Nancy had by this time come to the far end of her patience, and she was on her feet in a minute.

"Listen to me," she said. "I went to Ayrshire at the written asking of Janet McGillavorich to come to her own home. The morning I started for Mauchline the rear of her house fell into the cellar, making it extremely dangerous to remain in any part of the dwelling. I went to the inn only because she was there, and she stayed with me until my father came and took me away. I saw Robert Burns alone but once, entirely by accident, in the broad light of day.

"As for the rhyme," and she looked down at the paper for a moment, regarding it as a thing of no importance whatever, "it was not I who spoke in the lines, but a gipsy girl of my imaginings. Ye've had little personal experience with the thing called gift——"

He must have thought there was some flouting of him in this, for he broke in heatedly:

"And I thank God for it," he cried, "for it seems to be a thing which makes people betray trusts, lose all thought for others, raise hopes which they never intend to fulfil, unbridle their passions, forget their sex, and ride away to the deil at their own gate."

None could have foreseen the effect this speech had upon Nancy; the thought it contained falling so parallel to her own talk of the night before; but it's one matter to say a thing of one's self and an entirely different affair to have it said concerning one, and in a minute her anger fairly matched his own.

"Ye've insulted me, Danvers," she said, "many times in this talk, both in word and look; insulted me in my father's house, where you've been welcome, boy and man, ever since ye were born; insulted me, too, in a way I'm not like to forget."

She stood very tall and straight, her cheeks aflame, the lace on her bosom trembling with the quickness of her breathing, and her work dropped on the table before her as she slipped from her finger the ruby ring and pushed it toward him.

"Go away or stay at Arran, as you please! Ride or tie as best suits your mind, for in the way of love everything is gone between us for all time. And where ye go," she went on, "ye who pride yereself so on your birth and breeding, just recall the fact that of all the men of gift whom I have known, and they have been many, not one has ever forgotten himself before me as you have done to-day, nor insulted the daughter of a friend in her own house!"

He made no move to take the ring, and it lay twinkling on the table between them as Nancy turned to leave the room.

"Good-by," he said, turning white, and then (and I thought a heart of stone might be touched by the compliment under such circumstances) "Oh," he cried, as though the words were forced from him, "you are so beautiful!"

"The country's full of pretty women, any one of whom will be likely to marry you, when you order her to!" Nancy returned with an exasperating smile.

"I'll try it and see. I think I will not go away from Arran. I may do something that will surprise you," he added.

"There's nothing ye could do that would surprise me, unless it were something sensible, and ye're not like to do that," she retorted, and without another word she left him standing alone, and he flung himself out of the house, disappearing across the lawn, in the direction of Arran, with a white face and a brooding devil in his eyes that showed his mind obstinate and unrelenting, and in a mood to do any foolish thing that came by.



CHAPTER XX

DANVERS GIVES US A GREAT SURPRISE

A fortnight passed with no news of the Arran folks whatever, when one morning Sandy appeared at the door of the small dining-room where we were breakfasting, his sudden appearance recalling that memorable day when he asked me on the cruise which brought my girl to me. In the first glance I had of him I saw trouble; twice before he had worn such a look, once at his mother's death, and again when his wife had left him, taking the boy to London, and he knew the separation to be final. His face was very pale, the pallor showing strangely through his tanned skin, and his mouth was set, and twitching at the corners as beyond his control.

"Are ye ill, Sandy?" I cried, going toward him hurriedly.

"No," he answered, sitting down at the table and hiding his face in his hands; "but I've had a blow! I've had a blow!" he repeated. "It's Danvers," he went on, when he could speak. "He went off to Lanure yesterday and married Isabel Erskine!"

"Married Isabel Erskine!" I cried, like a parrot.

"Married Isabel Erskine!" repeated Nancy, who stood staring at him as if she doubted his saneness.

"Married Isa——" I was beginning again, in a highly intelligent manner, when Huey MacGrath suddenly dropped the tray of dishes he was bringing in and carried his hands to his face, beginning to moan and cry like a woman, for it had been the wish of his heart to have these two children, who in some way he believed to be his own, married to each other.

The disturbance was a good thing for all, for it broke the unnatural tension between us, and after MacColl had assisted Huey into the pantry, where I could see him standing, listening at the doorway, Sandy continued:

"It was all that talking, grape-eyed woman! It was for that she fetched her daughter to Arran. It's been going on right under my eye, and I too blind and taken up with my own affairs to see it The poor laddie," he cried. "The poor fool laddie!"

Understanding that a discussion of the marriage in her presence was an impossibility, Nancy left us, with a white face, on some pretense of business at the Burnside, and Sandy and I talked it out between us. Midnight found us going back and forth over the matter and arriving at the same point, that the chances of happiness for a man wedded to one woman and in love with another are just nothing at all. I could feel that there was one question in Sandy's mind which he could scarce bring himself to ask, and I took the suggestion of it upon myself.

"It will bring many changes to us," I said, "and to none more than Nancy."

"Do you think she cares for him?" Sandy asked, putting his thought plainly.

"To be frank with ye, Sandy," said I, "it's a matter I've been far from deciding. I believe that the visit to Mauchline changed her more than any other event in her life. Before it she'd idealized gift and the possession of it. When she came back she was changed in a way. 'It's a great thing to be a gentleman; I think it's more in the end than being a genius, Jock,' she said, and by this, as well as other speeches of hers, I am convinced that her mind had turned toward Danvers, and if he had come to her with any kindness at all, things would have been settled between them; but he burst in storming, poor fellow, like a crazy loon, and a fine quarrel they had of it, with this marriage as a resulting."

"There's one small good comes out of it all, which is that the paste-covered woman gets out of Arran to-day," Sandy ended. "It's a thing she had not counted upon, but Danvers wrote that they were off to the Continent, and it's not respectable for her to stay alone with me, and she packs for Carlisle to-morrow."

Of the next five months there is little to tell which bears directly upon my tale, except to make some mention of the "intellectual reform" of the Duke of Borthwicke, a name he put himself upon his altered conduct. News we had of him in plenty, and if rumor could be relied upon, he was a changed man. The first note of his new behavior was struck by his relieving the poor tenant-bodies on his Killanarchie estates from their rentals for three years because of the losses from a cattle blight. And before the sound of this had died away another bit was added to the tune of his reformation by his coming out strong against the crown for the repeal of the tax on Scotch whisky. And the full song of his praises began to be sung in public when he, being one of the Scotch Sixteen in the English House of Peers, declared for the inadequacy of representation which Scotland had in the House of Commons, and moved for an election of fifty-four, after the English manner[8].

[8] Scotland had but 16 Peers and 48 Representatives in Parliament at this time.

His letters to Nancy and myself at this time were of a piece with him, for he spoke with quaint sarcasm of that which he termed his "change of heart," and of the curious pleasure he obtained from marking his life out along another line. He wrote with detail as well of a new Paisley industry which he had started on one of his estates, asking Nancy's advice concerning a teacher for the lace-work, it being his purpose to have the young women round Borthwicke Castle turned toward making a livelihood after this manner. During all of this time his letters came frequently, and Nancy read them with much pleasure and many comments, but her private feelings toward the writer of them she confided to none.

There was a talk which set Nancy's state of mind with some clearness, however, which fell between us directly after the offer of marriage made to her by McMurtrie of Ainswere.

"Dearest," she said, "I am beginning to see with my mind that every woman flies in the face of the Almighty not to take into her life's reckoning the instinct of her sex for love and motherhood. It seems to me that a great love must be the best thing of all; but I'm just here, I don't dare to marry because I'm afraid of myself; and I don't dare to stay unmarried for fear of that great and unrelenting thing called Nature."

"Nancy," said I, with an earnestness that came straight from the heart, "if ye feel like that, your hour has not yet struck. For when the great love comes, it's not a question of what you want, but what ye can't help; and I wouldn't think anything more about it, for ye'll know when it comes, my dear," I cried; "ye'll know when it comes!"

There was an odd scrap of business, trifling in itself, and yet leading to great trouble, which fell about this time, and I set it down as of interest to those who note the way fate uses all as instruments.

Nancy, Sandy, and I had planned a jaunt to Ireland. There had been no intention whatever of taking Huey with us, for he was the last person on earth to take upon a pleasure outing, as he regarded all strangers as rogues and villains, and the Irish people as heathen papists, worshiping idols in the few moments unoccupied in breaking each other's heads with shillalahs. He had for me and mine a devotion at once touching and uncomfortable; but as he grew older he interfered in all manner of matters beyond his province, offered advices absurd and impertinent, and never once in the whole sixty years of our acquaintance can I recall his agreeing entirely with a statement made by any body except Nancy. If he couldn't contradict one flatly, and the uncongenial part of acquiescence was forced upon him by his love of truth, he held a grudging silence or affected an absent mind, or no interest in the matter whatever.

As the years went by and his health became feebler he followed me about until he was like to drive me to Bedlam, and I used to discharge him from my service about once a fortnight. I had never realized how highly absurd our relations were until Nancy drew them to my attention.

"Ye can't go to Alton on Thursday, Jock," she said.

"Why?" I inquired.

"'Tis your day for discharging Huey," she answered with a laugh, making up a funny face at me.

I would not set any one to thinking that I had a lack of affection for my old serving-man, for I had seen his old age provided against in a manner to prove my care; but I knew that he loved me in spite of my conduct rather than because of it, and with no hope whatever of my eternal salvation.

The plans for our Irish trip were being discussed one day when Nancy found him weeping bitterly over the silver he was counting, when he told her that his grief came from fear lest we should get murdered or kidnapped in that strange country without him to look after us, and that the whole matter was taking the very life out of him.

