r 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
personage, the chain that binds our client to the murderer; and I need
scarcely say that the introduction of a third accomplice rather
aggravates that appearance of a conspiracy which has been our stumbling
block from the beginning."

"I am of the same opinion," said Sheriff Miller. "I think we may all be
very much obliged to Prestongrange for taking a most uncomfortable
witness out of our way. And chiefly, I think, Mr. Balfour himself might
be obliged. For you talk of a third accomplice, but Mr. Balfour (in my
view) has very much the appearance of a fourth."

"Allow me, sirs!" interposed Stewart the Writer. "There is another view.
Here we have a witness--never fash whether material or not--a witness in
this cause, kidnapped by that old, lawless, bandit crew of the Glengyle
Macgregors, and sequestered for near upon a month in a bourock of old
cold ruins on the Bass. Move that and see what dirt you fling on the
proceedings! Sirs, this is a tale to make the world ring with! It would
be strange, w