"That can I. Times are dull at present. After '15 Paris swarmed with
Scotsmen who had fled to save their heads; but of late years but few have
come over, and the Scotch regiments have difficulty in keeping up their
numbers. Since the last of them marched for the frontier I have been
looking after empty benches, and it will be good news for me when I hear
that the war is over and they are on their way back."

For some days Malcolm and Ronald wandered about the narrow streets of
Paris. Ronald was somewhat disappointed in the city of which he had heard
so much. The streets were ill paved and worse lighted, and were narrow
and winding. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre there were signs of
wealth and opulence. The rich dresses of the nobles contrasted strongly
indeed with the sombre attire of the Glasgow citizens, and the appearance
and uniform of the royal guards filled him with admiration; but beyond
the fashionable quarter it did not appear to him that Paris possessed
many advantages over Glasgow, and the poorer class were squalid and
poverty stricken to a far greater degree than anything he had seen in
Scotland. But the chief points of attraction to him were the prisons. The
Bastille, the Chatelet, and the Temple were points to which he was
continually turning; the two former especially, since, if he were in
Paris, it was in one of these that his father was most probably lying.

The various plans he had so often thought over, by which, in some way or
other, he might communicate with his father and aid his escape, were
roughly shattered at the sight of these buildings. He had reckoned on
their resembling in some respect the prison in Glasgow, and at the sight
of these formidable fortresses with their lofty walls and flanking
towers, their moats and vigilant sentries, his hopes fell to zero. It
would, he saw at once, be absolutely impossible to open communication
with a prisoner of whose whereabouts he was wholly ignorant and of whose