The little one's heart was so touched by his sorrow and his age that she came back to Sandy and me with tears in her eyes, saying that if Huey couldn't go she would stay at home herself.

As he was too old and broken to travel with safety to himself, and as Nancy remained fixed as death, the Irish trip was not taken; by which, but for the whim of this old serving-man, we might have been from Scotland and avoided the bitter trouble which began at the Allisons' rout given in honor of the home-coming of Danvers and his bride.



CHAPTER XXI

THE ALLISONS' BALL AND THAT WHICH FOLLOWED IT

As I have written, save for Huey MacGrath, we should have been away from Scotland at the time of the Allisons' ball, and by this absence should have missed the visit of the Duke of Borthwicke concerning the Light-House Commission, which fell at the same time.

His grace's letter to Nancy just previous to this return was filled with a droll cataloguing of all the good deeds which he was doing, in the manner of an exact invoice.

"I hope you will not be forgetting any of these, not even the smallest," he concluded this epistle, "for it is because of these I am going to ask you a favor, a great favor—the greatest favor on earth."

For the two or three days before this merrymaking Nancy was in a strange mood, of which I could make nothing, her gaiety being more pronouncedly gay, and her silences continuing longer than I had ever noted them. She spent much of her time in her own room, trying on and having refitted a wonderful gown which Lunardi had sent up from London by special carrier the week before. I knew women well enough to understand that she wished to outshine even herself in this first meeting with Danvers since his marriage, perhaps to show him that she wore no willows on his account, or perchance to make him a bit regretful of what he had missed.

On the evening of the rout the duke dined at Stair, purposing to go with us to the ball and to be set down at his tavern on our way home. Nancy, in a short-waisted black frock, sat with us at the meal, merry as a child, chattering of the coming party and her "braw new claes," as she called them, as if there were no trouble in the world, or as if she were exempted from it, if it existed. She spent an hour or more upon her dressing, returning to us a lovelier, fairer, more radiant Nancy than she had ever seemed before, even to my infatuated fatherly eyes. Nor was this thought mine alone, for I saw the start of surprise which Montrose gave at sight of her, and heard the sudden breath he drew as she came toward us from the hall.

Her skin, always noticeably white and transparent, seemed this night to have a certain luminous quality. Her cheeks were flushed, her gray eyes shone mistily under the black lashes and blacker brows, and the scarlet outline of her lips was marked as in a drawing. She wore a gown of palest rose, covered with yellow cob-webby lace, which was her grandmother's, the satin of the gown showing through the film which covered it like "morning light through mist," as I told her, to be poetical. The frock was low and sleeveless, the bodice of it ablaze with gems, and there was another thing I noticed with surprise and admiration. She wore her hair high, though loose and soft about the brows, and in the coil of it a large comb set with many precious stones. This jewel, originally designed to wear at the back of the head, she had turned forward, making a coronet over her brows, beautiful in itself, becoming in the extreme, and I noted that his Grace of Borthwicke let his eyes rest upon it with a peculiar pleasure.

He rose at her entrance and bowed very low, with pretended servility, resuming his usual manner before he said, with significance:

"The coronet becomes you, Nancy Stair."

And she looked back at him, with a low laugh, with no self-consciousness in it, however, as she answered:

"There is none more competent to judge of that than yourself, your grace."

We arrived late at the ball, to find the rooms already crowded, and the Arran party, with Sir Patrick Sullivan, gathered in a group by the large window of the music-room.

Jane Gordon held me in talk a minute as I passed her, and for this reason his grace offered his arm to Nancy, and as the two of them passed together a hush fell on the people at the sight of them, and I could see by significant glances and the jogging of elbows that Edinburgh folks would take the news of a betrothal between them with small surprise. Gordon told me later that some one suggested this in a veiled fashion to his Grace of Borthwicke, who might easily have turned the matter aside or noted it not at all, but that he laughed openly, saying:

"If it had lain with me, my engagement to Mistress Stair would have been announced the evening I saw her first. 'Tis the lady herself who refuses me," an attitude which, from one of his rank, was surely gentlemanly in the extreme.

As soon as I was disengaged from the Gordons I made my way toward the Carmichael family with joy in my heart to see my lad once more. He greeted me with affection, folding my hand in his as a loving son might do, rallying me on my good looks, patting me on the shoulder, and showing by every sign an honest fondness for me which touched me deeply. I could have wished that he looked better himself. He had lost no flesh; he carried himself with a jauntiness and elasticity which comes from strength, but the expression of his mouth was changed and his eyes had a restless, uninterested expression which showed him unsettled and unhappy.

Isabel looked ill at ease. She had lost her color, had taken on much flesh, and it seemed, as I observed her more, that it was from the father rather than the son that she obtained what comfort she had, for it was to Sandy she turned in all of the talk, and it was his arm upon which she leaned. Her manner to me was constrained, but not lacking in cordiality, and when I proposed that they should join our party she assented willingly enough. Because of this suggestion it fell that we met Nancy walking toward us on the duke's arm, and at the sudden sight of her Danvers Carmichael turned white and set his jaw as one who endures a physical hurt in silence.

And the rest of the evening was of a piece with life, wherein none can tell what latent qualities of our neighbor may be brought suddenly to the fore, upsetting every plan which we have made for years.

Whether Danvers lost every thought of behavior through his present unhappiness, or for the first time recognized what he had missed; whether the presence of his Grace of Borthwicke in such devoted attendance upon Nancy roused his jealousy, none could know, but he seemed to throw obligations to the wind, and bore himself as one who has a mind to drink his fill of present pleasure, no matter how extortionate the reckoning may be.

So it fell that from the first word spoken between Nancy and Danvers it was he who, by sheer recklessness, took the upper hand with her, the duke being pushed back, as it were, upon Sir Patrick or myself for company.

"I did not think to forget any of your loveliness, Miss Stair," Danvers said as Nancy's hand met his, "but I find I had; or mayhap you've added to it during my absence. A thing which I had held to be impossible."

"'Tis in France we learn such speeches," Nancy answered, lifting her brows.

"Wherever you are such speeches would be the natural talk," Danvers replied, and though he used a jesting tone in the words, his passion for her was so inflamed that the impression of the words was of great earnestness, and we—at least I speak for myself—were given a feeling of looking at love-making not intended for our eyes.

The entire evening was a most uncomfortable time, filled for me with fear of coming trouble as I noted Sandy's knit brows and his efforts to keep Isabel from the dancing-room where Nancy and Danvers were walking together through one quadrille after another, until the gossip of the town was like to take hold of the matter. It was a curious thing that in my anxiety I should turn for help against Danvers to the duke himself.

"Your grace," I said, trying to keep the tone a merry one, "you are neglecting the lady you escorted here to-night, are you not?" and he laughed in a dry way before he answered:

"In faith I think that it is the lady who is neglecting me. I'll stop it," he added. There was no "perhaps" or "if possible" in his tone.

"It would be best, I think, for all concerned," I answered at a sight of Isabel's pale face and Sandy's anxious eyes.

Upon the instant Montrose started toward the place where Nancy stood, a little apart from a group of gay people, so that her talk with Danvers could be in the nature of a private one, if desired. As the duke made his way toward her I followed a little in the rear. He was, as always, smiling, calm, master of himself and of others, and as he came toward her he asked, in a low tone of penetrating quality, which by intention conveyed both affection and the rights of ownership:

"You are not tiring yourself?" and turning to Danvers, he added, "You must help Lord Stair and myself to take care of her, Mr. Carmichael. She has not been well of late."

I can set the words out, but the solicitation, such as a lover, nay, a husband might have shown, are impossible to convey with any nicety; and at his coming, Nancy, who had had one experience of the clash of tempers between these two men, temporized the affair by saying:

"My father and his grace are surely right. I have not been well of late, and find it indeed time for me to say 'Good night.'"

* * * * *

Toward morning I was awakened by the noise of a loosened blind, and slipping into a dressing-gown went through the passage to fasten the latch. Passing Nancy's room I heard a moan, and, startled out of myself, listened to hear another, and still another, as though a heart were breaking. There was a light in the room, and through a small window in the door, the curtain of which was drawn a bit aside, I saw the little one whom I would gladly die to save from any pain, lying face down upon the floor, her arms stretched out, the hands clutched tightly together, and her whole body shaking as in mortal illness.

"Nancy, Nancy, let me in! Open the door to me," I cried.

She started to a sitting position, tried to arrange her disordered hair and gown, and I saw her cast a look in the mirror as she came toward the door, to see how far she could make me believe that nothing unusual was the matter with her.

"What is it?" I asked, my heart bursting with love and sympathy as I drew her to my breast.

She turned her eyes toward me, eyes which held the despair in them which only women know.

"Oh," she cried, clutching me to keep from falling, "didn't you see?"

"I saw nothing," I answered.

"I can't speak it," she says; "but another of life's lessons has come to me to-night. Do you remember the time I told you that I had learned something with my head? I learned it with my heart to-night, and it's like to kill me. Oh, what have I done?" she cried, "what have I ever done to deserve such punishment as this?"

"Tell me, Nancy," I said. "There is nothing in God's world that can't be helped by sympathy."

"I can't tell you. I can't put words to it. See!" she said, standing a bit apart from me. "Look at me! Do you know a girl more to be envied? Handsomer? Richer? More gifted? Think, too, of the advantages that I've had with Father Michel and Hugh Pitcairn to teach me! Think of the stir my songs have made! And at the end what am I?

"Ah!" she went on, "take any woman, any woman, educate her in the highest knowledges known, keep her with men, and far from her own sex, and at the end of it, what is she? A creature who wants the man she loves and babies of her own," and at these last words she broke into another storm of weeping which drove me wild with dread.

"Nancy," I cried, "think of your recent illness. For my sake try to control yourself more. There is the poor head to be thought of always."

