went to and fro in it, feeding his terrors; he saw the

hollies, the snowy borders, the paths where he had sought
Alan, the high, conventual walls, the shut door - what! was

the door shut? Ay, truly, he had shut it - shut in his
money, his escape, his future life - shut it with these

hands, and none could now open it! He heard the snap of the
spring-lock like something bursting in his brain, and sat

astonied.
And then he woke again, terror jarring through his vitals.

This was no time to be idle; he must be up and doing, he must
think. Once at the end of this ridiculouscruise, once at

the Lodge door, there would be nothing for it but to turn the
cab and trundle back again. Why, then, go so far? why add

another feature of suspicion to a case already so suggestive?
why not turn at once? It was easy to say, turn; but whither?

He had nowhere now to go to; he could never - he saw it in
letters of blood - he could never pay that cab; he was

saddled with that cab for ever. Oh that cab! his soul
yearned and burned, and his bowels sounded to be rid of it.

He forgot all other cares. He must first quit himself of
this ill-smelling vehicle and of the human beast that guided

it - first do that; do that, at least; do that at once.
And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was his

persecutor rapping on the front glass. John let it down, and
beheld the port-wine countenance inflamed with intellectual

triumph.
'I ken wha ye are!' cried the husky voice. 'I mind ye now.

Ye're a Nucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas
party, and ye came back on the box, and I let ye drive.'

It is a fact. John knew the man; they had been even friends.
His enemy, he now remembered, was a fellow of great good

nature - endless good nature - with a boy; why not with a
man? Why not appeal to his better side? He grasped at the

new hope.
'Great Scott! and so you did,' he cried, as if in a transport

of delight, his voice sounding false in his own ears. 'Well,
if that's so, I've something to say to you. I'll just get

out, I guess. Where are we, any way?'
The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of the

branch-toll keeper, and they were now brought to on the
highest and most solitary part of the by-road. On the left,

a row of fieldside trees beshaded it; on the right, it was
bordered by naked fallows, undulating down-hill to the

Queensferry Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its
snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked

all about him, drinking the clear air like wine; then his
eyes returned to the cabman's face as he sat, not

ungleefully, awaiting John's communication, with the air of
one looking to be tipped.

The features of that face were hard to read, drink had so
swollen them, drink had so painted them, in tints that varied

from brick-red to mulberry. The small grey eyes blinked, the
lips moved, with greed; greed was the ruling passion; and

though there was some good nature, some genuine kindliness, a
true human touch, in the old toper, his greed was now so set

afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay
dormant. He sat there a monument of gluttonous desire.

John's heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but he
stood there and uttered nought. He sounded the well of his

courage, and it was dry. He groped in his treasury of words,
and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness had him by the

throat; the devil of terror babbled in his ears; and
suddenly, without a word uttered, with no conscious purpose

formed in his will, John whipped about, tumbled over the
roadside wall, and began running for his life across the

fallows.
He had not gone far, he was not past the midst of the first

afield, when his whole brain thundered within him, 'Fool!
You have your watch!' The shock stopped him, and he faced

once more toward the cab. The driver was leaning over the
wall, brandishing his whip, his face empurpled, roaring like

a bull. And John saw (or thought) that he had lost the
chance. No watch would pacify the man's resentment now; he

would cry for vengeance also. John would be had under the
eye of the police; his tale would be unfolded, his secret

plumbed, his destiny would close on him at last, and for
ever.

He uttered a deep sigh; and just as the cabman, taking heart
of grace, was beginning at last to scale the wall, his

defaulting customer fell again to running, and disappeared
into the further fields.

CHAPTER VIII - SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS
WHERE he ran at first, John never very clearly knew; nor yet

how long a time elapsed ere he found himself in the by-road
near the lodge of Ravelston, propped against the wall, his

lungs heaving like bellows, his legs leaden-heavy, his mind
possessed by one sole desire - to lie down and be unseen. He

remembered the thick coverts round the quarry-hole pond, an
untrodden corner of the world where he might surely find

concealment till the night should fall. Thither he passed
down the lane; and when he came there, behold! he had

forgotten the frost, and the pond was alive with young people
skating, and the pond-side coverts were thick with lookers-

on. He looked on a while himself. There was one tall,
graceful maiden, skating hand in hand with a youth, on whom

she bestowed her bright eyes perhaps too patently; and it was
strange with what anger John beheld her. He could have

broken forth in curses; he could have stood there, like a
mortified tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his gall upon

her by the hour - or so he thought; and the next moment his
heart bled for the girl. 'Poor creature, it's little she

knows!' he sighed. 'Let her enjoy herself while she can!'
But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at him on the

Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome to a sick-
hearted bystander?

The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested
another; and he plodded off toward Craigleith. A wind had

sprung up out of the north-west; it was cruel keen, it dried
him like a fire, and racked his finger-joints. It brought

clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted
heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among

the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the
quarry, and lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched

close along the earth, the stones were cutting and icy, the
bare hazels wailed about him; and soon the air of the

afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal
harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's

limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of change;
now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints

abraded him, was almost pleased; now he would crawl to the
edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw the

spiral of the descending roadway, the steep crags, the
clinging bushes, the peppering of snow-wreaths, and far down

in the bottom, the diminished crane. Here, no doubt, was a
way to end it. But it somehow did not take his fancy.