Butler stood still instinctively while the door was made fast, and then looking at his watch, walked briskly up the street, muttering to himself, almost unconsciously-- Porta adversa, ingens, solidoque adamante columnae; Vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exscindere ferro Coelicolae valeant--Stat ferrea turris ad auras--etc.* Dryden's _Virgil,_ Book vi.
* Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on high, With adamantine columns threats the sky; Vain is the force of man, and Heaven's as vain, To crush the pillars which the pile sustain: Sublime on these a tower of steel is reard.
Having wasted half-an-hour more in a second fruitless attempt to find his legal friend and adviser, he thought it time to leave the city and return to his place of residence, in a small village about two miles and a half to the southward of Edinburgh.

The metropolis was at this time surrounded by a high wall, with battlements and flanking projections at some intervals, and the access was through gates, called in the Scottish language _ports,_ which were regularly shut at night.

A small fee to the keepers would indeed procure egress and ingress at any time, through a wicket left for that purpose in the large gate; but it was of some importance, to a man so poor as Butler, to avoid even this slight pecuniary mulct; and fearing the hour of shutting the gates might be near, he made for that to which he found himself nearest, although, by doing so, he somewhat lengthened his walk homewards.

Bristo Port was that by which his direct road lay, but the West Port, which leads out of the Grassmarket, was the nearest of the city gates to the place where he found himself, and to that, therefore, he directed his course.

He reached the port in ample time to pass the circuit of the walls, and entered a suburb called Portsburgh, chiefly inhabited by the lower order of citizens and mechanics.