Catriona

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"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 our 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 skirting 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 neCESSaries? 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."

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