But it was not at that time the most peaceful of residences, this house of Lady Colville’s; for in a day or two Katie began to start in her high chamber at the long boom of the Castle guns; and in these balmy lightsome nights, excited crowds paced up and down, from the Canongate and the Lawnmarket, and gathered in groups about the Cross, discussing the hundred rumours to which the crisis gave birth. At all times this Edinburgh crowd does dearly love to gather like waves in the great street of the old city, and amuse itself with an excitement when the times permit. As they sweep along—knots of old men, slowly deliberating—clusters of young ones, quickening their pace as their conversation and thoughts intensify—all in motion, continually coming and going, the wide street never sufficiently thronged to prevent their passage, but enough so to secure all the animation of a crowd; and women looking on only from the “close mouths” and outer stairs, spectators merely, not actors in the ferment which growls too deeply for them to join—the scene is always interesting, always exciting to a stranger; it loses somehow the natural meanness of a vulgar mob, and you see something historical, which quickens your pulse, and makes your blood warm, in the angry crowd of the High Street, if it be only some frolic of soldiers from the Castle which has roused its wrath. Out, little Katie! out on the round balcony of that high oriel window—something approaches which eyes of noble ladies around you brighten to see. On the other balcony below this, Lady Anne, with a white ribbon on her breast, leans over the carved balustrade, eagerly looking out for its coming, with a flushed and animated face, to which enthusiasm gives a certain charm. Even now in her excitement she has time to look up, time to smile—though she is almost too anxious to smile—and wave her fluttering handkerchief to you above there, Katie Stewart, to quicken your zeal withal. But there, little stubborn Whig, unmoved except by curiosity, and with not a morsel of white ribbon about her whole person, and her handkerchief thrown away into the inner room, least she should be tempted to wave it, stands the little Hanoverian Katie, firmly planting her feet upon the window-sill, and leaning on the great shoulder of Bauby Rodger, who thrusts her forward from behind. Bauby is standing on a stool within the room, her immense person looming through the oppressed window, and one of her mighty hands, with a handkerchief nearly as large as the main-sail of a sloop, squeezed up within it like a ball, ready to be thrown loose to the winds when he comes, grasping, like Lady Anne, the rail of the balustrade.