Scotland, all England, would surely presently want these! Men of all
ranks, committed to the great venture, moved with a determined gaiety
and _elan_. "This is the stage, we are the actors; the piece is a
great piece, the world looks on!" The town of Edinburgh did present a
grandiose setting. Suspense, the die yet covered, the greatness of the
risk, gave, too, its glamour of height and stateliness. All these men
might see, in some bad moment at night, not only possible battle
death--that was in the counting--but, should the great enterprise
fail, scaffolds and hangmen. Many who went up and down were merely
thoughtless, ignorant, reckless, or held in a vanity of good fortune,
yet to the eye of history all might come into the sweep of great
drama. Place and time rang and were tense. Flare and sonorousness and
a deep vibration of the old massive passions, and through all the
outward air a September sea mist creeping.

Ian Rullock, walking down the High Street, approaching St. Giles,
heard his name spoken from a little knot of well-dressed citizens. As
he turned his head a gentleman detached himself from the company. It
proved to be Mr. Wotherspoon the advocate, old acquaintance and
adviser of Archibald Touris, of Black Hill.

"Captain Rullock--"

"Mr. Wotherspoon, I am glad to see you!"

Mr. Wotherspoon, old moderate Whig, and the Jacobite officer walked
together down the clanging way. The mist was making pallid garlands
for the tall houses, a trumpet rang at the foot of the street,
Macdonald of Glengarry and fifty clansmen, bright tartan and screaming
pipes, poured by.

"Auld Reekie sees again a stirring time!" said the lawyer.

"I am glad to have met you, sir," said Rullock. "I fancy that you can
tell me home news. I have heard none for a long time."

"You have been, doubtless," said Mr. Wotherspoon, "too engaged with
great, new-time things to be fashed with small, old-time ones."

"One of our new-time aims," said Ian, "is to give fresh room to an
old-time thing. But we won't let little bolts fly! I am anxious for
knowledge."

Mr. Wotherspoon seemed to ponder it. "I live just here. Perhaps you
will come up to my rooms, out of this Mars' racket?"

"In an hour's time I must wait on Lord George Murray. But I have till
then."

They entered a close, and climbed the stair of a tall, tall house,
dusky and old. Here, half-way up, was the lawyer's lair. He unlocked a
door and the two came, through a small vestibule,