mind that palace and the banner before it.  The note of the having rang jubilation in all its degrees, or with a lower and a muffled sound distaste and fear, or it aimed at a middle strain neither high nor low, a golden mean to be kept until there might be seen what motif, after all, was going to prevail!  It would never do, thought some, to be at this juncture too clamorous either way.  But to the unpondering ear the jubilation carried it, as to the eye tartans and white cockades made color, made high light, splashed and starred and redeemed the gray town.  There was one thing that could not but appeal.  A Scots royal line had come into its home nest at Holyrood.  Not for many and many and many a year had such a thing as that happened!  If matters went in a certain way Edinburgh might regain ancient pomp and circumstance.  That was a consideration that every hour arranged a new plea in the citizen heart.

Excitement, restless movement, tendency to come together in a crowd, were general, as were ejaculation, nervous laughter, declamation.  The roll of drum, call of trumpet, skirl of pipes, did not lack.  Charles Edward’s army encamped itself at Duddingston a little to the east of the city.  But its units came in numbers into the town.  The warlike hue diffused itself.  Horsemen were frequent, and a continual entering of new adherents, men in small or large clusters, marching in from the country, asking the way to the Prince.  For all the buzzing and thronging, great order prevailed.  Women sat or stood at windows, or passed in and out of dark wynds, or, escorted, picked their way at street crossings.  Now and then went by a sedan-chair.  Many women showed in their faces a truly religious fervor, a passionate Jacobite loyalty, lighting like a flame.  Many sewed white cockades.  All Scotland, all England, would surely presently want these!  Men of all ranks, committed to the great venture, moved with a determined gaiety and elan.  “This is the stage, we are the actors; the piece is a great piece, the world looks on!” The town of Edinburgh did present a grandiose setting.  Suspense, the die yet covered, the greatness of the risk, gave, too, its glamour of height and stateliness.  All these men might see, in some bad moment at night, not only possible battle death—­that was in the counting—­but, should the great enterprise fail, scaffolds and hangmen.  Many who went up and down were merely thoughtless, ignorant, reckless, or held in a vanity of good fortune, yet to the eye of history all might come into the sweep of great drama.  Place and time rang and were tense.  Flare and sonorousness and a deep vibration of the old massive passions, and through all the outward air a September sea mist creeping.

Ian Rullock, walking down the High Street, approaching St. Giles, heard his name spoken from a little knot of well-dressed citizens.  As he turned his head a gentleman detached himself from the company.  It proved to be Mr. Wotherspoon the advocate, old acquaintance and adviser of Archibald Touris, of Black Hill.