Catriona
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