"It's been this head of mine that's been my undoing, Jock," she answered, between her sobs. "All the trouble has come from that."

MacColl was off for Dr. McMurtrie before daybreak, and I sat holding Nancy's hand waiting for his coming, with Pitcairn's ancient statement going round and round clatter-mill in my brain:

"Ye can't educate a woman as ye can a man. With six thousand years of heredity, the physiology of the female sex, and the Lord himself against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter reared like other women, to fulfil woman's great end," and pondering over the fact that the great lawyer and Nancy herself seemed to have come to exactly the same conclusion.

I was alarmed by her pallor and exhaustion, but McMurtrie assured me that a sleeping potion would set her far along the road to recovery; and at breakfast, after Nancy had fallen into an induced sleep, unknown to himself he gave me what I felt to be the key to the whole bitter suffering she was enduring, suffering, I feared, which came from a love learned too late.

"Your friend Sandy will be a grandfather soon, I see," said the old doctor, beaming at me over his glasses as he drank his tea.

This was the beginning of a troubled time for all of us, and one which a partial biographer of Danvers Carmichael would like to slur over or leave untold entirely, for it seemed that neither reason nor self-respect could do anything with him in his thirst for Nancy's society. As soon as she was about again he was over at Stair, the excuse being some presents which he had brought us from the strange lands he had been visiting; his constant thought of her, even upon his bridal tour, being plainly shown by these: a ring from Venice, of wrought gold with aquamarines, some Spanish embroideries, quaint carvings; and finally he put the cap upon his extravagance by producing from an inner pocket a girdle of Egyptian workmanship, too valuable by far for her to accept from him.

"Surely, Dandy," I broke in at this, "ye must see that Nancy, no matter what the old-time affection between us may be, can not take such gifts from you?"

"Why not?" he answered, looking straight at me.

"It might be misinterpreted," I began, lamely.

"By whom?" he inquired.

"Not by us," I replied, "but by others."

"And what others are to know?" he demanded. "I am not going to make the matter of a gift public business."

There was something in me which made it impossible to mention his wife to him, but Nancy said, with gentleness and great wisdom, as it seemed to me:

"They are beautiful, and I would love to have them from you, Danvers; and some time, when Isabel and I become great friends, I'll ask them of you, maybe; but I can not take them now."

The next morning brought him back, with some strange translations and stranger foreign prints, where he knew my weakness; and I sat with the two of them, laughing and criticising the pictures or the writings until the luncheon time came, when it was impossible to turn a friend out of one's house, and I urged him myself to stay with us, by which it was near three when he set back to Arran Towers.

On the following morning he came again, with a flimsy excuse concerning a mare he was thinking of purchasing; and so, by this and by that, he managed to spend most of his time at Stair, and in Nancy's society, seemingly unconscious of a wife he left at Arran for Sandy to console.

I grew so anxious that I lost sleep, my appetite went from me; I would waken in the morning with a load on my breast as of guilt, and the thought before me of having a situation to handle which by a mistake of mine might be turned to a tragedy.

Walking from the burn with Father Michel one day we saw Danvers Carmichael striding through the Holm gate toward Stair House, and the glance that passed between us told me without words that the holy father's thought was mine, which was that two people near Edinbro' Town were playing very close to the fire.

"I've had some thought to speak to him of his conduct," Father Michel said, "but it would have more effect coming from you, my lord."

As I entered the house, with a purpose half formed, I found Danvers in the hall talking to Dickenson, by whom Nancy had sent word that one of her headaches was upon her, and that she was, by reason of it, unable to see any one.

The concern in Danvers's manner, the unconscious exhibition of tenderness in his voice, stiffened my half-formed resolution, and I did just what the impulse bade me.

"Step into the library here, Danvers," said I. "I want a word with ye."

He gave me a questioning look, following me with no words and stood waiting for me to speak after I had cautiously closed the door.

"It's just come to this, Dandie," I said, "you must stop coming to this house as ye do! Until ye had a wife there was never one who entered the door more welcome, but as long as I have Nancy Stair to think about, ye'll just have to end these visits entirely. With the matter of an old love between you, an affair known to the whole town as well, your conduct is fair impossible, and, what is more, misunderstood!"

And here again a difficult thing in him to handle appeared; never in his life had he known fear and a lie was a stranger to his lips, for his birth, gear, and rearing had given him a secured position in which he did as he chose, with excuses to none, and a be-damned-to-you attitude to all who found fault with him, and it was with the candor and shamelessness resulting from these that my dealings lay.

"Misunderstood—how?" he repeated after me like an echo.

"Well," said I, "the gossips will be having it that ye're in love with my daughter still."

"Lord Stair," says he, "whether the gossips speak it or not is of little moment to me, but it's the truth before God! There was never another woman in the world like her, and from the moment I set eyes upon her I've loved her and wanted her for my wife. I love her more now since I have known what I missed; what I missed!" he repeated, his face working in a kind of agony and his eyes swimming with tears. "Oh," he continued, "what a wreck I have made of my life!"

"There's no need, by the same token," I cried, "to make a wreck of another's as well. Ye've a wife at home, a wife who loves you and whom you swore to love and honor. I have my daughter's reputation to think of, and the end of the whole matter is you'll just have to make your visits less frequent."

He had never come to me for sympathy before when he had not found it, and the sorrow in his face melted me more than was wise.

"Say once a fortnight, or such like," I said weakly. "Considering the relations between your father and me, visits so spaced might pass unnoticed. But I tell you honestly, Danvers Carmichael, when a man loves a woman whom he can't have, there is nothing for it but a good run and a far one. You'd better stay away altogether, laddie. It's the wisest course."

He left me with no further word, and I hoped that he had come to my way of thinking, when Satan himself took a hand in the affairs between Nancy and himself.



CHAPTER XXII

A STRANGE MEETING

Upon the day following that on which I denied Danvers the house, a letter came to us from a hamlet on the west coast, near Allan-lough, saying that Janet McGillavorich was sick unto death and desired that Nancy should come to her immediately.

It was a tedious journey, and while I sorrowed for the cause of it, I was glad to have her away from Stair for a while, and hastened her departure with Dickenson on the afternoon coach of the same day upon which the letter arrived. Even with this speed it was far into the second day before she came to the house in which Janet was lying; a house which seemed to have straggled back from the sea and stood lonesomely by itself in a small fenced garden having a gate-and-chain opening to the graveled path. It was a double-storied dwelling of pink brick, with small-paned windows and ivy creeping over it everywhere, even upon the wooden cap of the doorway, which hung over the two broad stone steps of the entrance.

There was no time to knock before the door was opened to Nancy by the old woman who had been for many years Janet's maid, companion, and housekeeper, whose eyes were red with weeping and whose whole bearing denoted the greatest anxiety.

"She's took worse," she said. "It's thought she will not last the night."

"Will she know me?" Nancy asked.

"Oh, aye! She's her wits about her still. She knew Mr. Danvers," the old wife replied.

"Mr. Danvers," Nancy repeated after her. "Is Mr. Danvers here?" And at the words Danvers himself came forward to greet her.

"Are you cold?" he inquired, in the whispering tone used when sickness is near. "This has been a dreadful trip for you to take. You must have some hot tea at once." And, as the old woman bustled away to prepare it:

"Were you sent for, Danvers?" asked Nancy.

He nodded acquiescence, answering:

"The two of us are named in the will," the tears coming to his eyes as he spoke of Janet's kindness.

Tea had scarce been brewed when the old doctor came from above to say that Mrs. McGillavorich had heard of Nancy's arrival and wanted to see her immediately, adding, with some philosophy:

"It excites her so not to get her own way, that it couldn't excite her more to have it; so just go up, my dear, go right up!"

In this way, at the time of their lives when each was least prepared for trial and bitterly unhappy, it fell that Danvers and Nancy were thrown together in an intimacy impossible under other circumstances; relieving each other in the watching, sitting together by the bedside through the long hours of the night, or walking back and forth in each other's company to the little village on needful errands for the small household. In the tiny dining-room Nancy served at one side of the table while Danvers carved at the other, the suggestiveness of such an arrangement sending disordered longings to the hearts of both.

One dreadful night when Janet, who was barely conscious, clung to Nancy's hand, although the girl's head ached miserably and she had had no sleep for forty-eight hours, she showed by a sign to Danvers her intention to remain by the bedside in the great arm-chair. Her weariness and suffering made his heart yearn over her, and he leaned forward from the place he sat to put his hand upon her aching brow. His soothing touch, or perhaps a cause more subtle still, comforted her, and she fell asleep, to find the gray light of morn and Danvers, motionless beside her, having sat all those weary hours with his arm in a position which it must have tortured him to maintain. On the instant of her awakening she said, in a whisper:

"Your poor arm, Danvers! Your poor arm!"

And the strain of his mind showed in the answer:

"I would lose an arm altogether for what I have had to-night."

At the end of the fifth day Janet was so far recovered that she was able to sit up for a while against the pillows, and from this on her convalescence was a rapid one, although the tenth day had gone by when she told Danvers, with her customary frankness, to be off about his business. The evening before his departure, Nancy and he sat in Janet's room, fearful of being alone together for even a minute, and past eleven they parted for the night, in the old lady's presence, speaking their farewells in gay voices, with many assurances of meeting again in Edinburgh at some near time.

"I went to my room, Jock," Nancy said, when she told me this tale, "locked and bolted the door, and built a great fire in the chimney, for I was shivering from head to foot. And I thought of you! Only of you! Your love for me! The touch of your kind hands! Your dear gray head!—and before every other thing in life was the thought to do nothing to shame you, nor to cause a pain to that true heart of yours. And then I got down on my knees at the bedside like a little child and prayed to God.

