that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your honour
that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed to-night,
but in the matter of the Appin case, and I let you go free."

"I will give it till to-morrow or any other near day that you may please
to set," said I. "I would not be thought too wily; but if I gave the
promise without qualification your lordship would have attained his
end."

"I had no thought to entrap you," said he.

"I am sure of that," said I.

"Let me see," he continued. "To-morrow is the Sabbath. Come to me on
Monday by eight in the morning, and give me your promise until then."

"Freely given, my lord," said I. "And with regard to what has fallen
from yourself, I will give it for as long as it shall please God to
spare your days."

"You will observe," he said next, "that I have made no employment of
menaces."

"It was like your lordship's nobility," said I. "Yet I am not altogether
so dull but what I can perceive the nature of those you have not
uttered."

"Well," said he, "good-night to you. May you sleep well, for I think it
is more than I am like to do."

With that he sighed, took up a candle, and gave me his conveyance as far
as the street-door.

CHAPTER V

IN THE ADVOCATE'S HOUSE

The next day, Sabbath, August 27th, I had the occasion I had long looked
forward to, to hear some of the famous Edinburgh preachers, all well
known to me already by the report of Mr. Campbell. Alas! and I might
just as well have been at Essendean, and sitting under Mr. Campbell's
worthy self! the turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt continually on the
interview with Prestongrange, inhibiting me from all attention. I was
indeed much less impressed by the reasoning of the divines than by the
spectacle of the thronged congregation in the churches, like what I
imagined of a theatre or (in my then disposition) of an assize of trial;
above all at the West Kirk, with its three tiers of galleries, where I
went in the vain hope that I might see Miss Drummond.

On the Monday I betook me for the first time to a barber's, and was very
well pleased with the result. Thence to the Advocate's, where the red
coats of the soldiers showed again about his door, making a bright place
in the close. I looked about for the young lady and her gillies: there
was never a sign of them. But I was no sooner shown into the cabinet or
antechamber where I had spent so weariful a time upon the Saturday, than
I w