Turning quickly, I was aware of a party of armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a great-coat.

He walked with a stoop that was like a piece of courtesy, genteel and insinuating: he waved his hands plausibly as he went, and his face was sly and handsome.

I thought his eye took me in, but could not meet it.
This procession went by to a door in the close, which a serving-man in a fine livery set open; and two of the soldier-lads carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering with their firelocks by the door.
There can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some following of idle folk and children.

It was so now; but the more part melted away incontinent until but three were left.

One was a girl; she was dressed like a lady, and had a screen of the Drummond colours on her head; but her comrades or (I should say) followers were ragged gillies, such as I had seen the matches of by the dozen in my Highland journey.