his friend to him who held the horses at the foot of the Wynd, with
instructions to keep behind him at a distance, he began to follow his
victim slowly, and soon saw with delight that he was wending his
senatorial steps down towards Leith. The unconscious judge seemed
drowned in study: his eyes were fixed on the ground; his hands placed
behind his back; and, ever and anon, he twirled a gold-headed cane that
hung suspended by a silken string from one of his fingers. Will was
certain that he was meditating the fall of Coberston, and the ruin of
his benefactor, Traquair; and, as the thought rose in his mind, the fire
of his eye burned brighter, and his resolution mounted higher and
higher, till he could even have seized his prey in Leith lane, and
carried him off amidst the cries of the populace. But his opportunity
was coming quicker than he supposed. To enable him to get deeper and
deeper into his brown study, Durie was clearly bent upon avoiding the
common road where passengers put to flight his ideas; and, turning to
the right, went up a narrow lane, and continued to saunter on till he
came to that place commonly known by the name of the Figgate Whins. In
that sequestered place, where scarcely an individual was seen to pass in
an hour, the deep thinking of the cogitative senator might trench the
soil of the law of prescription, turn up the principle which regulated
tailzies under the second part of the act 1617, and bury Traquair's
right to Coberston. No sound but the flutter of a bird, or the moan of
the breaking waves of the Frith of Forth, could there interfere with his
train of thought. Away he sauntered, ever turning his gold-headed cane,
and driving his head farther and farther into the deep hole where, like
the ancient philosopher, he expected to find truth. Sometimes he struck
his foot against a stone, and started and looked up, as if awakened from
a dream; but he was too intent on his study to take the pains to make a
complete turn of his wise head, to see if there was any one behind him.
During all this time, a regular course of signals was in progress among
Will and his friends who were coming up behind him, the horses being
kept far back, in case the sound of their hoofs might reach the ear of
the day-dreamer. He had now reached the most retired and lonely part of
the common, where, at that time, there stood a small clump of trees at
a little distance from the whin-road that gave the place its singular
name.