The Collected Adventure Tales of R. L. Stevenson (Illustrated Edition). Robert Louis Stevenson

in the mouth of a stair, where he made me a signal and immediately vanished. Seven storeys up, there he was again in a house door, the which he looked behind us after we had entered. The house was quite dismantled, with not a stick of furniture; indeed, it was one of which Stewart had the letting in his hands.

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

      “How’s it with Alan?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “It will bear that colour,” said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “Is not this against the law?” I asked

      “I cannot say so much,” he replied. “It was a favour so natural and so constantly rendered (till this nonesuch business) that the law has never looked to it. And now admire the hand of Providence! A stranger is in Fleming’s printing house, spies a proof on the floor, picks it up, and carries it to me. Of all things, it was just this libel. Whereupon I had it set again - printed at the expense of the defence: sumptibus moesti rei; heard ever man the like of it? - and here it is for anybody, the muckle