‘My goo’ frien’,’ says he, and at the first word I pricked my ears, ‘my goo’ frien’, will you oblishe me with lil neshary infamation?  Whish roa’ t’ Cramond?’

I laughed out clear and loud, stepped up to the convivialist, took him by the shoulders and faced him about.  ‘My good friend,’ said I, ’I believe I know what is best for you much better than yourself, and may God forgive you the fright you have given me!  There, get you gone to Edinburgh!’ And I gave a shove, which he obeyed with the passive agility of a ball, and disappeared incontinently in the darkness down the road by which I had myself come.

Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill, descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands and my destination.  I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and quite distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of the Forth and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of vapour.  I had but one encounter—­that of a farm-cart, which I heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer in the night, and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing seen in a dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the horse’s steps.  I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and shoulders, one of them should be a woman.  Soon, by concurrent steps, the day began to break and the fog to subside and roll away.  The east grew luminous and was barred with chilly colours, and the Castle on its rock, and the spires and chimneys of the upper town, took gradual shape, and arose, like islands, out of the receding cloud.  All about me was still and sylvan; the road mounting and winding, with nowhere a sign of any passenger, the birds chirping, I suppose for warmth, the boughs of the trees knocking together, and the red leaves falling in the wind.

It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I came in view of my destination.  A single gable and chimney of the cottage peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a trifle higher on the mountain, a tall old white-washed farmhouse stood among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough hills of pasture.  I bethought me that shepherd folk were early risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the garden wall of my friends’ house.  The cottage was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs.  It had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of it rising in the midst two storeys high, with a steep-pitched roof, and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels,