by what the Duke of Argyle has just said to Mr. Macintosh._' O,
it's been a scandal!

"The great Argyle 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 owercome. And it was
forced home upon my mind how this, that had the externals of a sober
process of law, was in its essence a clan battle between savage clans. I
thought my friend the Writer none of the least savage. Who, that had
only seen him at a counsel's back before the Lord Ordinary, or following
a golf-ball and laying down his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have
recognised for the same person this voluble and violent clansman?

James Stewart's counsel were four in number--Sheriffs Brown of Colstoun
and Miller, Mr. Robert Macintosh and Mr. Stewart, younger of Stewart
Hall. These were covenanted to dine with the Writer after sermon, and I
was very obligingly included of the party. No sooner the cloth lifted,
and the first bowl very artfully compounded by Sheriff Miller, than we
fell to the subject in hand. I made a short narration of my seizure and
captivity, and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances
of the murder. It will be remembered this was the first time I had had
my say out, or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the
consequence was very dispiriting to the others and (I must own)
disappointing to myself.

"To sum up," said Colstoun, "you prove that Alan was on the spot; you
have heard him proffer menaces against Glenure; and though you assure us
he was not the man who fired, you leave a strong impression that he was
in league with him, and consenting, perhaps immediately assisting, in
the act. You show him besides, at the risk of his own liberty, actively
furthering the criminal's escape. And the rest of your testimony (so far
as the least material) depends on the bare word of Alan or of James, the
two accused. In short, you do not at all break, but only lengthen by one
persona