"'O God,' I cried, 'take this pain from my heart, for I can no longer endure it. It's killing me. It's killing me, here, all alone! away from Jock Stair! And if You will do this thing I will never ask another of You in all my days!' Trying to make a compact with my Maker," she finished, "like a foolish child——"

She heard the clock strike four, and knowing the hour near when he must leave, crept to the window to see if enough light had come for her to have a sight of him as he went down the path. While she stood peering out into the darkness, she heard a rap at the bedroom door.

"Who is it?" she cried.

"It's I—Danvers Carmichael!" came a voice, low but very distinct; at sound of which she unbarred the door and slipped into the hallway.

He had made himself ready for his departure; his great coat, with the cape drawn up, already on, his cap upon his head, and a lighted lantern beside him, casting an eerie gleam along the black passage. He was white to the lips, his eyes sunken and reckless, and at sight of him Nancy cried in alarm:

"What is it, Danvers? What is it?"

"Oh, my girl!" said he. "It's just this! I can't go away and leave you here! I can never go and leave you any more! The thought of it chokes me! I love you, love you, love you!" he went on, "with all there is of me. Last year I offered you love and honor. This year it's love and dishonor, maybe, but love still, love that is greater than shame or death. Will ye come away with me? There are other lands than ours and other laws. Bigbie's lugger is lying at the foot of the hill with sail up for Glasgow, and from there the world lies open for us.

"Oh, best beloved," he went on, "think of it! Does it mean anything to you?—to be alone together, forever more? Do you know what it is to waken with outstretched arms, longing for another, to——"

"I have suffered, Danvers," Nancy interrupted him. "I made mistakes, bitter mistakes, my head being so engaged with other matters that I lost the chart of woman's nature. And when I saw——" she paused at this, for it was something she could not bring herself to speak out; but words were unneeded between them, for his eyes sought hers hungrily, and they stood at gaze with each other for a space before Danvers cried:

"And to think it's not you—to think it's not you!" he repeated, with a moan like an animal in pain. "God!" he went on in his raving, "I can not and will not stand it longer! Why is a love like this given to a man? Do we choose? Have I had any choice in the matter? Whoever it was who designed the peculiar hell of my own nature can take the consequences of it. Speak to me, Nancy!" he cried; "speak to me! Do not stand there looking at me like a statue! For God's sake, speak—for it seems as though I should kill you and myself, and so make an end."

His grief had so worked upon him by this time that Nancy was beside herself with fear for him, although she spoke quietly and in as natural a voice as she could summon.

"I'll go with you, Dandie," she said; "I'll go with you. Wait for me," reentering her room; "just wait for me!"

It took her but a moment to get some stout walking-boots, a dark skirt, and the scarlet Connemara cloak which she had worn on many of their walks together, and pulling the hood of it over her head, she stepped softly back into the hallway.

"I am ready," she said, slipping her hand into his; "I am ready. Let us go."

There was no further word spoken between them. In silence they walked, hand in hand, along the frozen passage and down the twisting stairs, closing the house door noiselessly behind them. Outside it was very dark, save in the far east, where there was a rim of white showing in the sky like a line on a slate. The cold was biting, and a wind which had not reached the ground blew through the tree-tops with a rushing sound and sent a scurry of leaves before them on their path. Danvers had prepared himself by a lantern, and there seemed something significant of the business in hand in his determination to leave it behind; it was in the blackness of midnight, with a silent country stretching away from them in every direction and the stillness of the dead, that the two walked the narrow path and turned into the lane which led by a cut over the rise toward the Dumfries road. At the coming out of the close-way a chill wind struck them, and Nancy, taken suddenly from the warmth of bed, drew back and shivered, at which Danvers put his arm around her, throwing part of his cape over her. Still in silence, they walked until they came to the brow of the hill, at which place the path divides, one part of it winding across the bridge to the stage road, and the other dropping down by a clump of sailors' homes, west, to the sea. Enough light had come by this time to see the boats lying at anchor in the cove and to distinguish Bigbie's lugger from the rest, as she bobbed up and down, her sails spread and ready to be off. At the sight of this boat Danvers turned suddenly, as if recalled to his senses, and faced Nancy, as they stood at the parting of the ways.

"God forgive me!" he cried. "Oh, God forgive me, but I can't do it! I can't take ye. Not though you begged me on your knees; not though I knew you'd die without me. Oh, can you ever forgive the words I've said to you this morning? Will ye think rather that I'd choose to see ye dead than gone with me in the way I've asked? That I'd rather die myself than take ye; and that I love you, love you enough to give you up! And it's I," he went on in a bitter self-scorn, "who have prated of honor, and the conduct of gentlemen, who have made a beast of myself before the best woman who ever lived! Who through selfishness have tried to make her life a blacker ruin than I've made my own! Can you forget it, Nancy? Can you ever forgive me for it?"

"Dandie," she said softly, "ye needn't worry about that. I knew you wouldn't take me! I knew 'twas just that you were carried beyond yourself by your sorrows that made you talk as you did at the bedroom door. Look!" she said, opening the throat of the Connemara cloak and showing him the neck of her thin white dressing blouse, "one doesn't start to the Americas in clothes like that. I knew what you were and understood; knew that, given your way, you would choose the best, as you have done!" she cried, with the tears in her eyes. "Ye've stood before temptation! You've done the thing that's right when it was hard to do! and I'm proud to have seen you as I have this morning."

They were both crying by this time as they stood with hands clasped, on one side the calls of the sailors coming up the slope, on the other the echoes of a horn rolling along the frozen ground from the coach which came to carry Danvers away.

"I may kiss you before I go?" he asked, with a longing in his tone pitiable to hear.

"If ye think it's right," she answered. "If ye think that when ye look back to this time in the years to come you will be happier to remember that ye kissed me, than to think you kept the vows you swore before God, ye may kiss me if ye choose!"

The choice was made in silence, and he dropped her hands, picked up the valise which had fallen by his feet, and turned to go. At sight of this resolution Nancy burst into tears.

"Oh," she cried, "God bless you! God bless you, dear! And give you peace!" as, without touching even her hand, Danvers Carmichael fared forth alone, along the stage road which lay lonesome and frozen in the shadow of the night.



CHAPTER XXIII

A FALSE RUMOR CAUSES TROUBLE

While these events were going forward at Allan-lough I sat in an ignorant complacency at Stair, pleased with the advices of Janet's convalescence, and with no knowledge whatever of Danvers Carmichael's whereabouts save that he was from Arran Towers. My lack of knowledge concerning his movements occurred by reason of a new trouble which broke out at this time between his father and Hugh Pitcairn concerning a watercourse which crossed the adjoining lands of both, somewhere back in the country. The water was of no use to Sandy, and equally valueless to Hugh; but the fact that one of them wanted it heightened its value to the other, and talk went back and forth, with Sandy deaving my ears concerning his rights on Monday, and Hugh going over the same ground, looking the other way, on Tuesday, until I was driven from Stair and avoided both, spending my time at the clubs, the coffee-houses, or with Creech and his queer old books.

Coming down the steps of his shop on the morning of the twelfth of February—I recall the date because it was the beginning of all the troublous times at Stair—I encountered James Gordon, looking both worried and perplexed.

"John," said he, "you are the very man to help me from an embarrassing position. My wife and daughter have been taken with a fever; our town-house is small, and I have invited Borthwicke to stay with us during the meeting of the Lighthouse Commission——"

"Let me have him at Stair," I cried. "Nancy is from home, I am leading a bachelor life, and you will be showing a kindness to send me such good company as John Montrose."

In this entirely unplanned manner the duke became my visitor, and I found him a merry companion, easy, accessible, agreeable; praising my wines, naming my house the most attractive place in Scotland, and my daughter the most wonderful woman in the world; and I wandered abroad no more, but stayed at home, like a cream-fed cat by the fireside, his grace making the time gay with his tales, his wit, and his worldly wisdom. He urged me to accompany the commission to the northern coasts, and one day, when I was debating whether to join in this expedition or to go down to the West and visit Nancy, the girl settled the question for me herself by appearing at Stair, and at the first sight of her my heart sank within me. She had become much thinner, there was the pallor of sickness in her face, and a weakness both in voice and body as she clung to me, telling me her joy at seeing me again and that she would never leave me more. The news of Borthwicke's presence in the house she received with some surprise, which showed neither pleasure nor regret, going immediately to her rooms, however, making her long journey an excuse for dining alone.

It was after luncheon on the following day that old Dr. McMurtrie came into the library and addressed me, with some heat and scant apology.

"John," said he, looking at me over his glasses, "I am going to make myself disagreeable. I am going to be that damned nuisance, a candid friend; but somebody's got to speak to you, for you're just letting that girl of yours kill herself."

I stared at him in speechless wonderment.

"She's killing herself," he went on, relentlessly. "And when it's too late you'll see the truth of it. No girl's body is equal to the excitement she's had for years, ever since she was a baby, in fact, with her charities and her Burn-folking and her verse-writing. It's all damned nonsense," he summed up, succinctly, "and it's for you to stop it.

"Instead of helping her get out a second edition of poems," he went on, "ye'd show more sense if you put your mind to considering the problem of how much work a woman can do in justice to the race. Every female creature is in all probability the repository of unborn generations, and should be trained to think of that solemn fact as a man is taught to think of his country."

"Some women," I answered, testily, "are forced to work daily at laborious tasks to support families——"

"And others," he interrupted, "squeeze their feet and give each other poison; but they are not my patients, and Nancy Stair is. And I think you'll find that the women who work, as ye say, do most of it with their bodies, not with their heads or their nerves, and it's in work of this kind the trouble of female labor lies. Nancy should save her vitality. She should store it up for wifehood and motherhood. She'll be a spent woman before she has a husband, and your grandchildren puny youngsters as a resulting. Think it over, John," he concluded; "think it over."

