any, and so of being brought back to his first station, and obliged to seek lodging till morning in some hamlet there, or else in the Canongate. He could perform the whole circuit of the walls, however, in less than an hour, and might have the solace, at some points of his walk, of night views down into the luminous hollows of the town, very different from his first view upward from the North Loch. While the belated traveller was thus shut out, the inhabitants within might be passing their hours till bed-time comfortably enough, whether in the privacy of their domiciles, or in more or less noisy loitering and locomotion among the streets and wynds. If it were clear moonlight or starlight, the wynds, and especially the stately length of the High Street, would be radiantly distinct, and locomotion in them would be easy. But even in the darkest nights the townsmen were not reduced to actual groping through their town, if _ennui_, or whim, or business, or neighbourly conviviality determined them to be out of doors. Not only would they carry torches and lanterns with them for their own behoof, especially if they had to find their way down narrow closes to their homes; not only were there the gratuitous oil-lights or candlelights from the windows of the fore-tenements in the streets and wynds, sending down some glimmer into the streets and wynds themselves; but, by public regulation, the tenants of the fore-stair houses in the principal thoroughfares were bound to hang out, during certain hours of the evening, lamps for the guidance of those that might be passing. One has to remember, however, that people in those days kept very early hours. By ten o’clock every night Auld Reekie was mostly asleep. By that hour, accordingly, the house-lights, with some exceptions, had ceased to twinkle; and from that hour, save for bands of late roysterers here and there at close-mouths, and for the appointed night-watches on guard at the different ports, or making an occasional round with drum and whistle, silence and darkness reigned till dawn.