Maddened by the intelligence, he had hurried to his uncle's, and had the bad fortune to see Wallace taking leave of her as he approached the house; whereupon, in an agony of jealousy and disappointed love, he hastened to overtake him. Angry words ensued--Wallace boasted of his triumph, and a challenge was given and received, to meet in the King's Park. Urged on by his disappointed hopes, he waited upon Eliza in a frame of mind bordering upon distraction. Without prelude or explanation, he upbraided her as the most faithless of women, saying, he now thought as lightly of her love as he had ever highly prized it; and, in his fury, thought he had, as he intended, thrown her ring at her feet. At first she had looked alarmed, and wept, surprise held her silent, until all her native pride, and the innate dignity of the female, were roused by his taunts and reproaches, and she ordered him from her presence. They parted in mutual anger. Without seeing his uncle or any acquaintance in town, he had walked in the most sequestered parts of Arthur's Seat and the Hunting Bog, until the hour of meeting his rival. They met, and the issue has been told. "As we approached the city, he became very dull and uncommunicative, sitting absorbed in his own thoughts for hours; the fierce aspect that his countenance had for a long time worn was succeeded by a deep shade of sadness. I was young and inexperienced, and knew not how to speak, to divert his mind from the painful feelings that were preying upon him; thus we sat silent for hours, until we reached Musselburgh. 'Square!' he said, starting up, 'I shall soon have my doubts solved. For this some time an idea has haunted my mind, which renders me the most miserable of men. What if, in my madness (I can give it no milder term), I have wronged Eliza! She was all goodness and truth, and I ought to have weighed well before I reproached her. I have striven to think hardly of her, but my heart refuses. Eliza! Eliza! I have lost you for ever; true or false, I can never look on thy face again; but Wallace shall not triumph in my misery. I have preferred bringing you with me to any other person, because of your intimacy with Edinburgh. I do not wish it to be known that I am in town, until I have ascertained, through you, what has occurred since my last unfortunate visit to it.' I promised cheerfully to do my utmost to serve him in any duty he required, and, before the evening set in, we were safely lodged in the White Horse Tavern at the head of the Canongate. Our first step was to send for one of the cadies--a race of men now extinct; but they were, in their day and generation, a numerous fraternity in Edinburgh, and the source of communication, before the invention of the penny post. The affairs of the inhabitants of all ranks were in general well known to them. Their trustworthiness was admitted, and they were often employed in preference to domestic servants, in whose gossiping qualities they did not participate.