course was to hire a lad they called a _caddie_, who was like a guide or
pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands being done)
brought you again where you were lodging. But these caddies, being
always employed in the same sort of services, and having it for
obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the city,
had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of Mr.
Campbell's how they communicated one with another, what a rage of
curiosity they conceived as to their employer's business, and how they
were like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece of little
wisdom, the way I was now placed, to tack such a ferret to my tails. I
had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my kinsman Mr.
Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin's agent, and to
William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland. Mr.
Balfour's was a non-committal visit; and besides (Pilrig being in the
country) I made bold to find way to it myself, with the help of my two
legs and a Scots tongue. But the rest were in a different case. Not only
was the visit to Appin's agent, in the midst of the cry about the Appin
murder, dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the
other. I was like to have a bad enough time of it with my Lord Advocate
Grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot from Appin's agent,
was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might prove the mere ruin
of friend Alan's. The whole thing, besides, gave me a look of running
with the hare and hunting with the hounds that was little to my fancy. I
determined, therefore, to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and the whole
Jacobitical side of my business, and to profit for that purpose by the
guidance of the porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him
the address, when there came a sprinkle of rain--nothing to hurt, only
for my new clothes--and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a
close or alley.