o 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 wearyful a time upon the Saturday,
than I was aware of the tall figure of James More in a corner. He seemed
a prey to a painful uneasiness, reaching forth his feet and hands, and
his eyes speeding here and there without rest about the walls of the
small chamber, which recalled to me with a sense of pity the man's
wretched situation. I suppose it was partly this, and partly my strong
continuing interest in his daughter, that moved me to accost him.

"Give you a good-morning, sir," said I.

"And a good-morning to you, sir," said he.

"You bide tryst with Prestongrange?" I asked.

"I do, sir, and I pray your business with that gentleman be more
agreeable than mine," was his reply.

"I hope at least that yours will be brief, for I suppose you pass before
me," said I.

"All pass before me," he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of the
open hands. "It was not always so, sir, but times change. It was not so
when the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and the virtues of the
soldier might sustain themselves."

There came