CHAPTER TWELVE. 

THE DARKEST HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN. 

Many months passed away, during which Andrew Black, clean-shaved, brushed-up, and converted into a very respectable, ordinary-looking artisan, carried on the trade of a turner, in an underground cellar in one of the most populous parts of the Cowgate. Lost in the crowd was his idea of security. And he was not far wrong. His cellar had a way of escape through a back door. Its grated window, under the level of the street, admitted light to his whirling lathe, but, aided by dirt on the glass, it baffled the gaze of the curious. 

His evenings were spent in Candlemaker Row, where, seated by the window with his mother, Mrs. Wallace, and the two girls, he smoked his pipe and commented on Scotland's woes while gazing across the tombs at the glow in the western sky. Ramblin' Peter--no longer a beardless boy, but a fairly well-grown and good-looking youth--was a constant visitor at the Row. Aggie Wilson had taught him the use of his tongue, but Peter was not the man to use it in idle flirtation--nor Aggie the girl to listen if he had done so. They had both seen too much of the stern side of life to condescend on trifling. 

Once, by a superhuman effort, and with an alarming flush of the countenance, Peter succeeded in stammering a declaration of his sentiments. Aggie, with flaming cheeks and downcast eyes, accepted the declaration, and the matter was settled; that was all, for the subject had rushed upon both of them, as it were, unexpectedly, and as they were in the public street at the time and the hour was noon, further demonstration might have been awkward. 
did he have an escape in his cellar?
 His cellar had a way of escape through a back door.