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Catriona

by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #589 · 544,547 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Catriona

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson


        
Release date: July 1, 1996 [eBook #589]
                Most recently updated: June 6, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/589

Credits: David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATRIONA ***




Catriona

by Robert Louis Stevenson


Contents

 PART I. THE LORD ADVOCATE
 CHAPTER I. A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK
 CHAPTER II. THE HIGHLAND WRITER
 CHAPTER III. I GO TO PILRIG
 CHAPTER IV. LORD ADVOCATE PRESTONGRANGE
 CHAPTER V. IN THE ADVOCATE’S HOUSE
 CHAPTER VI. UMQUILE THE MASTER OF LOVAT
 CHAPTER VII. I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOUR
 CHAPTER VIII. THE BRAVO
 CHAPTER IX. THE HEATHER ON FIRE
 CHAPTER X. THE RED-HEADED MAN
 CHAPTER XI. THE WOOD BY SILVERMILLS
 CHAPTER XII. ON THE MARCH AGAIN WITH ALAN
 CHAPTER XIII. GILLANE SANDS
 CHAPTER XIV. THE BASS
 CHAPTER XV. BLACK ANDIE’S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK
 CHAPTER XVI. THE MISSING WITNESS
 CHAPTER XVII. THE MEMORIAL
 CHAPTER XVIII. THE TEE’D BALL
 CHAPTER XIX. I AM MUCH IN THE HANDS OF THE LADIES
 CHAPTER XX. I CONTINUE TO MOVE IN GOOD SOCIETY

 PART II. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
 CHAPTER XXI. THE VOYAGE INTO HOLLAND
 CHAPTER XXII. HELVOETSLUYS
 CHAPTER XXIII. TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
 CHAPTER XXIV. FULL STORY OF A COPY OF HEINECCIUS
 CHAPTER XXV. THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE
 CHAPTER XXVI. THE THREESOME
 CHAPTER XXVII. A TWOSOME
 CHAPTER XXVIII. IN WHICH I AM LEFT ALONE
 CHAPTER XXIX. WE MEET IN DUNKIRK
 CHAPTER XXX. THE LETTER FROM THE SHIP




DEDICATION.

To
CHARLES BAXTER, _Writer to the Signet_.

My Dear Charles,

It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them;
and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre
in the British Linen Company’s office, must expect his late
re-appearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. Yet, when
I remember the days of our explorations, I am not without hope. There
should be left in our native city some seed of the elect; some
long-legged, hot-headed youth must repeat to-day our dreams and
wanderings of so many years ago; he will relish the pleasure, which
should have been ours, to follow among named streets and numbered
houses the country walks of David Balfour, to identify Dean, and
Silvermills, and Broughton, and Hope Park, and Pilrig, and poor old
Lochend—if it still be standing, and the Figgate Whins—if there be any
of them left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as Gillane
or the Bass. So, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series
of the generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and
nugatory gift of life.

You are still—as when first I saw, as when I last addressed you—in the
venerable city which I must always think of as my home. And I have come
so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I see
like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole
stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of
laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet,
on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the
romance of destiny.

R. L. S.

_Vailima_, _Upolu_,
_Samoa_, 1892.




CATRIONA




PART I.
THE LORD ADVOCATE




CHAPTER I.
A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK


The 25th day of August, 1751, about two in the afternoon, I, David
Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me
with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me
from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, I
was like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my
last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own
head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I was
served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me
carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of
the saying) the ball directly at my foot.

There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail.
The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to
handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and
the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world
for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands and the still
country-sides that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the
citizens in particular abashed me. Rankeillor’s son was short and small
in the girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill
qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I
did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case)
set them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some clothes
of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter’s side, and put
my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.

At a merchant’s in the Luckenbooths I had myself fitted out: none too
fine, for I had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but
comely and responsible, so that servants should respect me. Thence to
an armourer’s, where I got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in
life. I felt safer with the weapon, though (for one so ignorant of
defence) it might be called an added danger. The porter, who was
naturally a man of some experience, judged my accoutrement to be well
chosen.

“Naething kenspeckle,”[1] said he; “plain, dacent claes. As for the
rapier, nae doubt it sits wi’ your degree; but an I had been you, I
would has waired my siller better-gates than that.” And he proposed I
should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a
cousin of his own, and made them “extraordinar endurable.”

But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in this
old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-warren, not
only by the number of its indwellers, but the complication of its
passages and holes. It was, indeed, a place where no stranger had a
chance to find a friend, let be another stranger. Suppose him even to
hit on the right close, people dwelt so thronged in these tall houses,
he might very well seek a day before he chanced on the right door. The
ordinary course was to hire a lad they called a _caddie_, who was like
a guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands
being done) brought you again where you were lodging. But these
caddies, being always employed in the same sort of services, and having
it for obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the
city, had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales
of Mr. Campbell’s how they communicated one with another, what a rage
of curiosity they conceived as to their employer’s business, and how
they were like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece of
little wisdom, the way I was now placed, to take such a ferret to my
tails. I had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my
kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin’s
agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of
Scotland. Mr. Balfour’s was a non-committal visit; and besides (Pilrig
being in the country) I made bold to find the way to it myself, with
the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue. But the rest were in a
different case. Not only was the visit to Appin’s agent, in the midst
of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was
highly inconsistent with the other. I was like to have a bad enough
time of it with my Lord Advocate Grant, the best of ways; but to go to
him hot-foot from Appin’s agent, was little likely to mend my own
affairs, and might prove the mere ruin of friend Alan’s. The whole
thing, besides, gave me a look of running with the hare and hunting
with the hounds that was little to my fancy. I determined, therefore,
to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and the whole Jacobitical side of
my business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the
porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him the address,
when there came a sprinkle of rain—nothing to hurt, only for my new
clothes—and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or
alley.

Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in. The narrow
paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang upon each
side and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they rose. At the
top only a ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could spy in the windows,
and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, I saw the houses
to be very well occupied; and the whole appearance of the place
interested me like a tale.

I was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in
time and clash of steel behind me. 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. They all
spoke together earnestly in Gaelic, the sound of which was pleasant in
my ears for the sake of Alan; and, though the rain was by again, and my
porter plucked at me to be going, I even drew nearer where they were,
to listen. The lady scolded sharply, the others making apologies and
cringeing before her, so that I made sure she was come of a chief’s
house. All the while the three of them sought in their pockets, and by
what I could make out, they had the matter of half a farthing among the
party; which made me smile a little to see all Highland folk alike for
fine obeisances and empty sporrans.

It chanced the girl turned suddenly about, so that I saw her face for
the first time. There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a
young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he could never
tell you why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. She had
wonderful bright eyes like stars, and I daresay the eyes had a part in
it; but what I remember the most clearly was the way her lips were a
trifle open as she turned. And, whatever was the cause, I stood there
staring like a fool. On her side, as she had not known there was anyone
so near, she looked at me a little longer, and perhaps with more
surprise, than was entirely civil.

It went through my country head she might be wondering at my new
clothes; with that, I blushed to my hair, and at the sight of my
colouring it is to be supposed she drew her own conclusions, for she
moved her gillies farther down the close, and they fell again to this
dispute, where I could hear no more of it.

I had often admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and
strong; and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come
forward, for I was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. You
would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common
practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly
following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged
indecent-like Highlandmen. But there was here a different ingredient;
it was plain the girl thought I had been prying in her secrets; and
with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this
was more than I could swallow. The beggar on horseback could not bear
to be thrust down so low, or, at least of it, not by this young lady.

I followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her the best that I
was able.

“Madam,” said I, “I think it only fair to myself to let you understand
I have no Gaelic. It is true I was listening, for I have friends of my
own across the Highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes
friendly; but for your private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I
might have had more guess at them.”

She made me a little, distant curtsey. “There is no harm done,” said
she, with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable).
“A cat may look at a king.”

“I do not mean to offend,” said I. “I have no skill of city manners; I
never before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me
for a country lad—it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than
you found it out.”

“Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking
to each other on the causeway,” she replied. “But if you are landward
[2] bred it will be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am
Highland, as you see, and think myself the farther from my home.”

“It is not yet a week since I passed the line,” said I. “Less than a
week ago I was on the braes of Balwhidder.”

“Balwhither?” she cries. “Come ye from Balwhither! The name of it makes
all there is of me rejoice. You will not have been long there, and not
known some of our friends or family?”

“I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren,” I
replied.

“Well, I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!” she said; “and
if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.”

“Ay,” said I, “they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.”

“Where in the great world is such another!” she cries; “I am loving the
smell of that place and the roots that grow there.”

I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. “I could be wishing
I had brought you a spray of that heather,” says I. “And, though I did
ill to speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common
acquaintance, I make it my petition you will not forget me. David
Balfour is the name I am known by. This is my lucky day, when I have
just come into a landed estate, and am not very long out of a deadly
peril. I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of
Balwhidder,” said I, “and I will yours for the sake of my lucky day.”

“My name is not spoken,” she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness.
“More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men’s tongues, save for
a blink. I am nameless, like the Folk of Peace. [3] Catriona Drummond
is the one I use.”

Now indeed I knew where I was standing. In all broad Scotland there was
but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the Macgregors.
Yet so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, I plunged the
deeper in.

“I have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself,”
said I, “and I think he will be one of your friends. They called him
Robin Oig.”

“Did ye so?” cries she. “Ye met Rob?”

“I passed the night with him,” said I.

“He is a fowl of the night,” said she.

“There was a set of pipes there,” I went on, “so you may judge if the
time passed.”

“You should be no enemy, at all events,” said she. “That was his
brother there a moment since, with the red soldiers round him. It is
him that I call father.”

“Is it so?” cried I. “Are you a daughter of James More’s?”

“All the daughter that he has,” says she: “the daughter of a prisoner;
that I should forget it so, even for one hour, to talk with strangers!”

Here one of the gillies addressed her in what he had of English, to
know what “she” (meaning by that himself) was to do about “ta
sneeshin.” I took some note of him for a short, bandy-legged,
red-haired, big-headed man, that I was to know more of to my cost.

“There can be none the day, Neil,” she replied. “How will you get
‘sneeshin,’ wanting siller! It will teach you another time to be more
careful; and I think James More will not be very well pleased with Neil
of the Tom.”

“Miss Drummond,” I said, “I told you I was in my lucky day. Here I am,
and a bank-porter at my tail. And remember I have had the hospitality
of your own country of Balwhidder.”

“It was not one of my people gave it,” said she.

“Ah, well,” said I, “but I am owing your uncle at least for some
springs upon the pipes. Besides which, I have offered myself to be your
friend, and you have been so forgetful that you did not refuse me in
the proper time.”

“If it had been a great sum, it might have done you honour,” said she;
“but I will tell you what this is. James More lies shackled in prison;
but this time past they will be bringing him down here daily to the
Advocate’s. . . .”

“The Advocate’s!” I cried. “Is that . . . ?”

“It is the house of the Lord Advocate Grant of Prestongrange,” said
she. “There they bring my father one time and another, for what purpose
I have no thought in my mind; but it seems there is some hope dawned
for him. All this same time they will not let me be seeing him, nor yet
him write; and we wait upon the King’s street to catch him; and now we
give him his snuff as he goes by, and now something else. And here is
this son of trouble, Neil, son of Duncan, has lost my four-penny piece
that was to buy that snuff, and James More must go wanting, and will
think his daughter has forgotten him.”

I took sixpence from my pocket, gave it to Neil, and bade him go about
his errand. Then to her, “That sixpence came with me by Balwhidder,”
said I.

“Ah!” she said, “you are a friend to the Gregara!”

“I would not like to deceive you, either,” said I. “I know very little
of the Gregara and less of James More and his doings, but since the
while I have been standing in this close, I seem to know something of
yourself; and if you will just say ‘a friend to Miss Catriona’ I will
see you are the less cheated.”

“The one cannot be without the other,” said she.

“I will even try,” said I.

“And what will you be thinking of myself!” she cried, “to be holding my
hand to the first stranger!”

“I am thinking nothing but that you are a good daughter,” said I.

“I must not be without repaying it,” she said; “where is it you stop!”

“To tell the truth, I am stopping nowhere yet,” said I, “being not full
three hours in the city; but if you will give me your direction, I will
be so bold as come seeking my sixpence for myself.”

“Will I can trust you for that?” she asked.

“You need have little fear,” said I.

“James More could not bear it else,” said she. “I stop beyond the
village of Dean, on the north side of the water, with Mrs.
Drummond-Ogilvy of Allardyce, who is my near friend and will be glad to
thank you.”

“You are to see me, then, so soon as what I have to do permits,” said
I; and, the remembrance of Alan rolling in again upon my mind, I made
haste to say farewell.

I could not but think, even as I did so, that we had made extraordinary
free upon short acquaintance, and that a really wise young lady would
have shown herself more backward. I think it was the bank-porter that
put me from this ungallant train of thought.

“I thoucht ye had been a lad of some kind o’ sense,” he began, shooting
out his lips. “Ye’re no likely to gang far this gate. A fule and his
siller’s shune parted. Eh, but ye’re a green callant!” he cried, “an’ a
veecious, tae! Cleikin’ up wi’ baubeejoes!”

“If you dare to speak of the young lady. . . ” I began.

“Leddy!” he cried. “Haud us and safe us, whatten leddy? Ca’ _thon_ a
leddy? The toun’s fu’ o’ them. Leddies! Man, its weel seen ye’re no
very acquant in Embro!”

A clap of anger took me.

“Here,” said I, “lead me where I told you, and keep your foul mouth
shut!”

He did not wholly obey me, for, though he no more addressed me
directly, he very impudent sang at me as he went in a manner of
innuendo, and with an exceedingly ill voice and ear—

“As Mally Lee cam doun the street, her capuchin did flee,
She cuist a look ahint her to see her negligee.
And we’re a’ gaun east and wast, we’re a’ gann ajee,
We’re a’ gaun east and wast courtin’ Mally Lee.”




CHAPTER II.
THE HIGHLAND WRITER


Mr. Charles Stewart the Writer dwelt at the top of the longest stair
ever mason set a hand to; fifteen flights of it, no less; and when I
had come to his door, and a clerk had opened it, and told me his master
was within, I had scarce breath enough to send my porter packing.

“Awa’ east and west wi’ ye!” said I, took the money bag out of his
hands, and followed the clerk in.

The outer room was an office with the clerk’s chair at a table spread
with law papers. In the inner chamber, which opened from it, a little
brisk man sat poring on a deed, from which he scarce raised his eyes on
my entrance; indeed, he still kept his finger in the place, as though
prepared to show me out and fall again to his studies. This pleased me
little enough; and what pleased me less, I thought the clerk was in a
good posture to overhear what should pass between us.

I asked if he was Mr. Charles Stewart the Writer.

“The same,” says he; “and, if the question is equally fair, who may you
be yourself?”

“You never heard tell of my name nor of me either,” said I, “but I
bring you a token from a friend that you know well. That you know
well,” I repeated, lowering my voice, “but maybe are not just so keen
to hear from at this present being. And the bits of business that I
have to propone to you are rather in the nature of being confidential.
In short, I would like to think we were quite private.”

He rose without more words, casting down his paper like a man
ill-pleased, sent forth his clerk of an errand, and shut to the
house-door behind him.

“Now, sir,” said he, returning, “speak out your mind and fear nothing;
though before you begin,” he cries out, “I tell you mine misgives me! I
tell you beforehand, ye’re either a Stewart or a Stewart sent ye. A
good name it is, and one it would ill-become my father’s son to
lightly. But I begin to grue at the sound of it.”

“My name is called Balfour,” said I, “David Balfour of Shaws. As for
him that sent me, I will let his token speak.” And I showed the silver
button.

“Put it in your pocket, sir!” cries he. “Ye need name no names. The
deevil’s buckie, I ken the button of him! And de’il hae’t! Where is he
now!”

I told him I knew not where Alan was, but he had some sure place (or
thought he had) about the north side, where he was to lie until a ship
was found for him; and how and where he had appointed to be spoken
with.

“It’s been always my opinion that I would hang in a tow for this family
of mine,” he cried, “and, dod! I believe the day’s come now! Get a ship
for him, quot’ he! And who’s to pay for it? The man’s daft!”

“That is my part of the affair, Mr. Stewart,” said I. “Here is a bag of
good money, and if more be wanted, more is to be had where it came
from.”

“I needn’t ask your politics,” said he.

“Ye need not,” said I, smiling, “for I’m as big a Whig as grows.”

“Stop a bit, stop a bit,” says Mr. Stewart. “What’s all this? A Whig?
Then why are you here with Alan’s button? and what kind of a black-foot
traffic is this that I find ye out in, Mr. Whig? Here is a forfeited
rebel and an accused murderer, with two hundred pounds on his life, and
ye ask me to meddle in his business, and then tell me ye’re a Whig! I
have no mind of any such Whigs before, though I’ve kent plenty of
them.”

“He’s a forfeited rebel, the more’s the pity,” said I, “for the man’s
my friend. I can only wish he had been better guided. And an accused
murderer, that he is too, for his misfortune; but wrongfully accused.”

“I hear you say so,” said Stewart.

“More than you are to hear me say so, before long,” said I. “Alan Breck
is innocent, and so is James.”

“Oh!” says he, “the two cases hang together. If Alan is out, James can
never be in.”

Hereupon I told him briefly of my acquaintance with Alan, of the
accident that brought me present at the Appin murder, and the various
passages of our escape among the heather, and my recovery of my estate.
“So, sir, you have now the whole train of these events,” I went on,
“and can see for yourself how I come to be so much mingled up with the
affairs of your family and friends, which (for all of our sakes) I wish
had been plainer and less bloody. You can see for yourself, too, that I
have certain pieces of business depending, which were scarcely fit to
lay before a lawyer chosen at random. No more remains, but to ask if
you will undertake my service?”

“I have no great mind to it; but coming as you do with Alan’s button,
the choice is scarcely left me,” said he. “What are your instructions?”
he added, and took up his pen.

“The first point is to smuggle Alan forth of this country,” said I,
“but I need not be repeating that.”

“I am little likely to forget it,” said Stewart.

“The next thing is the bit money I am owing to Cluny,” I went on. “It
would be ill for me to find a conveyance, but that should be no stick
to you. It was two pounds five shillings and three-halfpence farthing
sterling.”

He noted it.

“Then,” said I, “there’s a Mr. Henderland, a licensed preacher and
missionary in Ardgour, that I would like well to get some snuff into
the hands of; and, as I daresay you keep touch with your friends in
Appin (so near by), it’s a job you could doubtless overtake with the
other.”

“How much snuff are we to say?” he asked.

“I was thinking of two pounds,” said I.

“Two,” said he.

“Then there’s the lass Alison Hastie, in Lime Kilns,” said I. “Her that
helped Alan and me across the Forth. I was thinking if I could get her
a good Sunday gown, such as she could wear with decency in her degree,
it would be an ease to my conscience; for the mere truth is, we owe her
our two lives.”

“I am glad so see you are thrifty, Mr. Balfour,” says he, making his
notes.

“I would think shame to be otherwise the first day of my fortune,” said
I. “And now, if you will compute the outlay and your own proper
charges, I would be glad to know if I could get some spending-money
back. It’s not that I grudge the whole of it to get Alan safe; it’s not
that I lack more; but having drawn so much the one day, I think it
would have a very ill appearance if I was back again seeking, the next.
Only be sure you have enough,” I added, “for I am very undesirous to
meet with you again.”

“Well, and I’m pleased to see you’re cautious, too,” said the Writer.
“But I think ye take a risk to lay so considerable a sum at my
discretion.”

He said this with a plain sneer.

“I’ll have to run the hazard,” I replied. “O, and there’s another
service I would ask, and that’s to direct me to a lodging, for I have
no roof to my head. But it must be a lodging I may seem to have hit
upon by accident, for it would never do if the Lord Advocate were to
get any jealousy of our acquaintance.”

“Ye may set your weary spirit at rest,” said he. “I will never name
your name, sir; and it’s my belief the Advocate is still so much to be
sympathised with that he doesnae ken of your existence.”

I saw I had got to the wrong side of the man.

“There’s a braw day coming for him, then,” said I, “for he’ll have to
learn of it on the deaf side of his head no later than to-morrow, when
I call on him.”

“When ye _call_ on him!” repeated Mr. Stewart. “Am I daft, or are you!
What takes ye near the Advocate!”

“O, just to give myself up,” said I.

“Mr. Balfour,” he cried, “are ye making a mock of me?”

“No, sir,” said I, “though I think you have allowed yourself some such
freedom with myself. But I give you to understand once and for all that
I am in no jesting spirit.”

