The Advocate appeared for a moment at a stick, sitting with pursed lips, and blinking his eyes upon me like an angry cat.  “Mr. Balfour,” he said at last, “I tell you pointedly you go an ill way for your own interests.”

“My lord,” I said, “I am as free of the charge of considering my own interests in this matter as your lordship.  As God judges me, I have but the one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go clear.  If in pursuit of that I come to fall under your lordship’s displeasure, I must bear it as I may.”

At this he rose from his chair, lit a second candle, and for a while gazed upon me steadily.  I was surprised to see a great change of gravity fallen upon his face, and I could have almost thought he was a little pale.

“You are either very simple, or extremely the reverse, and I see that I must deal with you more confidentially,” says he.  “This is a political case—­ah, yes, Mr. Balfour! whether we like it or no, the case is political—­and I tremble when I think what issues may depend from it.  To a political case, I need scarce tell a young man of your education, we approach with very different thoughts from one which is criminal only. Salus populi suprema lex is a maxim susceptible of great abuse, but it has that force which we find elsewhere only in the laws of nature:  I mean it has the force of necessity.  I will open this out to you, if you will allow me, at more length.  You would have me believe—­”

“Under your pardon, my lord, I would have you to believe nothing but that which I can prove,” said I.

“Tut! tut! young gentleman,” says he, “be not so pragmatical, and suffer a man who might be your father (if it was nothing more) to employ his own imperfect language, and express his own poor thoughts, even when they have the misfortune not to coincide with Mr. Balfour’s.  You would have me to believe Breck innocent.  I would think this of little account, the more so as we cannot catch our man.  But the matter of Breck’s innocence shoots beyond itself.  Once admitted, it would destroy the whole presumptions of our case against another and a very different criminal; a man grown old in treason, already twice in arms against his king and already twice forgiven; a fomenter of discontent, and (whoever may have fired the shot) the unmistakable original of the deed in question.  I need not tell you that I mean James Stewart.”

“And I can just say plainly that the innocence of Alan and of James is what I am here to declare in private to your lordship, and what I am prepared to establish at the trial by my testimony,” said I.

“To which I can only answer by an equal plainness, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “that (in that case) your testimony will not be called by me, and I desire you to withhold it altogether.”

“You are at the head of Justice in this country,” I cried, “and you propose to me a crime!”