servant. "Poor devil! it is dull for him," I explained.

"The merciful man is merciful to his ass," observed my sententious
friend. "Bring him, by all means!

"'The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy';

and I have no doubt the orphan boy can get some cold victuals in the
kitchen, while the Senatus dines."

Accordingly, being now quite recovered from my unmanly condition, except
that nothing could yet induce me to cross the North Bridge, I arranged
for my ball dress at a shop in Leith Street, where I was not served ill,
cut out Rowley from his seclusion, and was ready along with him at the
trysting-place, the corner of Duke Street and York Place, by a little
after two. The University was represented in force: eleven persons,
including ourselves, Byfield the aeronaut, and the tall lad, Forbes,
whom I had met on the Sunday morning, bedewed with tallow, at the
"Hunters' Tryst." I was introduced; and we set off by way of Newhaven
and the sea-beach; at first through pleasant country roads, and
afterwards along a succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our
destination--Cramond on the Almond--a little hamlet on a little river,
embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of quicksand to
where a little islet stood planted in the sea. It was miniature scenery,
but charming of its kind. The air of this good winter afternoon was
bracing, but not cold. All the way my companions were skylarking,
jesting, and making puns, and I felt as if a load had been taken off my
lungs and spirits, and skylarked with the best of them.

Byfield I observed, because I had heard of him before, and seen his
advertisements, not at all because I was disposed to feel interest in
the man. He was dark and bilious and very silent; frigid in his manners,
but burning internally with a great fire of excitement; and he was so
good as to bestow a good deal of his company and conversation (such as
it was) upon myself, who was not in the least grateful. If I had known
how I was to be connected with him in the immediate future, I might have
taken more pains.

In the hamlet of Cramond there is a hostelry of no very promising
appearance, and here a room had been prepared for us, and we sat down to
table.

"Here you will find no guttling or gormandising, no turtle or
nightingales' tongues," said the extravagant, whose name, by the way,
was Dalmahoy. "The device, sir, of the University of Cramond is Plain
Livi