a blast of oaths. I need not say how fast I fled. This incident was
the more to my credit as I had, when I was young, a desperate
aversion to addressing strangers, though when once we had got into
talk I was pretty certain to assume the lead. The last particular
may still be recognized. About four years ago I saw my lame lad, and
knew him again at once. He was then a man of great strength, rolling
along, with an inch of cutty in his mouth and a butcher's basket on
his arm. Our meeting had been nothing to him, but it was a great
affair to me.

We strolled up the esplanade below the Castle, pausing in Ramsay's
Gardens to admire the lighted city from above. In the valley between the
Castle and Princes Street the pale blue mist rises at night like an
exhalation from the old gray stones. The lamps shining through it blend
in a delicate opalescent sheen, shot here and there with brighter
flares. As the sky darkens the castle looms in silhouette, with one
yellow square below the Half Moon Battery. "There are no stars like the
Edinburgh street lamps," says R.L.S. Aye, and the brightest of them all
shines on Heriot Row.

The vision of that child face still comes to me, peering down from the
dining-room window. R.L.S. may never have gratified his boyish wish to
go round with Leerie and light the lamps, but he lit many and more
enduring flames even in the hearts of those who never saw him.




FRANK CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLISHER'S READER