that I should comment on his design to visit me? but I observed James to
sit up with an air of immediate attention.

"Is that not Alan Breck that was suspected of the Appin accident?" he
inquired.

I told him, "Ay," it was the same; and he withheld me some time from my
other letters, asking of our acquaintance, of Alan's manner of life in
France, of which I knew very little, and further of his visit as now
proposed.

"All we forfeited folk hang a little together," he explained, "and
besides I know the gentleman: and though his descent is not the thing,
and indeed he has no true right to use the name of Stewart, he was very
much admired in the day of Drummossie. He did there like a soldier; if
some that need not be named had done as well, the upshot need not have
been so melancholy to remember. There were two that did their best that
day, and it makes a bond between the pair of us," says he.

I could scarce refrain from shooting out my tongue at him, and could
almost have wished that Alan had been there to have inquired a little
further into that mention of his birth. Though, they tell me, the same
was indeed not wholly regular.

Meanwhile, I had opened Miss Grant's, and could not withhold an
exclamation.

"Catriona," I cried, forgetting, the first time since her father was
arrived, to address her by a handle, "I am come into my kingdom fairly,
I am the laird of Shaws indeed--my uncle is dead at last."