“Nor yet me,” says Stewart. “And I give yon to understand (if that’s to
be the word) that I like the looks of your behaviour less and less. You
come here to me with all sorts of propositions, which will put me in a
train of very doubtful acts and bring me among very undesirable persons
this many a day to come. And then you tell me you’re going straight out
of my office to make your peace with the Advocate! Alan’s button here
or Alan’s button there, the four quarters of Alan wouldnae bribe me
further in.”

“I would take it with a little more temper,” said I, “and perhaps we
can avoid what you object to. I can see no way for it but to give
myself up, but perhaps you can see another; and if you could, I could
never deny but what I would be rather relieved. For I think my traffic
with his lordship is little likely to agree with my health. There’s
just the one thing clear, that I have to give my evidence; for I hope
it’ll save Alan’s character (what’s left of it), and James’s neck,
which is the more immediate.”

He was silent for a breathing-space, and then, “My man,” said he,
“you’ll never be allowed to give such evidence.”

“We’ll have to see about that,” said I; “I’m stiff-necked when I like.”

“Ye muckle ass!” cried Stewart, “it’s James they want; James has got to
hang—Alan, too, if they could catch him—but James whatever! Go near the
Advocate with any such business, and you’ll see! he’ll find a way to
muzzle, ye.”

“I think better of the Advocate than that,” said I.

“The Advocate be dammed!” cries he. “It’s the Campbells, man! You’ll
have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the
Advocate too, poor body! It’s extraordinar ye cannot see where ye
stand! If there’s no fair way to stop your gab, there’s a foul one
gaping. They can put ye in the dock, do ye no see that?” he cried, and
stabbed me with one finger in the leg.

“Ay,” said I, “I was told that same no further back than this morning
by another lawyer.”

“And who was he?” asked Stewart, “He spoke sense at least.”

I told I must be excused from naming him, for he was a decent stout old
Whig, and had little mind to be mixed up in such affairs.

“I think all the world seems to be mixed up in it!” cries Stewart. “But
what said you?”

“I told him what had passed between Rankeillor and myself before the
house of Shaws.

“Well, and so ye will hang!” said he. “Ye’ll hang beside James Stewart.
There’s your fortune told.”

“I hope better of it yet than that,” said I; “but I could never deny
there was a risk.”

“Risk!” says he, and then sat silent again. “I ought to thank you for
your staunchness to my friends, to whom you show a very good spirit,”
he says, “if you have the strength to stand by it. But I warn you that
you’re wading deep. I wouldn’t put myself in your place (me that’s a
Stewart born!) for all the Stewarts that ever there were since Noah.
Risk? ay, I take over-many; but to be tried in court before a Campbell
jury and a Campbell judge, and that in a Campbell country and upon a
Campbell quarrel—think what you like of me, Balfour, it’s beyond me.”

“It’s a different way of thinking, I suppose,” said I; “I was brought
up to this one by my father before me.”

“Glory to his bones! he has left a decent son to his name,” says he.
“Yet I would not have you judge me over-sorely. My case is dooms hard.
See, sir, ye tell me ye’re a Whig: I wonder what I am. No Whig to be
sure; I couldnae be just that. But—laigh in your ear, man—I’m maybe no
very keen on the other side.”

“Is that a fact?” cried I. “It’s what I would think of a man of your
intelligence.”

“Hut! none of your whillywhas!” [4] cries he. “There’s intelligence
upon both sides. But for my private part I have no particular desire to
harm King George; and as for King James, God bless him! he does very
well for me across the water. I’m a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books
and my bottle, a good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the
Parliament House with other lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the
golf on a Saturday at e’en. Where do ye come in with your Hieland
plaids and claymores?”

“Well,” said I, “it’s a fact ye have little of the wild Highlandman.”

“Little?” quoth he. “Nothing, man! And yet I’m Hieland born, and when
the clan pipes, who but me has to dance! The clan and the name, that
goes by all. It’s just what you said yourself; my father learned it to
me, and a bonny trade I have of it. Treason and traitors, and the
smuggling of them out and in; and the French recruiting, weary fall it!
and the smuggling through of the recruits; and their pleas—a sorrow of
their pleas! Here have I been moving one for young Ardsheil, my cousin;
claimed the estate under the marriage contract—a forfeited estate! I
told them it was nonsense: muckle they cared! And there was I cocking
behind a yadvocate that liked the business as little as myself, for it
was fair ruin to the pair of us—a black mark, _disaffected_, branded on
our hurdies, like folk’s names upon their kye! And what can I do? I’m a
Stewart, ye see, and must fend for my clan and family. Then no later by
than yesterday there was one of our Stewart lads carried to the Castle.
What for? I ken fine: Act of 1736: recruiting for King Lewie. And
you’ll see, he’ll whistle me in to be his lawyer, and there’ll be
another black mark on my chara’ter! I tell you fair: if I but kent the
heid of a Hebrew word from the hurdies of it, be dammed but I would
fling the whole thing up and turn minister!”

“It’s rather a hard position,” said I.

“Dooms hard!” cries he. “And that’s what makes me think so much of
ye—you that’s no Stewart—to stick your head so deep in Stewart
business. And for what, I do not know: unless it was the sense of
duty.”

“I hope it will be that,” said I.

“Well,” says he, “it’s a grand quality. But here is my clerk back; and,
by your leave, we’ll pick a bit of dinner, all the three of us. When
that’s done, I’ll give you the direction of a very decent man, that’ll
be very fain to have you for a lodger. And I’ll fill your pockets to
ye, forbye, out of your ain bag. For this business’ll not be near as
dear as ye suppose—not even the ship part of it.”

I made him a sign that his clerk was within hearing.

“Hoot, ye neednae mind for Robbie,” cries he. “A Stewart, too, puir
deevil! and has smuggled out more French recruits and trafficking
Papists than what he has hairs upon his face. Why, it’s Robin that
manages that branch of my affairs. Who will we have now, Rob, for
across the water!”

“There’ll be Andie Scougal, in the _Thristle_,” replied Rob. “I saw
Hoseason the other day, but it seems he’s wanting the ship. Then
there’ll be Tam Stobo; but I’m none so sure of Tam. I’ve seen him
colloguing with some gey queer acquaintances; and if was anybody
important, I would give Tam the go-by.”

“The head’s worth two hundred pounds, Robin,” said Stewart.

“Gosh, that’ll no be Alan Breck!” cried the clerk.

“Just Alan,” said his master.

“Weary winds! that’s sayrious,” cried Robin. “I’ll try Andie, then;
Andie’ll be the best.”

“It seems it’s quite a big business,” I observed.

“Mr. Balfour, there’s no end to it,” said Stewart.

“There was a name your clerk mentioned,” I went on: “Hoseason. That
must be my man, I think: Hoseason, of the brig _Covenant_. Would you
set your trust on him?”

“He didnae behave very well to you and Alan,” said Mr. Stewart; “but my
mind of the man in general is rather otherwise. If he had taken Alan on
board his ship on an agreement, it’s my notion he would have proved a
just dealer. How say ye, Rob?”

“No more honest skipper in the trade than Eli,” said the clerk. “I
would lippen to [5] Eli’s word—ay, if it was the Chevalier, or Appin
himsel’,” he added.

“And it was him that brought the doctor, wasnae’t?” asked the master.

“He was the very man,” said the clerk.

“And I think he took the doctor back?” says Stewart.

“Ay, with his sporran full!” cried Robin. “And Eli kent of that!” [6]

“Well, it seems it’s hard to ken folk rightly,” said I.

“That was just what I forgot when ye came in, Mr. Balfour!” says the
Writer.




CHAPTER III.
I GO TO PILRIG


The next morning, I was no sooner awake in my new lodging than I was up
and into my new clothes; and no sooner the breakfast swallowed, than I
was forth on my adventurers. Alan, I could hope, was fended for; James
was like to be a more difficult affair, and I could not but think that
enterprise might cost me dear, even as everybody said to whom I had
opened my opinion. It seemed I was come to the top of the mountain only
to cast myself down; that I had clambered up, through so many and hard
trials, to be rich, to be recognised, to wear city clothes and a sword
to my side, all to commit mere suicide at the last end of it, and the
worst kind of suicide, besides, which is to get hanged at the King’s
charges.

What was I doing it for? I asked, as I went down the high Street and
out north by Leith Wynd. First I said it was to save James Stewart; and
no doubt the memory of his distress, and his wife’s cries, and a word
or so I had let drop on that occasion worked upon me strongly. At the
same time I reflected that it was (or ought to be) the most indifferent
matter to my father’s son, whether James died in his bed or from a
scaffold. He was Alan’s cousin, to be sure; but so far as regarded
Alan, the best thing would be to lie low, and let the King, and his
Grace of Argyll, and the corbie crows, pick the bones of his kinsman
their own way. Nor could I forget that, while we were all in the pot
together, James had shown no such particular anxiety whether for Alan
or me.

Next it came upon me I was acting for the sake of justice: and I
thought that a fine word, and reasoned it out that (since we dwelt in
polities, at some discomfort to each one of us) the main thing of all
must still be justice, and the death of any innocent man a wound upon
the whole community. Next, again, it was the Accuser of the Brethren
that gave me a turn of his argument; bade me think shame for pretending
myself concerned in these high matters, and told me I was but a prating
vain child, who had spoken big words to Rankeillor and to Stewart, and
held myself bound upon my vanity to make good that boastfulness. Nay,
and he hit me with the other end of the stick; for he accused me of a
kind of artful cowardice, going about at the expense of a little risk
to purchase greater safety. No doubt, until I had declared and cleared
myself, I might any day encounter Mungo Campbell or the sheriff’s
officer, and be recognised, and dragged into the Appin murder by the
heels; and, no doubt, in case I could manage my declaration with
success, I should breathe more free for ever after. But when I looked
this argument full in the face I could see nothing to be ashamed of. As
for the rest, “Here are the two roads,” I thought, “and both go to the
same place. It’s unjust that James should hang if I can save him; and
it would be ridiculous in me to have talked so much and then do
nothing. It’s lucky for James of the Glens that I have boasted
beforehand; and none so unlucky for myself, because now I’m committed
to do right. I have the name of a gentleman and the means of one; it
would be a poor duty that I was wanting in the essence.” And then I
thought this was a Pagan spirit, and said a prayer in to myself, asking
for what courage I might lack, and that I might go straight to my duty
like a soldier to battle, and come off again scatheless, as so many do.

This train of reasoning brought me to a more resolved complexion;
though it was far from closing up my sense of the dangers that
surrounded me, nor of how very apt I was (if I went on) to stumble on
the ladder of the gallows. It was a plain, fair morning, but the wind
in the east. The little chill of it sang in my blood, and gave me a
feeling of the autumn, and the dead leaves, and dead folks’ bodies in
their graves. It seemed the devil was in it, if I was to die in that
tide of my fortunes and for other folks’ affairs. On the top of the
Calton Hill, though it was not the customary time of year for that
diversion, some children were crying and running with their kites.
These toys appeared very plain against the sky; I remarked a great one
soar on the wind to a high altitude and then plump among the whins; and
I thought to myself at sight of it, “There goes Davie.”

My way lay over Mouter’s Hill, and through an end of a clachan on the
braeside among fields. There was a whirr of looms in it went from house
to house; bees bummed in the gardens; the neighbours that I saw at the
doorsteps talked in a strange tongue; and I found out later that this
was Picardy, a village where the French weavers wrought for the Linen
Company. Here I got a fresh direction for Pilrig, my destination; and a
little beyond, on the wayside, came by a gibbet and two men hanged in
chains. They were dipped in tar, as the manner is; the wind span them,
the chains clattered, and the birds hung about the uncanny
jumping-jacks and cried. The sight coming on me suddenly, like an
illustration of my fears, I could scarce be done with examining it and
drinking in discomfort. And, as I thus turned and turned about the
gibbet, what should I strike on, but a weird old wife, that sat behind
a leg of it, and nodded, and talked aloud to herself with becks and
courtesies.

“Who are these two, mother?” I asked, and pointed to the corpses.

“A blessing on your precious face!” she cried. “Twa joes [7] o’mine:
just two o’ my old joes, my hinny dear.”

“What did they suffer for?” I asked.

“Ou, just for the guid cause,” said she. “Aften I spaed to them the way
that it would end. Twa shillin’ Scots: no pickle mair; and there are
twa bonny callants hingin’ for ’t! They took it frae a wean [8]
belanged to Brouchton.”

“Ay!” said I to myself, and not to the daft limmer, “and did they come
to such a figure for so poor a business? This is to lose all indeed.”

“Gie’s your loof, [9] hinny,” says she, “and let me spae your weird to
ye.”

“No, mother,” said I, “I see far enough the way I am. It’s an unco
thing to see too far in front.”

“I read it in your bree,” she said. “There’s a bonnie lassie that has
bricht een, and there’s a wee man in a braw coat, and a big man in a
pouthered wig, and there’s the shadow of the wuddy, [10] joe, that lies
braid across your path. Gie’s your loof, hinny, and let Auld Merren
spae it to ye bonny.”

The two chance shots that seemed to point at Alan and the daughter of
James More struck me hard; and I fled from the eldritch creature,
casting her a baubee, which she continued to sit and play with under
the moving shadows of the hanged.

My way down the causeway of Leith Walk would have been more pleasant to
me but for this encounter. The old rampart ran among fields, the like
of them I had never seen for artfulness of agriculture; I was pleased,
besides, to be so far in the still countryside; but the shackles of the
gibbet clattered in my head; and the mope and mows of the old witch,
and the thought of the dead men, hag-rode my spirits. To hang on a
gallows, that seemed a hard case; and whether a man came to hang there
for two shillings Scots, or (as Mr. Stewart had it) from the sense of
duty, once he was tarred and shackled and hung up, the difference
seemed small. There might David Balfour hang, and other lads pass on
their errands and think light of him; and old daft limmers sit at a
leg-foot and spae their fortunes; and the clean genty maids go by, and
look to the other aide, and hold a nose. I saw them plain, and they had
grey eyes, and their screens upon their heads were of the Drummed
colours.

I was thus in the poorest of spirits, though still pretty resolved,
when I came in view of Pilrig, a pleasant gabled house set by the
walkside among some brave young woods. The laird’s horse was standing
saddled at the door as I came up, but himself was in the study, where
he received me in the midst of learned works and musical instruments,
for he was not only a deep philosopher but much of a musician. He
greeted me at first pretty well, and when he had read Rankeillor’s
letter, placed himself obligingly at my disposal.

“And what is it, cousin David!” said he—“since it appears that we are
cousins—what is this that I can do for you! A word to Prestongrange!
Doubtless that is easily given. But what should be the word?”

“Mr. Balfour,” said I, “if I were to tell you my whole story the way it
fell out, it’s my opinion (and it was Rankeillor’s before me) that you
would be very little made up with it.”

“I am sorry to hear this of you, kinsman,” says he.

“I must not take that at your hands, Mr. Balfour,” said I; “I have
nothing to my charge to make me sorry, or you for me, but just the
common infirmities of mankind. ‘The guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want
of original righteousness, and the corruption of my whole nature,’ so
much I must answer for, and I hope I have been taught where to look for
help,” I said; for I judged from the look of the man he would think the
better of me if I knew my questions. [11] “But in the way of worldly
honour I have no great stumble to reproach myself with; and my
difficulties have befallen me very much against my will and (by all
that I can see) without my fault. My trouble is to have become dipped
in a political complication, which it is judged you would be blythe to
avoid a knowledge of.”

“Why, very well, Mr. David,” he replied, “I am pleased to see you are
all that Rankeillor represented. And for what you say of political
complications, you do me no more than justice. It is my study to be
beyond suspicion, and indeed outside the field of it. The question is,”
says he, “how, if I am to know nothing of the matter, I can very well
assist you?”

“Why sir,” said I, “I propose you should write to his lordship, that I
am a young man of reasonable good family and of good means: both of
which I believe to be the case.”

“I have Rankeillor’s word for it,” said Mr. Balfour, “and I count that
a warran-dice against all deadly.”

“To which you might add (if you will take my word for so much) that I
am a good churchman, loyal to King George, and so brought up,” I went
on.

“None of which will do you any harm,” said Mr. Balfour.

“Then you might go on to say that I sought his lordship on a matter of
great moment, connected with His Majesty’s service and the
administration of justice,” I suggested.

“As I am not to hear the matter,” says the laird, “I will not take upon
myself to qualify its weight. ‘Great moment’ therefore falls, and
‘moment’ along with it. For the rest I might express myself much as you
propose.”

“And then, sir,” said I, and rubbed my neck a little with my thumb,
“then I would be very desirous if you could slip in a word that might
perhaps tell for my protection.”

“Protection?” says he, “for your protection! Here is a phrase that
somewhat dampens me. If the matter be so dangerous, I own I would be a
little loath to move in it blindfold.”

“I believe I could indicate in two words where the thing sticks,” said
I.

“Perhaps that would be the best,” said he.

“Well, it’s the Appin murder,” said I.

He held up both his hands. “Sirs! sirs!” cried he.

I thought by the expression of his face and voice that I had lost my
helper.

“Let me explain. . .” I began.

“I thank you kindly, I will hear no more of it,” says he. “I decline
_in toto_ to hear more of it. For your name’s sake and Rankeillor’s,
and perhaps a little for your own, I will do what I can to help you;
but I will hear no more upon the facts. And it is my first clear duty
to warn you. These are deep waters, Mr. David, and you are a young man.
Be cautious and think twice.”

“It is to be supposed I will have thought oftener than that, Mr.
Balfour,” said I, “and I will direct your attention again to
Rankeillor’s letter, where (I hope and believe) he has registered his
approval of that which I design.”

“Well, well,” said he; and then again, “Well, well! I will do what I
can for you.” There with he took a pen and paper, sat a while in
thought, and began to write with much consideration. “I understand that
Rankeillor approved of what you have in mind?” he asked presently.

“After some discussion, sir, he bade me to go forward in God’s name,”
said I.

“That is the name to go in,” said Mr. Balfour, and resumed his writing.
Presently, he signed, re-read what he had written, and addressed me
again. “Now here, Mr. David,” said he, “is a letter of introduction,
which I will seal without closing, and give into your hands open, as
the form requires. But, since I am acting in the dark, I will just read
it to you, so that you may see if it will secure your end—

“Pilrig, _August_ 26th, 1751.


“My Lord,—This is to bring to your notice my namesake and cousin, David
Balfour Esquire of Shaws, a young gentleman of unblemished descent and
good estate. He has enjoyed, besides, the more valuable advantages of a
godly training, and his political principles are all that your lordship
can desire. I am not in Mr. Balfour’s confidence, but I understand him
to have a matter to declare, touching His Majesty’s service and the
administration of justice; purposes for which your Lordship’s zeal is
known. I should add that the young gentleman’s intention is known to
and approved by some of his friends, who will watch with hopeful
anxiety the event of his success or failure.


“Whereupon,” continued Mr. Balfour, “I have subscribed myself with the
usual compliments. You observe I have said ‘some of your friends’; I
hope you can justify my plural?”

“Perfectly, sir; my purpose is known and approved by more than one,”
said I. “And your letter, which I take a pleasure to thank you for, is
all I could have hoped.”

“It was all I could squeeze out,” said he; “and from what I know of the
matter you design to meddle in, I can only pray God that it may prove
sufficient.”




CHAPTER IV.
LORD ADVOCATE PRESTONGRANGE


My kinsman kept me to a meal, “for the honour of the roof,” he said;
and I believe I made the better speed on my return. I had no thought
but to be done with the next stage, and have myself fully committed; to
a person circumstanced as I was, the appearance of closing a door on
hesitation and temptation was itself extremely tempting; and I was the
more disappointed, when I came to Prestongrange’s house, to be informed
he was abroad. I believe it was true at the moment, and for some hours
after; and then I have no doubt the Advocate came home again, and
enjoyed himself in a neighbouring chamber among friends, while perhaps
the very fact of my arrival was forgotten. I would have gone away a
dozen times, only for this strong drawing to have done with my
declaration out of hand and be able to lay me down to sleep with a free
conscience. At first I read, for the little cabinet where I was left
contained a variety of books. But I fear I read with little profit; and
the weather falling cloudy, the dusk coming up earlier than usual, and
my cabinet being lighted with but a loophole of a window, I was at last
obliged to desist from this diversion (such as it was), and pass the
rest of my time of waiting in a very burthensome vacuity. The sound of
people talking in a near chamber, the pleasant note of a harpsichord,
and once the voice of a lady singing, bore me a kind of company.