He was scarce out of the house when Nancy appeared from the garden, coming over to the place I sat to put her hand on my shoulder.

"I'm thinking of marrying John Montrose, Jock," she said, with no introduction whatever.

"Ye have my own gentle way of breaking news to people, Little Flower," I said; and then: "Do you love him, Nancy? Or, what is more to the point, are you in love with him?"

"Neither," she responded; "but I have grown to believe in him, in spite of his past, and love may come," and here she clasped her hands together and her eyes widened with pain as she said: "I have had a great temptation, Daddy. A great temptation, and I want to put away any chance of it ever coming to me again. I could be true to another always when I might not——"

"Nancy," I interrupted, drawing her down on my knee, "there is no greater mistake a woman can make than to think that marrying one man will help her to forget another; for there is just one thing worse than not having the man you want, and that is having the man you don't want. And if you're not in love with Montrose, you'll never get my consent to the wedding, not if he were the Prince himself."

On the morning following these talks the duke, who was still with us, sent excuses to the breakfast-room that he had passed an uneasy night and would rest until noon; and his valet, who brought this message, ended by saying:

"His grace is not well. His grace should have a doctor, for he had the bleeding from the lungs again last night, although it would be worth my place if he knew I mentioned it to your lordship."

In our foggy country a little throat trouble is no great matter, but I ordered my horse for town, meaning to get McMurtrie out, as if by accident, to see what attentions the duke might require; and riding in some haste by the Bridge end, found a group of men, with papers in their hands, discussing some bit of news with much interest. As I drew near them, Dundas waved the journal at me and called out:

"Our congratulations, John."

I reined in my horse, asking the very natural question, upon what I was to be congratulated, when Blake handed me a copy of The Lounger, indicating a certain paragraph for me to read. The notice began:

"We understand that the long-expected betrothal between his Grace of Borthwicke and Mistress Nancy Stair, only daughter of Lord Stair, is announced," the penny-a-liner going on with much wordiness to state the time and place fixed for the coming marriage, and even the shops in London from which the trousseau was to come.

"Gentlemen," I cried, "upon my honor there is not a word of truth in all of this," and, securing a copy of the miserable sheet, turned back to Stair to discover from Nancy whether to deny the announcement by direct statement or let the rumor die in silence.

I entered the house by the side door which leads to the music-room, outside of which I paused, astonished at the sound of angry and excited voices within the apartment. As I listened, wondering if some new trouble was upon us, I recognized Danvers Carmichael's tone, and almost upon the instant of this recognition, heard him cry out:

"I will save you the promising, for I swear he shall never live to marry you!"

His Grace of Borthwicke being within possible earshot of this altercation, I decided to leave Danvers to Nancy's management, and hurried up the winding stairs to hold the duke's attention until Danvers had left the house.

Looking down into the main hall as I ascended the stair I saw Hugh Pitcairn rise from a couch upon which he had been lying and cross to the far window with some suddenness of manner, and knew by instinct that he had realized the talk was not intended for his ears, and had hastily changed his position, like the man of honor that he was.

Finding that the duke had not left his apartment in my absence I crossed to my own room, where I was not alone above five minutes before Nancy joined me.

"Mr. Pitcairn is below, waiting for the duke to affix some signatures," she said; and then:

"Danvers Carmichael has been here, too. He saw an announcement in The Lounger that I was betrothed to his Grace of Borthwicke, and came by to tell me—as you did yourself," she ended, with a smile, "that the wedding would have to take place without his approval."



CHAPTER XXIV

THE MURDER

Up to this point there are many events which I have drawn with blurred edges by reason of the distance of time; but from this to the end of my story I have the pettiest details of it in mind, many of them with a horrid distinctness.

On the evening of the twenty-third the Armstrongs held a dance in honor of the marriage of their daughter Jean with one of John Graham's lads, and a number of young folks were bid to dinner before this festivity should begin, Nancy being one of the number. His Grace of Borthwicke and I were asked for the dancing, a courtesy which he declined by reason of his indisposition, as well as from the fact that he was to start for the Highlands in the morning. Almost immediately after our dinner he excused himself to me, saying that an important letter must be got off on the early post. And his breeding was shown in the fact that he allowed no doubt to remain with me that this was any invented excuse to avoid my society, for he stated to whom the epistle was destined, and the need for its immediate sending, a point of conduct which seemed to me gentlemanly in the extreme.

"It's a letter to Pitt," he said.

"Ye are great friends now, are ye not?" I asked.

"He is the nearest friend I have in all the world," he answered. "We are both rhymesters," he added with a smile. "But this letter is a business one, for I have advices from France for which he is waiting, and they must be sent in cipher because of the trouble brewing in that country. If I do not get the letter off to-night he may not receive it for a fortnight, as he accompanies his Majesty to the country on Friday."

"Why not send it by special carrier?" I asked.

"It's not important enough for that," he answered lightly, as he crossed to Nancy's writing-room, which had been given to his use as an office during her absence at Allan-lough.

Left with the evening on my hands, I set out for Creech's with no weightier purpose than to divert myself and have some merry talk over a bowl of punch; but, as I entered, Blake, who was throwing dice with Dundas at the other end of the room, called to me to ask if I had heard whether Mr. Pitcairn was better.

"Is he ill?" I asked in surprise, as it was but the morning before he was at Stair.

"He was carried from the court this afternoon," he answered, and at the words I took up my coat and started for Pitcairn's house to see if there was some help that I could offer. I found him wrapped in flannels in front of a great fire in his own chamber, in as vile a frame of mind as I have ever seen any human being, bearing his indisposition as unphilosophically as I might have done myself, and I spent a highly uncomfortable, dry, and sober evening with him, escaping from his society somewhere at the back of the midnight with a feeling of relief and the intention of getting something to drink. Going down, unattended, I pulled the house-door hard after me to close it for the night, when Pitcairn called me from the window above to ask that I stop by the chemist's and hurry along a draught for which he was waiting.

A light and tricksey snow had begun to fall while I was in the house; snow which blew in gusts, now from one side, now from another; snow which came crosswise, to be caught by the high wind and carried up to the tops of the houses; and over all and around all the fog of the sea and beaten bells sounding far away, as of ships in trouble or as warnings from the shore.

I pulled my hat over my eyes, turned the collar of my great-coat around my ears, and took to the middle of the road, looking round warily from side to side to make sure that I was followed by none, for the town had been greatly excited during this winter by statements in the public prints of mysterious disappearances. Folks had been suddenly missed from their own doorways, of whom no subsequent traces could be found; visitors entering the city were lost sight of; Irish haymakers on their road to the agricultural districts of the lowlands had disappeared from their companions as if by magic, and suspicions of a dreadful nature were abroad.[9]

[9] Benson's Noted Trials.

It was a uncanny night, black as chaos; and with my mind excited by these horrid tales, I hurried along to the chemist's, whose man was outside putting up the shutters. I stated my errand to the doctor, who said he would carry the medicine himself, as Mr. Pitcairn's house lay on the road to another patient with whom he had promised to pass the night. This occurrence seems of small moment, and I but set it down to show how slight a thing may turn many lives, for it was this very dose of rhubarb and jalap which brought about much of the trouble toward which we were drawing.

Starting again toward Stair I came directly upon some of the town-guard, who, with flaming torches held aloft, were carrying a couple of drunken wretches to the gaol. Turning to look after them I became aware that a man had stepped from the shadow and was walking beside me, going in the same direction, but at a much quicker gait than my own. By the uncertain flare of the torches I saw that he was tall, carried himself with distinction, and, what seemed markedly strange on such a night, wore no covering whatever upon his head. I felt that he noted me not at all, and as the gloom swallowed him up, saw him throw out his hand with a significant gesture, as of one who has neither hope nor courage.

It was this motion which made my heart give a sudden leap and set it throbbing light and quick in my throat, for the belief came to me that the stranger was none other than Danvers Carmichael, though any reasonable explanation for his being abroad alone at such an hour and going toward Stair was far from clear to me. My first thought was to call out to him, but a bit of caution held me back, and upon thinking it over I made sure that my eyes and the fog had combined to deceive me, and I put the thing out of my mind altogether and hurried on toward home. Nearing the house I kept close to the high stone wall for protection against the wind, thinking to enter the grounds from the lower carriage-way, but the gates were closed, and I was forced to the main gate, the irons of which were swung far back.

As I turned into the path my eye was caught by a wide cone of light which came from the window of the room in which I had left his Grace of Borthwicke. Looking more attentively, I saw to my amazement that the window nearest the writing-table was wide open, and I thought to go directly to this place, for there was a low porch outside from which an entrance to the house could be effected. I had started across the lawn when I heard a pistol shot, followed by a pause, and then another, quick upon the heels of the first, which had seemed to come from the house. But the second, whether because of my confusion of mind or the blowing of the wind, appeared to have been somewhere behind me, and with a thought for my own safety I stepped under some frozen vines which hung above the gateway. As I did so, a small figure, coming from I know not what direction, passed through the cone of light. It ran low to the ground and light, and with incredible swiftness disappeared somewhere in the rose-garden by the south wall. Then a silence fell, and for a few seconds I stood waiting to hear a disturbance in the house, but finding naught happening I ran up the path in a preternatural hurry of spirits, and set the knocker of the main door clanging so that it might disturb the dead.

Even with all this racketing it was full five minutes before Huey MacGrath stuck his head, with a white nightcap upon it, from the attic window, holding a lighted candle high in his hand as he peered into the dark.

"I'll have ye arrestit!" he called down.

"Whist, Huey!" I cried. "It's I, the laird himself. There're burglars in the house!"

