All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever
I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one
sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses. Pardon
me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not
grudge at it! With you, it is all different. Show me your house
then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the
quarter of the town in which it lies! So, when I look all about
me, I shall be able to say: "THERE IS ONE HOUSE IN WHICH I AM NOT
QUITE UNKINDLY THOUGHT OF."'

Flora stood a moment.

'It is a pretty thought,' said she, 'and, as far as regards Ronald
and myself, a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very
smoke out of our chimney.'

So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the
opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion
almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight.
Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and
beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the
Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues
from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars.
And to this she directed my attention.

'You see these marks?' she said. 'We call them the Seven Sisters.
Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the
hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst
of them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are
living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am