I do not know the hour, but the darkness was long come, when the door
of the cabinet opened, and I was aware, by the light behind him, of a
tall figure of a man upon the threshold. I rose at once.

“Is anybody there?” he asked. “Who in that?”

“I am bearer of a letter from the laird of Pilrig to the Lord
Advocate,” said I.

“Have you been here long?” he asked.

“I would not like to hazard an estimate of how many hours,” said I.

“It is the first I hear of it,” he replied, with a chuckle. “The lads
must have forgotten you. But you are in the bit at last, for I am
Prestongrange.”

So saying, he passed before me into the next room, whither (upon his
sign) I followed him, and where he lit a candle and took his place
before a business-table. It was a long room, of a good proportion,
wholly lined with books. That small spark of light in a corner struck
out the man’s handsome person and strong face. He was flushed, his eye
watered and sparkled, and before he sat down I observed him to sway
back and forth. No doubt, he had been supping liberally; but his mind
and tongue were under full control.

“Well, sir, sit ye down,” said he, “and let us see Pilrig’s letter.”

He glanced it through in the beginning carelessly, looking up and
bowing when he came to my name; but at the last words I thought I
observed his attention to redouble, and I made sure he read them twice.
All this while you are to suppose my heart was beating, for I had now
crossed my Rubicon and was come fairly on the field of battle.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Balfour,” he said, when he
had done. “Let me offer you a glass of claret.”

“Under your favour, my lord, I think it would scarce be fair on me,”
said I. “I have come here, as the letter will have mentioned, on a
business of some gravity to myself; and, as I am little used with wine,
I might be the sooner affected.”

“You shall be the judge,” said he. “But if you will permit, I believe I
will even have the bottle in myself.”

He touched a bell, and a footman came, as at a signal, bringing wine
and glasses.

“You are sure you will not join me?” asked the Advocate. “Well, here is
to our better acquaintance! In what way can I serve you?”

“I should, perhaps, begin by telling you, my lord, that I am here at
your own pressing invitation,” said I.

“You have the advantage of me somewhere,” said he, “for I profess I
think I never heard of you before this evening.”

“Right, my lord; the name is, indeed, new to you,” said I. “And yet you
have been for some time extremely wishful to make my acquaintance, and
have declared the same in public.”

“I wish you would afford me a clue,” says he. “I am no Daniel.”

“It will perhaps serve for such,” said I, “that if I was in a jesting
humour—which is far from the case—I believe I might lay a claim on your
lordship for two hundred pounds.”

“In what sense?” he inquired.

“In the sense of rewards offered for my person,” said I.

He thrust away his glass once and for all, and sat straight up in the
chair where he had been previously lolling. “What am I to understand?”
said he.

“_A tall strong lad of about eighteen_,” I quoted, “_speaks like a
Lowlander and has no beard_.”

“I recognise those words,” said he, “which, if you have come here with
any ill-judged intention of amusing yourself, are like to prove
extremely prejudicial to your safety.”

“My purpose in this,” I replied, “is just entirely as serious as life
and death, and you have understood me perfectly. I am the boy who was
speaking with Glenure when he was shot.”

“I can only suppose (seeing you here) that you claim to be innocent,”
said he.

“The inference is clear,” I said. “I am a very loyal subject to King
George, but if I had anything to reproach myself with, I would have had
more discretion than to walk into your den.”

“I am glad of that,” said he. “This horrid crime, Mr. Balfour, is of a
dye which cannot permit any clemency. Blood has been barbarously shed.
It has been shed in direct opposition to his Majesty and our whole
frame of laws, by those who are their known and public oppugnants. I
take a very high sense of this. I will not deny that I consider the
crime as directly personal to his Majesty.”

“And unfortunately, my lord,” I added, a little drily, “directly
personal to another great personage who may be nameless.”

“If you mean anything by those words, I must tell you I consider them
unfit for a good subject; and were they spoke publicly I should make it
my business to take note of them,” said he. “You do not appear to me to
recognise the gravity of your situation, or you would be more careful
not to pejorate the same by words which glance upon the purity of
justice. Justice, in this country, and in my poor hands, is no
respecter of persons.”

“You give me too great a share in my own speech, my lord,” said I. “I
did but repeat the common talk of the country, which I have heard
everywhere, and from men of all opinions as I came along.”

“When you are come to more discretion you will understand such talk in
not to be listened to, how much less repeated,” says the Advocate. “But
I acquit you of an ill intention. That nobleman, whom we all honour,
and who has indeed been wounded in a near place by the late barbarity,
sits too high to be reached by these aspersions. The Duke of Argyle—you
see that I deal plainly with you—takes it to heart as I do, and as we
are both bound to do by our judicial functions and the service of his
Majesty; and I could wish that all hands, in this ill age, were equally
clean of family rancour. But from the accident that this is a Campbell
who has fallen martyr to his duty—as who else but the Campbells have
ever put themselves foremost on that path?—I may say it, who am no
Campbell—and that the chief of that great house happens (for all our
advantages) to be the present head of the College of Justice, small
minds and disaffected tongues are set agog in every changehouse in the
country; and I find a young gentleman like Mr. Balfour so ill-advised
as to make himself their echo.” So much he spoke with a very oratorical
delivery, as if in court, and then declined again upon the manner of a
gentleman. “All this apart,” said he. “It now remains that I should
learn what I am to do with you.”

“I had thought it was rather I that should learn the same from your
lordship,” said I.

“Ay, true,” says the Advocate. “But, you see, you come to me well
recommended. There is a good honest Whig name to this letter,” says he,
picking it up a moment from the table. “And—extra-judicially, Mr.
Balfour—there is always the possibility of some arrangement, I tell
you, and I tell you beforehand that you may be the more upon your
guard, your fate lies with me singly. In such a matter (be it said with
reverence) I am more powerful than the King’s Majesty; and should you
please me—and of course satisfy my conscience—in what remains to be
held of our interview, I tell you it may remain between ourselves.”

“Meaning how?” I asked.

“Why, I mean it thus, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “that if you give
satisfaction, no soul need know so much as that you visited my house;
and you may observe that I do not even call my clerk.”

I saw what way he was driving. “I suppose it is needless anyone should
be informed upon my visit,” said I, “though the precise nature of my
gains by that I cannot see. I am not at all ashamed of coming here.”

“And have no cause to be,” says he, encouragingly. “Nor yet (if you are
careful) to fear the consequences.”

“My lord,” said I, “speaking under your correction, I am not very easy
to be frightened.”

“And I am sure I do not seek to frighten you,” says he. “But to the
interrogation; and let me warn you to volunteer nothing beyond the
questions I shall ask you. It may consist very immediately with your
safety. I have a great discretion, it is true, but there are bounds to
it.”

“I shall try to follow your lordship’s advice,” said I.

He spread a sheet of paper on the table and wrote a heading. “It
appears you were present, by the way, in the wood of Lettermore at the
moment of the fatal shot,” he began. “Was this by accident?”

“By accident,” said I.

“How came you in speech with Colin Campbell?” he asked.

“I was inquiring my way of him to Aucharn,” I replied.

I observed he did not write this answer down.

“H’m, true,” said he, “I had forgotten that. And do you know, Mr.
Balfour, I would dwell, if I were you, as little as might be on your
relations with these Stewarts. It might be found to complicate our
business. I am not yet inclined to regard these matters as essential.”

“I had thought, my lord, that all points of fact were equally material
in such a case,” said I.

“You forget we are now trying these Stewarts,” he replied, with great
significance. “If we should ever come to be trying you, it will be very
different; and I shall press these very questions that I am now willing
to glide upon. But to resume: I have it here in Mr. Mungo Campbell’s
precognition that you ran immediately up the brae. How came that?”

“Not immediately, my lord, and the cause was my seeing of the
murderer.”

“You saw him, then?”

“As plain as I see your lordship, though not so near hand.”

“You know him?”

“I should know him again.”

“In your pursuit you were not so fortunate, then, as to overtake him?”

“I was not.”

“Was he alone?”

“He was alone.”

“There was no one else in that neighbourhood?”

“Alan Breck Stewart was not far off, in a piece of a wood.”

The Advocate laid his pen down. “I think we are playing at cross
purposes,” said he, “which you will find to prove a very ill amusement
for yourself.”

“I content myself with following your lordship’s advice, and answering
what I am asked,” said I.

“Be so wise as to bethink yourself in time,” said he, “I use you with
the most anxious tenderness, which you scarce seem to appreciate, and
which (unless you be more careful) may prove to be in vain.”

“I do appreciate your tenderness, but conceive it to be mistaken,” I
replied, with something of a falter, for I saw we were come to grips at
last. “I am here to lay before you certain information, by which I
shall convince you Alan had no hand whatever in the killing of
Glenure.”

The Advocate appeared for a moment at a stick, sitting with pursed
lips, and blinking his eyes upon me like an angry cat. “Mr. Balfour,”
he said at last, “I tell you pointedly you go an ill way for your own
interests.”

“My lord,” I said, “I am as free of the charge of considering my own
interests in this matter as your lordship. As God judges me, I have but
the one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go
clear. If in pursuit of that I come to fall under your lordship’s
displeasure, I must bear it as I may.”

At this he rose from his chair, lit a second candle, and for a while
gazed upon me steadily. I was surprised to see a great change of
gravity fallen upon his face, and I could have almost thought he was a
little pale.

“You are either very simple, or extremely the reverse, and I see that I
must deal with you more confidentially,” says he. “This is a political
case—ah, yes, Mr. Balfour! whether we like it or no, the case is
political—and I tremble when I think what issues may depend from it. To
a political case, I need scarce tell a young man of your education, we
approach with very different thoughts from one which is criminal only.
_Salus populi suprema lex_ is a maxim susceptible of great abuse, but
it has that force which we find elsewhere only in the laws of nature: I
mean it has the force of necessity. I will open this out to you, if you
will allow me, at more length. You would have me believe—”

“Under your pardon, my lord, I would have you to believe nothing but
that which I can prove,” said I.

“Tut! tut; young gentleman,” says he, “be not so pragmatical, and
suffer a man who might be your father (if it was nothing more) to
employ his own imperfect language, and express his own poor thoughts,
even when they have the misfortune not to coincide with Mr. Balfour’s.
You would have me to believe Breck innocent. I would think this of
little account, the more so as we cannot catch our man. But the matter
of Breck’s innocence shoots beyond itself. Once admitted, it would
destroy the whole presumptions of our case against another and a very
different criminal; a man grown old in treason, already twice in arms
against his king and already twice forgiven; a fomentor of discontent,
and (whoever may have fired the shot) the unmistakable original of the
deed in question. I need not tell you that I mean James Stewart.”

“And I can just say plainly that the innocence of Alan and of James is
what I am here to declare in private to your lordship, and what I am
prepared to establish at the trial by my testimony,” said I.

“To which I can only answer by an equal plainness, Mr. Balfour,” said
he, “that (in that case) your testimony will not be called by me, and I
desire you to withhold it altogether.”

“You are at the head of Justice in this country,” I cried, “and you
propose to me a crime!”

“I am a man nursing with both hands the interests of this country,” he
replied, “and I press on you a political necessity. Patriotism is not
always moral in the formal sense. You might be glad of it, I think: it
is your own protection; the facts are heavy against you; and if I am
still trying to except you from a very dangerous place, it is in part
of course because I am not insensible to your honesty in coming here;
in part because of Pilrig’s letter; but in part, and in chief part,
because I regard in this matter my political duty first and my judicial
duty only second. For the same reason—I repeat it to you in the same
frank words—I do not want your testimony.”

“I desire not to be thought to make a repartee, when I express only the
plain sense of our position,” said I. “But if your lordship has no need
of my testimony, I believe the other side would be extremely blythe to
get it.”

Prestongrange arose and began to pace to and fro in the room. “You are
not so young,” he said, “but what you must remember very clearly the
year ’45 and the shock that went about the country. I read in Pilrig’s
letter that you are sound in Kirk and State. Who saved them in that
fatal year? I do not refer to His Royal Highness and his ramrods, which
were extremely useful in their day; but the country had been saved and
the field won before ever Cumberland came upon Drummossie. Who saved
it? I repeat; who saved the Protestant religion and the whole frame of
our civil institutions? The late Lord President Culloden, for one; he
played a man’s part, and small thanks he got for it—even as I, whom you
see before you, straining every nerve in the same service, look for no
reward beyond the conscience of my duties done. After the President,
who else? You know the answer as well as I do; ’tis partly a scandal,
and you glanced at it yourself, and I reproved you for it, when you
first came in. It was the Duke and the great clan of Campbell. Now here
is a Campbell foully murdered, and that in the King’s service. The Duke
and I are Highlanders. But we are Highlanders civilised, and it is not
so with the great mass of our clans and families. They have still
savage virtues and defects. They are still barbarians, like these
Stewarts; only the Campbells were barbarians on the right side, and the
Stewarts were barbarians on the wrong. Now be you the judge. The
Campbells expect vengeance. If they do not get it—if this man James
escape—there will be trouble with the Campbells. That means disturbance
in the Highlands, which are uneasy and very far from being disarmed:
the disarming is a farce. . .”

“I can bear you out in that,” said I.

“Disturbance in the Highlands makes the hour of our old watchful
enemy,” pursued his lordship, holding out a finger as he paced; “and I
give you my word we may have a ’45 again with the Campbells on the
other side. To protect the life of this man Stewart—which is forfeit
already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this—do you propose
to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers,
and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent
persons? . . . These are considerations that weigh with me, and that I
hope will weigh no less with yourself, Mr. Balfour, as a lover of your
country, good government, and religious truth.”

“You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,” said I. “I
will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe your policy to be
sound. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I
believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the
oath of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain
man—or scarce a man yet—the plain duties must suffice. I can think but
of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a
shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still
tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It’s the way that I am
made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if
this be wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late.”

He had heard me motionless, and stood so a while longer.

“This is an unexpected obstacle,” says he, aloud, but to himself.

“And how is your lordship to dispose of me?” I asked.

“If I wished,” said he, “you know that you might sleep in gaol?”

“My lord,” said I, “I have slept in worse places.”

“Well, my boy,” said he, “there is one thing appears very plainly from
our interview, that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your
honour that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed
to-night, but in the matter of the Appin case, and I let you go free.”

“I will give it till to-morrow or any other near day that you may
please to set,” said I. “I would not be thought too wily; but if I gave
the promise without qualification your lordship would have attained his
end.”

“I had no thought to entrap you,” said he.

“I am sure of that,” said I.

“Let me see,” he continued. “To-morrow is the Sabbath. Come to me on
Monday by eight in the morning, and give me your promise until then.”

“Freely given, my lord,” said I. “And with regard to what has fallen
from yourself, I will give it for an long as it shall please God to
spare your days.”

“You will observe,” he said next, “that I have made no employment of
menaces.”

“It was like your lordship’s nobility,” said I. “Yet I am not
altogether so dull but what I can perceive the nature of those you have
not uttered.”

“Well,” said he, “good-night to you. May you sleep well, for I think it
is more than I am like to do.”

With that he sighed, took up a candle, and gave me his conveyance as
far as the street door.




CHAPTER V.
IN THE ADVOCATE’S HOUSE


The next day, Sabbath, August 27th, I had the occasion I had long
looked forward to, to hear some of the famous Edinburgh preachers, all
well known to me already by the report of Mr Campbell. Alas! and I
might just as well have been at Essendean, and sitting under Mr.
Campbell’s worthy self! the turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt
continually on the interview with Prestongrange, inhibiting me from all
attention. I was indeed much less impressed by the reasoning of the
divines than by the spectacle of the thronged congregation in the
churches, like what I imagined of a theatre or (in my then disposition)
of an assize of trial; above all at the West Kirk, with its three tiers
of galleries, where I went in the vain hope that I might see Miss
Drummond.

On the Monday I betook me for the first time to a barber’s, and was
very well pleased with the result. Thence to the Advocate’s, where the
red coats of the soldiers showed again about his door, making a bright
place in the close. I looked about for the young lady and her gillies:
there was never a sign of them. But I was no sooner shown into the
cabinet or antechamber where I had spent so wearyful a time upon the
Saturday, than I was aware of the tall figure of James More in a
corner. He seemed a prey to a painful uneasiness, reaching forth his
feet and hands, and his eyes speeding here and there without rest about
the walls of the small chamber, which recalled to me with a sense of
pity the man’s wretched situation. I suppose it was partly this, and
partly my strong continuing interest in his daughter, that moved me to
accost him.

“Give you a good-morning, sir,” said I.

“And a good-morning to you, sir,” said he.

“You bide tryst with Prestongrange?” I asked.

“I do, sir, and I pray your business with that gentleman be more
agreeable than mine,” was his reply.

“I hope at least that yours will be brief, for I suppose you pass
before me,” said I.

“All pass before me,” he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of the
open hands. “It was not always so, sir, but times change. It was not so
when the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and the virtues of
the soldier might sustain themselves.”

There came a kind of Highland snuffle out of the man that raised my
dander strangely.

“Well, Mr. Macgregor,” said I, “I understand the main thing for a
soldier is to be silent, and the first of his virtues never to
complain.”

“You have my name, I perceive”—he bowed to me with his arms
crossed—“though it’s one I must not use myself. Well, there is a
publicity—I have shown my face and told my name too often in the beards
of my enemies. I must not wonder if both should be known to many that I
know not.”

“That you know not in the least, sir,” said I, “nor yet anybody else;
but the name I am called, if you care to hear it, is Balfour.”

“It is a good name,” he replied, civilly; “there are many decent folk
that use it. And now that I call to mind, there was a young gentleman,
your namesake, that marched surgeon in the year ’45 with my battalion.”

“I believe that would be a brother to Balfour of Baith,” said I, for I
was ready for the surgeon now.

“The same, sir,” said James More. “And since I have been fellow-soldier
with your kinsman, you must suffer me to grasp your hand.”

He shook hands with me long and tenderly, beaming on me the while as
though he had found a brother.

“Ah!” says he, “these are changed days since your cousin and I heard
the balls whistle in our lugs.”

“I think he was a very far-away cousin,” said I, drily, “and I ought to
tell you that I never clapped eyes upon the man.”

“Well, well,” said he, “it makes no change. And you—I do not think you
were out yourself, sir—I have no clear mind of your face, which is one
not probable to be forgotten.”

“In the year you refer to, Mr. Macgregor, I was getting skelped in the
parish school,” said I.

“So young!” cries he. “Ah, then, you will never be able to think what
this meeting is to me. In the hour of my adversity, and here in the
house of my enemy, to meet in with the blood of an old
brother-in-arms—it heartens me, Mr. Balfour, like the skirling of the
highland pipes! Sir, this is a sad look back that many of us have to
make: some with falling tears. I have lived in my own country like a
king; my sword, my mountains, and the faith of my friends and kinsmen
sufficed for me. Now I lie in a stinking dungeon; and do you know, Mr.
Balfour,” he went on, taking my arm and beginning to lead me about, “do
you know, sir, that I lack mere ne_cess_aries? The malice of my foes
has quite sequestered my resources. I lie, as you know, sir, on a
trumped-up charge, of which I am as innocent as yourself. They dare not
bring me to my trial, and in the meanwhile I am held naked in my
prison. I could have wished it was your cousin I had met, or his
brother Baith himself. Either would, I know, have been rejoiced to help
me; while a comparative stranger like yourself—”

I would be ashamed to set down all he poured out to me in this beggarly
vein, or the very short and grudging answers that I made to him. There
were times when I was tempted to stop his mouth with some small change;
but whether it was from shame or pride—whether it was for my own sake
or Catriona’s—whether it was because I thought him no fit father for
his daughter, or because I resented that grossness of immediate falsity
that clung about the man himself—the thing was clean beyond me. And I
was still being wheedled and preached to, and still being marched to
and fro, three steps and a turn, in that small chamber, and had
already, by some very short replies, highly incensed, although not
finally discouraged, my beggar, when Prestongrange appeared in the
doorway and bade me eagerly into his big chamber.

“I have a moment’s engagements,” said he; “and that you may not sit
empty-handed I am going to present you to my three braw daughters, of
whom perhaps you may have heard, for I think they are more famous than
papa. This way.”

He led me into another long room above, where a dry old lady sat at a
frame of embroidery, and the three handsomest young women (I suppose)
in Scotland stood together by a window.

“This is my new friend, Mr Balfour,” said he, presenting me by the arm,
“David, here is my sister, Miss Grant, who is so good as keep my house
for me, and will be very pleased if she can help you. And here,” says
he, turning to the three younger ladies, “here are my _three braw
dauchters_. A fair question to ye, Mr. Davie: which of the three is the
best favoured? And I wager he will never have the impudence to propound
honest Alan Ramsay’s answer!”

