orth. I was thinking if I could get her a
good Sunday gown, such as she could wear with decency in her degree, it
would be an ease to my conscience: for the mere truth is, we owe her our
two lives."

"I am glad to see you are thrifty, Mr. Balfour," says he, making his
notes.

"I would think shame to be otherwise the first day of my fortune," said
I. "And now, if you will compute the outlay and your own proper charges,
I would be glad to know if I could get some spending-money back. It's
not that I grudge the whole of it to get Alan safe; it's not that I lack
more; but having drawn so much the one day, I think it would have a very
ill appearance if I was back again seeking, the next. Only be sure you
have enough," I added, "for I am very undesirous to meet with you
again."

"Well, and I'm pleased to see you're cautious too," said the Writer.
"But I think ye take a risk to lay so considerable a sum at my
discretion."

He said this with a plain sneer.

"I'll have to run the hazard," I replied. "O, and there's another
service I would ask, and that's to direct me to a lodging, for I have no
roof to my head. But it must be a lodging I may seem to have hit upon by
accident, for it would never do if the Lord Advocate were to get any
jealousy of our acquaintance."

"Ye may set your weary spirit at rest," said he. "I will never name your
name, sir; and it's my belief the Advocate is still so much to be
sympathised with that he doesnae ken of your existence."

I saw I had got to the wrong side of the man.

"There's a braw day coming for him, then," said I, "for he'll have to
learn of it on the deaf side of his head no later than to-morrow, when I
call on him."

"When ye _call_ on him!" repeated Mr. Stewart. "Am I daft, or are you?
What takes ye near the Advocate?"

"O, just to give myself up," said I.

"Mr. Balfour," he cried, "are ye making a mock of me?"

"No, sir," said I, "though I think you have allowed yourself some such
freedom with myself. But I give you to understand once and for all that
I am in no jesting spirit."

"Nor yet me," says Stewart. "And I give you to understand (if that's to
be the word) that I like the looks of your behaviour less and less. You
come here to me with all sorts of propositions, which will put me in a
train of very doubtful acts and bring me among very undesirable persons
this many a day to come. And then you tell me you're going straight out
of my office to make your peace wit