“Hoot, hoot, hoot,” said the barber, “nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all ” and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was but I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next customer no wiser than he came. The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr. “What?” cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started and then, “Well, mannie,” he added, “it’s nane of my affairs but ye seem a decent-spoken lad and if ye’ll take a word from me, ye’ll keep clear of the Shaws.” “I was led to think that I would get a situation,” I said, looking as modest as I could. “Ou, ay,” says the man “there’s the laird, to be sure, if it’s him you’re wanting. “Are ye daft? There’s nae folk there-to call folk.” “Ay,” said I, “but the folk that are in it?” He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others. The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. The pride of life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music.Ī little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. And there, to my great pleasure and wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the other the company of Grenadiers, with their Pope’s-hats.

Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond and so, from one to another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Colinton, till I came out upon the Glasgow road. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly and both brought my country heart into my mouth. On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson