The pledge which Munro had given to his niece in behalf of Colleton was productive of no small inconvenience to the former personage.  Though himself unwilling—­we must do him the justice to believe—­that the youth should perish for a crime so completely his own, he had in him no great deal of that magnanimous virtue, of itself sufficiently strong to have persuaded him to such a risk, as that which he had undertaken at the supplication of Lucy.  The more he reflected upon the matter, the more trifling seemed the consideration.  With such a man, to reflect is simply to calculate.  Money, now—­the spoil or the steed of the traveller—­would have been a far more decided stimulant to action.  In regarding such an object, he certainly would have overlooked much of the danger, and have been less heedful of the consequences.  The selfishness of the motive would not merely have sanctioned, but have smoothed the enterprise; and he thought too much with the majority—­allowing for any lurking ambition in his mind—­not to perceive that where there is gain there must be glory.

None of these consolatory thoughts came to him in the contemplation of his present purpose.  To adventure his own life—­perhaps to exchange places with the condemned he proposed to save—­though, in such a risk, he only sought to rescue the innocent from the doom justly due to himself—­was a flight of generous impulse somewhat above the usual aim of the landlord; and, but for the impelling influence of his niece—­an influence which, in spite of his own evil habits, swayed him beyond his consciousness—­we should not now have to record the almost redeeming instance in the events of his life at this period—­the one virtue, contrasting with, if it could not lessen or relieve, the long tissue of his offences.

There were some few other influences, however—­if this were not enough—­coupled with that of his niece’s entreaty, which gave strength and decision to his present determination.  Munro was not insensible to the force of superior character, and a large feeling of veneration led him, from the first, to observe the lofty spirit and high sense of honor which distinguished the bearing and deportment of Ralph Colleton.  He could not but admire the native superiority which characterized the manner of the youth, particularly when brought into contrast with that of Guy Rivers, for whom the same feeling had induced a like, though not a parallel respect, on the part of the landlord.

It may appear strange to those accustomed only to a passing and superficial estimate of the thousand inconsistencies which make up that contradictory creation, the human mind, that such should be a feature in the character of a ruffian like Munro; but, to those who examine for themselves, we shall utter nothing novel when we assert, that a respect for superiority of mental and even mere moral attribute, enters largely into the habit of the ruffian generally.  The murderer