each woo him forth and warn him back again into himself?
Between these two considerations, at least, he was more than

usually moved; and when he got to Randolph Crescent, he quite
forgot the four hundred pounds in the inner pocket of his

greatcoat, hung up the coat, with its rich freight, upon his
particular pin of the hatstand; and in the very action sealed

his doom.
CHAPTER II - IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND

ABOUT half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer
his arm to Miss Mackenzie, and escort her home. The night

was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of the
different gardens rustled and looked black. Up the stone

gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, the breeze
made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering;

and when at last they had mounted to the Royal Terrace, where
Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt freshness came in their

faces from the sea. These phases of the walk remained
written on John's memory, each emphasised by the touch of

that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects of
the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's-eye, a picture of

the lighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking
with Flora; and his father, from the other end, had looked on

with a kind and ironical smile. John had read the
significance of that smile, which might have escaped a

stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement
with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it

still was a thought contemptuous, had implied consent.
At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a

certain emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little
longer, and said, 'Good-night, Flora, dear,' and was

instantly thrown into much fear by his presumption. But she
only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell; and while

she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the
porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a

fortification. She had a knitted shawl over her head; her
blue Highland eyes took the light from the neighbouring

street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door opened and closed
upon her, John felt cruelly alone.

He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow;
and when he came to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful

mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay
the way to Colette's, where Alan would soon be looking for

his arrival, and where he would now have no more consented to
go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the touch

of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his
father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him

was the way home, which pointed only to bed, a place of
little ease for one whose fancy was strung to the lyrical

pitch, and whose not very ardent heart was just then
tumultuously moved. The hilltop, the cool air of the night,

the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city
under his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files

of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned
that way; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the

crop of his venial errors for the sickle of destiny.
On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half

an hour, looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at
the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the resolves he formed;

beautiful and kindly were the vistas of future life that sped
before him. He uttered to himself the name of Flora in so

many touching and dramatic keys, that he became at length
fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At

that juncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his
ear. He put his hand into his pocket, pulled forth the

envelope that held the money, and sat stupefied. The Calton
Hill, about this period, had an ill name of nights; and to be

sitting there with four hundred pounds that did not belong to
him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a

very bad hat a little on one side of him, apparently looking
at the scenery; from a little on the other a second night-

walker was drawing very quietly near. Up jumped John. The
envelope fell from his hands; he stooped to get it, and at

the same moment both men ran in and closed with him.
A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the

poorer by a purse which contained exactly one penny postage-
stamp, by a cambric handkerchief, and by the all-important

envelope.
Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of lovely

exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported
alone; and not many hundred yards away his greatest friend

was sitting at supper - ay, and even expecting him. Was it
not in the nature of man that he should run there? He went

in quest of sympathy - in quest of that droll article that we
all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait, and have

agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague but
rather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or

would be so when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he
might remedy this misfortune, and avert that dreaded

interview with Mr. Nicholson, from which John now shrunk in
imagination as the hand draws back from fire.

Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow
avenue, part street, part by-road. The head of it faces the

doors of the prison; its tail descends into the sunless slums
of the Low Calton. On one hand it is overhung by the crags

of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Between these
two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at night,

sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it was cleared
the place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of

these was the house of Colette; and at his door our ill-
starred John was presentlybeating for admittance. In an

evil hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of the
contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour he penetrated into

the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was
there, seated in a room lighted by noisy gas-jets, beside a

dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse meal, and in the
company of several tipsy members of the junior bar. But Alan

was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds upon a horse-
race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in

default of any possible means of extrication, drowning the
memory of his predicament. He to help John! The thing was

impossible; he couldn't help himself.
'If you have a beast of a father,' said he, 'I can tell you I

have a brute of a trustee.'
'I'm not going to hear my father called a beast,' said John

with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound
rivet of the chain that bound him to life.

But Alan was quite good-natured.
'All right, old fellow,' said he. 'Mos' respec'able man your

father.' And he introduced his friend to his companions as
'old Nicholson the what-d'ye-call-um's son.'

John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate
table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters,

seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came
a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent

from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party,
taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow,

were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly
summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent case

against that arch-shebeener, Colette.
It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came