CHAPTER FOURTH.
On the Rialto, every night at twelve, I take my evening's walk of meditation: There we two will meet.
Venice Preserved.
Full of sinister augury, for which, however, I could assign no satisfactory cause, I shut myself up in my apartment at the inn, and having dismissed Andrew, after resisting his importunity to accompany him to St.Enoch's Kirk,* where, he said, "a soul-searching divine was to haud forth," I set myself seriously to consider what were best to be done.
* This I believe to be an anachronism, as Saint Enoch's Church was not built at the date of the story.

[It was founded in 1780, and has since been rebuilt.] I never was what is properly called superstitious; but I suppose that all men, in situations of peculiar doubt and difficulty, when they have exercised their reason to little purpose, are apt, in a sort of despair, to abandon the reins to their imagination, and be guided altogether by chance, or by those whimsical impressions which take possession of the mind, and to which we give way as if to involuntary impulses.

There was something so singularly repulsive in the hard features of the Scotch trader, that I could not resolve to put myself into his hands without transgressing every caution which could be derived from the rules of physiognomy; while, at the same time, the warning voice, the form which flitted away like a vanishing shadow through those vaults, which might be termed "the valley of the shadow of death," had something captivating for the imagination of a young man, who, you will farther please to remember, was also a young poet.
If danger was around me, as the mysterious communication intimated, how could I learn its nature, or the means of averting it, but by meeting my unknown counsellor, to whom I could see no reason for imputing any other than kind intentions.

Rashleigh and his machinations occurred more than once to my remembrance;--but so rapid had my journey been, that I could not suppose him apprised of my arrival in Glasgow, much less prepared to play off any stratagem against my person.

In my temper also I was bold and confident, strong and active in person, and in some measure accustomed to the use of arms, in which the French youth of all kinds were then initiated.