make him hear reason?'

'Me!--I will not go my foot's length,' said the provost; and that, Mr.
Alan, you may be well assured of. Mr. Redgauntlet is my wife's fourth
cousin, that is undeniable; but were he the last of her kin and mine
both, it would ill befit my office to be communing with rebels.'

'Aye, or drinking with nonjurors,' said Maxwell, filling his glass. 'I
would as soon expect; to have met Claverhouse at a field-preaching. And
as for myself, Mr. Fairford, I cannot go, for just the opposite reason.
It would be INFRA DIG. in the provost of this most flourishing and loyal
town to associate with Redgauntlet; and for me it would be NOSCITUR A
SOCIO. There would be post to London, with the tidings that two such
Jacobites as Redgauntlet and I had met on a braeside--the Habeas Corpus
would be suspended--Fame would sound a charge from Carlisle to the
Land's End--and who knows but the very wind of the rumour might blow my
estate from between my fingers, and my body over Errickstane-brae again?
No, no; bide a gliff--I will go into the provost's closet, and write a
letter to Redgauntlet, and direct you how to deliver it.'

'There is pen and ink in the office,' said the provost, pointing to the
door of an inner apartment, in which he had his walnut-tree desk and
east-country cabinet.

'A pen that can write, I hope?' said the old laird.

'It can write and spell baith in right hands,' answered the provost, as
the laird retired and shut the door behind him.

CHAPTER XII

NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD, CONTINUED

The room was no sooner deprived of Mr. Maxwell of Summertrees's
presence, than the provost looked very warily above, beneath, and around
the apartment, hitched his chair towards that of his remaining guest,
and began to speak In a whisper which could not have startled 'the
smallest mouse that creeps on floor.'

'Mr. Fairford,' said he, 'you are a good lad; and, what is more, you are
my auld friend your father's son. Your father has been agent for this
burgh for years, and has a good deal to say with the council; so there
have been a sort of obligations between him and me; it may have been now
on this side and now on that; but obligations there have been. I am but
a plain man, Mr. Fairford; but I hope you understand me?'

'I believe you mean me well, provost; and I am sure,' replied Fairford,
'you can never better show your kindness than on this occasion.'

'That's it--that's the very point I would be