“I am a man,” was the reply; “and my purpose is friendly to you.”

“A man!” I repeated. “That is a very brief description.”

“It will serve for one who has no other to give,” said the stranger. “He that is without name, without friends, without coin, without country, is still at least a man; and he that has all these is no more.”

“Yet this is still too general an account of yourself, to say the least of it, to establish your credit with a stranger.”

“It is all I mean to give, howsoe’er; you may choose to follow me, or to remain without the information I desire to afford you.”

“Can you not give me that information here?” I demanded.

“You must receive it from your eyes, not from my tongue—you must follow me, or remain in ignorance of the information which I have to give you.”

There was something short, determined, and even stern in the man’s manner, not certainly well calculated to conciliate undoubting confidence.

“What is it you fear?” he said impatiently. “To whom, think ye, your life is of such consequence, that they should seek to bereave ye of it?”

“I fear nothing,” I replied firmly, though somewhat hastily. “Walk on—I attend you.”

We proceeded, contrary to my expectation, to re-enter the town, and glided like mute spectres, side by side, up its empty and silent streets. The high and gloomy stone fronts, with the variegated ornaments and pediments of the windows, looked yet taller and more sable by the imperfect moonshine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my conductor spoke.

“Are you afraid?”

“I retort your own words,” I replied; “wherefore should I fear?”

“Because you are with a stranger—perhaps an enemy, in a place where you have no friends and many enemies.”

“I neither fear you nor them; I am young, active, and armed.”

“I am not armed,” replied my conductor; “but no matter, a willing hand never lacked weapon. You say you fear nothing; but if you knew who was by your side, perhaps you might underlie a tremor.”

“And why should I?” replied I. “I again repeat, I fear nought that you can do.”

“Nought that I can do?—Be it so. But do you not fear the consequences of being found with one, whose very name whispered in this lonely street would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him—on whose head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar—the sound of whose apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news of a field stricken and won in Flanders?”

“And who then are you, whose name should create so deep a feeling of terror?” I replied.

“No enemy of yours, since I am conveying you to a place, where, were I myself recognised and identified, iron to the heels, and hemp to the craig, would be my brief dooming.”