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.  It was indeed a place where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be another stranger.  Suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt so thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day before he chanced on the right door.  The ordinary course was to hire a lad they called a caddie, who was like a guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands being done) brought you again where you were lodging.  But these caddies, being always employed in the same sort of services, and having it for obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the city, had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of Mr. Campbell’s how they communicated one with another, what a rage of curiosity they conceived as to their employer’s business, and how they were like eyes and fingers to the police.  It would be a piece of little wisdom, the way I was now placed, to tack such a ferret to my tails.  I had three visits to make, all immediately needful:  to my kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin’s agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland.  Mr. Balfour’s was a non-committal visit; and besides (Pilrig being in the country) I made bold to find way to it myself, with the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue.  But the rest were in a different case.  Not only was the visit to Appin’s agent, in the midst of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the other.  I was like to have a bad enough time of it with my Lord Advocate Grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot from Appin’s agent, was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might prove the mere ruin of friend Alan’s.  The whole thing, besides, gave me a look of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds that was little to my fancy.  I determined, therefore, to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and the whole Jacobitical side of my business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the porter at my side.  But it chanced I had scarce given him the address, when there came a sprinkle of rain—­nothing to hurt, only for my new clothes—­and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or alley.

Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in.  The narrow paved way descended swiftly.  Prodigious tall houses sprang upon each side and bulged out, one story beyond another, as they rose.  At the top only a ribbon of sky showed in.  By what I could spy in the windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, I saw the houses to be very well occupied; and the whole appearance of the place interested me like a tale.