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It was our almost daily practice to walk through the Old Town, and we were now familiar with every street and close in that densely-crowded quarter. Our quest for the sites of ancient landmarks never grew monotonous, and we were always reconstructing, in imagination, the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Lawnmarket, and the High Street, until we could see Auld Reekie as it was in bygone centuries.

"MY DEAR CHARLES, You promised when I displenished this house that you would accept of the prints of Roman antiquities, which I now send. I believe they were once in some esteem, though now so detestably smoked that they will only suit your suburban villa in the Cowgate when you remove to that classical residence.

As the name implies, it was an open thoroughfare or alley leading from the Lawnmarket, and extended in a direct line between the old Tolbooth to near the head of the Cowgate.

And this letter it is that accounts for my presence in a miserable, dingy, dirty little hall running off a close in the historic Cowgate, redolent of the glories of the splendid past, and of the various odours of the evil-smelling present. I was there to hear Mrs.

The mob, at first only about one hundred strong, now amounted to thousands, and were increasing every moment. They divided themselves so as to ascend with more speed the various narrow lanes which lead up from the Cowgate to the High Street; and still beating to arms as they went, an calling on all true Scotsmen to join them, they now filled the principal street of the city.

It was, indeed, difficult for the most imaginative to believe that the Cowgate was once a lovely, wooded ravine, with a rustic burn babbling over pebbles at its bottom, and along the brook a straggling path worn smooth by cattle on their driven way to the Grassmarket.

Many months passed away, during which Andrew Black, clean-shaved, brushed-up, and converted into a very respectable, ordinary-looking artisan, carried on the trade of a turner, in an underground cellar in one of the most populous parts of the Cowgate. Lost in the crowd was his idea of security. And he was not far wrong. His cellar had a way of escape through a back door.

To get into Greyfriars Place from the east at that time one had to descend to the Cowgate and climb out again. Bobby darted down the first of the narrow wynds. Suddenly he turned 'round and 'round in bewilderment, then shot through a sculptured door way, into a well-like court, and up a flight of stone stairs.

Think how magnificent an idea to one who never shot anything but hedge-sparrows, and that with a horse-pistol purchased at a broker's stand in the Cowgate!

"Salemina is so flexible, and you are so dramatic, that you enter into all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in that Tam o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen " "Ministers" interjected Salemina, "all ministers and professors.