the young lawyer, surprised and overawed, forbore, as he
had intended, to snatch the letter from his hand, and confined himself
to bitter complaints of the impropriety of his conduct, and of the light
in which he himself must be placed to Redgauntlet should he present him
a letter with a broken seal.

'That,' said Father Buonaventure, 'shall be fully cared for. I will
myself write to Redgauntlet, and enclose Maxwell's letter, provided
always you continue to desire to deliver it, after perusing the
contents.'

He then restored the letter to Fairford, and, observing that he
hesitated to peruse it, said emphatically, 'Read it, for it concerns
you.'

This recommendation, joined to what Provost Crosbie had formerly
recommended, and to the warning which he doubted not that Nanty intended
to convey by his classical allusion, decided Fairford's resolution. 'If
these correspondents,' he thought, 'are conspiring against my person,
I have a right to counterplot them; self-preservation, as well as my
friend's safety, require that I should not be too scrupulous.'

So thinking, he read the letter, which was in the following words:--

'DEAR RUGGED AND DANGEROUS, 'Will you never cease meriting your old
nick-name? You have springed your dottrel, I find, and what is the
consequence?--why, that there will be hue and cry after you presently.
The bearer is a pert young lawyer, who has brought a formal complaint
against you, which, luckily, he has preferred in a friendly court.
Yet, favourable as the judge was disposed to be, it was with the utmost
difficulty that cousin Jenny and I could keep him to his tackle. He
begins to be timid, suspicious, and untractable, and I fear Jenny will
soon bend her brows on him in vain. I know not what to advise--the
lad who carries this is a good lad--active for his friend--and I have
pledged my honour he shall have no personal ill-usage. Pledged my
honour, remark these words, and remember I can be rugged and dangerous
as well, as my neighbours. But I have not ensured him against a short
captivity, and as he is a stirring active fellow, I see no remedy but
keeping him out of the way till this business of the good Father B----
is safely blown over, which God send it were!--Always thine, even should
I be once more CRAIG-IN-PERIL.'

'What think you, young man, of the danger you have been about to
encounter so willingly?'

'As strangely,' replied Alan Fairford, 'as of the extraordinary means
which you