"Ye've no been drinkin'?" he shouted back, questioningly.

"Didn't ye hear the shots?" I asked.

"I heard nothing," he answered in an unconvinced manner.

"Do you want to be murdered in your bed?" I called up to him, "rather than come down to see what's going about?"

"There's just naething the matter at all," he returned. "Ye've been drinkin'. Is Rab Burns with ye?" he asked, resting his elbows imperturbably on the window-ledge.

His conduct, in my excited state, enraged me to the extent of using language which acquainted him with my wishes if not with my sobriety, and I noted him withdraw his head hastily, and the light grow bright and dim, and bright again, in his turning of the stairs, before the bars were let down and the door opened to me.

"There's just naething the matter at all," was his greeting. "Aye, ye will have been drinkin'!"

Although he carried such a brave front I saw that he had taken the precaution to bring an old blunderbuss with him, and two of the serving-men, who appeared from a rear stairway in a sleep-befuddled condition.

As we stood in the silence of the great dark hall a fear came over me that I had up-turned the house to no purpose, but underneath it lay the premonition of a great trouble, a feeling so strong that I was unable to put it by. The doors on both sides of the hall were closed, and there was no light save one small gleam which trickled from the keyhole of Nancy's writing-room. Advancing to the door I rapped boldly upon it, and waited for the duke to bid me enter; no voice answered, nor was any sound to be heard save the tick, tick, tick of a great clock that stood near. Again I beat upon the door, and called Montrose loudly by name, and with baited breath listened to the tick-ticking of the clock, and nothing else.

"He's fell asleep," Huey suggested, and upon this, thinking the door locked, I threw my weight against it, precipitating myself into the room with unnecessary violence, to find the duke sitting at the desk, his head thrown back upon the cushions, and one hand on the arm of the great chair in an attitude of peaceful slumber. But there came to me a dread of the sleep which could keep a man of his temperament unconscious while the house was being pulled about his ears. As I drew nearer to him the wind from the opened casement blew the curtains far into the room and rustled the papers on the table, the light of which was pushed back and the papers redd up, as if the business of the evening were by with.

I stepped softly to the sitting man and touched him on the shoulder, and, as I did so, fell back with a loud cry, while a voice with which I seemed to have nothing to do cried out:

"He's been murdered! He's shot! He's dead!"

I can not recall what other words this personless voice cried out, but I know that I stood staring at this man who but a few hours before had been so hated, feared, aye, and admired; staring at his dreadful pallor, his inhuman repose, and his inscrutable smile, as he sat before me with the blood trickling down the side of his face from a bullet-hole just over the temple.

In the first sight I had of him I knew that he was dead; the feeling of death was around him; there was death in the air, in the awful serenity of the pale face, in the hands which lay motionless and relaxed, as if surrendering all; in the faint smile, as though Death himself had come before the great man's vision and had been regarded calmly before his work was done; and while the four of us were standing, drunk with fear at this awful sight, there came to us the sound of carriage-wheels and gay voices, and before the power of action was with any of us, Nancy stood in the doorway, her eyes filled with laughter, her scarlet lips curved backward in a smile as she came forward to the place where I stood.

"Are ye giving a ball while the mistress of the house is from home?" she inquired, gayly; and, as the queerness of our actions struck her: "What is it?" she cried; and again, "What is it?"

To save her, some power of thought came back to my disordered mind.

"Come away, Nancy! Come away with me!" I cried; but before I could reach her she had moved forward toward the dead, her head lowered, her eyes widened with terror, and at sight of the blood clapped her hands over her eyes to shut out the horrid sight, and went white, and but for me would have fallen.

The telling of this takes longer than the acting of it, for it was less than a minute before she called, with some authority in her tone:

"Send them away, Jock. Send them all away! Leave me alone with him."

I motioned the men from the room. It was the common belief that his grace was Nancy's accepted lover, and there seemed nothing strange in her request to be alone with him. As I came back she held me by the sleeve.

"Have you found anything——" she began. "Do you know of anybody?"

"Nothing has been found," I answered, and a look passed between us which told me that my dread was her own.

"Jock, darling," she went on, "stay here! but don't see anything you may have to tell of afterward," and a vision of the hatless man in the snow came back to me at her words.

"Fetch me some water," she went on, "and let none come in but you."

I stood holding the door ajar while the water for which she asked was being brought; but though my back was toward her I knew she made a hasty move between the open window and the desk, and as I drew near again she pointed out a pistol lying directly under the duke's left hand, at sight of which I fell back with a cry of dismay, for it was one of a brace which I had given Danvers Carmichael on his birthday two years before.

How this could have escaped my sight at the first look I had of the dead was a thing I could not understand, for it lay well in the light, and by its reflections would naturally be an object to hold the eye, and even in my confusion of mind I felt certain that it had been placed there since my first entrance to the room.

Turning to Nancy for some explanation, I found her conduct of a piece with the rest of her life, for every power of her mind was focused on present action, and there was something unnatural, beyond belief, and not like a feminine creature, in the manner with which she stood regarding each object in the room, and at sight of this self-control McMurtrie's talk came back to me.

"I will not have you here," I cried, putting my arm around her to lead her away. "It's horrible—horrible to think of such a trial for you," to which she paid no heed whatever, drawing herself from me in silence, to cross to the open window and peer out into the night.

"Thank God!" she cried, "it's snowing in clouds. It will be a foot deep by morning! But we must make an effort to search the grounds. We must seem to leave nothing undone," and the thought being conceived, it was executed on the instant.

"Why do you stand doing nothing?" she cried, throwing the door back and confronting the huddled servants. "Get your lanterns out, and the coach-lamps as well; the murderer may not be far gone. Search the carriage-way toward the town," she called twice, and even in the confusion I knew she was sending them as far from the road to Arran as she could.

Father Michel, Jamie Henderlin, and some other of the burn people had arrived by this time, but it was Nancy who thought for all of us, refusing to go to her rooms, and insisting upon taking a part in the search with us. Aside from the strain upon her, I was grateful in my soul for this determination, for laws and courts and country notwithstanding, my mind was fixed to do everything possible to prevent suspicion falling on the son of Alexander Carmichael, who, I began to fear, would be accused of a hand in the affair.

During the rest of the night, through all the talk and the searching of the grounds, there were two lines of thought in my mind, the one planning, explaining, and excusing Danvers, the other seeming to assist in present conduct and to suggest immediate courses of action.

It was Nancy herself who was first upon the little balcony of the window by which the dead man was still sitting. Father Michel, Huey MacGrath, and I followed, and going down the steps I struck my foot against some light object, kicking it far ahead of me, and on the instant Nancy sprang forward, leaned over and picked up something in the snow.

"What is it?" I cried.

She held out to me the piece of lace she had worn as a head covering to the dance—held it far out, so that all could see what it was, but made no response in words—and after the fruitless search was finished consented to go to her room. As I stood by her door, undecided whether or not to tell her of the hatless man I had met in the snow, she suddenly threw her arms wide apart and dropped unconscious at my feet. I lifted her up, wild with this new anxiety, and as I did so the lace unrolled, and from it fell a cap, with snow upon it, a man's cap with a strangely embroidered band which Nancy had worked for Danvers Carmichael the summer before. At sight of it I could have cried out as a woman does, for I knew it to be the object I had struck with my foot under the window, and the last hope for Danvers Carmichael seemed to vanish from my mind at sight of it.

Her consciousness was not long in returning, and before it came back I had wrapped the cap in the lace again, trusting her woman's wit to do the wise thing concerning it.

"Leave me alone, Jock," she said suddenly, as to my amazement she went to the wash-hand-stand, filled the basin with cold water, and dipped the whole top of her curly head into it.

"There must be no trifling with headaches to-night!" she explained. "I've others to think of than myself. Pray for me, dearest!" she cried, putting her hands on my breast and looking up pleadingly in my eyes. "Pray for your little girl, as she sits here all alone. Pray that I may have presence of mind!" and God knows the awe I felt as I saw the courage and spirit in that slim girlish body.

"Nancy," said I, for I felt that without words, we were banded together for the protection of a life dear to both of us, "with your knowledge of the law——" but before I could finish she interrupted me:

"Yesterday in my presence Danvers Carmichael threatened the duke's life not once but many times, with Pitcairn lying just outside the door. The law!" she cried. "It's not the law I'm afraid of—it's Hugh Pitcairn!"



CHAPTER XXV

THE TRIAL

The great duke lay in state in St. Giles, and the Highlands emptied themselves into Edinburgh demanding justice. The lady-mother of the dead was there, broken-hearted, and Percival Montrose, to whom the title fell; and I had a fine taste of the fealty of Gaelic-folk, for kinsfolk and clansfolk took the duke's undoing as a personal affront, and put their own matters by to get some one hanged for it.

The streets, especially those around the courts, were thronged with the late duke's following; unkempt, hot-eyed, bare-legged gillies were grouped at every corner, glowering under their tartan bonnets; I found a huddle of them squatted behind some alders on the Burnside, and came upon another set by the carriage-way, who glared at me as I passed them as if I had had some part in the undoing of their clansman.

During this time Nancy lay ill, for which, strange as it seems, I praised God, for the sickness saved her from the horrors of the coroner's inquest, McMurtrie coming to my aid in the matter by declaring it worth her life to be dragged into the affair. There was nothing more definite elicited from this tribunal, constituted largely of men under heavy obligations either to Sandy or myself, than "Death at the hands of a person or persons unknown," but the relief which came with the verdict was of short duration.

How rumor is bred none can tell, but on the day following the coroner's findings there was a waif-word wandering about that Danvers Carmichael knew more than he had told of the duke's taking off; and whether bred by servants' gossip or the talk of the fool chemist-doctor who had taken the medicine to Pitcairn on the night of the murder and encountered Danvers hatless in the snow, I can not say; but by the evening there rose a strong demand for his arrest, and two officers appeared at Arran and took the lad into custody.

