; and, the ice being broken, I was able to
consult him as to my conduct. He insisted I must return to the house,
at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with Mr. Loudon. "For the
evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you please," said he, "by
asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself. But the luncheon and the
walk are unavoidable. He is an old man, and, I believe, really fond of
you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of
avoiding him; and as for Mr. Adam, do you know, I think your delicacy
out of place.... And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you to do with this money?"

Ay, there was the question. With two thousand pounds--fifty thousand
francs--I might return to Paris and the arts, and be a prince and
millionaire in that thrifty Latin Quarter. I think I had the grace, with
one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had sent the London letter: I
know very well that with the rest and worst of me, I repented bitterly
of that precipitate act. On one point, however, my whole multiplex
estate of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help
but I must follow. The money was accordingly divided in two unequal
shares: for the first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of Dijon to
meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I had already cash in
hand for the expenses of my journey, he supplied me with drafts on San
Francisco.

The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable
dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the
form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no
suburb or work of his old hands, but with an impulse both natural and
pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It
was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks
of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with
elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy. The east wind
(which I thought too harsh for the old man) continually shook the
boughs, and the thin sun of a Scottish summer drew their dancing
shadows.

"I wanted ye to see the place," said he. "Yon's the stane. Euphemia
Ross: that was my goodwife, your grandmither--hoots! I'm wrong; that was
my first yin; I had no bairns by her;--yours is the second, Mary Murray,
Born 1819, Died 1850: that's her--a fine, plain, decent sort of
a creature, tak' her athegether. Alexander Loudon, Born Seventeen
Ninety-Twa, Died--an