ney, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me
from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, I
was like a beggarman by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my
last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own
head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I was
served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me
carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the
saying) the ball directly at my foot.

There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail.
The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to
handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and
the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for
me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands, and the still country-sides
that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in
particular abashed me. Rankeillor's son was short and small in the
girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill
qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I did
so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case) set
them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some clothes of my
own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter's side, and put my hand
on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.

At a merchant's in the Luckenbooths, I had myself fitted out: none too
fine, for I had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but comely
and responsible, so that servants should respect 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 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. I