Nancy, who had not left her room from that dreadful night, but who had recovered herself enough to sit up a little at a time, received the news in silence, asking if it were possible for me to get the exact testimony given before the coroner for her to see; and going through it, sitting in the bed, with flushed face and feverish eyes.

"It's not so bad," she said, as she put it aside; "not so bad. Will ye ride out and ask Mr. Pitcairn to come to me?" she asked.

"Pitcairn? Ye'll not be wanting Pitcairn," I answered. "It's Magendie we are having up from London for the defense."

"I—want—to—see—Mr.—Pitcairn," she said slowly.

"I don't understand at all," I answered. "When you refuse to see Sandy, who, in his own great distress, has never forgot you for a moment, I don't see why you should be sending for Pitcairn."

"I want to see neither Sandy nor any of the Arran people," she answered.

"And you've no word of comfort for Danvers?" I asked.

"None," she returned. "I have not one word of comfort or anything else to send to Danvers Carmichael, and I'd like to have it generally known."

Although I saw him not, I knew that Pitcairn came to Stair that afternoon; but, before God, by no message carried by me; and the following morning I visited him in his offices, finding him at a desk in the inner room looking frozenly out under his dome-like forehead in a way to suggest that his natural greeting would be: "What are you prepared to swear to?"

"Hugh," said I, "ye've doubtless heard of the trouble young Mr. Carmichael is in——" here I waited.

He nodded, as one might who had but a certain number of words given him at birth and was fearful that the supply might run out.

"It has occurred to me," I went on, "that your old friendship for me and my old friendship for Sandy being common knowledge, ye might show a fine courtesy by standing aside in the case and letting Mr. Inge take it altogether. Such a thing can be done, I know, for when the Lord-President himself had Ferrars to try, who was a known man to him, he asked to be relieved from presiding."

"I attended to the duke's affairs when he was living. I shall attend to them now that he is dead," he replied stolidly. "There is an ethical side to the matter as well, for I believe him to have been killed by the young——" he caught himself at this, with a correction. "I have my beliefs in the case," he amended. "But ye can rest by this, if a man is innocent of a crime in this country he can prove it. It is a prosecution, not a persecution, that will be conducted by the government."

And here a lighter vein seemed to take him, for he added:

"And so, Jock Stair, you would come to me to use an old friendship to buy the laddie off! Ye're a nice citizen; a fine, public-spirited body!"

"Hugh Pitcairn," I answered, "if you were in trouble, and it needed the last shilling I had in the world to help ye, you'd find me beside ye, with it held out in my hand; and it seems a little thing I am asking of you, and not for myself either——"

"Your daughter's a better man than you," he broke in on me. "It was a fine thing she did—a fine, public-spirited thing!"

"Ye've trained her well in the lawing," I said, leading him on a bit, for Nancy had held the silence of the dead concerning the murder since the day of his visit, and I had no knowledge of what he meant.

"Mark you," he said, and there was almost a glow upon his face, "the first day that she was able to sit up after her illness Nancy Stair sent for me. 'Mr. Pitcairn,' said she, 'a most unwelcome task has come to me, and I am needing your advice.' And on this she went over the talk, part of which I had overheard, between herself and the young Carmichael, with neither heat nor fallacy of emphasis, as accurately as I might have done myself," he ended, as though higher praise were inconceivable.

"There's a girl for ye!" he cried. "I've set but little store by her verse-making; or her charity work, which is sentiment; but by the lawing the very female quality of her mind has been changed, for she is able to put a duty to her country before her own feelings. Ye might take a lesson from your daughter in that, Jock Stair!" he finished.

I rode back to Stair on a gallop and went straight to Nancy's room.

"What is this ye've done?" I cried. "What is this thing that ye've done against the man who has loved ye ever since his eyes lighted upon you, and whom your own indecision has helped to the place he now stands?"

There was a look of reproach in her eyes as she sat looking up at me, but her words were quiet enough.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I've been having a talk with Pitcairn——" I began.

"For Heaven's sake!" she cried, springing to her feet. "It was the thing I wanted least. What did you tell him? Oh, what did ye tell him?" she asked excitedly.

"I told him nothing," I answered.

"You think you didn't, dearest," she answered; "but it's not in your nature to keep a secret. 'Tis because you're a fine gentleman, with never a thought in your life that needs hiding; but it's bad in law! Stay away from Hugh Pitcairn, dearest. Stay away from him!"

"Nancy," said I, and my flattered vanity softened my tone, "I don't understand your conduct at all; for, as far as I can see, you seem to have done all ye could to get Danvers Carmichael hanged——"

"Seemed, Jock," she said, "only seemed! Ye might trust me a bit more——"

"And you're called for the prosecution——"

"Naturally," she returned, unmoved.

And here I just stared at her for a minute, and turned with a bit of temper showing in my conduct and left the room.

The same evening I was further blindfolded by a visit from Mr. Magendie, the London lawyer, who by Nancy's thought (although I did not recognize her suggestion in the matter at the time, so deftly was it made) had been brought up to Edinburgh for Danvers's defense. I found this renowned gentleman of a slight, wiry build, below the medium height, with a distinguished head, covered with thick silver hair, hawk eyes, and a nose which turned downward like a beak. There was a Sabbath calm in his manner; his voice was gentle and suave, and his most pertinent statements came as mere suggestions. He had, I noticed, the very rare quality of fixing his whole attention on the one to whom he listened, and of putting his own personality somewhere aside as he held up the speaker to the strong light of a mind trained for inspection. I found after the interview that I had told him almost everything that I had said, done, or imagined since my birth, and at remembrance of it, recalled Nancy's inquiries concerning my talk with Hugh, and prayed Heaven I had not been equally indiscreet before that block of steel.

It was as the London man was leaving the house that the blindfolding of me was begun anew by Huey MacGrath entering with a note, saying that Nancy would like to have Mr. Magendie come to her sitting-room on the second floor. I paced up and down the lower hall, perplexed in mind and sick with dread of the horror hanging over us, yet with something in my heart which told me that, in spite of Hugh's statements, Nancy Stair was with us—with Sandy, and Danvers, and myself.

Near one o'clock of the morning I heard Nancy's voice, at the turn of the stair, saying good night to the London man.

"People think he's ice," she cried, and I knew it was Pitcairn of whom she spoke; "but try a bit of flattery with him. Not on his looks, for he cares less for them than for the wind that blows, but on his abilities. Tell him that all knowledge of the Scots law will end at his death, and that you're flattered to be on the same case with him; tell him that Moses but anticipated him in the Ten Commandments, and that, before the time of Leviticus, he was. He will rest calm under it. He will show naught; but in his soul he will agree with you, and think that a man who has such penetration concerning himself must have a judgment worth consideration about others."

I heard Magendie laugh aloud, and when I joined him saw that his eyes had brightened during the interview, as though he had been drinking, and that he carried himself with some excitement.

"It will be a great case, my lord! a great case!" he said, with enthusiasm. "And it's a fine daughter ye have! A great woman! God!" he cried, seizing my hand, "if she'd go on the case with me, I'd undertake the defense of Judas!—and I'd get a verdict, too!" he added, with a laugh, as he went out into the night.

On the morning set for the trial, to add to our distressed state of mind, a tempest arose. There was rain driven into the town from the hills, and rain driven into the town from the sea, and banks of leaden clouds were blown back and forth over the trees, which were bent double by the Bedlamite wind. The grounds of Stair lay like a pond, the road ran like a river, and the broken bits of trees hurled everywhere made going abroad a dangerous business. As I entered the breakfast-room Huey threw a look at my attire.

"You'll not be thinking of going out?" he demanded, rather than asked.

"I'm thinking of nothing else," said I.

"Ye'll get killt," he cried, and at the words my eyes lighted with some amazement upon his own odd costume, for he was prepared to serve my breakfast in corduroys and thigh-boots.

"Why are you dressed like that?" I inquired.

"You wouldn't be wanting me to stay at home when there's trouble to Mr. Danvers, would you?" he demanded fiercely. "I, who have known him since he was a week old, and have had favors from him thousands of times! And now," he went on as though I had done him some personal injury, "when there's sorrow by him, ye'd have me keeping the chimney-lug, wi' a glass and a story-book, mayhap, and him needing friends as he sits wi' that deevil Pitcairn glowerin' at him. Nay! Nay!" he continued, "Huey MacGrath's not like that! I'll be there!" he cried, his conceit and loyalty carrying a singular comfort to me. "I'll be there, early and late, and they'll see they have me to contend wi'!"

"Ye can't stay in the court. You'll be sequestered until after you've testified. Ye know the law for that, Huey."

"They'll sequester me none"; he returned, grimly; "and if Dunsappie the macer tries it I'll have him read out of the church, for I know of him that which makes me able to do it!"

"There's Mr. Pitcairn, who knows ye well," said I.

"I'm not counting to see him," he returned with a squinting of his eye. "I'll stay where he is nae looking; but I'll get a glyff of the laddie himsel', and he'll know I'm there, and will feel better for it, though I'm only an old serving man!"

"I'm sure he will, Huey," I said, touched to the heart; "I'm sure he will; and I'll tell him of your coming if he misses a sight of you," I added, as I saw the poor fellow's face working with sorrow and anxiety; but his spirit and loyalty undaunted by all the courts of judiciary that ever sat.

We were preparing to be off together when Nancy came down to us, pale and heavy-eyed.

