our game with your gammon, or I will make you as mute as your beds
fellow."
The unhappy wretch, exhausted, sunk back beside his hideous companion,
and the usual jargon of the game, interlarded with execrations, went on as
before.
From this specimen of the most obdurate indifference, contrasted with
the last excess of misery, Middlemas became satisfied how little could be
made of an appeal to the humanity of his fellow-sufferers. His heart sunk
within him, and the thoughts of the happy and peaceful home, which he
might have called his own, rose before his over-heated fancy, with a vividness of perception that bordered upon insanity. He saw before him the
rivulet which wanders through the burgh-muir of Middlemas, where he had
so often set little mills for the amusement of Menie while she was a child.
One draught of it would have been worth all the diamonds of the East,
which of late he had worshipped with such devotion; but that draught was
denied to him as to Tantalus.
Rallying his senses from this passing illusion, and knowing enough of
the practice of the medical art, to be aware of the necessity of preventing
his ideas from wandering if possible, he endeavoured to recollect that he
was a surgeon, and, after all, should not have the extreme fear for the
interior of a military hospital, which its horrors might inspire into strangers
to the profession. But though he strove, by such recollections, to rally his
spirits, he was not the less aware of the difference betwixt the condition of
a surgeon, who might have attended such a place in the course of his duty,
and a poor inhabitant, who was at once a patient and a prisoner.
A footstep was now heard in the apartment, which seemed to silence all
the varied sounds of woe that filled it. The cribbage party hid their cards,
and ceased their oaths; other wretches, whose complaints had arisen to
frenzy, left off their wild exclamations and entreaties for assistance. Agony
softened her shriek, Insanity hushed its senseless clamours, and even Death
seemed desirous to stifle his parting groan in the presence of Captain Seelencooper. This official was the superintendent, or, as the miserable inhabitants termed him, the Governor of the Hospital. He had all the air of
having been originally a turnkey in some ill-regulated jail-a stout, short,
bandy-legged man, with one eye, and a double portion of ferocity in that
which remained. He wore an old-fashioned tarnished uniform, which did
not seem to have been made for him; and the voice in which this minister
of humanity addressed the sick, was that of a boatswain, shouting in the
midst of a storm. He had pistols and a cutlass in his belt; for his mode
of administration being such as provoked even hospital patients to revolt,
his life had been more than once in danger amongst them. IHe was followed
by two assistants, who carried hand-cuffs and strait-jackets.
As Seelencooper made his rounds, complaint and pain-were hushed, and
the flourish of the bamboo, which he bore in his hand, seemed powerful as
the wand of a magician to silence all complaint and remonstrance.
"I tell you the meat is as sweet as a nosegay- and for the bread, it's
good enough, and too good, for a set of lubbers, that lie shamming Abraham, and consuming the Right Honourable Company's victuals -I don't
speak to them that are really sick, for God knows I am always for humanity."
" If that be the case, sir," said Richard Middlemas, whose lair the Captain had approached, while he was thus answering the low and humble
complaints of those by whose bed-side he passed-" if that be the case, sir,
I hope your humanity will make you attend to what I say."
"And who the devil are you?" said the Governor, turning on him his
single eye of fire, while a sneer gathered on his harsh features, which were
so well qualified to express it.
" My name is Middlemas - I come from Scotland, and have been sent