Hereupon all three, and the old Miss Grant as well, cried out against
this sally, which (as I was acquainted with the verses he referred to)
brought shame into my own check. It seemed to me a citation
unpardonable in a father, and I was amazed that these ladies could
laugh even while they reproved, or made believe to.

Under cover of this mirth, Prestongrange got forth of the chamber, and
I was left, like a fish upon dry land, in that very unsuitable society.
I could never deny, in looking back upon what followed, that I was
eminently stockish; and I must say the ladies were well drilled to have
so long a patience with me. The aunt indeed sat close at her
embroidery, only looking now and again and smiling; but the misses, and
especially the eldest, who was besides the most handsome, paid me a
score of attentions which I was very ill able to repay. It was all in
vain to tell myself I was a young follow of some worth as well as a
good estate, and had no call to feel abashed before these lasses, the
eldest not so much older than myself, and no one of them by any
probability half as learned. Reasoning would not change the fact; and
there were times when the colour came into my face to think I was
shaved that day for the first time.

The talk going, with all their endeavours, very heavily, the eldest
took pity on my awkwardness, sat down to her instrument, of which she
was a passed mistress, and entertained me for a while with playing and
singing, both in the Scots and in the Italian manners; this put me more
at my ease, and being reminded of Alan’s air that he had taught me in
the hole near Carriden, I made so bold as to whistle a bar or two, and
ask if she knew that.

She shook her head. “I never heard a note of it,” said she. “Whistle it
all through. And now once again,” she added, after I had done so.

Then she picked it out upon the keyboard, and (to my surprise)
instantly enriched the same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she
played, with a very droll expression and broad accent—

“Haenae I got just the lilt of it?
Isnae this the tune that ye whustled?”


“You see,” she says, “I can do the poetry too, only it won’t rhyme. And
then again:

“I am Miss Grant, sib to the Advocate:
You, I believe, are Dauvit Balfour.”


I told her how much astonished I was by her genius.

“And what do you call the name of it?” she asked.

“I do not know the real name,” said I. “I just call it _Alan’s air_.”

She looked at me directly in the face. “I shall call it _David’s air_,”
said she; “though if it’s the least like what your namesake of Israel
played to Saul I would never wonder that the king got little good by
it, for it’s but melancholy music. Your other name I do not like; so if
you was ever wishing to hear your tune again you are to ask for it by
mine.”

This was said with a significance that gave my heart a jog. “Why that,
Miss Grant?” I asked.

“Why,” says she, “if ever you should come to get hanged, I will set
your last dying speech and confession to that tune and sing it.”

This put it beyond a doubt that she was partly informed of my story and
peril. How, or just how much, it was more difficult to guess. It was
plain she knew there was something of danger in the name of Alan, and
thus warned me to leave it out of reference; and plain she knew that I
stood under some criminal suspicion. I judged besides that the
harshness of her last speech (which besides she had followed up
immediately with a very noisy piece of music) was to put an end to the
present conversation. I stood beside her, affecting to listen and
admire, but truly whirled away by my own thoughts. I have always found
this young lady to be a lover of the mysterious; and certainly this
first interview made a mystery that was beyond my plummet. One thing I
learned long after, the hours of the Sunday had been well employed, the
bank porter had been found and examined, my visit to Charles Stewart
was discovered, and the deduction made that I was pretty deep with
James and Alan, and most likely in a continued correspondence with the
last. Hence this broad hint that was given me across the harpsichord.

In the midst of the piece of music, one of the younger misses, who was
at a window over the close, cried on her sisters to come quick, for
there was “_Grey eyes_ again.” The whole family trooped there at once,
and crowded one another for a look. The window whither they ran was in
an odd corner of that room, gave above the entrance door, and flanked
up the close.

“Come, Mr. Balfour,” they cried, “come and see. She is the most
beautiful creature! She hangs round the close-head these last days,
always with some wretched-like gillies, and yet seems quite a lady.”

I had no need to look; neither did I look twice, or long. I was afraid
she might have seen me there, looking down upon her from that chamber
of music, and she without, and her father in the same house, perhaps
begging for his life with tears, and myself come but newly from
rejecting his petitions. But even that glance set me in a better
conceit of myself and much less awe of the young ladies. They were
beautiful, that was beyond question, but Catriona was beautiful too,
and had a kind of brightness in her like a coal of fire. As much as the
others cast me down, she lifted me up. I remembered I had talked easily
with her. If I could make no hand of it with these fine maids, it was
perhaps something their own fault. My embarrassment began to be a
little mingled and lightened with a sense of fun; and when the aunt
smiled at me from her embroidery, and the three daughters unbent to me
like a baby, all with “papa’s orders” written on their faces, there
were times when I could have found it in my heart to smile myself.

Presently papa returned, the same kind, happy-like, pleasant-spoken
man.

“Now, girls,” said he, “I must take Mr. Balfour away again; but I hope
you have been able to persuade him to return where I shall be always
gratified to find him.”

So they each made me a little farthing compliment, and I was led away.

If this visit to the family had been meant to soften my resistance, it
was the worst of failures. I was no such ass but what I understood how
poor a figure I had made, and that the girls would be yawning their
jaws off as soon as my stiff back was turned. I felt I had shown how
little I had in me of what was soft and graceful; and I longed for a
chance to prove that I had something of the other stuff, the stern and
dangerous.

Well, I was to be served to my desire, for the scene to which he was
conducting me was of a different character.




CHAPTER VI.
UMQUILE THE MASTER OF LOVAT


There was a man waiting us in Prestongrange’s study, whom I distasted
at the first look, as we distaste a ferret or an earwig. He was bitter
ugly, but seemed very much of a gentleman; had still manners, but
capable of sudden leaps and violences; and a small voice, which could
ring out shrill and dangerous when he so desired.

The Advocate presented us in a familiar, friendly way.

“Here, Fraser,” said he, “here is Mr. Balfour whom we talked about. Mr.
David, this is Mr. Simon Fraser, whom we used to call by another title,
but that is an old song. Mr. Fraser has an errand to you.”

With that he stepped aside to his book-shelves, and made believe to
consult a quarto volume in the far end.

I was thus left (in a sense) alone with perhaps the last person in the
world I had expected. There was no doubt upon the terms of
introduction; this could be no other than the forfeited Master of Lovat
and chief of the great clan Fraser. I knew he had led his men in the
Rebellion; I knew his father’s head—my old lord’s, that grey fox of the
mountains—to have fallen on the block for that offence, the lands of
the family to have been seized, and their nobility attainted. I could
not conceive what he should be doing in Grant’s house; I could not
conceive that he had been called to the bar, had eaten all his
principles, and was now currying favour with the Government even to the
extent of acting Advocate-Depute in the Appin murder.

“Well, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “what is all this I hear of ye?”

“It would not become me to prejudge,” said I, “but if the Advocate was
your authority he is fully possessed of my opinions.”

“I may tell you I am engaged in the Appin case,” he went on; “I am to
appear under Prestongrange; and from my study of the precognitions I
can assure you your opinions are erroneous. The guilt of Breck is
manifest; and your testimony, in which you admit you saw him on the
hill at the very moment, will certify his hanging.”

“It will be rather ill to hang him till you catch him,” I observed.
“And for other matters I very willingly leave you to your own
impressions.”

“The Duke has been informed,” he went on. “I have just come from his
Grace, and he expressed himself before me with an honest freedom like
the great nobleman he is. He spoke of you by name, Mr. Balfour, and
declared his gratitude beforehand in case you would be led by those who
understand your own interests and those of the country so much better
than yourself. Gratitude is no empty expression in that mouth:
_experto-crede_. I daresay you know something of my name and clan, and
the damnable example and lamented end of my late father, to say nothing
of my own errata. Well, I have made my peace with that good Duke; he
has intervened for me with our friend Prestongrange; and here I am with
my foot in the stirrup again and some of the responsibility shared into
my hand of prosecuting King George’s enemies and avenging the late
daring and barefaced insult to his Majesty.”

“Doubtless a proud position for your father’s son,” says I.

He wagged his bald eyebrows at me. “You are pleased to make experiments
in the ironical, I think,” said he. “But I am here upon duty, I am here
to discharge my errand in good faith, it is in vain you think to divert
me. And let me tell you, for a young fellow of spirit and ambition like
yourself, a good shove in the beginning will do more than ten years’
drudgery. The shove is now at your command; choose what you will to be
advanced in, the Duke will watch upon you with the affectionate
disposition of a father.”

“I am thinking that I lack the docility of the son,” says I.

“And do you really suppose, sir, that the whole policy of this country
is to be suffered to trip up and tumble down for an ill-mannered colt
of a boy?” he cried. “This has been made a test case, all who would
prosper in the future must put a shoulder to the wheel. Look at me! Do
you suppose it is for my pleasure that I put myself in the highly
invidious position of persecuting a man that I have drawn the sword
alongside of? The choice is not left me.”

“But I think, sir, that you forfeited your choice when you mixed in
with that unnatural rebellion,” I remarked. “My case is happily
otherwise; I am a true man, and can look either the Duke or King George
in the face without concern.”

“Is it so the wind sits?” says he. “I protest you are fallen in the
worst sort of error. Prestongrange has been hitherto so civil (he tells
me) as not to combat your allegations; but you must not think they are
not looked upon with strong suspicion. You say you are innocent. My
dear sir, the facts declare you guilty.”

“I was waiting for you there,” said I.

“The evidence of Mungo Campbell; your flight after the completion of
the murder; your long course of secresy—my good young man!” said Mr.
Simon, “here is enough evidence to hang a bullock, let be a David
Balfour! I shall be upon that trial; my voice shall be raised; I shall
then speak much otherwise from what I do to-day, and far less to your
gratification, little as you like it now! Ah, you look white!” cries
he. “I have found the key of your impudent heart. You look pale, your
eyes waver, Mr. David! You see the grave and the gallows nearer by than
you had fancied.”

“I own to a natural weakness,” said I. “I think no shame for that.
Shame. . .” I was going on.

“Shame waits for you on the gibbet,” he broke in.

“Where I shall but be even’d with my lord your father,” said I.

“Aha, but not so!” he cried, “and you do not yet see to the bottom of
this business. My father suffered in a great cause, and for dealing in
the affairs of kings. You are to hang for a dirty murder about
boddle-pieces. Your personal part in it, the treacherous one of holding
the poor wretch in talk, your accomplices a pack of ragged Highland
gillies. And it can be shown, my great Mr. Balfour—it can be shown, and
it _will_ be shown, trust _me_ that has a finger in the pie—it can be
shown, and shall be shown, that you were paid to do it. I think I can
see the looks go round the court when I adduce my evidence, and it
shall appear that you, a young man of education, let yourself be
corrupted to this shocking act for a suit of cast clothes, a bottle of
Highland spirits, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in copper money.”

There was a touch of the truth in these words that knocked me like a
blow: clothes, a bottle of _usquebaugh_, and
three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in change made up, indeed, the most of
what Alan and I had carried from Auchurn; and I saw that some of
James’s people had been blabbing in their dungeons.

“You see I know more than you fancied,” he resumed in triumph. “And as
for giving it this turn, great Mr. David, you must not suppose the
Government of Great Britain and Ireland will ever be stuck for want of
evidence. We have men here in prison who will swear out their lives as
we direct them; as I direct, if you prefer the phrase. So now you are
to guess your part of glory if you choose to die. On the one hand,
life, wine, women, and a duke to be your handgun: on the other, a rope
to your craig, and a gibbet to clatter your bones on, and the lousiest,
lowest story to hand down to your namesakes in the future that was ever
told about a hired assassin. And see here!” he cried, with a formidable
shrill voice, “see this paper that I pull out of my pocket. Look at the
name there: it is the name of the great David, I believe, the ink
scarce dry yet. Can you guess its nature? It is the warrant for your
arrest, which I have but to touch this bell beside me to have executed
on the spot. Once in the Tolbooth upon this paper, may God help you,
for the die is cast!”

I must never deny that I was greatly horrified by so much baseness, and
much unmanned by the immediacy and ugliness of my danger. Mr. Simon had
already gloried in the changes of my hue; I make no doubt I was now no
ruddier than my shirt; my speech besides trembled.

“There is a gentleman in this room,” cried I. “I appeal to him. I put
my life and credit in his hands.”

Prestongrange shut his book with a snap. “I told you so, Simon,” said
he; “you have played your hand for all it was worth, and you have lost.
Mr. David,” he went on, “I wish you to believe it was by no choice of
mine you were subjected to this proof. I wish you could understand how
glad I am you should come forth from it with so much credit. You may
not quite see how, but it is a little of a service to myself. For had
our friend here been more successful than I was last night, it might
have appeared that he was a better judge of men than I; it might have
appeared we were altogether in the wrong situations, Mr. Simon and
myself. And I know our friend Simon to be ambitious,” says he, striking
lightly on Fraser’s shoulder. “As for this stage play, it is over; my
sentiments are very much engaged in your behalf; and whatever issue we
can find to this unfortunate affair, I shall make it my business to see
it is adopted with tenderness to you.”

These were very good words, and I could see besides that there was
little love, and perhaps a spice of genuine ill-will, between these two
who were opposed to me. For all that, it was unmistakable this
interview had been designed, perhaps rehearsed, with the consent of
both; it was plain my adversaries were in earnest to try me by all
methods; and now (persuasion, flattery, and menaces having been tried
in vain) I could not but wonder what would be their next expedient. My
eyes besides were still troubled, and my knees loose under me, with the
distress of the late ordeal; and I could do no more than stammer the
same form of words: “I put my life and credit in your hands.”

“Well, well,” said he, “we must try to save them. And in the meanwhile
let us return to gentler methods. You must not bear any grudge upon my
friend, Mr. Simon, who did but speak by his brief. And even if you did
conceive some malice against myself, who stood by and seemed rather to
hold a candle, I must not let that extend to innocent members of my
family. These are greatly engaged to see more of you, and I cannot
consent to have my young womenfolk disappointed. To-morrow they will be
going to Hope Park, where I think it very proper you should make your
bow. Call for me first, when I may possibly have something for your
private hearing; then you shall be turned abroad again under the
conduct of my misses; and until that time repeat to me your promise of
secrecy.”

I had done better to have instantly refused, but in truth I was beside
the power of reasoning; did as I was bid; took my leave I know not how;
and when I was forth again in the close, and the door had shut behind
me, was glad to lean on a house wall and wipe my face. That horrid
apparition (as I may call it) of Mr. Simon rang in my memory, as a
sudden noise rings after it is over in the ear. Tales of the man’s
father, of his falseness, of his manifold perpetual treacheries, rose
before me from all that I had heard and read, and joined on with what I
had just experienced of himself. Each time it occurred to me, the
ingenious foulness of that calumny he had proposed to nail upon my
character startled me afresh. The case of the man upon the gibbet by
Leith Walk appeared scarce distinguishable from that I was now to
consider as my own. To rob a child of so little more than nothing was
certainly a paltry enterprise for two grown men; but my own tale, as it
was to be represented in a court by Simon Fraser, appeared a fair
second in every possible point of view of sordidness and cowardice.

The voices of two of Prestongrange’s liveried men upon his doorstep
recalled me to myself.

“Ha’e,” said the one, “this billet as fast as ye can link to the
captain.”

“Is that for the cateran back again?” asked the other.

“It would seem sae,” returned the first. “Him and Simon are seeking
him.”

“I think Prestongrange is gane gyte,” says the second. “He’ll have
James More in bed with him next.”

“Weel, it’s neither your affair nor mine’s,” said the first.

And they parted, the one upon his errand, and the other back into the
house.

This looked as ill as possible. I was scarce gone and they were sending
already for James More, to whom I thought Mr. Simon must have pointed
when he spoke of men in prison and ready to redeem their lives by all
extremities. My scalp curdled among my hair, and the next moment the
blood leaped in me to remember Catriona. Poor lass! her father stood to
be hanged for pretty indefensible misconduct. What was yet more
unpalatable, it now seemed he was prepared to save his four quarters by
the worst of shame and the most foul of cowardly murders—murder by the
false oath; and to complete our misfortunes, it seemed myself was
picked out to be the victim.

I began to walk swiftly and at random, conscious only of a desire for
movement, air, and the open country.




CHAPTER VII.
I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOUR


I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the _Lang Dykes_ [12]. This is a
rural road which runs on the north side over against the city. Thence I
could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle
stands upon its crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable
ends, and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my
bosom. My youth, as I have told, was already inured to dangers; but
such danger as I had seen the face of but that morning, in the midst of
what they call the safety of a town, shook me beyond experience. Peril
of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of sword and shot, I had stood
all of these without discredit; but the peril there was in the sharp
voice and the fat face of Simon, properly Lord Lovat, daunted me
wholly.

I sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the
water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples. If I could
have done so with any remains of self-esteem, I would now have fled
from my foolhardy enterprise. But (call it courage or cowardice, and I
believe it was both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out
beyond the possibility of a retreat. I had out-faced these men, I would
continue to out-face them; come what might, I would stand by the word
spoken.

The sense of my own constancy somewhat uplifted my spirits, but not
much. At the best of it there was an icy place about my heart, and life
seemed a black business to be at all engaged in. For two souls in
particular my pity flowed. The one was myself, to be so friendless and
lost among dangers. The other was the girl, the daughter of James More.
I had seen but little of her; yet my view was taken and my judgment
made. I thought her a lass of a clean honour, like a man’s; I thought
her one to die of a disgrace; and now I believed her father to be at
that moment bargaining his vile life for mine. It made a bond in my
thoughts betwixt the girl and me. I had seen her before only as a
wayside appearance, though one that pleased me strangely; I saw her now
in a sudden nearness of relation, as the daughter of my blood foe, and
I might say, my murderer. I reflected it was hard I should be so
plagued and persecuted all my days for other folks’ affairs, and have
no manner of pleasure myself. I got meals and a bed to sleep in when my
concerns would suffer it; beyond that my wealth was of no help to me.
If I was to hang, my days were like to be short; if I was not to hang
but to escape out of this trouble, they might yet seem long to me ere I
was done with them. Of a sudden her face appeared in my memory, the way
I had first seen it, with the parted lips; at that, weakness came in my
bosom and strength into my legs; and I set resolutely forward on the
way to Dean. If I was to hang to-morrow, and it was sure enough I might
very likely sleep that night in a dungeon, I determined I should hear
and speak once more with Catriona.

The exercise of walking and the thought of my destination braced me yet
more, so that I began to pluck up a kind of spirit. In the village of
Dean, where it sits in the bottom of a glen beside the river, I
inquired my way of a miller’s man, who sent me up the hill upon the
farther side by a plain path, and so to a decent-like small house in a
garden of lawns and apple-trees. My heart beat high as I stepped inside
the garden hedge, but it fell low indeed when I came face to face with
a grim and fierce old lady, walking there in a white mutch with a man’s
hat strapped upon the top of it.

“What do ye come seeking here?” she asked.

I told her I was after Miss Drummond.

“And what may be your business with Miss Drummond?” says she.

I told her I had met her on Saturday last, had been so fortunate as to
render her a trifling service, and was come now on the young lady’s
invitation.

“O, so you’re Saxpence!” she cried, with a very sneering manner. “A
braw gift, a bonny gentleman. And hae ye ony ither name and
designation, or were ye bapteesed Saxpence?” she asked.

I told my name.

“Preserve me!” she cried. “Has Ebenezer gotten a son?”

“No, ma’am,” said I. “I am a son of Alexander’s. It’s I that am the
Laird of Shaws.”

“Ye’ll find your work cut out for ye to establish that,” quoth she.

“I perceive you know my uncle,” said I; “and I daresay you may be the
better pleased to hear that business is arranged.”

“And what brings ye here after Miss Drummond?” she pursued.

“I’m come after my saxpence, mem,” said I. “It’s to be thought, being
my uncle’s nephew, I would be found a careful lad.”

“So ye have a spark of sleeness in ye?” observed the old lady, with
some approval. “I thought ye had just been a cuif—you and your
saxpence, and your _lucky day_ and your _sake of Balwhidder_”—from
which I was gratified to learn that Catriona had not forgotten some of
our talk. “But all this is by the purpose,” she resumed. “Am I to
understand that ye come here keeping company?”

“This is surely rather an early question,” said I. “The maid is young,
so am I, worse fortune. I have but seen her the once. I’ll not deny,” I
added, making up my mind to try her with some frankness, “I’ll not deny
but she has run in my head a good deal since I met in with her. That is
one thing; but it would be quite another, and I think I would look very
like a fool, to commit myself.”

