ground of dislike or suspicion.

I was yet in suspense, when Andrew, who mistook my hesitation for
bashfulness, proceeded to exhort me to lay it aside. "Speak till
him--speak till him, Mr. Francis--he's no provost yet, though they say
he'll be my lord neist year. Speak till him, then--he'll gie ye a decent
answer for as rich as he is, unless ye were wanting siller frae
him--they say he's dour to draw his purse."

It immediately occurred to me, that if this merchant were really of the
churlish and avaricious disposition which Andrew intimated, there might
be some caution necessary in making myself known, as I could not tell how
accounts might stand between my father and him. This consideration came
in aid of the mysterious hint which I had received, and the dislike which
I had conceived at the man's countenance. Instead of addressing myself
directly to him, as I had designed to have done, I contented myself with
desiring Andrew to inquire at Mr. MacVittie's house the address of Mr.
Owen, an English gentleman; and I charged him not to mention the person
from whom he received the commission, but to bring me the result to the
small inn where we lodged. This Andrew promised to do. He said something
of the duty of my attending the evening service; but added with a
causticity natural to him, that "in troth, if folk couldna keep their
legs still, but wad needs be couping the creels ower through-stanes, as
if they wad raise the very dead folk wi' the clatter, a kirk wi' a
chimley in't was fittest for them."

CHAPTER FOURTH.

On the Rialto, every night at twelve,
I take my evening's walk of meditation:
There we two will meet.
Venice Preserved.

Full of sinister augury, for which, however, I could assign no
satisfactory cause, I shut myself up in my apartment at the inn, and
having dismissed Andrew, after resisting his importunity to accompany him
to St. Enoch's Kirk,* where, he said, "a soul-searching divine was to haud
forth," I set myself seriously to consider what were best to be done.

* This I believe to be an anachronism, as Saint Enoch's Church was not
built at the date of the story. [It was founded in 1780, and has since
been rebuilt.]

I never was what is properly called superstitious; but I suppose that all
men, in situations of peculiar doubt and difficulty, when they have
exercised their reason to little