Catriona
up with the Queensferry. To keep the letter of Andie’s engagement (or
what was left of it) I must remain on board, but I thought no harm to
communicate with the shore in writing. On Prestongrange’s cover, where
the Government seal must have a good deal surprised my correspondent, I
writ, by the boat’s lantern, a few necessary words, aboard and Andie
carried them to Rankeillor. In about an hour he came again, with a
purse of money and the assurance that a good horse should be standing
saddled for me by two to-morrow at Clackmannan Pool. This done, and the
boat riding by her stone anchor, we lay down to sleep under the sail.
We were in the Pool the next day long ere two; and there was nothing
left for me but to sit and wait. I felt little alacrity upon my errand.
I would have been glad of any passable excuse to lay it down; but none
being to be found, my uneasiness was no less great than if I had been
running to some desired pleasure. By shortly after one the horse was at
the waterside, and I could see a man walking it to and fro till I
should land, which vastly swelled my impatience. Andie ran the moment
of my liberation very fine, showing himself a man of his bare word, but
scarce serving his employers with a heaped measure; and by about fifty
seconds after two I was in the saddle and on the full stretch for
Stirling. In a little more than an hour I had passed that town, and was
already mounting Alan Water side, when the weather broke in a small
tempest. The rain blinded me, the wind had nearly beat me from the
saddle, and the first darkness of the night surprised me in a
wilderness still some way east of Balwhidder, not very sure of my
direction and mounted on a horse that began already to be weary.
In the press of my hurry, and to be spared the delay and annoyance of a
guide, I had followed (so far as it was possible for any horseman) the
line of my journey with Alan. This I did with open eyes, foreseeing a
great risk in it, which the tempest had now brought to a reality. The
last that I knew of where I was, I think it must have been about Uam
Var; the hour perhaps six at night. I must still think it great good
fortune that I got about eleven to my destination, the house of Duncan
Dhu. Where I had wandered in the interval perhaps the horse could tell.
I know we were twice down, and once over the saddle and for a moment
carried away in a roaring burn. Steed and rider were bemired up to the
eyes.
From Duncan I had news of the trial. It was followed in all these
Highland regions with religious interest; news of it spread from
Inverary as swift as men could travel; and I was rejoiced to learn
that, up to a late hour that Saturday it was not yet concluded; and all
men began to suppose it must spread over the Monday. Under the spur of
this intelligence I would not sit to eat; but, Duncan having agreed to
be my guide, took the road again on foot, with the piece in my hand and
munching as I went. Duncan brought with him a flask of usquebaugh and a
hand-lantern; which last enlightened us just so long as we could find
houses where to rekindle it, for the thing leaked outrageously and blew
out with every gust. The more part of the night we walked blindfold
among sheets of rain, and day found us aimless on the mountains. Hard
by we struck a hut on a burn-side, where we got bite and a direction;
and, a little before the end of the sermon, came to the kirk doors of
Inverary.
The rain had somewhat washed the upper parts of me, but I was still
bogged as high as to the knees; I streamed water; I was so weary I
could hardly limp, and my face was like a ghost’s. I stood certainly
more in need of a change of raiment and a bed to lie on, than of all
the benefits in Christianity. For all which (being persuaded the chief
point for me was to make myself immediately public) I set the door of
the church with the dirty Duncan at my tails, and finding a vacant
place sat down.
“Thirteently, my brethren, and in parenthesis, the law itself must be
regarded as a means of grace,” the minister was saying, in the voice of
one delighting to pursue an argument.
The sermon was in English on account of the assize. The judges were
present with their armed attendants, the halberts glittered in a corner
by the door, and the seats were thronged beyond custom with the array
of lawyers. The text was in Romans 5th and 13th—the minister a skilled
hand; and the whole of that able churchful—from Argyle, and my Lords
Elchies and Kilkerran, down to the halbertmen that came in their
attendance—was sunk with gathered brows in a profound critical
attention. The minister himself and a sprinkling of those about the
door observed our entrance at the moment and immediately forgot the
same; the rest either did not hear or would not hear or would not be
heard; and I sat amongst my friends and enemies unremarked.
The first that I singled out was Prestongrange. He sat well forward,
like an eager horseman in the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his
eyes glued on the minister; the doctrine was clearly to his mind.
Charles Stewart, on the other hand, was half asleep, and looked
harassed and pale. As for Simon Fraser, he appeared like a blot, and
almost a scandal, in the midst of that attentive congregation, digging
his hands in his pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, and
rolling up his bald eyebrows and shooting out his eyes to right and
left, now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. At times, too, he would
take the Bible in front of him, run it through, seem to read a bit, run
it through again, and stop and yawn prodigiously: the whole as if for
exercise.
In the course of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. He sat a
second stupefied, then tore a half-leaf out of the Bible, scrawled upon
it with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his next
neighbour. The note came to Prestongrange, who gave me but the one
look; thence it voyaged to the hands of Mr. Erskine; thence again to
Argyle, where he sat between the other two lords of session, and his
Grace turned and fixed me with an arrogant eye. The last of those
interested in my presence was Charlie Stewart, and he too began to
pencil and hand about dispatches, none of which I was able to trace to
their destination in the crowd.
