es to-night!" she explained.
"I've others to think of than myself. Pray for me, dearest!" she cried,
putting her hands on my breast and looking up pleadingly in my eyes.
"Pray for your little girl, as she sits here all alone. Pray that I may
have presence of mind!" and God knows the awe I felt as I saw the
courage and spirit in that slim girlish body.

"Nancy," said I, for I felt that without words, we were banded together
for the protection of a life dear to both of us, "with your knowledge
of the law----" but before I could finish she interrupted me:

"Yesterday in my presence Danvers Carmichael threatened the duke's life
not once but many times, with Pitcairn lying just outside the door. The
law!" she cried. "It's not the law I'm afraid of--it's Hugh Pitcairn!"

CHAPTER XXV

THE TRIAL

The great duke lay in state in St. Giles, and the Highlands emptied
themselves into Edinburgh demanding justice. The lady-mother of the
dead was there, broken-hearted, and Percival Montrose, to whom the
title fell; and I had a fine taste of the fealty of Gaelic-folk, for
kinsfolk and clansfolk took the duke's undoing as a personal affront,
and put their own matters by to get some one hanged for it.

The streets, especially those around the courts, were thronged with the
late duke's following; unkempt, hot-eyed, bare-legged gillies were
grouped at every corner, glowering under their tartan bonnets; I found
a huddle of them squatted behind some alders on the Burnside, and came
upon another set by the carriage-way, who glared at me as I passed them
as if I had had some part in the undoing of their clansman.

During this time Nancy lay ill, for which, strange as it seems, I
praised God, for the sickness saved her from the horrors of the
coroner's inquest, McMurtrie coming to my aid in the matter by
declaring it worth her life to be dragged into the affair. There was
nothing more definite elicited from this tribunal, constituted largely
of men under heavy obligations either to Sandy or myself, than "Death
at the hands of a person or persons unknown," but the relief which came
with the verdict was of short duration.

How rumor is bred none can tell, but on the day following the coroner's
findings there was a waif-word wandering about that Danvers Carmichael
knew more than he had told of the duke's taking off; and whether bred
by servants' gossip or the talk of the fool chemist-doctor who had
taken the medicine to Pitcairn on