You who read this will no doubt
suspect that we are merely shading this man for the sake of effect: and
this is true; but you are to remember that, while we are chroniclers of
things mysterious, we work for the advantage to you of putting into your
power to venture a shrewd guess; in making which, you are only working
in the destined vocation of man, for the world is only guesswork all
over, and you yourself are only guesswork as a part of it. The reader of
the _Mercury_ was verily Mr. John Cowie, whilom butler to Mr. John
Napier, and now waiter in the Lonsdale Arms of the obscure Kirby--a
place like Peebles, where, if you wanted to deposit a secret, you could
do so by crying it out at the market-cross; and, moreover, he was verily
in possession of the key to the Napier mystery.
Accordingly, Mr. White of Mill's Court in two days afterwards received a
letter, informing him that John Cowie was the writer of the same, and
that, if a reasonable consideration were held out to him, he would
proceed to the northern metropolis, and there settle for ever a case
which apparently had kept the newsmongers of Edinburgh in aliment for a
length of time much exceeding the normal nine days.
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