As for
the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been
you, I would has waired my siller better-gates than that." And he
proposed I should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back,
that was a cousin of his own, and made them "extraordinar
endurable."
But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in
this old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-
warren, not only by the number of its indwellers, but the
complication of its passages and holes. It was, indeed, a place
where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be another
stranger. Suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt
so thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day
before he chanced on the right door. The ordinary course was to
hire a lad they called a caddie, who was like a guide or pilot, led
you where you had occasion, and (your errands being done) brought
you again where you were lodging. But these caddies, being always
employed in the same sort of services, and having it for obligation
to be well informed of every house and person in the city, had
grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of Mr.
Campbell's how they communicated one with another, what a rage of
curiosity they conceived as to their employer's business, and how
they were like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece
of little wisdom, the way I was now placed, to take such a ferret
to my tails. I had three visits to make, all immediately needful:
to my kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was
Appin's agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord
Advocate of Scotland. Mr. Balfour's was a non-committal visit; and
besides (Pilrig being in the country) I made bold to find the way
to it myself, with the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue. But
the rest were in a different case. Not only was the visit to
Appin's agent, in the midst of the cry about the Appin murder,
dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the other.
I was like to have a bad enough time of it with my Lord Advocate
Grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot from Appin's
agent, was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might prove
the mere ruin of friend Alan's. The whole thing, besides, gave me
a look of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds that
was little to my fancy. I determined, therefore, to be done at
once with Mr. Stewart and the whole Jacobitical side of my
business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the
porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him the
address, when there came a sprinkle of rain--nothing to hurt, only
for my new clothes--and we took shelter under a pend at the head of
a close or alley.
Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in. The
narrow paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang
upon each side and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they
rose. At the top only a ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could
spy in the windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out
and in, I saw the houses to be very well occupied; and the whole
appearance of the place interested me like a tale.
I was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in
time and clash of steel behind me. Turning quickly, I was aware of
a party of armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a
great coat. He walked with a stoop that was like a piece of
courtesy, genteel and insinuating: he waved his hands plausibly as
he went, and his face was sly and handsome. I thought his eye took
me in, but could not meet it. This procession went by to a door in
the close, which a serving-man in a fine livery set open; and two
of the soldier-lads carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering
with their firelocks by the door.
There can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some
following of idle folk and children.