of living flesh and the trifling walls that separated and
contained it.

There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circumstance of terror
and reality, in the fall of the _land_ in the High Street. The building
had grown rotten to the core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed
up so that the scavenger's barrow could not pass; cracks and
reverberations sounded through the house at night; the inhabitants of
the huge old human bee-hive discussed their peril when they encountered
on the stair; some had even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and
returned to them again in a fit of economy or self-respect; when, in the
black hours of a Sunday morning, the whole structure ran together with a
hideous uproar and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical
shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock travelled with the
morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. The church-bells never sounded
more dismally over Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made a
brave harvest; and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof destroyed many
a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable: here
it was plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle
still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture of the
Queen was pasted over the chimney, So, by this disaster, you had a
glimpse into the life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the
revolving years. The _land_ had fallen; and with the _land_ how much!
Far in the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the sun
looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted place. And all over
the world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy what a multitude
of people could exclaim with truth: "The house that I was born in fell
last night!"

CHAPTER III

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE

Time has wrought its changes most notably around the precinct of St.
Giles's Church. The church itself, if it were not for the spire, would
be unrecognizable; the _Krames_ are all gone, not a shop is left to
shelter in its buttresses; and zealous magistrates and a misguided
architect have shorn the design of manhood, and left it poor, naked, and
pitifully pretentious. As St. Giles's must have had in former days a
rich and quaint appearance now forgotten, so the neighbourhood was
bustling, sunless, and romantic. It was here that the town was most
overbuilt; but the overbuilding has been all rooted out, and not only a
free