th to sever the connection, and would
even ask a substitute. I would be obliged for a letter of introduction
to one of your own cloth in Edinburgh--an old man for choice, very
experienced, very respectable, and very secret. Could you favour me with
such a letter?"

"Why, no," said he. "Certainly not. I will do no such thing, indeed."

"It would be a great favour, sir," I pleaded.

"It would be an unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a
letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must
forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it no more."

"You seem to be always in the right," said I. "The letter would be out
of the question, I quite see that. But the lawyer's name might very well
have dropped from you in the way of conversation; having heard him
mentioned, I might profit by the circumstance to introduce myself; and
in this way my business would be the better done, and you not in the
least compromised."

"What is this business?" said Romaine.

"I have not said that I had any," I replied. "It might arise. This is
only a possibility that I must keep in view."

"Well," said he, with a gesture of the hands, "I mention Mr. Robbie; and
let that be an end of it!--Or wait!" he added, "I have it. Here is
something that will serve you for an introduction, and cannot compromise
me." And he wrote his name and the Edinburgh lawyer's address on a piece
of card and tossed it to me.

CHAPTER XXI

I BECOME THE OWNER OF A CLARET-COLOURED CHAISE

What with packing, signing papers, and partaking of an excellent cold
supper in the lawyer's room, it was past two in the morning before we
were ready for the road. Romaine himself let us out of a window in a
part of the house known to Rowley: it appears it served as a kind of
postern to the servants' hall, by which (when they were in the mind for
a clandestine evening) they would come regularly in and out; and I
remember very well the vinegar aspect of the lawyer on the receipt of
this piece of information--how he pursed his lips, jutted his eyebrows,
and kept repeating, "This must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred
to-morrow in the morning!" In this preoccupation I believe he took leave
of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the
window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy
of blackness and the shadow of woods.

A little wet snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling again; it