In the course of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. He
sat a second stupefied, then tore a half-leaf out of the Bible,
scrawled upon it with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word
to his next neighbour. The note came to Prestongrange, who gave me
but the one look; thence it voyaged to the hands of Mr. Erskine;
thence again to Argyle, where he sat between the other two lords of
session, and his Grace turned and fixed me with an arrogant eye.
The last of those interested in my presence was Charlie Stewart,
and he too began to pencil and hand about dispatches, none of which
I was able to trace to their destination in the crowd.
But the passage of these notes had aroused notice; all who were in
the secret (or supposed themselves to be so) were whispering
information--the rest questions; and the minister himself seemed
quite discountenanced by the flutter in the church and sudden stir
and whispering. His voice changed, he plainly faltered, nor did he
again recover the easy conviction and full tones of his delivery.
It would be a puzzle to him till his dying day, why a sermon that
had gone with triumph through four parts, should this miscarry in
the fifth.
As for me, I continued to sit there, very wet and weary, and a good
deal anxious as to what should happen next, but greatly exulting in
my success.
CHAPTER XVII--THE MEMORIAL
The last word of the blessing was scarce out of the minister's
mouth before Stewart had me by the arm. We were the first to be
forth of the church, and he made such extraordinary expedition that
we were safe within the four walls of a house before the street had
begun to be thronged with the home-going congregation.
"Am I yet in time?" I asked.
"Ay and no," said he. "The case is over; the jury is enclosed, and
will so kind as let us ken their view of it to-morrow in the
morning, the same as I could have told it my own self three days
ago before the play began. The thing has been public from the
start. The panel kent it, 'YE MAY DO WHAT YE WILL FOR ME,'
whispers he two days ago. 'YE KEN MY FATE BY WHAT THE DUKE OF
ARGYLE HAS JUST SAID TO MR. MACINTOSH.' O, it's been a scandal!
"The great Agyle he gaed before,
He gart the cannons and guns to roar,"
and the very macer cried 'Cruachan!' But now that I have got you
again I'll never despair. The oak shall go over the myrtle yet;
we'll ding the Campbells yet in their own town. Praise God that I
should see the day!"
He was leaping with excitement, emptied out his mails upon the
floor that I might have a change of clothes, and incommoded me with
his assistance as I changed. What remained to be done, or how I
was to do it, was what he never told me nor, I believe, so much as
thought of. "We'll ding the Campbells yet!" that was still his
overcome. And it was forced home upon my mind how this, that had
the externals of a sober process of law, was in its essence a clan
battle between savage clans. I thought my friend the Writer none
of the least savage. Who that had only seen him at a counsel's
back before the Lord Ordinary or following a golf ball and laying
down his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have recognised for the
same person this voluble and violent clansman?
James Stewart's counsel were four in number--Sheriffs Brown of
Colstoun and Miller, Mr. Robert Macintosh, and Mr. Stewart younger
of Stewart Hall. These were covenanted to dine with the Writer
after sermon, and I was very obligingly included of the party. No
sooner the cloth lifted, and the first bowl very artfully
compounded by Sheriff Miller, than we fell to the subject in hand.
I made a short narration of my seizure and captivity, and was then
examined and re-examined upon the circumstances of the murder. It
will be remembered this was the first time I had had my say out, or
the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the consequence was
very dispiriting to the others and (I must own) disappointing to
myself.