But the passage of these notes had aroused notice; all who were in the
secret (or supposed themselves to be so) were whispering
information—the rest questions; and the minister himself seemed quite
discountenanced by the flutter in the church and sudden stir and
whispering. His voice changed, he plainly faltered, nor did he again
recover the easy conviction and full tones of his delivery. It would be
a puzzle to him till his dying day, why a sermon that had gone with
triumph through four parts, should thus miscarry in the fifth.
As for me, I continued to sit there, very wet and weary, and a good
deal anxious as to what should happen next, but greatly exulting in my
success.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MEMORIAL
The last word of the blessing was scarce out of the minister’s mouth
before Stewart had me by the arm. We were the first to be forth of the
church, and he made such extraordinary expedition that we were safe
within the four walls of a house before the street had begun to be
thronged with the home-going congregation.
“Am I yet in time?” I asked.
“Ay and no,” said he. “The case is over; the jury is enclosed, and will
so kind as let us ken their view of it to-morrow in the morning, the
same as I could have told it my own self three days ago before the play
began. The thing has been public from the start. The panel kent it,
‘_Ye may do what ye will for me_,’ whispers he two days ago. ‘_Ye ken
my fate by what the Duke of Argyle has just said to Mr. Macintosh_.’ O,
it’s been a scandal!
“The great Agyle he gaed before,
He gart the cannons and guns to roar,”
and the very macer cried ‘Cruachan!’ But now that I have got you again
I’ll never despair. The oak shall go over the myrtle yet; we’ll ding
the Campbells yet in their own town. Praise God that I should see the
day!”
He was leaping with excitement, emptied out his mails upon the floor
that I might have a change of clothes, and incommoded me with his
assistance as I changed. What remained to be done, or how I was to do
it, was what he never told me nor, I believe, so much as thought of.
“We’ll ding the Campbells yet!” that was still his overcome. And it was
forced home upon my mind how this, that had the externals of a sober
process of law, was in its essence a clan battle between savage clans.
I thought my friend the Writer none of the least savage. Who that had
only seen him at a counsel’s back before the Lord Ordinary or following
a golf ball and laying down his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have
recognised for the same person this voluble and violent clansman?
James Stewart’s counsel were four in number—Sheriffs Brown of Colstoun
and Miller, Mr. Robert Macintosh, and Mr. Stewart younger of Stewart
Hall. These were covenanted to dine with the Writer after sermon, and I
was very obligingly included of the party. No sooner the cloth lifted,
and the first bowl very artfully compounded by Sheriff Miller, than we
fell to the subject in hand. I made a short narration of my seizure and
captivity, and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances
of the murder. It will be remembered this was the first time I had had
my say out, or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the
consequence was very dispiriting to the others and (I must own)
disappointing to myself.
“To sum up,” said Colstoun, “you prove that Alan was on the spot; you
have heard him proffer menaces against Glenure; and though you assure
us he was not the man who fired, you leave a strong impression that he
was in league with him, and consenting, perhaps immediately assisting,
in the act. You show him besides, at the risk of his own liberty,
actively furthering the criminal’s escape. And the rest of your
testimony (so far as the least material) depends on the bare word of
Alan or of James, the two accused. In short, you do not at all break,
but only lengthen by one personage, the chain that binds our client to
the murderer; and I need scarcely say that the introduction of a third
accomplice rather aggravates that appearance of a conspiracy which has
been our stumbling block from the beginning.”
“I am of the same opinion,” said Sheriff Miller. “I think we may all be
very much obliged to Prestongrange for taking a most uncomfortable
witness out of our way. And chiefly, I think, Mr. Balfour himself might
be obliged. For you talk of a third accomplice, but Mr. Balfour (in my
view) has very much the appearance of a fourth.”
“Allow me, sirs!” interposed Stewart the Writer. “There is another
view. Here we have a witness—never fash whether material or not—a
witness in this cause, kidnapped by that old, lawless, bandit crew of
the Glengyle Macgregors, and sequestered for near upon a month in a
bourock of old ruins on the Bass. Move that and see what dirt you fling
on the proceedings! Sirs, this is a tale to make the world ring with!
It would be strange, with such a grip as this, if we couldnae squeeze
out a pardon for my client.”
“And suppose we took up Mr. Balfour’s cause to-morrow?” said Stewart
Hall. “I am much deceived or we should find so many impediments thrown
in our path, as that James should have been hanged before we had found
a court to hear us. This is a great scandal, but I suppose we have none
of us forgot a greater still, I mean the matter of the Lady Grange. The
woman was still in durance; my friend Mr. Hope of Rankeillor did what
was humanly possible; and how did he speed? He never got a warrant!
Well, it’ll be the same now; the same weapons will be used. This is a