’In connection with the recent horrid murder in the Castle, we are desired to make public the following intelligence.  The soldier, Champdivers, is supposed to be in the neighbourhood of this city.  He is about the middle height or rather under, of a pleasing appearance and highly genteel address.  When last heard of he wore a fashionable suit of pearl-grey, and boots with fawn-coloured tops.  He is accompanied by a servant about sixteen years of age, speaks English without any accent, and passed under the alias of Ramornie.  A reward is offered for his apprehension.’

In a moment I was in the next room, stripping from me the pearl-coloured suit!

I confess I was now a good deal agitated.  It is difficult to watch the toils closing slowly and surely about you, and to retain your composure; and I was glad that Rowley was not present to spy on my confusion.  I was flushed, my breath came thick; I cannot remember a time when I was more put out.

And yet I must wait and do nothing, and partake of my meals, and entertain the ever-garrulous Rowley, as though I were entirely my own man.  And if I did not require to entertain Mrs. McRankine also, that was but another drop of bitterness in my cup!  For what ailed my landlady, that she should hold herself so severely aloof, that she should refuse conversation, that her eyes should be reddened, that I should so continually hear the voice of her private supplications sounding through the house?  I was much deceived, or she had read the insidious paragraph and recognised the comminated pearl-grey suit.  I remember now a certain air with which she had laid the paper on my table, and a certain sniff, between sympathy and defiance, with which she had announced it:  ‘There’s your Mercury for ye!’

In this direction, at least, I saw no pressing danger; her tragic countenance betokened agitation; it was plain she was wrestling with her conscience, and the battle still hung dubious.  The question of what to do troubled me extremely.  I could not venture to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my landlady’s spiritual nature:  it might go off at a word, and in any direction, like a badly-made firework.  And while I praised myself extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a friend of her, I was all abroad as to my conduct in the present.  There seemed an equal danger in pressing and in neglecting the accustomed marks of familiarity.  The one extreme looked like impudence, and might annoy, the other was a practical confession of guilt.  Altogether, it was a good hour for me when the dusk began to fall in earnest on the streets of Edinburgh, and the voice of an early watchman bade me set forth.