ld yourself aloof from me, and have given out by
your conduct that your sympathies are all for the prosecution; but in
spite of it, if an angel from Heaven were to call you guilty of
disloyalty to a friend I'd give him the lie, though I were damned for
it!" I cried.

"Mine Jock," she said, "mine Jock!" and, comforted by the very violence
of my language, she stood quietly by the window watching Huey as he
waded through the river of water underneath which the road toward
Edinburgh lay.

Sandy had remained in town over night to be with his boy at the
earliest possible moment, and we sought him at the coffee-house where
he had slept. He had his friends with him, but there were none to whom
he paid attention save to me, holding my hand in his, and breathing
deep in a kind of relief as I stood by him.

I asked him how Danvers bore himself, and he answered, with a courage
and fortitude beyond belief, and that Magendie gave him comforting
assurances. Of Nancy no word was spoken between us, for the hurt he had
received from her conduct put an edge upon his suffering keener than he
could bring himself to name, and there came upon me, at the sight of
this pain, the impulse to tell him my own suspicions in the matter, but
caution for the cause held me back.

Fierce as the morning was, the court-room was packed when we entered. I
had asked and received permission to sit beside Sandy until such time
as the empaneling should begin; and as we took our seats in that dread
place I had a taste of the terror of the law which daunts my spirit to
this day. It's one thing to read of murders by one's fireside,
speculating over the evidence like a tale, and another to sit face to
face with the charges and the life of one most dear dependent on the
issue. And such was the awe inspired by the dreadful surroundings that
when Carew, the Lord-President, in the wig and scarlet robes of
criminal jurisdiction, preceded by the macers, took the bench, my body
shook as though in mortal illness, from fear of the august power he
represented, and this despite the fact that I'd drunken deeper than was
wise with him many times in my early days and knew him to be sodden in
his affection for Nancy from the time she had taken the case out of his
hands for Jeanie Henderlin. When Danvers, who was by far the most
composed of any of us, was brought in, I arose, laying my hand on his
shoulder as we talked, determined that the whole town should know where
my belie