“You can speak out of your mouth, I see,” said the old lady. “Praise
God, and so can I! I was fool enough to take charge of this rogue’s
daughter: a fine charge I have gotten; but it’s mine, and I’ll carry it
the way I want to. Do ye mean to tell me, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, that
you would marry James More’s daughter, and him hanged! Well, then,
where there’s no possible marriage there shall be no manner of
carryings on, and take that for said. Lasses are bruckle things,” she
added, with a nod; “and though ye would never think it by my wrunkled
chafts, I was a lassie mysel’, and a bonny one.”

“Lady Allardyce,” said I, “for that I suppose to be your name, you seem
to do the two sides of the talking, which is a very poor manner to come
to an agreement. You give me rather a home thrust when you ask if I
would marry, at the gallow’s foot, a young lady whom I have seen but
once. I have told you already I would never be so untenty as to commit
myself. And yet I’ll go some way with you. If I continue to like the
lass as well as I have reason to expect, it will be something more than
her father, or the gallows either, that keeps the two of us apart. As
for my family, I found it by the wayside like a lost bawbee! I owe less
than nothing to my uncle and if ever I marry, it will be to please one
person: that’s myself.”

“I have heard this kind of talk before ye were born,” said Mrs. Ogilvy,
“which is perhaps the reason that I think of it so little. There’s much
to be considered. This James More is a kinsman of mine, to my shame be
it spoken. But the better the family, the mair men hanged or headed,
that’s always been poor Scotland’s story. And if it was just the
hanging! For my part I think I would be best pleased with James upon
the gallows, which would be at least an end to him. Catrine’s a good
lass enough, and a good-hearted, and lets herself be deaved all day
with a runt of an auld wife like me. But, ye see, there’s the weak bit.
She’s daft about that long, false, fleeching beggar of a father of
hers, and red-mad about the Gregara, and proscribed names, and King
James, and a wheen blethers. And you might think ye could guide her, ye
would find yourself sore mista’en. Ye say ye’ve seen her but the once.
. .”

“Spoke with her but the once, I should have said,” I interrupted. “I
saw her again this morning from a window at Prestongrange’s.”

This I daresay I put in because it sounded well; but I was properly
paid for my ostentation on the return.

“What’s this of it?” cries the old lady, with a sudden pucker of her
face. “I think it was at the Advocate’s door-cheek that ye met her
first.”

I told her that was so.

“H’m,” she said; and then suddenly, upon rather a scolding tone, “I
have your bare word for it,” she cries, “as to who and what you are. By
your way of it, you’re Balfour of the Shaws; but for what I ken you may
be Balfour of the Deevil’s oxter. It’s possible ye may come here for
what ye say, and it’s equally possible ye may come here for deil care
what! I’m good enough Whig to sit quiet, and to have keepit all my
men-folk’s heads upon their shoulders. But I’m not just a good enough
Whig to be made a fool of neither. And I tell you fairly, there’s too
much Advocate’s door and Advocate’s window here for a man that comes
taigling after a Macgregor’s daughter. Ye can tell that to the Advocate
that sent ye, with my fond love. And I kiss my loof to ye, Mr.
Balfour,” says she, suiting the action to the word; “and a braw journey
to ye back to where ye cam frae.”

“If you think me a spy,” I broke out, and speech stuck in my throat. I
stood and looked murder at the old lady for a space, then bowed and
turned away.

“Here! Hoots! The callant’s in a creel!” she cried. “Think ye a spy?
what else would I think ye—me that kens naething by ye? But I see that
I was wrong; and as I cannot fight, I’ll have to apologise. A bonny
figure I would be with a broadsword. Ay! ay!” she went on, “you’re none
such a bad lad in your way; I think ye’ll have some redeeming vices.
But, O! Davit Balfour, ye’re damned countryfeed. Ye’ll have to win over
that, lad; ye’ll have to soople your back-bone, and think a wee pickle
less of your dainty self; and ye’ll have to try to find out that
women-folk are nae grenadiers. But that can never be. To your last day
you’ll ken no more of women-folk than what I do of sow-gelding.”

I had never been used with such expressions from a lady’s tongue, the
only two ladies I had known, Mrs. Campbell and my mother, being most
devout and most particular women; and I suppose my amazement must have
been depicted in my countenance, for Mrs. Ogilvy burst forth suddenly
in a fit of laughter.

“Keep me!” she cried, struggling with her mirth, “you have the finest
timber face—and you to marry the daughter of a Hieland cateran! Davie,
my dear, I think we’ll have to make a match of it—if it was just to see
the weans. And now,” she went on, “there’s no manner of service in your
daidling here, for the young woman is from home, and it’s my fear that
the old woman is no suitable companion for your father’s son. Forbye
that I have nobody but myself to look after my reputation, and have
been long enough alone with a sedooctive youth. And come back another
day for your saxpence!” she cried after me as I left.

My skirmish with this disconcerting lady gave my thoughts a boldness
they had otherwise wanted. For two days the image of Catriona had mixed
in all my meditations; she made their background, so that I scarce
enjoyed my own company without a glint of her in a corner of my mind.
But now she came immediately near; I seemed to touch her, whom I had
never touched but the once; I let myself flow out to her in a happy
weakness, and looking all about, and before and behind, saw the world
like an undesirable desert, where men go as soldiers on a march,
following their duty with what constancy they have, and Catriona alone
there to offer me some pleasure of my days. I wondered at myself that I
could dwell on such considerations in that time of my peril and
disgrace; and when I remembered my youth I was ashamed. I had my
studies to complete: I had to be called into some useful business; I
had yet to take my part of service in a place where all must serve; I
had yet to learn, and know, and prove myself a man; and I had so much
sense as blush that I should be already tempted with these further-on
and holier delights and duties. My education spoke home to me sharply;
I was never brought up on sugar biscuits but on the hard food of the
truth. I knew that he was quite unfit to be a husband who was not
prepared to be a father also; and for a boy like me to play the father
was a mere derision.

When I was in the midst of these thoughts and about half-way back to
town I saw a figure coming to meet me, and the trouble of my heart was
heightened. It seemed I had everything in the world to say to her, but
nothing to say first; and remembering how tongue-tied I had been that
morning at the Advocate’s I made sure that I would find myself struck
dumb. But when she came up my fears fled away; not even the
consciousness of what I had been privately thinking disconcerted me the
least; and I found I could talk with her as easily and rationally as I
might with Alan.

“O!” she cried, “you have been seeking your sixpence; did you get it?”

I told her no; but now I had met with her my walk was not in vain.
“Though I have seen you to-day already,” said I, and told her where and
when.

“I did not see you,” she said. “My eyes are big, but there are better
than mine at seeing far. Only I heard singing in the house.”

“That was Miss Grant,” said I, “the eldest and the bonniest.”

“They say they are all beautiful,” said she.

“They think the same of you, Miss Drummond,” I replied, “and were all
crowding to the window to observe you.”

“It is a pity about my being so blind,” said she, “or I might have seen
them too. And you were in the house? You must have been having the fine
time with the fine music and the pretty ladies.”

“There is just where you are wrong,” said I; “for I was as uncouth as a
sea-fish upon the brae of a mountain. The truth is that I am better
fitted to go about with rudas men than pretty ladies.”

“Well, I would think so too, at all events!” said she, at which we both
of us laughed.

“It is a strange thing, now,” said I. “I am not the least afraid with
you, yet I could have run from the Miss Grants. And I was afraid of
your cousin too.”

“O, I think any man will be afraid of her,” she cried. “My father is
afraid of her himself.”

The name of her father brought me to a stop. I looked at her as she
walked by my side; I recalled the man, and the little I knew and the
much I guessed of him; and comparing the one with the other, felt like
a traitor to be silent.

“Speaking of which,” said I, “I met your father no later than this
morning.”

“Did you?” she cried, with a voice of joy that seemed to mock at me.
“You saw James More? You will have spoken with him then?”

“I did even that,” said I.

Then I think things went the worst way for me that was humanly
possible. She gave me a look of mere gratitude. “Ah, thank you for
that!” says she.

“You thank me for very little,” said I, and then stopped. But it seemed
when I was holding back so much, something at least had to come out. “I
spoke rather ill to him,” said I; “I did no like him very much; I spoke
him rather ill, and he was angry.”

“I think you had little to do then, and less to tell it to his
daughter!” she cried out. “But those that do not love and cherish him I
will not know.”

“I will take the freedom of a word yet,” said I, beginning to tremble.
“Perhaps neither your father nor I are in the best of spirits at
Prestongrange’s. I daresay we both have anxious business there, for
it’s a dangerous house. I was sorry for him too, and spoke to him the
first, if I could but have spoken the wiser. And for one thing, in my
opinion, you will soon find that his affairs are mending.”

“It will not be through your friendship, I am thinking,” said she; “and
he is much made up to you for your sorrow.”

“Miss Drummond,” cried I, “I am alone in this world.”

“And I am not wondering at that,” said she.

“O, let me speak!” said I. “I will speak but the once, and then leave
you, if you will, for ever. I came this day in the hopes of a kind word
that I am sore in want of. I know that what I said must hurt you, and I
knew it then. It would have been easy to have spoken smooth, easy to
lie to you; can you not think how I was tempted to the same? Cannot you
see the truth of my heart shine out?”

“I think here is a great deal of work, Mr. Balfour,” said she. “I think
we will have met but the once, and will can part like gentle folk.”

“O, let me have one to believe in me!” I pleaded, “I cannae bear it
else. The whole world is clanned against me. How am I to go through
with my dreadful fate? If there’s to be none to believe in me I cannot
do it. The man must just die, for I cannot do it.”

She had still looked straight in front of her, head in air; but at my
words or the tone of my voice she came to a stop. “What is this you
say?” she asked. “What are you talking of?”

“It is my testimony which may save an innocent life,” said I, “and they
will not suffer me to bear it. What would you do yourself? You know
what this is, whose father lies in danger. Would you desert the poor
soul? They have tried all ways with me. They have sought to bribe me;
they offered me hills and valleys. And to-day that sleuth-hound told me
how I stood, and to what a length he would go to butcher and disgrace
me. I am to be brought in a party to the murder; I am to have held
Glenure in talk for money and old clothes; I am to be killed and
shamed. If this is the way I am to fall, and me scarce a man—if this is
the story to be told of me in all Scotland—if you are to believe it
too, and my name is to be nothing but a by-word—Catriona, how can I go
through with it? The thing’s not possible; it’s more than a man has in
his heart.”

I poured my words out in a whirl, one upon the other; and when I
stopped I found her gazing on me with a startled face.

“Glenure! It is the Appin murder,” she said softly, but with a very
deep surprise.

I had turned back to bear her company, and we were now come near the
head of the brae above Dean village. At this word I stepped in front of
her like one suddenly distracted.

“For God’s sake!” I cried, “for God’s sake, what is this that I have
done?” and carried my fists to my temples. “What made me do it? Sure, I
am bewitched to say these things!”

“In the name of heaven, what ails you now!” she cried.

“I gave my honour,” I groaned, “I gave my honour and now I have broke
it. O, Catriona!”

“I am asking you what it is,” she said; “was it these things you should
not have spoken? And do you think I have no honour, then? or that I am
one that would betray a friend? I hold up my right hand to you and
swear.”

“O, I knew you would be true!” said I. “It’s me—it’s here. I that stood
but this morning and out-faced them, that risked rather to die
disgraced upon the gallows than do wrong—and a few hours after I throw
my honour away by the roadside in common talk! ‘There is one thing
clear upon our interview,’ says he, ‘that I can rely on your pledged
word.’ Where is my word now? Who could believe me now? You could not
believe me. I am clean fallen down; I had best die!” All this I said
with a weeping voice, but I had no tears in my body.

“My heart is sore for you,” said she, “but be sure you are too nice. I
would not believe you, do you say? I would trust you with anything. And
these men? I would not be thinking of them! Men who go about to entrap
and to destroy you! Fy! this is no time to crouch. Look up! Do you not
think I will be admiring you like a great hero of the good—and you a
boy not much older than myself? And because you said a word too much in
a friend’s ear, that would die ere she betrayed you—to make such a
matter! It is one thing that we must both forget.”

“Catriona,” said I, looking at her, hang-dog, “is this true of it?
Would ye trust me yet?”

“Will you not believe the tears upon my face?” she cried. “It is the
world I am thinking of you, Mr. David Balfour. Let them hang you; I
will never forget, I will grow old and still remember you. I think it
is great to die so: I will envy you that gallows.”

“And maybe all this while I am but a child frighted with bogles,” said
I. “Maybe they but make a mock of me.”

“It is what I must know,” she said. “I must hear the whole. The harm is
done at all events, and I must hear the whole.”

I had sat down on the wayside, where she took a place beside me, and I
told her all that matter much as I have written it, my thoughts about
her father’s dealings being alone omitted.

“Well,” she said, when I had finished, “you are a hero, surely, and I
never would have thought that same! And I think you are in peril, too.
O, Simon Fraser! to think upon that man! For his life and the dirty
money, to be dealing in such traffic!” And just then she called out
aloud with a queer word that was common with her, and belongs, I
believe, to her own language. “My torture!” says she, “look at the
sun!”

Indeed, it was already dipping towards the mountains.

She bid me come again soon, gave me her hand, and left me in a turmoil
of glad spirits. I delayed to go home to my lodging, for I had a terror
of immediate arrest; but got some supper at a change house, and the
better part of that night walked by myself in the barley-fields, and
had such a sense of Catriona’s presence that I seemed to bear her in my
arms.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRAVO


The next day, August 29th, I kept my appointment at the Advocate’s in a
coat that I had made to my own measure, and was but newly ready.

“Aha,” says Prestongrange, “you are very fine to-day; my misses are to
have a fine cavalier. Come, I take that kind of you. I take that kind
of you, Mr. David. O, we shall do very well yet, and I believe your
troubles are nearly at an end.”

“You have news for me?” cried I.

“Beyond anticipation,” he replied. “Your testimony is after all to be
received; and you may go, if you will, in my company to the trial,
which in to be held at Inverary, Thursday, 21st _proximo_.”

I was too much amazed to find words.

“In the meanwhile,” he continued, “though I will not ask you to renew
your pledge, I must caution you strictly to be reticent. To-morrow your
precognition must be taken; and outside of that, do you know, I think
least said will be soonest mended.”

“I shall try to go discreetly,” said I. “I believe it is yourself that
I must thank for this crowning mercy, and I do thank you gratefully.
After yesterday, my lord, this is like the doors of Heaven. I cannot
find it in my heart to get the thing believed.”

“Ah, but you must try and manage, you must try and manage to believe
it,” says he, soothing-like, “and I am very glad to hear your
acknowledgment of obligation, for I think you may be able to repay me
very shortly”—he coughed—“or even now. The matter is much changed. Your
testimony, which I shall not trouble you for to-day, will doubtless
alter the complexion of the case for all concerned, and this makes it
less delicate for me to enter with you on a side issue.”

“My Lord,” I interrupted, “excuse me for interrupting you, but how has
this been brought about? The obstacles you told me of on Saturday
appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how has it been
contrived?”

“My dear Mr. David,” said he, “it would never do for me to divulge
(even to you, as you say) the councils of the Government; and you must
content yourself, if you please, with the gross fact.”

He smiled upon me like a father as he spoke, playing the while with a
new pen; methought it was impossible there could be any shadow of
deception in the man: yet when he drew to him a sheet of paper, dipped
his pen among the ink, and began again to address me, I was somehow not
so certain, and fell instinctively into an attitude of guard.

“There is a point I wish to touch upon,” he began. “I purposely left it
before upon one side, which need be now no longer necessary. This is
not, of course, a part of your examination, which is to follow by
another hand; this is a private interest of my own. You say you
encountered Alan Breck upon the hill?”

“I did, my lord,” said I.

“This was immediately after the murder?”

“It was.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“I did.”

“You had known him before, I think?” says my lord, carelessly.

“I cannot guess your reason for so thinking, my lord,” I replied, “but
such in the fact.”

“And when did you part with him again?” said he.

“I reserve my answer,” said I. “The question will be put to me at the
assize.”

“Mr. Balfour,” said he, “will you not understand that all this is
without prejudice to yourself? I have promised you life and honour;
and, believe me, I can keep my word. You are therefore clear of all
anxiety. Alan, it appears, you suppose you can protect; and you talk to
me of your gratitude, which I think (if you push me) is not
ill-deserved. There are a great many different considerations all
pointing the same way; and I will never be persuaded that you could not
help us (if you chose) to put salt on Alan’s tail.”

“My lord,” said I, “I give you my word I do not so much as guess where
Alan is.”

He paused a breath. “Nor how he might be found?” he asked.

I sat before him like a log of wood.

“And so much for your gratitude, Mr. David!” he observed. Again there
was a piece of silence. “Well,” said he, rising, “I am not fortunate,
and we are a couple at cross purposes. Let us speak of it no more; you
will receive notice when, where, and by whom, we are to take your
precognition. And in the meantime, my misses must be waiting you. They
will never forgive me if I detain their cavalier.”

Into the hands of these Graces I was accordingly offered up, and found
them dressed beyond what I had thought possible, and looking fair as a
posy.

As we went forth from the doors a small circumstance occurred which
came afterwards to look extremely big. I heard a whistle sound loud and
brief like a signal, and looking all about, spied for one moment the
red head of Neil of the Tom, the son of Duncan. The next moment he was
gone again, nor could I see so much as the skirt-tail of Catriona, upon
whom I naturally supposed him to be then attending.

My three keepers led me out by Bristo and the Bruntsfield Links; whence
a path carried us to Hope Park, a beautiful pleasance, laid with
gravel-walks, furnished with seats and summer-sheds, and warded by a
keeper. The way there was a little longsome; the two younger misses
affected an air of genteel weariness that damped me cruelly, the eldest
considered me with something that at times appeared like mirth; and
though I thought I did myself more justice than the day before, it was
not without some effort. Upon our reaching the park I was launched on a
bevy of eight or ten young gentlemen (some of them cockaded officers,
the rest chiefly advocates) who crowded to attend upon these beauties;
and though I was presented to all of them in very good words, it seemed
I was by all immediately forgotten. Young folk in a company are like to
savage animals: they fall upon or scorn a stranger without civility, or
I may say, humanity; and I am sure, if I had been among baboons, they
would have shown me quite as much of both. Some of the advocates set up
to be wits, and some of the soldiers to be rattles; and I could not
tell which of these extremes annoyed me most. All had a manner of
handling their swords and coat-skirts, for the which (in mere black
envy) I could have kicked them from the park. I daresay, upon their
side, they grudged me extremely the fine company in which I had
arrived; and altogether I had soon fallen behind, and stepped stiffly
in the rear of all that merriment with my own thoughts.

From these I was recalled by one of the officers, Lieutenant Hector
Duncansby, a gawky, leering Highland boy, asking if my name was not
“Palfour.”

I told him it was, not very kindly, for his manner was scant civil.

“Ha, Palfour,” says he, and then, repeating it, “Palfour, Palfour!”

“I am afraid you do not like my name, sir,” says I, annoyed with myself
to be annoyed with such a rustical fellow.

“No,” says he, “but I wass thinking.”

“I would not advise you to make a practice of that, sir,” says I. “I
feel sure you would not find it to agree with you.”

“Tit you effer hear where Alan Grigor fand the tangs?” said he.

I asked him what he could possibly mean, and he answered, with a
heckling laugh, that he thought I must have found the poker in the same
place and swallowed it.

There could be no mistake about this, and my cheek burned.

“Before I went about to put affronts on gentlemen,” said I, “I think I
would learn the English language first.”

He took me by the sleeve with a nod and a wink and led me quietly
outside Hope Park. But no sooner were we beyond the view of the
promenaders, than the fashion of his countenance changed. “You tam
lowland scoon’rel!” cries he, and hit me a buffet on the jaw with his
closed fist.

I paid him as good or better on the return; whereupon he stepped a
little back and took off his hat to me decorously.

“Enough plows I think,” says he. “I will be the offended shentleman,
for who effer heard of such suffeeciency as tell a shentlemans that is
the king’s officer he cannae speak Cot’s English? We have swords at our
hurdles, and here is the King’s Park at hand. Will ye walk first, or
let me show ye the way?”

I returned his bow, told him to go first, and followed him. As he went
I heard him grumble to himself about _Cot’s English_ and the _King’s
coat_, so that I might have supposed him to be seriously offended. But
his manner at the beginning of our interview was there to belie him. It
was manifest he had come prepared to fasten a quarrel on me, right or
wrong; manifest that I was taken in a fresh contrivance of my enemies;
and to me (conscious as I was of my deficiencies) manifest enough that
I should be the one to fall in our encounter.

