"This is the stage, we are the actors; the piece is a great piece, the world looks on!" The town of Edinburgh did present a grandiose setting.

Suspense, the die yet covered, the greatness of the risk, gave, too, its glamour of height and stateliness.

All these men might see, in some bad moment at night, not only possible battle death--that was in the counting--but, should the great enterprise fail, scaffolds and hangmen.

Many who went up and down were merely thoughtless, ignorant, reckless, or held in a vanity of good fortune, yet to the eye of history all might come into the sweep of great drama.

Place and time rang and were tense.