I awoke to much diffidence, even to a feeling that might be called the beginnings of panic, and lay for hours in my bed considering the situation.  Seek where I pleased, there was nothing to encourage me and plenty to appal.  They kept a close watch about the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog—­at least, unless I had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only watch the more indefatigably for the loss.  In the pardonable ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved.  Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried what remained to me in a bank in George Street.  And now I must get back the one or the other; and which? and how?

As I tossed in my bed, I could see three possible courses, all extremely perilous.  First, Rowley might have been mistaken; the bank might not be watched; it might still be possible for him to draw the money on the deposit receipt.  Second, I might apply again to Robbie.  Or, third, I might dare everything, go to the Assembly Ball, and speak with Flora under the eyes of all Edinburgh.  This last alternative, involving as it did the most horrid risks, and the delay of forty-eight hours, I did but glance at with an averted head, and turned again to the consideration of the others.  It was the likeliest thing in the world that Robbie had been warned to have no more to do with me.  The whole policy of the Gilchrists was in the hands of Chevenix; and I thought this was a precaution so elementary that he was certain to have taken it.  If he had not, of course I was all right:  Robbie would manage to communicate with Flora; and by four o’clock I might be on the south road and, I was going to say, a free man.  Lastly, I must assure myself with my own eyes whether the bank in George Street were beleaguered.

I called to Rowley and questioned him tightly as to the appearance of the Bow Street officer.

‘What sort of looking man is he, Rowley?’ I asked, as I began to dress.

‘Wot sort of a looking man he is?’ repeated Rowley.  ’Well, I don’t very well know wot you would say, Mr. Anne.  He ain’t a beauty, any’ow.’

‘Is he tall?’

‘Tall?  Well, no, I shouldn’t say tall Mr. Anne.’

‘Well, then, is he short?’

’Short?  No, I don’t think I would say he was what you would call short.  No, not piticular short, sir.’

‘Then, I suppose, he must be about the middle height?’

‘Well, you might say it, sir; but not remarkable so.’

I smothered an oath.

‘Is he clean-shaved?’ I tried him again.

‘Clean-shaved?’ he repeated, with the same air of anxious candour.

‘Good heaven, man, don’t repeat my words like a parrot!’ I cried. 
’Tell me what the man was like:  it is of the first importance that
I should be able to recognise him.’