the bell of a suite of apartments,
inquire for Mr. Vavasour, learn (with no great surprise) that he did not
live there, come down again and, again politely saluting the man from
Bow Street, make my escape at last into the street.

I was now driven back upon the Assembly Ball. Robbie had failed me. The
bank was watched; it would never do to risk Rowley in that
neighbourhood. All I could do was to wait until the morrow evening, and
present myself at the Assembly, let it end as it might. But I must say I
came to this decision with a good deal of genuine fright; and here I
came for the first time to one of those places where my courage stuck. I
do not mean that my courage boggled and made a bit of a bother over it,
as it did over the escape from the Castle; I mean, stuck, like a stopped
watch, or a dead man. Certainly I would go to the ball; certainly I must
see this morning about my clothes. That was all decided. But the most of
the shops were on the other side of the valley, in the Old Town; and it
was now my strange discovery that I was physically unable to cross the
North Bridge! It was as though a precipice had stood between us, or the
deep sea had intervened. Nearer to the Castle my legs refused to bear
me.

I told myself this was mere superstition; I made wagers with myself--and
gained them; I went down on the esplanade of Princes Street, walked and
stood there, alone and conspicuous, looking across the garden at the old
grey bastions of the fortress, where all these troubles had begun. I
cocked my hat, set my hand on my hip, and swaggered on the pavement,
confronting detection. And I found I could do all this with a sense of
exhilaration that was not unpleasing, and with a certain _cranerie_ of
manner that raised me in my own esteem. And yet there was one thing I
could not bring my mind to face up to, or my limbs to execute; and that
was to cross the valley into the Old Town. It seemed to me I must be
arrested immediately if I had done so; I must go straight into the
twilight of a prison cell, and pass straight thence to the gross and
final embraces of the nightcap and the halter. And yet it was from no
reasoned fear of the consequences that I could not go. I was unable. My
horse balked, and there was an end!

My nerve was gone: here was a discovery for a man in such imminent
peril, set down to so desperate a game, which I could only hope to win
by continual luck and unflagging effrontery! The strain had been too