the old butler removed his defences, remarking only, "I thocht ye
were that man." But his master was not there; he was staying, it
appeared, at the house in Murrayfield; and though the butler would have
been glad enough to have taken his place and given all the news of the
family, John, struck with a little chill, was eager to be gone. Only,
the door was scarce closed again, before he regretted that he had not
asked about "that man."

He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father and made all
well at home; Alan had been the only possible exception, and John had
not time to go as far as Murrayfield. But here he was on Regent Terrace;
there was nothing to prevent him going round the end of the hill, and
looking from without on the Mackenzies' house. As he went he reflected
that Flora must now be a woman of near his own age, and it was within
the bounds of possibility that she was married; but this dishonourable
doubt he dammed down.

There was the house, sure enough; but the door was of another colour,
and what was this--two door-plates? He drew nearer; the top one bore,
with dignified simplicity, the words, "Mr. Proudfoot"; the lower one was
more explicit, and informed the passer-by that here was likewise the
abode of "Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proudfoot, Advocate." The Proudfoots must be
rich, for no advocate could look to have much business in so remote a
quarter; and John hated them for their wealth and for their name, and
for the sake of the house they desecrated with their presence. He
remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at school, not known: a little,
whey-faced urchin, the despicable member of some lower class. Could it
be this abortion that had climbed to be an advocate, and now lived in
the birthplace of Flora and the home of John's tenderest memories? The
chill that had first seized upon him when he heard of Houston's absence
deepened and struck inward. For a moment, as he stood under the doors of
that estranged house, and looked east and west along the solitary
pavement of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, the sense
of solitude and desolation took him by the throat, and he wished himself
in San Francisco.

And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers,
the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lit, recurred to
his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad
who, on a certain spring Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of
churc