man, and when am I to see it again?"

"As to when you'll see it--why, just 'when the King enjoys his ain
again,' as the auld sang says."

"Worst of a', Robin," retorted the Bailie. "I mean ye disloyal
traitor--worst of a'! Ye had better stick to your auld trade o'
theft-boot and blackmail than ruining nations. And wha the deevil's
this?" he continued, turning to me.

Owen explained that I was young Mr. Frank Osbaldistone, the only child
of the head of the house, and the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, having
undertaken Owen's release, took me home to sleep at his house.

I was astonished that Mr. Campbell should appear to Mr. Jarvie as the
head of a freebooting Highland clan, and dismayed to think that Diana's
fate could be involved in that of desperadoes of this man's description.

The packet which Diana Vernon had given me I had opened in the presence
of the Highlander, for the ten days had elapsed, and a sealed letter had
dropped out. This had at once been claimed by Mr. Campbell, or Rob
MacGregor, as Mr. Jarvie called him, and the address showed that it had
gone to its rightful owner.

Before we parted, MacGregor bade me visit him in the Highlands, and I
kept this appointment in company with the Bailie. Strange to say, in the
Highlands I met Diana Vernon, escorted by a single horseman, and from
her received papers which had been in Rashleigh's possession. There was
fighting in the Highlands, and the Bailie and I were both more than once
in peril of our lives.

_IV.--Rob Roy to the Rescue_

No sooner had we returned from our dangerous expedition than I sought
out Owen. He was not alone--my father was with him.

The first impulse was to preserve the dignity of his usual
equanimity--"Francis, I am glad to see you." The next was to embrace me
tenderly--"my dear, dear son!"

When the tumult of our joy was over, I learnt that my father had arrived
from Holland shortly after Owen had set off for Scotland. By his
extensive resources, with funds enlarged and credit fortified, he easily
put right what had befallen only, perhaps, through his absence, and set
out for Scotland to exact justice from Rashleigh Osbaldistone.

The full extent of my cousin Rashleigh's villainy I had yet to learn. In
the rebellion of 1715, when in an ill-omened hour the standard of the
Stuart was set up, to the ruin of many honourable families, Rashleigh,
with more than another Jacobite agent, revealed the plot to the
Government. My poor uncle