As Archie heard a steady tread approaching, he shrank farther back under the stair. He could only distinguish a middle-sized male figure which might belong to anyone, and he followed it with straining eyes to within a few feet of the lamp. Here it paused, and, skirting the light patch, stepped out into the middle of the way.
He scarcely breathed. He was not sure yet, though the man had come nearer by half the street; but the height matched his expectation, and the avoidance of the solitary light proved the desire for secrecy in the person before him. As the man moved on he slipped from his shelter and followed him, keeping just enough distance between them to allow him to see the way he went.
The two figures passed up the High Street, one behind the other, Flemington shrinking close to the walls and drawing a little nearer. Before they had gone a hundred yards, his unconscious guide turned suddenly into one of those narrow covered-in alleys, or closes, as they are called, which started at right angles from the main street.
Archie dived in after him as unconcernedly as he would have dived into the mouth of hell, had his interests taken him that way. These closes, characteristic of Scottish towns to this day, were so long, and burrowed under so many sightless-looking windows and doors, to emerge in unexpected places, that he admired James's knowledge of the short cuts of Montrose, though it seemed to him no more than natural. The place for which he conceived him to be making was a house in the New Wynd nicknamed the 'Happy Land,' and kept by a well-known widow for purposes which made its insignificance an advantage. It was used, as he had heard, by the Jacobite community, because the frequent visitors who entered after dusk passed in without more comment from the townspeople than could be expressed in a lifted eyebrow or a sly nudge. It was a disconcerting moment, even to him, when the man in front of him stopped, and what he had taken for the distant glimmer of an open space revealed itself as a patch of whitewash with a door in it. The close was a cul-de-sac.
Flemington stood motionless as the other knocked at the door. Flight was undesirable, for James might give chase, and capture would mean the end of a piece of work of which he was justly proud. He guessed himself to be the fleeter-footed of the two, but he knew nothing of the town's byways, and other night-birds besides Logie might join in. But his bold wit did not desert him, for he gave a loud drunken shout, as like those he had heard at the North Port as he could make it, and lurched across the close. Its other inmate turned towards him, and as he did so Archie shouted again, and, stumbling against him, subsided upon the paved floor.