"Jock," said she, "if Mr. Magendie had the word he hoped for from Father Michel, it would be wise for him to have as many Romanists in the jury as he can get. They have reason to know the priest's goodness." And then: "Jock, darling!" she cried, throwing her arms around my neck and weeping as though her heart would break, "there's a trial coming between us; and ye'll see me misjudged by the world, and by Sandy as well, who has been like an own father to me! And by him!—him, too! You'll all be ashamed of me; but when I'm called, mayhap to-morrow or the next day," and the little hands fastened themselves around my bare throat, "don't distrust me. Beloved, don't distrust me! Don't believe I'm bad, or wanting in loyalty to the dear ones of my life. Don't believe it, though ye hear me say it myself. I can abide all that's come to me, but to have something between us!" and she buried her face in my bosom, moaning like a hurt child.

"Nancy," said I, for the sight of any suffering of hers made me like a crazy man, "you've held yourself aloof from me, and have given out by your conduct that your sympathies are all for the prosecution; but in spite of it, if an angel from Heaven were to call you guilty of disloyalty to a friend I'd give him the lie, though I were damned for it!" I cried.

"Mine Jock," she said, "mine Jock!" and, comforted by the very violence of my language, she stood quietly by the window watching Huey as he waded through the river of water underneath which the road toward Edinburgh lay.

Sandy had remained in town over night to be with his boy at the earliest possible moment, and we sought him at the coffee-house where he had slept. He had his friends with him, but there were none to whom he paid attention save to me, holding my hand in his, and breathing deep in a kind of relief as I stood by him.

I asked him how Danvers bore himself, and he answered, with a courage and fortitude beyond belief, and that Magendie gave him comforting assurances. Of Nancy no word was spoken between us, for the hurt he had received from her conduct put an edge upon his suffering keener than he could bring himself to name, and there came upon me, at the sight of this pain, the impulse to tell him my own suspicions in the matter, but caution for the cause held me back.

Fierce as the morning was, the court-room was packed when we entered. I had asked and received permission to sit beside Sandy until such time as the empaneling should begin; and as we took our seats in that dread place I had a taste of the terror of the law which daunts my spirit to this day. It's one thing to read of murders by one's fireside, speculating over the evidence like a tale, and another to sit face to face with the charges and the life of one most dear dependent on the issue. And such was the awe inspired by the dreadful surroundings that when Carew, the Lord-President, in the wig and scarlet robes of criminal jurisdiction, preceded by the macers, took the bench, my body shook as though in mortal illness, from fear of the august power he represented, and this despite the fact that I'd drunken deeper than was wise with him many times in my early days and knew him to be sodden in his affection for Nancy from the time she had taken the case out of his hands for Jeanie Henderlin. When Danvers, who was by far the most composed of any of us, was brought in, I arose, laying my hand on his shoulder as we talked, determined that the whole town should know where my beliefs and sympathies lay.

There was little difficulty in getting the fifteen jurymen, and, as I was taken away to be sequestered, a thing happened which I tell for the love I have of human nature. There was a commotion at the door of the court-room, and I heard the macer's tones threatening some one, and then a clear voice crying:

"If you don't let me in I'll break every bone in your body," and Billy Deuceace, hard-ridden and disheveled, elbowed his way to the railing itself and held out both hands to Danvers.

"Couldn't get here any sooner, old man," he cried. "Have ridden all night! Just came up to say it's all damned nonsense, you know!" he finished, and I felt that a happier beginning could scarce have occurred for us.

I was not in the court-room when the case opened, and by this reason am forced for information to the papers recording the case, which forms one of the causes celebres of Scottish legal history. Even at this distance of time, at sight of these old files I feel again the helplessness and miserable sinking of heart which I felt the first time I read the indictment of Pitcairn against the boy whom I loved, no matter what he had done; and I write it again, no matter what he had done.

"The trial of Danvers Carmichael for the murder of John Stewart Aglionby Montrose, Duke of Borthwicke, Ardvilarchan, and Drumblaine in the Muirs, Lord of, etc., before the Lord-President Carew, beginning Tuesday, March tenth, 1788.

Counsel for the Crown

Mr. Pitcairn Mr. Inge

Solicitor

Mr. Caldicott

For the Prisoner

Mr. Magendie Mr. Elliott

Solicitor

Mr. Witmer

taken in shorthand by John Gurney of London.

"After addressing the bench, the case was opened for the prosecution by Mr. Pitcairn, as follows:

"GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY:

"The crime imputed to the prisoner at the bar is that of wilful murder, effected by means and in a manner most abhorred. Such an accusation naturally excites the indignation of honest minds against the criminal. I will not endeavor to increase it, and it is your duty to resist it and to investigate and determine the case wholly upon the evidence which will be placed before you.

"On the night of the twenty-third of February, 1788, John Stewart Aglionby Montrose, Duke of Borthwicke, was found, between the hours of midnight and one of the morning, dead in a desk-chair, in a chamber on the ground floor of Stair House, near Edinburgh, by Lord Stair and his serving-men, Huey MacGrath, John Elliott, and James MacColl. The window by the late duke it will be proven was wide open, forming an easy entrance from outside; a pistol, the property of the accused, was found lying by the chair upon which the duke sat, and a wound above the temple of the deceased was discovered, made by a bullet similar to those used in the pistol before mentioned.

"It will be proven by testimony of such a character and from such a source as to render it singularly forcible, that on the morning of the day previous to the night of the murder the accused had threatened the duke's life, applying vile and scurrilous names to the deceased; repeating these threats several times and in various forms.

"It will be proven that there had existed for the accused one of the most powerful incentives to murder known, in the fact that the late duke and he loved, and had loved for some time past, the same lady, Nancy, daughter to Lord Stair; that both had addressed her in marriage, and that in September last the quarrel between them rode so high that a meeting was arranged between the late duke and the accused; and there will be testimony to show that the duel was averted by the late duke's apologizing to Mr. Carmichael, a course urged upon him by the lady herself.

"It will be proven that in October past, after a bitter quarrel with Miss Stair, the accused espoused in a hasty (and in a person of his rank and station), unseemly manner, his mother's cousin, Miss Isabel Erskine; that since that time he has been little in her presence, leaving her alone at the time when a woman most needs the comfort and support of a husband's presence, and paying marked attentions, both in public and private, to the first lady of his choice.

"It will be proven that on the day preceding the murder there was published in an Edinburgh paper called The Lounger the news that an engagement of marriage had been contracted between the late John Stewart Aglionby Montrose, Duke of Borthwicke, Muir, etc., and Mistress Nancy Stair, only daughter of John Stair, Lord of Stair and Alton in the Mearns.

"It will be proven that immediately upon reading this the accused came directly to Stair, and after entering unannounced into the room where the lady was sitting, asked her if the tale were true, calling the late duke a thiever from the poor, a seducer of women, a man drenched in all manner of villainy, and one whom he would rather see her dead than married to. That he had declared that he still loved and had always loved her, that his marriage was but the result of a crazy jealousy, and besought her to promise him that she would never marry the duke. It will be proven by two competent witnesses that upon her refusing to do this, the accused had cried out, 'I will save you the promising, for I swear he shall never live to marry you.'

"It will be proven by a physician of repute that within ten minutes of the time of the murder the accused was seen, hatless, walking very fast or running away from Stair House toward his own home of Arran, and this along a very secluded and unusual path.

"In conclusion, testimony will be brought to show that the day before the murder the accused made an agreement with a boatman of Leith to keep a boat ready for him at an hour's notice, either for Ireland or France.

"It may be urged that this testimony, even if fully established, is purely circumstantial, for that none saw the accused commit the fatal deed. To this I would answer:

"The true question is, not what is the kind of evidence in this cause, but what is the result of it in your minds.

"If it fail to satisfy you of the guilt of the prisoner, if your minds are not convinced, if you remain in doubt, you must acquit him, be the evidence positive or presumptive, because the law regards a man as innocent so long as any reasonable doubt of his guilt exists. But if, on the contrary, you are convinced of the fact, if there is no chance for a reasonable doubt to exist, it is imperatively your duty to yourselves, to your country, and to your God to convict, even if the evidence be wholly presumptive."

I set this extremely dry document down exactly as it is recorded in the files for two reasons: first, that it contains all of the charges against Danvers, and to show how black the case stood against him when I say that all Pitcairn said he would prove he proved to the last letter.

After my own testimony was taken, the nature of which is already known, I was granted the privilege of sitting beside Sandy and his boy, the three of us being joined daily by Billy Deuceace, whom I love to the minute of this writing for his devotion to my lad.

Nancy's appearance in court was naturally looked upon as the most exciting point of the trial, and the morning she was to be called the crowd was dense to suffocation, the court-officers busy, dashing to and fro, trying to keep some orderliness among the women, who jostled each other and gave vent to loud exclamations of annoyance in their efforts to get places from which the best view might be obtained. It is curious to note the way some trivial vexation will linger in the mind, for in recalling this scene it is the annoyance I had from Mrs. MacLeod, mine landlady of the Star and Garter, that stands out clearest in my memory of that dreadful waiting time.

She sat well to the front, giving herself important airs, and I could hear her going back and forth in whispers over the story of Nancy's visiting the duke at her house to obtain the pardon of Timothy Lapraik. Wagging her head to and fro, applying her smelling-salts vigorously, and assuming the manner of an intimate sufferer in the cause, she exasperated us to such an extent that Billy Deuceace was for throwing her out of a window.

When Nancy entered every eye in that immense throng was fixed upon her, and as she stood, so fair to see, in her black hat and gown, waiting to take the oath, Mrs. MacLeod's feelings overcame her entirely, and she cried out, in a loud voice: "Ah, the beauty! 'Tis her that should hae been a duchess!" immediately falling into strong hysterics, upon which the macers summarily ejected her, to our great satisfaction, and Billy Deuceace all but cheered.