As we came into that rough rocky desert of the King’s Park I was
tempted half-a-dozen times to take to my heels and run for it, so loath
was I to show my ignorance in fencing, and so much averse to die or
even to be wounded. But I considered if their malice went as far as
this, it would likely stick at nothing; and that to fall by the sword,
however ungracefully, was still an improvement on the gallows. I
considered besides that by the unguarded pertness of my words and the
quickness of my blow I had put myself quite out of court; and that even
if I ran, my adversary would probably pursue and catch me, which would
add disgrace to my misfortune. So that, taking all in all, I continued
marching behind him, much as a man follows the hangman, and certainly
with no more hope.

We went about the end of the long craigs, and came into the Hunter’s
Bog. Here, on a piece of fair turf, my adversary drew. There was nobody
there to see us but some birds; and no resource for me but to follow
his example, and stand on guard with the best face I could display. It
seems it was not good enough for Mr. Dancansby, who spied some flaw in
my manœuvres, paused, looked upon me sharply, and came off and on, and
menaced me with his blade in the air. As I had seen no such proceedings
from Alan, and was besides a good deal affected with the proximity of
death, I grew quite bewildered, stood helpless, and could have longed
to run away.

“Fat deil ails her?” cries the lieutenant.

And suddenly engaging, he twitched the sword out of my grasp and sent
it flying far among the rushes.

Twice was this manœuvre repeated; and the third time when I brought
back my humiliated weapon, I found he had returned his own to the
scabbard, and stood awaiting me with a face of some anger, and his
hands clasped under his skirt.

“Pe tamned if I touch you!” he cried, and asked me bitterly what right
I had to stand up before “shentlemans” when I did not know the back of
a sword from the front of it.

I answered that was the fault of my upbringing; and would he do me the
justice to say I had given him all the satisfaction it was
unfortunately in my power to offer, and had stood up like a man?

“And that is the truth,” said he. “I am fery prave myself, and pold as
a lions. But to stand up there—and you ken naething of fence!—the way
that you did, I declare it was peyond me. And I am sorry for the plow;
though I declare I pelief your own was the elder brother, and my heid
still sings with it. And I declare if I had kent what way it wass, I
would not put a hand to such a piece of pusiness.”

“That is handsomely said,” I replied, “and I am sure you will not stand
up a second time to be the actor for my private enemies.”

“Indeed, no, Palfour,” said he; “and I think I was used extremely
suffeeciently myself to be set up to fecht with an auld wife, or all
the same as a bairn whateffer! And I will tell the Master so, and fecht
him, by Cot, himself!”

“And if you knew the nature of Mr. Simon’s quarrel with me,” said I,
“you would be yet the more affronted to be mingled up with such
affairs.”

He swore he could well believe it; that all the Lovats were made of the
same meal and the devil was the miller that ground that; then suddenly
shaking me by the hand, he vowed I was a pretty enough fellow after
all, that it was a thousand pities I had been neglected, and that if he
could find the time, he would give an eye himself to have me educated.

“You can do me a better service than even what you propose,” said I;
and when he had asked its nature—“Come with me to the house of one of
my enemies, and testify how I have carried myself this day,” I told
him. “That will be the true service. For though he has sent me a
gallant adversary for the first, the thought in Mr. Simon’s mind is
merely murder. There will be a second and then a third; and by what you
have seen of my cleverness with the cold steel, you can judge for
yourself what is like to be the upshot.”

“And I would not like it myself, if I was no more of a man than what
you wass!” he cried. “But I will do you right, Palfour. Lead on!”

If I had walked slowly on the way into that accursed park my heels were
light enough on the way out. They kept time to a very good old air,
that is as ancient as the Bible, and the words of it are: “_Surely the
bitterness of death is passed_.” I mind that I was extremely thirsty,
and had a drink at Saint Margaret’s well on the road down, and the
sweetness of that water passed belief. We went through the sanctuary,
up the Canongate, in by the Netherbow, and straight to Prestongrange’s
door, talking as we came and arranging the details of our affair. The
footman owned his master was at home, but declared him engaged with
other gentlemen on very private business, and his door forbidden.

“My business is but for three minutes, and it cannot wait,” said I.
“You may say it is by no means private, and I shall be even glad to
have some witnesses.”

As the man departed unwillingly enough upon this errand, we made so
bold as to follow him to the ante-chamber, whence I could hear for a
while the murmuring of several voices in the room within. The truth is,
they were three at the one table—Prestongrange, Simon Fraser, and Mr.
Erskine, Sheriff of Perth; and as they were met in consultation on the
very business of the Appin murder, they were a little disturbed at my
appearance, but decided to receive me.

“Well, well, Mr. Balfour, and what brings you here again? and who is
this you bring with you?” says Prestongrange.

As for Fraser, he looked before him on the table.

“He is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which I
think it very needful you should hear,” said I, and turned to
Duncansby.

“I have only to say this,” said the lieutenant, “that I stood up this
day with Palfour in the Hunter’s Pog, which I am now fery sorry for,
and he behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it. And I
have creat respects for Palfour,” he added.

“I thank you for your honest expressions,” said I.

Whereupon Duncansby made his bow to the company, and left the chamber,
as we had agreed upon before.

“What have I to do with this?” says Prestongrange.

“I will tell your lordship in two words,” said I. “I have brought this
gentleman, a King’s officer, to do me so much justice. Now I think my
character is covered, and until a certain date, which your lordship can
very well supply, it will be quite in vain to despatch against me any
more officers. I will not consent to fight my way through the garrison
of the castle.”

The veins swelled on Prestongrange’s brow, and he regarded me with
fury.

“I think the devil uncoupled this dog of a lad between my legs!” he
cried; and then, turning fiercely on his neighbour, “This is some of
your work, Simon,” he said. “I spy your hand in the business, and, let
me tell you, I resent it. It is disloyal, when we are agreed upon one
expedient, to follow another in the dark. You are disloyal to me. What!
you let me send this lad to the place with my very daughters! And
because I let drop a word to you..... Fy, sir, keep your dishonours to
yourself!”

Simon was deadly pale. “I will be a kick-ball between you and the Duke
no longer,” he exclaimed. “Either come to an agreement, or come to a
differ, and have it out among yourselves. But I will no longer fetch
and carry, and get your contrary instructions, and be blamed by both.
For if I were to tell you what I think of all your Hanover business it
would make your head sing.”

But Sheriff Erskine had preserved his temper, and now intervened
smoothly. “And in the meantime,” says he, “I think we should tell Mr.
Balfour that his character for valour is quite established. He may
sleep in peace. Until the date he was so good as to refer to it shall
be put to the proof no more.”

His coolness brought the others to their prudence; and they made haste,
with a somewhat distracted civility, to pack me from the house.




CHAPTER IX.
THE HEATHER ON FIRE


When I left Prestongrange that afternoon I was for the first time
angry. The Advocate had made a mock of me. He had pretended my
testimony was to be received and myself respected; and in that very
hour, not only was Simon practising against my life by the hands of the
Highland soldier, but (as appeared from his own language) Prestongrange
himself had some design in operation. I counted my enemies;
Prestongrange with all the King’s authority behind him; and the Duke
with the power of the West Highlands; and the Lovat interest by their
side to help them with so great a force in the north, and the whole
clan of old Jacobite spies and traffickers. And when I remembered James
More, and the red head of Neil the son of Duncan, I thought there was
perhaps a fourth in the confederacy, and what remained of Rob Roy’s old
desperate sept of caterans would be banded against me with the others.
One thing was requisite—some strong friend or wise adviser. The country
must be full of such, both able and eager to support me, or Lovat and
the Duke and Prestongrange had not been nosing for expedients; and it
made me rage to think that I might brush against my champions in the
street and be no wiser.

And just then (like an answer) a gentleman brushed against me going by,
gave me a meaning look, and turned into a close. I knew him with the
tail of my eye—it was Stewart the Writer; and, blessing my good
fortune, turned in to follow him. As soon as I had entered the close I
saw him standing in the mouth of a stair, where he made me a signal and
immediately vanished. Seven storeys up, there he was again in a house
door, the which he looked behind us after we had entered. The house was
quite dismantled, with not a stick of furniture; indeed, it was one of
which Stewart had the letting in his hands.

“We’ll have to sit upon the floor,” said he; “but we’re safe here for
the time being, and I’ve been wearying to see ye, Mr. Balfour.”

“How’s it with Alan?” I asked.

“Brawly,” said he. “Andie picks him up at Gillane sands to-morrow,
Wednesday. He was keen to say good-bye to ye, but the way that things
were going, I was feared the pair of ye was maybe best apart. And that
brings me to the essential: how does your business speed?”

“Why,” said I, “I was told only this morning that my testimony was
accepted, and I was to travel to Inverary with the Advocate, no less.”

“Hout awa!” cried Stewart. “I’ll never believe that.”

“I have maybe a suspicion of my own,” says I, “but I would like fine to
hear your reasons.”

“Well, I tell ye fairly, I’m horn-mad,” cries Stewart. “If my one hand
could pull their Government down I would pluck it like a rotten apple.
I’m doer for Appin and for James of the Glens; and, of course, it’s my
duty to defend my kinsman for his life. Hear how it goes with me, and
I’ll leave the judgment of it to yourself. The first thing they have to
do is to get rid of Alan. They cannae bring in James as art and part
until they’ve brought in Alan first as principal; that’s sound law:
they could never put the cart before the horse.”

“And how are they to bring in Alan till they can catch him?” says I.

“Ah, but there is a way to evite that arrestment,” said he. “Sound law,
too. It would be a bonny thing if, by the escape of one ill-doer
another was to go scatheless, and the remeid is to summon the principal
and put him to outlawry for the non-compearance. Now there’s four
places where a person can be summoned: at his dwelling-house; at a
place where he has resided forty days; at the head burgh of the shire
where he ordinarily resorts; or lastly (if there be ground to think him
forth of Scotland) _at the cross of Edinburgh_, _and the pier and shore
of Leith_, _for sixty days_. The purpose of which last provision is
evident upon its face: being that outgoing ships may have time to carry
news of the transaction, and the summonsing be something other than a
form. Now take the case of Alan. He has no dwelling-house that ever I
could hear of; I would be obliged if anyone would show me where he has
lived forty days together since the ’45; there is no shire where he
resorts whether ordinarily or extraordinarily; if he has a domicile at
all, which I misdoubt, it must be with his regiment in France; and if
he is not yet forth of Scotland (as we happen to know and they happen
to guess) it must be evident to the most dull it’s what he’s aiming
for. Where, then, and what way should he be summoned? I ask it at
yourself, a layman.”

“You have given the very words,” said I. “Here at the cross, and at the
pier and shore of Leith, for sixty days.”

“Ye’re a sounder Scots lawyer than Prestongrange, then!” cries the
Writer. “He has had Alan summoned once; that was on the twenty-fifth,
the day that we first met. Once, and done with it. And where? Where,
but at the cross of Inverary, the head burgh of the Campbells? A word
in your ear, Mr. Balfour—they’re not seeking Alan.”

“What do you mean?” I cried. “Not seeking him?”

“By the best that I can make of it,” said he. “Not wanting to find him,
in my poor thought. They think perhaps he might set up a fair defence,
upon the back of which James, the man they’re really after, might climb
out. This is not a case, ye see, it’s a conspiracy.”

“Yet I can tell you Prestongrange asked after Alan keenly,” said I;
“though, when I come to think of it, he was something of the easiest
put by.”

“See that!” says he. “But there! I may be right or wrong, that’s
guesswork at the best, and let me get to my facts again. It comes to my
ears that James and the witnesses—the witnesses, Mr. Balfour!—lay in
close dungeons, and shackled forbye, in the military prison at Fort
William; none allowed in to them, nor they to write. The witnesses, Mr.
Balfour; heard ye ever the match of that? I assure ye, no old, crooked
Stewart of the gang ever out-faced the law more impudently. It’s clean
in the two eyes of the Act of Parliament of 1700, anent wrongous
imprisonment. No sooner did I get the news than I petitioned the Lord
Justice Clerk. I have his word to-day. There’s law for ye! here’s
justice!”

He put a paper in my hand, that same mealy-mouthed, false-faced paper
that was printed since in the pamphlet “by a bystander,” for behoof (as
the title says) of James’s “poor widow and five children.”

“See,” said Stewart, “he couldn’t dare to refuse me access to my
client, so he _recommends the commanding officer to let me in_.
Recommends!—the Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland recommends. Is not the
purpose of such language plain? They hope the officer may be so dull,
or so very much the reverse, as to refuse the recommendation. I would
have to make the journey back again betwixt here and Fort William. Then
would follow a fresh delay till I got fresh authority, and they had
disavowed the officer—military man, notoriously ignorant of the law,
and that—I ken the cant of it. Then the journey a third time; and there
we should be on the immediate heels of the trial before I had received
my first instruction. Am I not right to call this a conspiracy?”

“It will bear that colour,” said I.

“And I’ll go on to prove it you outright,” said he. “They have the
right to hold James in prison, yet they cannot deny me to visit him.
They have no right to hold the witnesses; but am I to get a sight of
them, that should be as free as the Lord Justice Clerk himself!
See—read: _For the rest_, _refuses to give any orders to keepers of
prisons who are not accused as having done anything contrary to the
duties of their office_. Anything contrary! Sirs! And the Act of
seventeen hunner? Mr. Balfour, this makes my heart to burst; the
heather is on fire inside my wame.”

“And the plain English of that phrase,” said I, “is that the witnesses
are still to lie in prison and you are not to see them?”

“And I am not to see them until Inverary, when the court is set!” cries
he, “and then to hear Prestongrange upon _the anxious responsibilities
of his office and the great facilities afforded the defence_! But I’ll
begowk them there, Mr. David. I have a plan to waylay the witnesses
upon the road, and see if I cannae get I a little harle of justice out
of the _military man notoriously ignorant of the law_ that shall
command the party.”

It was actually so—it was actually on the wayside near Tynedrum, and by
the connivance of a soldier officer, that Mr. Stewart first saw the
witnesses upon the case.

“There is nothing that would surprise me in this business,” I remarked.

“I’ll surprise you ere I’m done!” cries he. “Do ye see this?”—producing
a print still wet from the press. “This is the libel: see, there’s
Prestongrange’s name to the list of witnesses, and I find no word of
any Balfour. But here is not the question. Who do ye think paid for the
printing of this paper?”

“I suppose it would likely be King George,” said I.

“But it happens it was me!” he cried. “Not but it was printed by and
for themselves, for the Grants and the Erskines, and yon thief of the
black midnight, Simon Fraser. But could _I_ win to get a copy! No! I
was to go blindfold to my defence; I was to hear the charges for the
first time in court alongst the jury.”

“Is not this against the law?” I asked.

“I cannot say so much,” he replied. “It was a favour so natural and so
constantly rendered (till this nonesuch business) that the law has
never looked to it. And now admire the hand of Providence! A stranger
is in Fleming’s printing house, spies a proof on the floor, picks it
up, and carries it to me. Of all things, it was just this libel.
Whereupon I had it set again—printed at the expense of the defence:
_sumptibus moesti rei_; heard ever man the like of it?—and here it is
for anybody, the muckle secret out—all may see it now. But how do you
think I would enjoy this, that has the life of my kinsman on my
conscience?”

“Troth, I think you would enjoy it ill,” said I.

“And now you see how it is,” he concluded, “and why, when you tell me
your evidence is to be let in, I laugh aloud in your face.”

It was now my turn. I laid before him in brief Mr. Simon’s threats and
offers, and the whole incident of the bravo, with the subsequent scene
at Prestongrange’s. Of my first talk, according to promise, I said
nothing, nor indeed was it necessary. All the time I was talking
Stewart nodded his head like a mechanical figure; and no sooner had my
voice ceased, than he opened his mouth and gave me his opinion in two
words, dwelling strong on both of them.

“Disappear yourself,” said he.

“I do not take you,” said I.

“Then I’ll carry you there,” said he. “By my view of it you’re to
disappear whatever. O, that’s outside debate. The Advocate, who is not
without some spunks of a remainder decency, has wrung your life-safe
out of Simon and the Duke. He has refused to put you on your trial, and
refused to have you killed; and there is the clue to their ill words
together, for Simon and the Duke can keep faith with neither friend nor
enemy. Ye’re not to be tried then, and ye’re not to be murdered; but
I’m in bitter error if ye’re not to be kidnapped and carried away like
the Lady Grange. Bet me what ye please—there was their _expedient_!”

“You make me think,” said I, and told him of the whistle and the
red-headed retainer, Neil.

“Wherever James More is there’s one big rogue, never be deceived on
that,” said he. “His father was none so ill a man, though a kenning on
the wrong side of the law, and no friend to my family, that I should
waste my breath to be defending him! But as for James he’s a brock and
a blagyard. I like the appearance of this red-headed Neil as little as
yourself. It looks uncanny: fiegh! it smells bad. It was old Lovat that
managed the Lady Grange affair; if young Lovat is to handle yours,
it’ll be all in the family. What’s James More in prison for? The same
offence: abduction. His men have had practice in the business. He’ll be
to lend them to be Simon’s instruments; and the next thing we’ll be
hearing, James will have made his peace, or else he’ll have escaped;
and you’ll be in Benbecula or Applecross.”

“Ye make a strong case,” I admitted.

“And what I want,” he resumed, “is that you should disappear yourself
ere they can get their hands upon ye. Lie quiet until just before the
trial, and spring upon them at the last of it when they’ll be looking
for you least. This is always supposing Mr. Balfour, that your evidence
is worth so very great a measure of both risk and fash.”

“I will tell you one thing,” said I. “I saw the murderer and it was not
Alan.”

“Then, by God, my cousin’s saved!” cried Stewart. “You have his life
upon your tongue; and there’s neither time, risk, nor money to be
spared to bring you to the trial.” He emptied his pockets on the floor.
“Here is all that I have by me,” he went on, “Take it, ye’ll want it
ere ye’re through. Go straight down this close, there’s a way out by
there to the Lang Dykes, and by my will of it! see no more of Edinburgh
till the clash is over.”

“Where am I to go, then?” I inquired.

“And I wish that I could tell ye!” says he, “but all the places that I
could send ye to, would be just the places they would seek. No, ye must
fend for yourself, and God be your guiding! Five days before the trial,
September the sixteen, get word to me at the _King’s Arms_ in Stirling;
and if ye’ve managed for yourself as long as that, I’ll see that ye
reach Inverary.”

“One thing more,” said I. “Can I no see Alan?”

He seemed boggled. “Hech, I would rather you wouldnae,” said he. “But I
can never deny that Alan is extremely keen of it, and is to lie this
night by Silvermills on purpose. If you’re sure that you’re not
followed, Mr. Balfour—but make sure of that—lie in a good place and
watch your road for a clear hour before ye risk it. It would be a
dreadful business if both you and him was to miscarry!”




CHAPTER X.
THE RED-HEADED MAN


It was about half-past three when I came forth on the Lang Dykes. Dean
was where I wanted to go. Since Catriona dwelled there, and her
kinsfolk the Glengyle Macgregors appeared almost certainly to be
employed against me, it was just one of the few places I should have
kept away from; and being a very young man, and beginning to be very
much in love, I turned my face in that direction without pause. As a
slave to my conscience and common sense, however, I took a measure of
precaution. Coming over the crown of a bit of a rise in the road, I
clapped down suddenly among the barley and lay waiting. After a while,
a man went by that looked to be a Highlandman, but I had never seen him
till that hour. Presently after came Neil of the red head. The next to
go past was a miller’s cart, and after that nothing but manifest
country people. Here was enough to have turned the most foolhardy from
his purpose, but my inclination ran too strong the other way. I argued
it out that if Neil was on that road, it was the right road to find him
in, leading direct to his chief’s daughter; as for the other
Highlandman, if I was to be startled off by every Highlandman I saw, I
would scarce reach anywhere. And having quite satisfied myself with
this disingenuous debate, I made the better speed of it, and came a
little after four to Mrs. Drumond-Ogilvy’s.

Both ladies were within the house; and upon my perceiving them together
by the open door, I plucked off my hat and said, “Here was a lad come
seeking saxpence,” which I thought might please the dowager.

Catriona ran out to greet me heartily, and, to my surprise, the old
lady seemed scarce less forward than herself. I learned long afterwards
that she had despatched a horseman by daylight to Rankeillor at the
Queensferry, whom she knew to be the doer for Shaws, and had then in
her pocket a letter from that good friend of mine, presenting, in the
most favourable view, my character and prospects. But had I read it I
could scarce have seen more clear in her designs. Maybe I was
_countryfeed_; at least, I was not so much so as she thought; and it
was even to my homespun wits, that she was bent to hammer up a match
between her cousin and a beardless boy that was something of a laird in
Lothian.

