But there is no shelter in Princes Street. On the 24th of January 1868 a great storm raged. Chimney-pots and portions of chimney-stacks came down in all directions. Fifty police carts were filled with the rubbish. Cabs were blown over, an instance of the force of the east wind which impressed James Payn the novelist exceedingly. A gentleman had opened Professor Syme’s carriage door to get out. The door was completely blown away; a man brought it up presently, with the panel not even scratched and the glass unbroken. Another eminent doctor, Sir Robert Christison, was hurled along Princes Street at such a rate, that when, to prevent an accident, he seized hold of a lamp-post he was dashed violently into the gutter and seriously hurt his knee. The street was deserted, people were afraid to venture out of doors. Even on a moderately gusty night the noise of the wind amidst the tall lands and narrow closes of the Old Town, as heard from Princes Street, is a sound never to be forgotten; it has a tragic mournful dignity in its infinite wail, the voice of old Edinburgh touched with pity and terror! Some one has said what a charming place Edinburgh would be if you could only put up a screen against the east wind. As that is impossible it may be held to excuse everything from flight to dissipation! CHAPTER TWELVE THE CITY I continue the subjects of my last chapter, though this deals rather with things under cover and folk of a better position than the common objects of the street. I pass as briefly as may be the more elaborate legends of Edinburgh, they are rather story than anecdote. I have already dealt with Lady Stair and her close. It is on the north side of the Lawnmarket. If you go down that same street till it becomes the Canongate, on the same side, you have Morocco Land with its romantic legend of young Gray, who showed a clean pair of heels to the hangman, only to turn up a few years after as a bold bad corsair. But he came to bless and not to rob, for by his eastern charms or what not he cured the Provost’s daughter, sick well-nigh to death of the plague, and then married her. They lived very happily together in Morocco Land, outside the Netherbow be it noted, and so outside old Edinburgh, for Gray had vowed he would never again enter the city. If you find a difficulty in realising this tale of eastern romance amid the grimy surroundings of the Canongate of to-day, lift up your eyes to Morocco Land, and there is the figure of the Moor carved on it, and how can you doubt the story after that? On the opposite side is Queensberry House, which bears many a legend of the splendour and wicked deeds of more than one Duke of Queensberry. Chief of them was that High Commissioner who presided over the Union debates, he whom the Edinburgh mob hated with all the bitter hatred of their ferocious souls. They loved to tell how when he was