Ye towers of Julius! London's shame;   With many a and midnight murder fed!
                           Gray.
Such is the of Gray. Bandello, long before him, has said something like it; and the same sentiment must, in some shape or other, have frequently occurred to those, who, remembering the fate of other captives in that state-prison, may have had but too much reason to anticipate their own. The dark and low arch, which seemed, like the entrance to Dante's Hell, to forbid hope of regress—the muttered sounds of the warders, and petty formalities observed in opening and shutting the grated wicket—the cold and salutation of the of the , who showed his prisoner that distant and measured respect which authority pays as a tax to decorum, all struck upon Nigel's heart, impressing on him the cruel consciousness of .
 
“I am a prisoner,” he said, the words escaping from him almost unawares; “I am a prisoner, and in the Tower!”
 
The Lieutenant bowed—“And it is my duty,” he said, “to show your lordship your , where, I am compelled to say, my orders are to place you under some restraint. I will make it as easy as my duty permits.”
 
Nigel only bowed in return to this compliment, and followed the Lieutenant to the ancient buildings on the western side of the parade, and adjoining to the , used in those days as a state-prison, but in ours as the mess-room of the officers of the guard upon duty at the fortress. The double doors were unlocked, the prisoner a few steps, followed by the Lieutenant, and a warder of the higher class. They entered a large, but irregular, low-roofed, and dark apartment, exhibiting a very proportion of furniture. The warder had orders to light a fire, and attend to Lord Glenvarloch's commands in all things consistent with his duty; and the Lieutenant, having made his with the customary compliment, that he trusted his lordship would not long remain under his , took his leave.
 
Nigel would have asked some questions of the warder, who remained to put the apartment into order, but the man had caught the spirit of his office. He seemed not to hear some of the prisoner's questions, though of the most ordinary kind, did not reply to others, and when he did speak, it was in a short and tone, which, though not disrespectful, was such as at least to encourage no farther communication.
 
Nigel left him, therefore, to do his work in silence, and proceeded to amuse himself with the task of deciphering the names, mottoes, verses, and , with which his in captivity had covered the walls of their prison-house. There he saw the names of many a forgotten sufferer with others which will continue in remembrance until English history shall perish. There were the effusions of the Catholic, poured on the eve of his sealing his profession at Tyburn, mingled with those of the firm Protestant, about to feed the fires of Smithfield. There the slender hand of the unfortunate Jane Grey, whose fate was to draw tears from future generations, might be contrasted with the bolder touch which impressed deep on the walls the Bear and Staff, the proud of the proud Dudleys. It was like the roll of the prophet, a record of and mourning, and yet not unmixed with brief interjections of resignation, and sentences of the firmest resolution.[Footnote: These memorials of illustrious criminals, or of innocent persons who had the fate of such, are still preserved, though at one time, in the course of repairing the rooms, they were in some danger of being . They are preserved at present with becoming respect, and have most of them been .—See BAYLEY'S History and of the Tower of London.]
 
In the sad task of examining the of his predecessors in captivity, Lord Glenvarloch was interrupted by the sudden opening of the door of his prison-room. It was the warder, who came to inform him, that, by order of the Lieutenant of the Tower, his lordship was to have the society and attendance of a fellow-prisoner in his place of . Nigel replied hastily, that he wished no attendance, and would rather be left alone; but the warder gave him to understand, with a kind of civility, that the Lieutenant was the best judge how his prisoners should be accommodated, and that he would have no trouble with the boy, who was such a slip of a thing as was scarce worth turning a key upon.—“There, Giles,” he said, “bring the child in.”
 
Another warder put the “lad before him” into the room, and, both withdrawing, bolt crashed and chain clanged, as they replaced these obstacles to freedom. The boy was clad in a grey suit of the finest cloth, laid down with silver lace, with a buff-coloured cloak of the same pattern. His cap, which was a Montero of black , was pulled over his brows, and, with the of his long ringlets, almost his face. He stood on the very spot where the warder had quitted his collar, about two steps from the door of the apartment, his eyes on the ground, and every trembling with confusion and terror. Nigel could well have with his society, but it was not in his nature to , whether of body or mind, without endeavouring to relieve it.
 
“Cheer up,” he said, “my pretty lad. We are to be companions, it seems, for a little time—at least I trust your confinement will be short, since you are too young to have done aught to deserve long restraint. Come, come—do not be discouraged. Your hand is cold and trembles? the air is warm too—but it may be the damp of this darksome room. Place you by the fire.—What! weeping-ripe, my little man? I pray you, do not be a child. You have no beard yet, to be by your tears, but yet you should not cry like a girl. Think you are only shut up for playing , and you can pass a day without weeping, surely.”
 
The boy suffered himself to be led and seated by the fire, but, after retaining for a long time the very which he assumed in sitting down, he suddenly changed it in order to his hands with an air of the bitterest distress, and then, spreading them before his face, wept so , that the tears found their way in floods through his slender fingers.
 
