porter, who was naturally a man of some experience, judged my
accoutrement to be well chosen.

"Naething kenspeckle," {1} said he; "plain, dacent claes. As for
the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been
you, I would has waired my siller better-gates than that." And he
proposed I should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back,
that was a cousin of his own, and made them "extraordinar
endurable."

But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in
this old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-
warren, not only by the number of its indwellers, but the
complication of its passages and holes. It was, indeed, a place
where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be another
stranger. Suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt
so thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day
before he chanced on the right door. The ordinary 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 take 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