is of a
dye which cannot permit any clemency. Blood has been barbarously shed.
It has been shed in direct opposition to his Majesty and our whole frame
of laws, by those who are their known and public oppugnants. I take a
very high sense of this. I will not deny that I consider the crime as
directly personal to his Majesty."

"And unfortunately, my lord," I added a little drily, "directly personal
to another great personage who may be nameless."

"If you mean anything by those words, I must tell you I consider them
unfit for a good subject; and were they spoke publicly I should make it
my business to take note of them," said he. "You do not appear to me to
recognise the gravity of your situation, or you would be more careful
not to pejorate the same by words which glance upon the purity of
justice. Justice, in this country, and in my poor hands, is no respecter
of persons."

"You give me too great a share in my own speech, my lord," said I. "I
did but repeat the common talk of the country, which I have heard
everywhere, and from men of all opinions as I came along."

"When you are come to more discretion you will understand such talk is
not to be listened to, how much less repeated," says the Advocate. "But
I acquit you of an ill intention. That nobleman, whom we all honour and
who has indeed been wounded in a near place by the late barbarity, sits
too high to be reached by these aspersions. The Duke of Argyle--you see
that I deal plainly with you--takes it to heart as I do, and as we are
both bound to do by our judicial functions and the service of his
Majesty; and I could wish that all hands, in this ill age, were equally
clean of family rancour. But from the accident that this is a Campbell
who has fallen martyr to his duty--as who else but the Campbells have
ever put themselves foremost on that path? I may say it, who am no
Campbell--and that the chief of that great house happens (for all our
advantages) to be the present head of the College of Justice, small
minds and disaffected tongues are set agog in every changehouse in the
country; and I find a young gentleman like Mr. Balfour so ill-advised as
to make himself their echo." So much he spoke with a very oratorical
delivery, as if in court, and then declined again upon the manner of a
gentleman. "All this apart," said he. "It now remains that I should
learn what I am to do with you."

"I had thought it was rather I that should learn the same from your
lord