The cross was the 'Change of the city, and on the spot where it stood, every Wednesday our traders yet meet to buy and sell, and to consult with sharp Clerks to the Signet, and more sharping Solicitors, where bargains are daily made as of old, but requiring ratifications more binding than merely standing on "our lady's steps" at the east end of St. Giles, or the pressure of wetted thumbs on a certain mysterious stone which was there kept for that purpose. With a velvet mantle floating from his left shoulder, a long yellow feather waving over the right, and having in his carriage all that indefinable air which the consciousness of rank and spirit seldom fail to impart, Clermistonlee walked hastily up the street, poking his nose into the hood of every woman that passed. He kissed his hand to fair Annie Laurie, as she sailed out of Peebles Wynd with her fan spread before, and her vast fardingale behind her: he made a long step to cross the grave of Merlin, (whose stone coffin for ages marked the street he had been the first to pave), he roundly cursed the sooty Tronmen who did not make sufficient way for him, kicked a water barrel ten yards off, and laid his cane across the shoulders of the aquarius, its owner, bowed to the gay fellows under Blair's pillars, and with the air of a man who knew he was pretty well observed, made a pirouette near the cathedral, surveying all around him, but without seeing the person of whom he was in quest. "Juden," said he to that respectable personage, who stuck close to his skirts, "I see not this knave, with whom I would fain come to blows while my spirit is in its bitterest mood." "Right, my lord; but I warrant they will be cooing and billing on the Castle-hill yet." "They--whom? Dost mean to tell me that Lilian Napier hath appeared there with her spark?" "Hath she no? By my faith, 'tis the toun gossip," said Juden, who, notwithstanding his devotion to his master, thought there could be no harm in rousing his fierce spirit to the utmost. "Mony a summer even in the balmy gloaming have they been seen in the King's Park, where none but lovers gang, as your lordship kens, for there yoursel and bonny Lady Alison----"