Nigel was in some degree rendered insensible to his own situation, by his feelings for the intense agony by which so young and beautiful a creature seemed to be overwhelmed; and, sitting down close beside the boy, he the most terms which occurred, to endeavour to his distress; and, with an action which the difference of their age rendered natural, drew his hand along the long hair of the child. The lad appeared so shy as even to shrink from this slight approach to familiarity—yet, when Lord Glenvarloch, perceiving and allowing for his timidity, sat down on the farther side of the fire, he appeared to be more at his ease, and to hearken with some apparent interest to the arguments which from time to time Nigel used, to induce him to moderate, at least, the violence of his grief. As the boy listened, his tears, though they continued to flow freely, seemed to escape from their source more easily, his were less convulsive, and became gradually changed into low sighs, which succeeded each other, indicating as much sorrow, perhaps, but less alarm, than his first transports had shown.
 
“Tell me who and what you are, my pretty boy,” said Nigel.—“Consider me, child, as a companion, who wishes to be kind to you, would you but teach him how he can be so.”
 
“Sir—my lord, I mean,” answered the boy, very timidly, and in a voice which could scarce be heard even across the brief distance which divided them, “you are very good—and I—am very unhappy—”
 
A second fit of tears interrupted what else he had intended to say, and it required a of Lord Glenvarloch's good-natured expostulations and encouragements, to bring him once more to such composure as rendered the lad capable of expressing himself . At length, however, he was able to say—“I am sensible of your goodness, my lord—and grateful for it—but I am a poor unhappy creature, and, what is worse, have myself only to thank for my misfortunes.”
 
“We are seldom absolutely , my young acquaintance,” said Nigel, “without being ourselves more or less responsible for it—I may well say so, otherwise I had not been here to-day—but you are very young, and can have but little to answer for.”
 
“O sir! I wish I could say so—I have been self-willed and obstinate—and rash and ungovernable—and now—now, how dearly do I pay the price of it!”
 
“Pshaw, my boy,” replied Nigel; “this must be some childish frolic—some breaking out of bounds—some truant trick—And yet how should any of these have brought you to the Tower?—There is something mysterious about you, young man, which I must inquire into.”
 
“Indeed, indeed, my lord, there is no harm about me,” said the boy, more moved it would seem to by the last words, by which he seemed alarmed, than by all the kind expostulations and arguments which Nigel had used. “I am innocent—that is, I have done wrong, but nothing to deserve being in this place.”
 
“Tell me the truth, then,” said Nigel, in a tone in which command mingled with encouragement; “you have nothing to fear from me, and as little to hope, perhaps—yet, placed as I am, I would know with whom I speak.”
 
“With an unhappy—boy, sir—and idle and truantly disposed, as your lordship said,” answered the lad, looking up, and showing a in which paleness and blushes succeeded each other, as fear and shamefacedness alternately had influence. “I left my father's house without leave, to see the king hunt in the Park at Greenwich; there came a cry of treason, and all the gates were shut—I was frightened, and hid myself in a , and I was found by some of the and examined—and they said I gave no good account of myself—and so I was sent hither.”
 
“I am an unhappy, a most unhappy being,” said Lord Glenvarloch, rising and walking through the apartment; “nothing approaches me but shares my own bad fate! Death and dog my steps, and involve all who are found near me. Yet this boy's story sounds strangely.—You say you were examined, my young friend—Let me pray you to say whether you told your name, and your means of gaining admission into the Park—if so, they surely would not have detained you?”
 
“O, my lord,” said the boy, “I took care not to tell them the name of the friend that let me in; and as to my father—I would not he knew where I now am for all the wealth in London!”
 
“But do you not expect,” said Nigel, “that they will dismiss you till you let them know who and what you are?”
 
“What good will it do them to keep so useless a creature as myself?” said the boy; “they must let me go, were it but out of shame.”
 
“Do not trust to that—tell me your name and station—I will communicate them to the Lieutenant—he is a man of quality and honour, and will not only be willing to your liberation, but also, I have no doubt, will with your father. I am partly answerable for such poor aid as I can afford, to get you out of this , since I occasioned the alarm owing to which you were arrested; so tell me your name, and your father's name.”
 
“My name to you? O never, never!” answered the boy, in a tone of deep emotion, the cause of which Nigel could not comprehend.
 
“Are you so much afraid of me, young man,” he replied, “because I am here accused and a prisoner? Consider, a man may be both, and deserve neither suspicion nor restraint. Why should you distrust me? You seem friendless, and I am myself so much in the same circumstances, that I cannot but pity your situation when I reflect on my own. Be wise; I have spoken kindly to you—I mean as kindly as I speak.”
 
“O, I doubt it not, I doubt it not, my lord,” said the boy, “and I could tell you all—that is, almost all.”
 
“Tell me nothing, my young friend, excepting what may assist me in being useful to you,” said Nigel.
 
“You are generous, my lord,” said the boy; “and I am sure—O sure, I might safely trust to your honour—But yet—but yet—I am so sore beset—I have been so rash, so unguarded—I can never tell you of my . Besides, I have already told too much to one whose heart I thought I had moved—yet I find myself here.”
 
“To whom did you make this disclosure?” said Nigel.
 
“I dare not tell,” replied the youth.
 
“There is something singular about ............