door the girl held out her hand with a certain
emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little longer, and said,
"Good-night, Flora, dear," and was instantly thrown into much fear by
his presumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the
bell; and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the
porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a fortification. She
had a knitted shawl over her head; her blue Highland eyes took the
light from the neighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door
opened and closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone.

He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he
came to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown
of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way to Collette's, where Alan
would soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no
more consented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the
touch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his
father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was the way
home, which pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whose
fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heart
was just then tumultuously moved. The hill-top, the cool air of the
night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city under
his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew
him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way; and by that
quite innocent deflection ripened the crop of his venial errors for the
sickle of destiny.

On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half an hour,
looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at the lamps of heaven.
Wonderful were the resolves he formed; beautiful and kindly were the
vistas of future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself the
name of Flora in so many touching and dramatic keys that he became at
length fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At that
juncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his ear. He put his
hand into the pocket, pulled forth the envelope that held the money, and
sat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this period, had an ill name of
nights; and to be sitting there with four hundred pounds that did not
belong to him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a very
bad hat, a little on one side of him, apparently looking at the scenery;
from a