window easily, hoisted herself on
the sill, crept through and let herself drop on the grass below. To
scramble up the trunk of one of the chestnuts and swing herself over the
wall was quickly done, and then she was once more on the flagged path of
the street, and the world lay before her.

As she stood for one moment, breathless with her haste and excitement,
she was startled by the sudden apparition of the house cat, who was on
his way home as surreptitiously as she was on hers abroad. He had one
bloody ear and a scratched nose, and stared at her as he passed: then,
probably in the hope of finding an open door after her, he jumped over
the wall hurriedly. Baubie was seized with a sudden panic lest the cat
should waken some one in the house, and she took to her heels and ran
until she reached the bridge. The morning sun was just beginning to
touch the tall tops of the houses, and the little valley through which
the Water of Leith ran lay still in a kind of clear grayish light, in
which the pale tender hues of the young leaves and the flowering trees
were all the more vividly beautiful. The stream was low, and it hurried
along over its stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as
great a hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart,
whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street beyond.

She could hear, as she strained herself to listen for pursuing voices,
the rustle and murmur of the water with an odd distinctness as it rose
upon the still air of the summer morning.

Not a creature was to be seen as she made her way eastward, shaping her
course for Princes street, and peering, with a gruesome fear of the
school-board officer, round every corner. That early bird, however, was
not so keenly on the alert as she gave him the credit of being, and she
reached her goal unchallenged after coasting along in parallel lines
with it for some time.

The long beautiful line of Princes street was untenanted as the Rob Roy
tartan tacked cautiously round the corner of St. David street and took a
hasty look up and down before venturing forth.

The far-reaching pale red beams of the morning sun had just touched and
kindled as with a flame the summit of the Rock, and the windows of the
Castle caught and flashed back the greeting in a dozen ruddy
reflections. The gardens below lay partly veiled in a clear transparent
mist, faintly blue, that hovered above the trees and crept up the banks,
and over which