“Captain Rullock—­”

“Mr. Wotherspoon, I am glad to see you!”

Mr. Wotherspoon, old moderate Whig, and the Jacobite officer walked together down the clanging way.  The mist was making pallid garlands for the tall houses, a trumpet rang at the foot of the street, Macdonald of Glengarry and fifty clansmen, bright tartan and screaming pipes, poured by.

“Auld Reekie sees again a stirring time!” said the lawyer.

“I am glad to have met you, sir,” said Rullock.  “I fancy that you can tell me home news.  I have heard none for a long time.”

“You have been, doubtless,” said Mr. Wotherspoon, “too engaged with great, new-time things to be fashed with small, old-time ones.”

“One of our new-time aims,” said Ian, “is to give fresh room to an old-time thing.  But we won’t let little bolts fly!  I am anxious for knowledge.”

Mr. Wotherspoon seemed to ponder it.  “I live just here.  Perhaps you will come up to my rooms, out of this Mars’ racket?”

“In an hour’s time I must wait on Lord George Murray.  But I have till then.”

They entered a close, and climbed the stair of a tall, tall house, dusky and old.  Here, half-way up, was the lawyer’s lair.  He unlocked a door and the two came, through a small vestibule, into a good-sized, comfortable, well-furnished room.  Rullock glanced at the walls.

“I was here once or twice, years ago.  I remember your books.  What a number you have!”

“I recall,” said Mr. Wotherspoon, “a visit that you paid me with the now laird of Glenfernie.”

The window to which they moved allowed a glimpse of the colorful street.  Mr. Wotherspoon closed it against the invading noise and the touch of chill in the misty air.  He then pushed two chairs to the table and took from a cupboard a bottle and glasses.

“My man is gadding, with eyes like saucers—­like the rest of us, like the rest of us, Captain Rullock!” They sat down.  “My profession,” said the lawyer, “can be made to be narrow and narrowing.  On the other hand, if a man has an aptitude for life, there is much about life to be learned with a lawyer’s spy-glass!  A lawyer sees a variety of happenings in a mixed world.  He quite especially learns how seldom black and white are found in anything like a pure condition.  A thousand thousand blends.  Be wise and tolerant—­or to be wise be tolerant!” He pushed the bottle.

Ian smiled.  “I take that, sir, to mean that you find God save King James! not wholly harsh and unmusical—­”

“Perhaps not wholly so,” said the lawyer.  “I am Whig and Presbyterian and I prefer God save King George! But I do not look for the world to end, whether for King George or King James.  I did not have in mind just this public occasion.”

His tone was dry.  Ian kept his gold-brown eyes upon him.  “Tell me what you have heard from Black Hill.”

“I was there late in May.  Mr. Touris learned at that time that you had quitted France.”