ded, that he
should prevent any stranger from being unnecessarily made acquainted with
her family affairs. It was in such a crisis that Jeanie's active and
undaunted habits of virtuous exertion were most conspicuous. While the
Captain's attention was still engaged by a prolonged refreshment, and a
very tedious examination, in Gaelic and English, of all the prisoners,
and every other witness of the fatal transaction, she had the body of her
brother-in-law undressed and properly disposed. It then appeared, from
the crucifix, the beads, and the shirt of hair which he wore next his
person, that his sense of guilt had induced him to receive the dogmata of
a religion, which pretends, by the maceration of the body, to expiate the
crimes of the soul. In the packet of papers which the express had brought
to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by
his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found
new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God he
had taken that measure.

Ratcliffe, to whom all sorts of misdeeds and misdoers were familiar,
instigated by the promised reward, soon found himself in a condition to
trace the infant of these unhappy parents. The woman to whom Meg
Murdockson had sold that most unfortunate child, had made it the
companion of her wanderings and her beggary, until he was about seven or
eight years old, when, as Ratcliffe learned from a companion of hers,
then in the Correction House of Edinburgh, she sold him in her turn to
Donacha dhu na Dunaigh. This man, to whom no act of mischief was unknown,
was occasionally an agent in a horrible trade then carried on betwixt
Scotland and America, for supplying the plantations with servants, by
means of _kidnapping,_ as it was termed, both men and women, but
especially children under age. Here Ratcliffe lost sight of the boy, but
had no doubt but Donacha Dhu could give an account of him. The gentleman
of the law, so often mentioned, despatched therefore an express, with a
letter to Sir George Staunton, and another covering a warrant for
apprehension of Donacha, with instructions to the Captain of Knockdunder
to exert his utmost energy for that purpose.

Possessed of this information, and with a mind agitated by the most
gloomy apprehensions, Butler now joined the Captain, and obtained from
him with some difficulty a sight of the examinations. These, with a few
questions to the elder of the prisoner