“Mr. Loudon bids me add,” continued the lawyer, consulting a little sheet of notes, “that although these volumes are very valuable to the practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality.  He tells you also not to be ’hadden doun’—­his own expression—­by the theory of strains, and that Portland cement, properly sanded, will go a long way.”

I smiled, and remarked that I supposed it would.

“I once lived in one of my excellent client’s houses,” observed the lawyer; “and I was tempted, in that case, to think it had gone far enough.”

“Under these circumstances, sir,” said I, “you will be rather relieved to hear that I have no intention of becoming a builder.”

At this, he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, I was able to consult him as to my conduct.  He insisted I must return to the house, at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with Mr. Loudon.  “For the evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you please,” said he, “by asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself.  But the luncheon and the walk are unavoidable.  He is an old man, and, I believe, really fond of you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of avoiding him; and as for Mr. Adam, do you know, I think your delicacy out of place....  And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you to do with this money?”

Ay, there was the question.  With two thousand pounds—­fifty thousand francs—­I might return to Paris and the arts, and be a prince and millionaire in that thrifty Latin Quarter.  I think I had the grace, with one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had sent the London letter:  I know very well that with the rest and worst of me, I repented bitterly of that precipitate act.  On one point, however, my whole multiplex estate of man was unanimous:  the letter being gone, there was no help but I must follow.  The money was accordingly divided in two unequal shares:  for the first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of Dijon to meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I had already cash in hand for the expenses of my journey, he supplied me with drafts on San Francisco.

The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay.  It was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy.  The east wind (which I thought too harsh for the old man) continually shook the boughs, and the thin sun of a Scottish summer drew their dancing shadows.