“Saxpence had better take his broth with us, Catrine,” says she. “Run
and tell the lasses.”

And for the little while we were alone was at a good deal of pains to
flatter me; always cleverly, always with the appearance of a banter,
still calling me Saxpence, but with such a turn that should rather
uplift me in my own opinion. When Catriona returned, the design became
if possible more obvious; and she showed off the girl’s advantages like
a horse-couper with a horse. My face flamed that she should think me so
obtuse. Now I would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of,
and then I could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and
now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me,
and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of
ill-will. At last the matchmaker had a better device, which was to
leave the pair of us alone. When my suspicions are anyway roused it is
sometimes a little the wrong side of easy to allay them. But though I
knew what breed she was of, and that was a breed of thieves, I could
never look in Catriona’s face and disbelieve her.

“I must not ask?” says she, eagerly, the same moment we were left
alone.

“Ah, but to-day I can talk with a free conscience,” I replied. “I am
lightened of my pledge, and indeed (after what has come and gone since
morning) I would not have renewed it were it asked.”

“Tell me,” she said. “My cousin will not be so long.”

So I told her the tale of the lieutenant from the first step to the
last of it, making it as mirthful as I could, and, indeed, there was
matter of mirth in that absurdity.

“And I think you will be as little fitted for the rudas men as for the
pretty ladies, after all!” says she, when I had done. “But what was
your father that he could not learn you to draw the sword! It is most
ungentle; I have not heard the match of that in anyone.”

“It is most misconvenient at least,” said I; “and I think my father
(honest man!) must have been wool-gathering to learn me Latin in the
place of it. But you see I do the best I can, and just stand up like
Lot’s wife and let them hammer at me.”

“Do you know what makes me smile?” said she. “Well, it is this. I am
made this way, that I should have been a man child. In my own thoughts
it is so I am always; and I go on telling myself about this thing that
is to befall and that. Then it comes to the place of the fighting, and
it comes over me that I am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a
sword or give one good blow; and then I have to twist my story round
about, so that the fighting is to stop, and yet me have the best of it,
just like you and the lieutenant; and I am the boy that makes the fine
speeches all through, like Mr. David Balfour.”

“You are a bloodthirsty maid,” said I.

“Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers,” she
said, “but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think
you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I
want to kill, I think. Did ever you kill anyone?”

“That I have, as it chances. Two, no less, and me still a lad that
should be at the college,” said I. “But yet, in the look-back, I take
no shame for it.”

“But how did you feel, then—after it?” she asked.

‘”Deed, I sat down and grat like a bairn,” said I.

“I know that, too,” she cried. “I feel where these tears should come
from. And at any rate, I would not wish to kill, only to be Catherine
Douglas that put her arm through the staples of the bolt, where it was
broken. That is my chief hero. Would you not love to die so—for your
king?” she asked.

“Troth,” said I, “my affection for my king, God bless the puggy face of
him, is under more control; and I thought I saw death so near to me
this day already, that I am rather taken up with the notion of living.”

“Right,” she said, “the right mind of a man! Only you must learn arms;
I would not like to have a friend that cannot strike. But it will not
have been with the sword that you killed these two?”

“Indeed, no,” said I, “but with a pair of pistols. And a fortunate
thing it was the men were so near-hand to me, for I am about as clever
with the pistols as I am with the sword.”

So then she drew from me the story of our battle in the brig, which I
had omitted in my first account of my affairs.

“Yes,” said she, “you are brave. And your friend, I admire and love
him.”

“Well, and I think anyone would!” said I. “He has his faults like other
folk; but he is brave and staunch and kind, God bless him! That will be
a strange day when I forget Alan.” And the thought of him, and that it
was within my choice to speak with him that night, had almost overcome
me.

“And where will my head be gone that I have not told my news!” she
cried, and spoke of a letter from her father, bearing that she might
visit him to-morrow in the castle whither he was now transferred, and
that his affairs were mending. “You do not like to hear it,” said she.
“Will you judge my father and not know him?”

“I am a thousand miles from judging,” I replied. “And I give you my
word I do rejoice to know your heart is lightened. If my face fell at
all, as I suppose it must, you will allow this is rather an ill day for
compositions, and the people in power extremely ill persons to be
compounding with. I have Simon Fraser extremely heavy on my stomach
still.”

“Ah!” she cried, “you will not be evening these two; and you should
bear in mind that Prestongrange and James More, my father, are of the
one blood.”

“I never heard tell of that,” said I.

“It is rather singular how little you are acquainted with,” said she.
“One part may call themselves Grant, and one Macgregor, but they are
still of the same clan. They are all the sons of Alpin, from whom, I
think, our country has its name.”

“What country is that?” I asked.

“My country and yours,” said she.

“This is my day for discovering I think,” said I, “for I always thought
the name of it was Scotland.”

“Scotland is the name of what you call Ireland,” she replied. “But the
old ancient true name of this place that we have our foot-soles on, and
that our bones are made of, will be Alban. It was Alban they called it
when our forefathers will be fighting for it against Rome and
Alexander; and it is called so still in your own tongue that you
forget.”

“Troth,” said I, “and that I never learned!” For I lacked heart to take
her up about the Macedonian.

“But your fathers and mothers talked it, one generation with another,”
said she. “And it was sung about the cradles before you or me were ever
dreamed of; and your name remembers it still. Ah, if you could talk
that language you would find me another girl. The heart speaks in that
tongue.”

I had a meal with the two ladies, all very good, served in fine old
plate, and the wine excellent, for it seems that Mrs. Ogilvy was rich.
Our talk, too, was pleasant enough; but as soon as I saw the sun
decline sharply and the shadows to run out long, I rose to take my
leave. For my mind was now made up to say farewell to Alan; and it was
needful I should see the trysting wood, and reconnoitre it, by
daylight. Catriona came with me as far as to the garden gate.

“It is long till I see you now?” she asked.

“It is beyond my judging,” I replied. “It will be long, it may be
never.”

“It may be so,” said she. “And you are sorry?”

I bowed my head, looking upon her.

“So am I, at all events,” said she. “I have seen you but a small time,
but I put you very high. You are true, you are brave; in time I think
you will be more of a man yet. I will be proud to hear of that. If you
should speed worse, if it will come to fall as we are afraid—O well!
think you have the one friend. Long after you are dead and me an old
wife, I will be telling the bairns about David Balfour, and my tears
running. I will be telling how we parted, and what I said to you, and
did to you. _God go with you and guide you_, _prays your little
friend_: so I said—I will be telling them—and here is what I did.”

She took up my hand and kissed it. This so surprised my spirits that I
cried out like one hurt. The colour came strong in her face, and she
looked at me and nodded.

“O yes, Mr. David,” said she, “that is what I think of you. The head
goes with the lips.”

I could read in her face high spirit, and a chivalry like a brave
child’s; not anything besides. She kissed my hand, as she had kissed
Prince Charlie’s, with a higher passion than the common kind of clay
has any sense of. Nothing before had taught me how deep I was her
lover, nor how far I had yet to climb to make her think of me in such a
character. Yet I could tell myself I had advanced some way, and that
her heart had beat and her blood flowed at thoughts of me.

After that honour she had done me I could offer no more trivial
civility. It was even hard for me to speak; a certain lifting in her
voice had knocked directly at the door of my own tears.

“I praise God for your kindness, dear,” said I. “Farewell, my little
friend!” giving her that name which she had given to herself; with
which I bowed and left her.

My way was down the glen of the Leith River, towards Stockbridge and
Silvermills. A path led in the foot of it, the water bickered and sang
in the midst; the sunbeams overhead struck out of the west among long
shadows and (as the valley turned) made like a new scene and a new
world of it at every corner. With Catriona behind and Alan before me, I
was like one lifted up. The place besides, and the hour, and the
talking of the water, infinitely pleased me; and I lingered in my steps
and looked before and behind me as I went. This was the cause, under
Providence, that I spied a little in my rear a red head among some
bushes.

Anger sprang in my heart, and I turned straight about and walked at a
stiff pace to where I came from. The path lay close by the bushes where
I had remarked the head. The cover came to the wayside, and as I passed
I was all strung up to meet and to resist an onfall. No such thing
befell, I went by unmeddled with; and at that fear increased upon me.
It was still day indeed, but the place exceeding solitary. If my
haunters had let slip that fair occasion I could but judge they aimed
at something more than David Balfour. The lives of Alan and James
weighed upon my spirit with the weight of two grown bullocks.

Catriona was yet in the garden walking by herself.

“Catriona,” said I, “you see me back again.”

“With a changed face,” said she.

“I carry two men’s lives besides my own,” said I. “It would be a sin
and shame not to walk carefully. I was doubtful whether I did right to
come here. I would like it ill, if it was by that means we were brought
to harm.”

“I could tell you one that would be liking it less, and will like
little enough to hear you talking at this very same time,” she cried.
“What have I done, at all events?”

“O, you I you are not alone,” I replied. “But since I went off I have
been dogged again, and I can give you the name of him that follows me.
It is Neil, son of Duncan, your man or your father’s.”

“To be sure you are mistaken there,” she said, with a white face. “Neil
is in Edinburgh on errands from my father.”

“It is what I fear,” said I, “the last of it. But for his being in
Edinburgh I think I can show you another of that. For sure you have
some signal, a signal of need, such as would bring him to your help, if
he was anywhere within the reach of ears and legs?”

“Why, how will you know that?” says she.

“By means of a magical talisman God gave to me when I was born, and the
name they call it by is Common-sense,” said I. “Oblige me so far as
make your signal, and I will show you the red head of Neil.”

No doubt but I spoke bitter and sharp. My heart was bitter. I blamed
myself and the girl and hated both of us: her for the vile crew that
she was come of, myself for my wanton folly to have stuck my head in
such a byke of wasps.

Catriona set her fingers to her lips and whistled once, with an
exceeding clear, strong, mounting note, as full as a ploughman’s. A
while we stood silent; and I was about to ask her to repeat the same,
when I heard the sound of some one bursting through the bushes below on
the braeside. I pointed in that direction with a smile, and presently
Neil leaped into the garden. His eyes burned, and he had a black knife
(as they call it on the Highland side) naked in his hand; but, seeing
me beside his mistress, stood like a man struck.

“He has come to your call,” said I; “judge how near he was to
Edinburgh, or what was the nature of your father’s errands. Ask
himself. If I am to lose my life, or the lives of those that hang by
me, through the means of your clan, let me go where I have to go with
my eyes open.”

She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic. Remembering Alan’s anxious
civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud for
bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour
she should have stuck by English.

Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil
(for all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.

Then she turned to me. “He swears it is not,” she said.

“Catriona,” said I, “do you believe the man yourself?”

She made a gesture like wringing the hands.

“How will I can know?” she cried.

“But I must find some means to know,” said I. “I cannot continue to go
dovering round in the black night with two men’s lives at my girdle!
Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard
to put myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have
fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it.
See, keep him here till two of the morning, and I care not. Try him
with that.”

They spoke together once more in the Gaelic.

“He says he has James More my father’s errand,” said she. She was
whiter than ever, and her voice faltered as she said it.

“It is pretty plain now,” said I, “and may God forgive the wicked!”

She said never anything to that, but continued gazing at me with the
same white face.

“This is a fine business,” said I again. “Am I to fall, then, and those
two along with me?”

“O, what am I to do?” she cried. “Could I go against my father’s
orders, him in prison, in the danger of his life!”

“But perhaps we go too fast,” said I. “This may be a lie too. He may
have no right orders; all may be contrived by Simon, and your father
knowing nothing.”

She burst out weeping between the pair of us; and my heart smote me
hard, for I thought this girl was in a dreadful situation.

“Here,” said I, “keep him but the one hour; and I’ll chance it, and may
God bless you.”

She put out her hand to me, “I will he needing one good word,” she
sobbed.

“The full hour, then?” said I, keeping her hand in mine. “Three lives
of it, my lass!”

“The full hour!” she said, and cried aloud on her Redeemer to forgive
her.

I thought it no fit place for me, and fled.




CHAPTER XI.
THE WOOD BY SILVERMILLS


I lost no time, but down through the valley and by Stockbridge and
Silvermills as hard as I could stave. It was Alan’s tryst to be every
night between twelve and two “in a bit scrog of wood by east of
Silvermills and by south the south mill-lade.” This I found easy
enough, where it grew on a steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift
and deep along the foot of it; and here I began to walk slower and to
reflect more reasonably on my employment. I saw I had made but a fool’s
bargain with Catriona. It was not to be supposed that Neil was sent
alone upon his errand, but perhaps he was the only man belonging to
James More; in which case I should have done all I could to hang
Catriona’s father, and nothing the least material to help myself. To
tell the truth, I fancied neither one of these ideas. Suppose by
holding back Neil, the girl should have helped to hang her father, I
thought she would never forgive herself this side of time. And suppose
there were others pursuing me that moment, what kind of a gift was I
come bringing to Alan? and how would I like that?

I was up with the west end of that wood when these two considerations
struck me like a cudgel. My feet stopped of themselves and my heart
along with them. “What wild game is this that I have been playing?”
thought I; and turned instantly upon my heels to go elsewhere.

This brought my face to Silvermills; the path came past the village
with a crook, but all plainly visible; and, Highland or Lowland, there
was nobody stirring. Here was my advantage, here was just such a
conjuncture as Stewart had counselled me to profit by, and I ran by the
side of the mill-lade, fetched about beyond the east corner of the
wood, threaded through the midst of it, and returned to the west
selvage, whence I could again command the path, and yet be myself
unseen. Again it was all empty, and my heart began to rise.

For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and no
hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch. When that hour
began the sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the
daylight clear; before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk,
the images and distances of things were mingled, and observation began
to be difficult. All that time not a foot of man had come east from
Silvermills, and the few that had gone west were honest countryfolk and
their wives upon the road to bed. If I were tracked by the most cunning
spies in Europe, I judged it was beyond the course of nature they could
have any jealousy of where I was: and going a little further home into
the wood I lay down to wait for Alan.

The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not the
path only, but every bush and field within my vision. That was now at
an end. The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in
the wood; all round there was a stillness of the country; and as I lay
there on my back, the next three or four hours, I had a fine occasion
to review my conduct.

Two things became plain to me first: that I had no right to go that day
to Dean, and (having gone there) had now no right to be lying where I
was. This (where Alan was to come) was just the one wood in all broad
Scotland that was, by every proper feeling, closed against me; I
admitted that, and yet stayed on, wondering at myself. I thought of the
measure with which I had meted to Catriona that same night; how I had
prated of the two lives I carried, and had thus forced her to
enjeopardy her father’s; and how I was here exposing them again, it
seemed in wantonness. A good conscience is eight parts of courage. No
sooner had I lost conceit of my behaviour, than I seemed to stand
disarmed amidst a throng of terrors. Of a sudden I sat up. How if I
went now to Prestongrange, caught him (as I still easily might) before
he slept, and made a full submission? Who could blame me? Not Stewart
the Writer; I had but to say that I was followed, despaired of getting
clear, and so gave in. Not Catriona: here, too, I had my answer ready;
that I could not bear she should expose her father. So, in a moment, I
could lay all these troubles by, which were after all and truly none of
mine; swim clear of the Appin Murder; get forth out of hand-stroke of
all the Stewarts and Campbells, all the Whigs and Tories, in the land;
and live henceforth to my own mind, and be able to enjoy and to improve
my fortunes, and devote some hours of my youth to courting Catriona,
which would be surely a more suitable occupation than to hide and run
and be followed like a hunted thief, and begin over again the dreadful
miseries of my escape with Alan.

At first I thought no shame of this capitulation; I was only amazed I
had not thought upon the thing and done it earlier; and began to
inquire into the causes of the change. These I traced to my lowness of
spirits, that back to my late recklessness, and that again to the
common, old, public, disconsidered sin of self-indulgence. Instantly
the text came in my head, “_How can Satan cast out Satan_?” What? (I
thought) I had, by self-indulgence; and the following of pleasant
paths, and the lure of a young maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit
with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of James and Alan? And
I was to seek the way out by the same road as I had entered in? No; the
hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by
self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be crucified. I looked about
me for that course which I least liked to follow: this was to leave the
wood without waiting to see Alan, and go forth again alone, in the dark
and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes.

I have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections,
because I think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to
young men. But there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in
ethic and religion, room for common sense. It was already close on
Alan’s hour, and the moon was down. If I left (as I could not very
decently whistle to my spies to follow me) they might miss me in the
dark and tack themselves to Alan by mistake. If I stayed, I could at
the least of it set my friend upon his guard which might prove his mere
salvation. I had adventured other peoples’ safety in a course of
self-indulgence; to have endangered them again, and now on a mere
design of penance, would have been scarce rational. Accordingly, I had
scarce risen from my place ere I sat down again, but already in a
different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past weakness
and rejoicing in my present composure.

Presently after came a crackling in the thicket. Putting my mouth near
down to the ground, I whistled a note or two, of Alan’s air; an answer
came in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked together in the
dark.

“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered.

“Just myself,” said I.

“God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye!” says he. “I’ve had the
longest kind of a time. A’ day, I’ve had my dwelling into the inside of
a stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and
then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! Dod,
and ye’re none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! The
morn? what am I saying?—the day, I mean.”

“Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough,” said I. “It’s past twelve now,
surely, and ye sail the day. This’ll be a long road you have before
you.”

“We’ll have a long crack of it first,” said he.

“Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,”
said I.

And I told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear
enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions, laughing
here and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing
(above all there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the
other) was extraordinary friendly to my heart.

“Ay, Davie, ye’re a queer character,” says he, when I had done: “a
queer bitch after a’, and I have no mind of meeting with the like of
ye. As for your story, Prestongrange is a Whig like yoursel’, so I’ll
say the less of him; and, dod! I believe he was the best friend ye had,
if ye could only trust him. But Simon Fraser and James More are my ain
kind of cattle, and I’ll give them the name that they deserve. The
muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a’body kens that; and as
for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could
stotter on two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind, when I was
still so wambly on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him. A proud
man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause.
I’ll never can deny but what Robin was something of a piper,” he added;
“but as for James More, the deil guide him for me!”

“One thing we have to consider,” said I. “Was Charles Stewart right or
wrong? Is it only me they’re after, or the pair of us?”

“And what’s your ain opinion, you that’s a man of so much experience?”
said he.

“It passes me,” said I.

“And me too,” says Alan. “Do ye think this lass would keep her word to
ye?” he asked.

“I do that,” said I.

“Well, there’s nae telling,” said he. “And anyway, that’s over and
done: he’ll be joined to the rest of them lang syne.”

“How many would ye think there would be of them?” I asked.

“That depends,” said Alan. “If it was only you, they would likely send
two-three lively, brisk young birkies, and if they thought that I was
to appear in the employ, I daresay ten or twelve,” said he.

It was no use, I gave a little crack of laughter.

“And I think your own two eyes will have seen me drive that number, or
the double of it, nearer hand!” cries he.

“It matters the less,” said I, “because I am well rid of them for this
time.”

“Nae doubt that’s your opinion,” said he; “but I wouldnae be the least
surprised if they were hunkering this wood. Ye see, David man; they’ll
be Hieland folk. There’ll be some Frasers, I’m thinking, and some of
the Gregara; and I would never deny but what the both of them, and the
Gregara in especial, were clever experienced persons. A man kens little
till he’s driven a spreagh of neat cattle (say) ten miles through a
throng lowland country and the black soldiers maybe at his tail. It’s
there that I learned a great part of my penetration. And ye need nae
tell me: it’s better than war; which is the next best, however, though
generally rather a bauchle of a business. Now the Gregara have had
grand practice.”

“No doubt that’s a branch of education that was left out with me,” said
I.

“And I can see the marks of it upon ye constantly,” said Alan. “But
that’s the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye’re
ignorat, and ye cannae see ’t. Wae’s me for my Greek and Hebrew; but,
man, I ken that I dinnae ken them—there’s the differ of it. Now, here’s
you. Ye lie on your wame a bittie in the bield of this wood, and ye
tell me that ye’ve cuist off these Frasers and Macgregors. Why?
_Because I couldnae see them_, says you. Ye blockhead, that’s their
livelihood.”

“Take the worst of it,” said I, “and what are we to do?”

