"What do you mean?" I cried. "Not seeking him?"

"By the best that I can make of it," said he. "Not wanting to find him,
in my poor thought. They think perhaps he might set up a fair defence,
upon the back of which James, the man they're really after, might climb
out. This is not a case, ye see, it's a conspiracy."

"Yet I can tell you Prestongrange asked after Alan keenly," said I;
"though, when I come to think of it, he was something of the easiest put
by."

"See that!" says he. "But there! I may be right or wrong, that's
guesswork at the best, and let me get to my facts again. It comes to my
ears that James and the witnesses--the witnesses, Mr. Balfour!--lay in
close dungeons, and shackled forbye, in the military prison at Fort
William; none allowed in to them, nor they to write. The witnesses, Mr.
Balfour; heard ye ever the match of that? I assure ye, no old, crooked
Stewart of the gang ever outfaced the law more impudently. It's clean in
the two eyes of the Act of Parliament of 1700, anent wrongous
imprisonment. No sooner did I get the news than I petitioned the Lord
Justice Clerk. I have his word to-day. There's law for ye! here's
justice!"

He put a paper in my hand, that same mealy-mouthed, false-faced paper
that was printed since in the pamphlet "by a bystander," for behoof (as
the title says) of James's "poor widow and five children."

"See," said Stewart, "he couldn't dare to refuse me access to my client,
so he _recommends the commanding officer to let me in_. Recommends!--the
Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland recommends. Is not the purpose of such