had got possession of it, came rushing and shouting on board. I knew every
face at once, though some were changed--with illness, years, or sorrow.

Perhaps few such scenes had ever before been witnessed on the Broomielaw,
for those men were arrayed in the full Scottish costume and wore the
M'Crimman tartan, and their shouts of joy might have been heard a good
half-mile off, despite the noises of the great city.

How they had heard of our coming it never occurred to me to inquire.
Suffice it to say that here they were, and I leave the reader to guess the
kind of welcome they gave us.

No, nothing would satisfy them short of escorting us to our hotel.

Our carriages, therefore, to please these kindly souls from Coila, were
obliged to proceed but slowly, for five pipers marched in front, playing
the bold old air of 'The March of the Cameron Men,' while the rest, with
drawn claymores, brought up the rear.

On the very next day Townley, Archie, and I received a message from M'Rae
himself, announcing that he would gladly meet us at the Royal Hotel in
Edinburgh. We were to bring no advocate with us, the letter advised; if
any dispute arose, then, and not till then, would be the time to call in
the aid of the law.

I confess that I entered M'Rae's room with a beating heart. How would he
receive us?

We found him quietly smoking a cigar and gazing out of the window.

But he turned with a kindly smile towards us as soon as we entered, and
the next minute we were all seated round the table, and business--_the_
business--was entered into.

M'Rae listened without a word. He never even moved a muscle while Townley
told all his long story, or rather read it from paper after paper, which
he took from his bag. The last of these papers was Duncan's own
confession, with Archie's signature and mine as witnesses alongside
Moncrieff's.

He opened his lips at last.

'This is your signature, and you duly attest all this?'

He put the question first to Archie and then to me.

Receiving a reply in the affirmative, it was but natural that I should
look for some show of emotion in M'Rae's face. I looked in vain. I have
never seen more consummate coolness before nor since. Indeed, it was a
coolness that alarmed me.

And when he rose from the table after a few minutes of apparently
engrossing thought, and walked directly towards a casket that stood on the
writing-table, I thought that after all our cause was lost.

In that casket