me. Thence to an
armourer's, where I got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in life. I
felt safer with the weapon, though (for one so ignorant of defence) it
might be called an added danger. The porter, who was naturally a man of
some experience, judged my accoutrement to be well chosen.

"Naething kenspeckle,"[1] said he; "plain, dacent claes. As for the
rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I
would hae 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 tack 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 Gran