His business in Edinburgh was of a simple kind, to see the lawyer who had prepared the papers for the transfer of his little income, and who, knowing his history, was curious and interested in him, asked him to dinner, and would have made much of the strange young man who had descended from the very height of prosperity, and now had denuded himself of the last humble revenue upon which he could depend. “I have ventured to express my disapproval, Mr. Earnshaw,” this good man had said; “but having done so, and cleared my conscience if--there is anything I can be of use to you in, tell me.” “Nothing,” said Edgar; “but a thousand thanks for the goodwill, which is better than anything.” Then he went away, declining the invitation, and walked about Edinburgh in the dreamy solitude which began to be habitual to him, friendly and social as his nature was. In the evening he dined alone in one of the Princes Street hotels, near a window which looked out upon the Castle and the old town, all glimmering with lights in the soft darkness, which was just touched with frost. The irregular twinkle of the lights scattered about upon the fine bank of towers and spires and houses opposite; the dark depth below, where dark trees rustled, and stray lights gleamed here and there; the stream of traffic always pouring through the street below, notwithstanding the picturesque landscape on the other side--all attracted Edgar with the charm which they exercise on every sensitive mind. When the bugle sounded low and sweet up in mid-air from the Castle, he started up as if that visionary note had been for him. The darkness and the lights, the new and the old, seemed to him alike a dream, and he not less a dream pursuing his way between them, not sure which was real and which fictitious in his own life; which present and which past. The bugle called him--to what? Not to the sober limits of duty, to obedience and to rest, as it called the unwilling soldiers out of their riots and amusements; but perhaps to as real a world still unknown to him, compassed--like the dark Castle, standing deep in undistinguishable, rustling trees--with mists and dream-like uncertainty. Who has ever sat at a dark window looking out upon the gleaming, darkling crest of that old Edinburgh, with the crown of St. Giles hovering over it in the blue, and the Castle half way up to heaven, without feeling something weird and mystical beyond words, in the call of the bugle, sudden, sweet, and penetrating, out of the clouds? What Edgar had to do after the call of this bugle was no deed of high emprise. He had no princess to rescue, no dragon to kill. He got up with that half-laugh at himself and his own fancies which was habitual to him, and paid his bill and collected his few properties, and went to the railway. Other people were beginning to go to bed; the shop windows were closing; the lights mounting higher from story to story. But a stream of people and carriages was pouring steadily down into the