CHAPTER XXVIII.
A SHABBY WAYFARER.
n Sussex the situation was now most critical. The struggle between the French invaders and the line of Volunteers defending London was long and desperate, but our civilian soldiers were bearing their part bravely, showing how Britons could fight, and day after day repelling the repeated assaults with a vigour that at once proved their efficiency.
Three days after the battle at Manchester had been fought and won, a man with slouching gait and woeful countenance, attired in a cheap suit of shabby grey, stood on the steps of the Granton Hotel, at Granton, and with his hands thrust into his pockets gazed thoughtfully out over the broad waters of the Firth of Forth, to where the Fifeshire hills loomed dark upon the horizon. Slowly his keen eyes wandered away eastward to the open sea, an extensive view of which he obtained from the flight of steps whereon he stood, and then with a sigh of disappointment he buttoned his coat, and, grasping his stick, descended, and walked at a leisurely pace along the road through Newhaven to Leith.
"To-night. To-night at sundown!" he muttered to himself, as he bent his head to the wind.
Involuntarily he placed his hand to his hip to reassure himself that a letter he carried was still safe.