“I am thinking of that same,” said he. “We might twine. It wouldnae be
greatly to my taste; and forbye that, I see reasons against it. First,
it’s now unco dark, and it’s just humanly possible we might give them
the clean slip. If we keep together, we make but the ae line of it; if
we gang separate, we make twae of them: the more likelihood to stave in
upon some of these gentry of yours. And then, second, if they keep the
track of us, it may come to a fecht for it yet, Davie; and then, I’ll
confess I would be blythe to have you at my oxter, and I think you
would be none the worse of having me at yours. So, by my way of it, we
should creep out of this wood no further gone than just the inside of
next minute, and hold away east for Gillane, where I’m to find my ship.
It’ll be like old days while it lasts, Davie; and (come the time) we’ll
have to think what you should be doing. I’m wae to leave ye here,
wanting me.”

“Have with ye, then!” says I. “Do ye gang back where you were
stopping?”

“Deil a fear!” said Alan. “They were good folks to me, but I think they
would be a good deal disappointed if they saw my bonny face again. For
(the way times go) I am nae just what ye could call a Walcome Guest.
Which makes me the keener for your company, Mr. David Balfour of the
Shaws, and set ye up! For, leave aside twa cracks here in the wood with
Charlie Stewart, I have scarce said black or white since the day we
parted at Corstorphine.”

With which he rose from his place, and we began to move quietly
eastward through the wood.




CHAPTER XII.
ON THE MARCH AGAIN WITH ALAN


It was likely between one and two; the moon (as I have said) was down;
a strongish wind, carrying a heavy wrack of cloud, had set in suddenly
from the west; and we began our movement in as black a night as ever a
fugitive or a murderer wanted. The whiteness of the path guided us into
the sleeping town of Broughton, thence through Picardy, and beside my
old acquaintance the gibbet of the two thieves. A little beyond we made
a useful beacon, which was a light in an upper window of Lochend.
Steering by this, but a good deal at random, and with some trampling of
the harvest, and stumbling and falling down upon the banks, we made our
way across country, and won forth at last upon the linky, boggy
muirland that they call the Figgate Whins. Here, under a bush of whin,
we lay down the remainder of that night and slumbered.

The day called us about five. A beautiful morning it was, the high
westerly wind still blowing strong, but the clouds all blown away to
Europe. Alan was already sitting up and smiling to himself. It was my
first sight of my friend since we were parted, and I looked upon him
with enjoyment. He had still the same big great-coat on his back; but
(what was new) he had now a pair of knitted boot-hose drawn above the
knee. Doubtless these were intended for disguise; but, as the day
promised to be warm, he made a most unseasonable figure.

“Well, Davie,” said he, “is this no a bonny morning? Here is a day that
looks the way that a day ought to. This is a great change of it from
the belly of my haystack; and while you were there sottering and
sleeping I have done a thing that maybe I do very seldom.”

“And what was that?” said I.

“O, just said my prayers,” said he.

“And where are my gentry, as ye call them?” I asked.

“Gude kens,” says he; “and the short and the long of it is that we must
take our chance of them. Up with your foot-soles, Davie! Forth,
Fortune, once again of it! And a bonny walk we are like to have.”

So we went east by the beach of the sea, towards where the salt-pans
were smoking in by the Esk mouth. No doubt there was a by-ordinary
bonny blink of morning sun on Arthur’s Seat and the green Pentlands;
and the pleasantness of the day appeared to set Alan among nettles.

“I feel like a gomeral,” says he, “to be leaving Scotland on a day like
this. It sticks in my head; I would maybe like it better to stay here
and hing.”

“Ay, but ye wouldnae, Alan,” said I.

“No, but what France is a good place too,” he explained; “but it’s some
way no the same. It’s brawer I believe, but it’s no Scotland. I like it
fine when I’m there, man; yet I kind of weary for Scots divots and the
Scots peat-reek.”

“If that’s all you have to complain of, Alan, it’s no such great
affair,” said I.

“And it sets me ill to be complaining, whatever,” said he, “and me but
new out of yon deil’s haystack.”

“And so you were unco weary of your haystack?” I asked.

“Weary’s nae word for it,” said he. “I’m not just precisely a man
that’s easily cast down; but I do better with caller air and the lift
above my head. I’m like the auld Black Douglas (wasnae’t?) that likit
better to hear the laverock sing than the mouse cheep. And yon place,
ye see, Davie—whilk was a very suitable place to hide in, as I’m free
to own—was pit mirk from dawn to gloaming. There were days (or nights,
for how would I tell one from other?) that seemed to me as long as a
long winter.”

“How did you know the hour to bide your tryst?” I asked.

“The goodman brought me my meat and a drop brandy, and a candle-dowp to
eat it by, about eleeven,” said he. “So, when I had swallowed a bit, it
would he time to be getting to the wood. There I lay and wearied for ye
sore, Davie,” says he, laying his hand on my shoulder “and guessed when
the two hours would be about by—unless Charlie Stewart would come and
tell me on his watch—and then back to the dooms haystack. Na, it was a
driech employ, and praise the Lord that I have warstled through with
it!”

“What did you do with yourself?” I asked.

“Faith,” said he, “the best I could! Whiles I played at the
knucklebones. I’m an extraordinar good hand at the knucklebones, but
it’s a poor piece of business playing with naebody to admire ye. And
whiles I would make songs.”

“What were they about?” says I.

“O, about the deer and the heather,” says he, “and about the ancient
old chiefs that are all by with it lang syne, and just about what songs
are about in general. And then whiles I would make believe I had a set
of pipes and I was playing. I played some grand springs, and I thought
I played them awful bonny; I vow whiles that I could hear the squeal of
them! But the great affair is that it’s done with.”

With that he carried me again to my adventures, which he heard all over
again with more particularity, and extraordinary approval, swearing at
intervals that I was “a queer character of a callant.”

“So ye were frich’ened of Sim Fraser?” he asked once.

“In troth was I!” cried I.

“So would I have been, Davie,” said he. “And that is indeed a driedful
man. But it is only proper to give the deil his due: and I can tell you
he is a most respectable person on the field of war.”

“Is he so brave?” I asked.

“Brave!” said he. “He is as brave as my steel sword.”

The story of my duel set him beside himself.

“To think of that!” he cried. “I showed ye the trick in Corrynakiegh
too. And three times—three times disarmed! It’s a disgrace upon my
character that learned ye! Here, stand up, out with your airn; ye shall
walk no step beyond this place upon the road till ye can do yoursel’
and me mair credit.”

“Alan,” said I, “this is midsummer madness. Here is no time for fencing
lessons.”

“I cannae well say no to that,” he admitted. “But three times, man! And
you standing there like a straw bogle and rinning to fetch your ain
sword like a doggie with a pocket-napkin! David, this man Duncansby
must be something altogether by-ordinar! He maun be extraordinar
skilly. If I had the time, I would gang straight back and try a turn at
him mysel’. The man must be a provost.”

“You silly fellow,” said I, “you forget it was just me.”

“Na,” said he, “but three times!”

“When ye ken yourself that I am fair incompetent,” I cried.

“Well, I never heard tell the equal of it,” said he.

“I promise you the one thing, Alan,” said I. “The next time that we
forgather, I’ll be better learned. You shall not continue to bear the
disgrace of a friend that cannot strike.”

“Ay, the next time!” says he. “And when will that be, I would like to
ken?”

“Well, Alan, I have had some thoughts of that, too,” said I; “and my
plan is this. It’s my opinion to be called an advocate.”

“That’s but a weary trade, Davie,” says Alan, “and rather a blagyard
one forby. Ye would be better in a king’s coat than that.”

“And no doubt that would be the way to have us meet,” cried I. “But as
you’ll be in King Lewie’s coat, and I’ll be in King Geordie’s, we’ll
have a dainty meeting of it.”

“There’s some sense in that,” he admitted.

“An advocate, then, it’ll have to be,” I continued, “and I think it a
more suitable trade for a gentleman that was _three times_ disarmed.
But the beauty of the thing is this: that one of the best colleges for
that kind of learning—and the one where my kinsman, Pilrig, made his
studies—is the college of Leyden in Holland. Now, what say you, Alan?
Could not a cadet of _Royal Ecossais_ get a furlough, slip over the
marches, and call in upon a Leyden student?”

“Well, and I would think he could!” cried he. “Ye see, I stand well in
with my colonel, Count Drummond-Melfort; and, what’s mair to the
purpose I have a cousin of mine lieutenant-colonel in a regiment of the
Scots-Dutch. Naething could be mair proper than what I would get a
leave to see Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart of Halkett’s. And Lord Melfort,
who is a very scienteefic kind of a man, and writes books like Cæsar,
would be doubtless very pleased to have the advantage of my observes.”

“Is Lord Meloort an author, then?” I asked, for much as Alan thought of
soldiers, I thought more of the gentry that write books.

“The very same, Davie,” said he. “One would think a colonel would have
something better to attend to. But what can I say that make songs?”

“Well, then,” said I, “it only remains you should give me an address to
write you at in France; and as soon as I am got to Leyden I will send
you mine.”

“The best will be to write me in the care of my chieftain,” said he,
“Charles Stewart, of Ardsheil, Esquire, at the town of Melons, in the
Isle of France. It might take long, or it might take short, but it
would aye get to my hands at the last of it.”

We had a haddock to our breakfast in Musselburgh, where it amused me
vastly to hear Alan. His great-coat and boot-hose were extremely
remarkable this warm morning, and perhaps some hint of an explanation
had been wise; but Alan went into that matter like a business, or I
should rather say, like a diversion. He engaged the goodwife of the
house with some compliments upon the rizzoring of our haddocks; and the
whole of the rest of our stay held her in talk about a cold he had
taken on his stomach, gravely relating all manner of symptoms and
sufferings, and hearing with a vast show of interest all the old wives’
remedies she could supply him with in return.

We left Musselburgh before the first ninepenny coach was due from
Edinburgh for (as Alan said) that was a rencounter we might very well
avoid. The wind although still high, was very mild, the sun shone
strong, and Alan began to suffer in proportion. From Prestonpans he had
me aside to the field of Gladsmuir, where he exerted himself a great
deal more than needful to describe the stages of the battle. Thence, at
his old round pace, we travelled to Cockenzie. Though they were
building herring-busses there at Mrs. Cadell’s, it seemed a
desert-like, back-going town, about half full of ruined houses; but the
ale-house was clean, and Alan, who was now in a glowing heat, must
indulge himself with a bottle of ale, and carry on to the new luckie
with the old story of the cold upon his stomach, only now the symptoms
were all different.

I sat listening; and it came in my mind that I had scarce ever heard
him address three serious words to any woman, but he was always
drolling and fleering and making a private mock of them, and yet
brought to that business a remarkable degree of energy and interest.
Something to this effect I remarked to him, when the good-wife (as
chanced) was called away.

“What do ye want?” says he. “A man should aye put his best foot forrit
with the womankind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert
them, the poor lambs! It’s what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye
should get the principles, it’s like a trade. Now, if this had been a
young lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my
stomach, Davie. But aince they’re too old to be seeking joes, they a’
set up to be apotecaries. Why? What do I ken? They’ll be just the way
God made them, I suppose. But I think a man would be a gomeral that
didnae give his attention to the same.”

And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with
impatience to renew their former conversation. The lady had branched
some while before from Alan’s stomach to the case of a goodbrother of
her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing
at extraordinary length. Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both
dull and awful, for she talked with unction. The upshot was that I fell
in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce
marking what I saw. Presently had any been looking they might have seen
me to start.

“We pit a fomentation to his feet,” the good-wife was saying, “and a
het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal,
and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast. . . ”

“Sir,” says I, cutting very quietly in, “there’s a friend of mine gone
by the house.”

“Is that e’en sae?” replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small
account. And then, “Ye were saying, mem?” says he; and the wearyful
wife went on.

Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must
go forth after the change.

“Was it him with the red head?” asked Alan.

“Ye have it,” said I.

“What did I tell you in the wood?” he cried. “And yet it’s strange he
should be here too! Was he his lane?”

“His lee-lane for what I could see,” said I.

“Did he gang by?” he asked.

“Straight by,” said I, “and looked neither to the right nor left.”

“And that’s queerer yet,” said Alan. “It sticks in my mind, Davie, that
we should be stirring. But where to?—deil hae’t! This is like old days
fairly,” cries he.

“There is one big differ, though,” said I, “that now we have money in
our pockets.”

“And another big differ, Mr. Balfour,” says he, “that now we have dogs
at our tail. They’re on the scent; they’re in full cry, David. It’s a
bad business and be damned to it.” And he sat thinking hard with a look
of his that I knew well.

“I’m saying, Luckie,” says he, when the goodwife returned, “have ye a
back road out of this change house?”

She told him there was and where it led to.

“Then, sir,” says he to me, “I think that will be the shortest road for
us. And here’s good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I’ll no forget thon
of the cinnamon water.”

We went out by way of the woman’s kale yard, and up a lane among
fields. Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a
little hollow place of the country, out of view of men, sat down.

“Now for a council of war, Davie,” said he. “But first of all, a bit
lesson to ye. Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife
have minded of the pair of us! Just that we had gone out by the back
gate. And what does she mind now? A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man,
that suffered with the stomach, poor body! and was real ta’en up about
the goodbrother. O man, David, try and learn to have some kind of
intelligence!”

“I’ll try, Alan,” said I.

“And now for him of the red head,” says he; “was he gaun fast or slow?”

“Betwixt and between,” said I.

“No kind of a hurry about the man?” he asked.

“Never a sign of it,” said I.

“Nhm!” said Alan, “it looks queer. We saw nothing of them this morning
on the Whins; he’s passed us by, he doesnae seem to be looking, and yet
here he is on our road! Dod, Davie, I begin to take a notion. I think
it’s no you they’re seeking, I think it’s me; and I think they ken fine
where they’re gaun.”

“They ken?” I asked.

“I think Andie Scougal’s sold me—him or his mate wha kent some part of
the affair—or else Charlie’s clerk callant, which would be a pity too,”
says Alan; “and if you askit me for just my inward private conviction,
I think there’ll be heads cracked on Gillane sands.”

“Alan,” I cried, “if you’re at all right there’ll be folk there and to
spare. It’ll be small service to crack heads.”

“It would aye be a satisfaction though,” says Alan. “But bide a bit;
bide a bit; I’m thinking—and thanks to this bonny westland wind, I
believe I’ve still a chance of it. It’s this way, Davie. I’m no trysted
with this man Scougal till the gloaming comes. _But_,” says he, “_if I
can get a bit of a wind out of the west I’ll be there long or that_,”
he says, “_and lie-to for ye behind the Isle of Fidra_. Now if your
gentry kens the place, they ken the time forbye. Do ye see me coming,
Davie? Thanks to Johnnie Cope and other red-coat gomerals, I should ken
this country like the back of my hand; and if ye’re ready for another
bit run with Alan Breck, we’ll can cast back inshore, and come to the
seaside again by Dirleton. If the ship’s there, we’ll try and get on
board of her. If she’s no there, I’ll just have to get back to my weary
haystack. But either way of it, I think we will leave your gentry
whistling on their thumbs.”

“I believe there’s some chance in it,” said I. “Have on with ye, Alan!”




CHAPTER XIII.
GILLANE SANDS


I did not profit by Alan’s pilotage as he had done by his marchings
under General Cope; for I can scarce tell what way we went. It is my
excuse that we travelled exceeding fast. Some part we ran, some
trotted, and the rest walked at a vengeance of a pace. Twice, while we
were at top speed, we ran against country-folk; but though we plumped
into the first from round a corner, Alan was as ready as a loaded
musket.

“Has ye seen my horse?” he gasped.

“Na, man, I haenae seen nae horse the day,” replied the countryman.

And Alan spared the time to explain to him that we were travelling
“ride and tie”; that our charger had escaped, and it was feared he had
gone home to Linton. Not only that, but he expended some breath (of
which he had not very much left) to curse his own misfortune and my
stupidity which was said to be its cause.

“Them that cannae tell the truth,” he observed to myself as we went on
again, “should be aye mindful to leave an honest, handy lee behind
them. If folk dinnae ken what ye’re doing, Davie, they’re terrible
taken up with it; but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it
than what I do for pease porridge.”

As we had first made inland, so our road came in the end to lie very
near due north; the old Kirk of Aberlady for a landmark on the left; on
the right, the top of the Berwick Law; and it was thus we struck the
shore again, not far from Dirleton. From north Berwick west to Gillane
Ness there runs a string of four small islets, Craiglieth, the Lamb,
Fidra, and Eyebrough, notable by their diversity of size and shape.
Fidra is the most particular, being a strange grey islet of two humps,
made the more conspicuous by a piece of ruin; and I mind that (as we
drew closer to it) by some door or window of these ruins the sea peeped
through like a man’s eye. Under the lee of Fidra there is a good
anchorage in westerly winds, and there, from a far way off, we could
see the _Thistle_ riding.

The shore in face of these islets is altogether waste. Here is no
dwelling of man, and scarce any passage, or at most of vagabond
children running at their play. Gillane is a small place on the far
side of the Ness, the folk of Dirleton go to their business in the
inland fields, and those of North Berwick straight to the sea-fishing
from their haven; so that few parts of the coast are lonelier. But I
mind, as we crawled upon our bellies into that multiplicity of heights
and hollows, keeping a bright eye upon all sides, and our hearts
hammering at our ribs, there was such a shining of the sun and the sea,
such a stir of the wind in the bent grass, and such a bustle of
down-popping rabbits and up-flying gulls, that the desert seemed to me,
like a place alive. No doubt it was in all ways well chosen for a
secret embarcation, if the secret had been kept; and even now that it
was out, and the place watched, we were able to creep unperceived to
the front of the sandhills, where they look down immediately on the
beach and sea.

But here Alan came to a full stop.

“Davie,” said he, “this is a kittle passage! As long as we lie here
we’re safe; but I’m nane sae muckle nearer to my ship or the coast of
France. And as soon as we stand up and signal the brig, it’s another
matter. For where will your gentry be, think ye?”

“Maybe they’re no come yet,” said I. “And even if they are, there’s one
clear matter in our favour. They’ll be all arranged to take us, that’s
true. But they’ll have arranged for our coming from the east and here
we are upon their west.”

“Ay,” says Alan, “I wish we were in some force, and this was a battle,
we would have bonnily out-manœuvred them! But it isnae, Davit; and the
way it is, is a wee thing less inspiring to Alan Breck. I swither,
Davie.”

“Time flies, Alan,” said I.

“I ken that,” said Alan. “I ken naething else, as the French folk say.
But this is a dreidful case of heids or tails. O! if I could but ken
where your gentry were!”

“Alan,” said I, “this is no like you. It’s got to be now or never.”

“This is no me, quo’ he,”


sang Alan, with a queer face betwixt shame and drollery.

“Neither you nor me, quo’ he, neither you nor me.
Wow, na, Johnnie man! neither you nor me.”


And then of a sudden he stood straight up where he was, and with a
handkerchief flying in his right hand, marched down upon the beach. I
stood up myself, but lingered behind him, scanning the sand-hills to
the east. His appearance was at first unremarked: Scougal not expecting
him so early, and _my gentry_ watching on the other side. Then they
awoke on board the _Thistle_, and it seemed they had all in readiness,
for there was scarce a second’s bustle on the deck before we saw a
skiff put round her stern and begin to pull lively for the coast.
Almost at the same moment of time, and perhaps half a mile away towards
Gillane Ness, the figure of a man appeared for a blink upon a sandhill,
waving with his arms; and though he was gone again in the same flash,
the gulls in that part continued a little longer to fly wild.

Alan had not seen this, looking straight to seaward at the ship and
skiff.

“It maun be as it will!” said he, when I had told him, “Weel may yon
boatie row, or my craig’ll have to thole a raxing.”

That part of the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when
the tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to
the sea; and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of
a town. No eye of ours could spy what was passing behind there in the
bents, no hurry of ours could mend the speed of the boat’s coming: time
stood still with us through that uncanny period of waiting.

“There is one thing I would like to ken,” say Alan. “I would like to
ken these gentry’s orders. We’re worth four hunner pound the pair of
us: how if they took the guns to us, Davie! They would get a bonny shot
from the top of that lang sandy bank.”

“Morally impossible,” said I. “The point is that they can have no guns.
This thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but
never guns.”

“I believe ye’ll be in the right,” says Alan. “For all which I am
wearing a good deal for yon boat.”

And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.

It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard
on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes.
There was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we
were able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could
manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the
gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.

“This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in,” says Alan
suddenly; “and, man, I wish that I had your courage!”

“Alan!” I cried, “what kind of talk is this of it! You’re just made of
courage; it’s the character of the man

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