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Station, passed (not without alarm) into the bright lights of
the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the cloak-room,
and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow Road. The
change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps
twinkling to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and
rotten straw which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him
strange alternations of lucidity and mortal giddiness.
'I have been drinking,' he discovered; 'I must go straight to
bed, and sleep.' And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness
that came upon his mind in waves.
From one of these spells he was wakened by the stoppage of
the cab; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country
road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and
the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark.
The Lodge (as the place was named), stood, indeed, very
solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but
standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on
all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of
Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or
downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of
seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls,
which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in
former days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the
cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle
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