renchman!" retorted the Duke, coming over, turning
up the skirts of his coat, and warming himself at the fire. "Don't
say Frenchman to me, and don't suggest any more abominable crime and
intrigue till the memory of that miserable Appin affair is off my mind.
I know what they'll say about that: I have a good notion what they're
saying already--as if I personally had a scrap of animosity to this poor
creature sent to the gibbet on Leven-side."

"I think you should have this Frenchman arrested for inquiry: I do not
like the look of him."

Argyll laughed. "Heavens!" he cried, "is the man gane wud? Have you
any charge against this unfortunate foreigner who has dared to shelter
himself in my woods? And if you have, do you fancy it is the old feudal
times with us still, and that I can clap him in my dungeon--if I had
such a thing--without any consultation with the common law-officers
of the land? Wake up, Sim! wake up! this is '55, and there are sundry
written laws of the State that unfortunately prevent even the Mac-Cailen
Mor snatching a man from the footpath and hanging him because he has
not the Gaelic accent and wears his hair in a different fashion from the
rest of us. Don't be a fool, cousin, don't be a fool!"

"It's as your Grace likes," said MacTaggart. "But if this man's not in
any way concerned in the Appin affair, he may very well be one of the
French agents who are bargaining for men for the French service, and the
one thing's as unlawful as the other by the act of 'thirty-six."

"H'm!" said Argyll, turning more grave, and shrewdly eyeing his
Chamberlain--"H'm! have you any particularly good reason to think that?"
He waited for no answer, but went on. "I give it up, MacTaggart," said
he, with a gesture of impatience. "Gad! I cannot pretend to know half
the plots you are either in yourself or listening on the outside of,
though I get credit, I know, for planning them. All I want to know is,
have you any reason to think this part of Scotland--and incidentally
the government of this and every well-governed realm, as the libels
say--would be bettered by the examination of this man? Eh?"

MacTaggart protested the need was clamant. "On the look of the man I
would give him the jougs," said he. "It's spy--"

"H'm!" said Argyll, then coughed discreetly over a pinch of snuff.

"Spy or agent," said the Chamberlain, little abashed at the
interjection.

"And yet a gentleman by the look of him, said Sim MacTaggart, five