“Edinburgh! he’ll be sure to land in Edinburgh!” he muttered to himself, and thus he confidently tramped through Fife, reserving the little money he had to pay the ferry at Burntisland. It was the dead of winter, and bitterly cold, and when Jim arrived at his mother’s house he was nearly dead beat. He had got over with a goods boat, and reached home early in the morning. He lay down and slept all day—a fevered, unrestful sleep, full of dreams and mutterings, and suppressed threats and deadly words, which filled his mother with terror. At night he awoke, and moodily consumed the meal placed before him, and then limped to the door. “Where are you for now?” asked his mother with a palpitating heart. “Just going out to look about me,” was the answer, and then he was gone. His mother thought she would look about her too, and threw a shawl over her head and followed. During the two hours’ wandering which followed, she never lost sight of him. At last she discovered that he was following a man—Joe Knevitt—who appeared quite unconscious of the fact. Knevitt made for a tumble-down rookery in a close a little below the Bridges. It was his home, and had the advantage of being accessible from two sides—by the two flights of wooden steps on one side, and by a back window on a level with a higher close beyond. The garret on the top flat was all Joe’s, and he clearly indicated to his foe that no one else was within by unlocking the door as he went in. Jim had his shoes off in a twinkling, and then crept up the first flight of steps and patiently waited in the dark, with his knife ready unclasped in his hand. The poor mother understood it all now, and, having before heard the place described, she slipped round to the next close, clambered upon an outhouse, and astonished Knevitt by tapping lightly at the window and madly motioning him to come out and fly for his life. Knevitt needed no explanation; her face was enough, and he was out at the window and gone before she had well got over her excitement and terror. She waited there for a full quarter of an hour to give him time to escape; and then resolved to go in, open the door, and go down and tell Jim that his plot was discovered and his intended victim far beyond his reach. The door was opened, and Jim, watching below with the knife in his hand, dimly saw a female figure descend where only a man had entered. “That trick won’t deceive me!” he cried, as he dashed up the steps and drew back his right arm. “You’ve tried it once too often, Joe!”