e of their daughter Jean with one of John Graham's lads,
and a number of young folks were bid to dinner before this festivity
should begin, Nancy being one of the number. His Grace of Borthwicke
and I were asked for the dancing, a courtesy which he declined by
reason of his indisposition, as well as from the fact that he was to
start for the Highlands in the morning. Almost immediately after our
dinner he excused himself to me, saying that an important letter must
be got off on the early post. And his breeding was shown in the fact
that he allowed no doubt to remain with me that this was any invented
excuse to avoid my society, for he stated to whom the epistle was
destined, and the need for its immediate sending, a point of conduct
which seemed to me gentlemanly in the extreme.

"It's a letter to Pitt," he said.

"Ye are great friends now, are ye not?" I asked.

"He is the nearest friend I have in all the world," he answered. "We
are both rhymesters," he added with a smile. "But this letter is a
business one, for I have advices from France for which he is waiting,
and they must be sent in cipher because of the trouble brewing in that
country. If I do not get the letter off to-night he may not receive it
for a fortnight, as he accompanies his Majesty to the country on
Friday."

"Why not send it by special carrier?" I asked.

"It's not important enough for that," he answered lightly, as he
crossed to Nancy's writing-room, which had been given to his use as an
office during her absence at Allan-lough.

Left with the evening on my hands, I set out for Creech's with no
weightier purpose than to divert myself and have some merry talk over a
bowl of punch; but, as I entered, Blake, who was throwing dice with
Dundas at the other end of the room, called to me to ask if I had heard
whether Mr. Pitcairn was better.

"Is he ill?" I asked in surprise, as it was but the morning before he
was at Stair.

"He was carried from the court this afternoon," he answered, and at the
words I took up my coat and started for Pitcairn's house to see if
there was some help that I could offer. I found him wrapped in flannels
in front of a great fire in his own chamber, in as vile a frame of mind
as I have ever seen any human being, bearing his indisposition as
unphilosophically as I might have done myself, and I spent a highly
uncomfortable, dry, and sober evening with him, escaping from his
society somewhere at the back of the midnight w