"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.