On the south side of the High Street a fine old “fore-stair” remains, outside Cant’s Close; and between this and World’s End Close, where the High Street ends and the Canongate begins, and where formerly stood the Nether Bow Port, there are several interesting closes. First comes Strichen’s Close, where the Abbots of Melrose had their dwellings, and where, later on, Sir George Mackenzie lived. Next it is Blackfriars Street which once was Blackfriars Wynd, where was the palace of Cardinal Beaton, and where Queen Mary passed afoot with “licht torches” the night of Darnley’s murder. Next Blackfriars Street is South Gray’s Close, where the Scottish Mint, or “Cunyie House” was, after its removal from Holyrood in Queen Mary’s time until the Union; and here, therefore, were the Scottish coins struck, of native Scottish gold. Next to South Gray’s Close is Hyndford’s Close, where Lady Maxwell of Monreith lived, and her daughters (one of whom was afterwards Duchess of Gordon) used gaily to ride up and down the High Street mounted on the pigs which had their humble dwellings under the fore-stairs. In Hyndford’s Close also lived the Countess of Balcarres, whose eldest daughter was Lady Anne Barnard (_née_ Lindsay), the author of “Young Jamie lo’ed me weel,” and whose letters to Lord Melville from South Africa were lately published. Tweeddale Close, a door or two farther on, once the stately town residence of the Marquises of Tweeddale, is now indissolubly connected with the story of a mysterious crime,--the Begbie murder; for it was just within this close that a bank porter was stabbed to death on a dark November afternoon in 1806. The murderer, in spite of all the hue and cry and horror that followed on his crime, died undiscovered.