“I am a man nursing with both hands the interests of this country,” he replied, “and I press on you a political necessity.  Patriotism is not always moral in the formal sense.  You might be glad of it, I think:  it is your own protection; the facts are heavy against you; and if I am still trying to except you from a very dangerous place, it is in part of course because I am not insensible to your honesty in coming here; in part because of Pilrig’s letter; but in part, and in chief part, because I regard in this matter my political duty first and my judicial duty only second.  For the same reason—­I repeat it to you in the same frank words—­I do not want your testimony.”

“I desire not to be thought to make a repartee, when I express only the plain sense of our position,” said I.  “But if your lordship has no need of my testimony, I believe the other side would be extremely blythe to get it.”

Prestongrange arose and began to pace to and fro in the room.  “You are not so young,” he said, “but what you must remember very clearly the year ’45 and the shock that went about the country.  I read in Pilrig’s letter that you are sound in Kirk and State.  Who saved them in that fatal year?  I do not refer to his Royal Highness and his ramrods, which were extremely useful in their day; but the country had been saved and the field won before ever Cumberland came upon Drummossie.  Who saved it?  I repeat; who saved the Protestant religion and the whole frame of our civil institutions?  The late Lord President Culloden, for one; he played a man’s part, and small thanks he got for it—­even as I, whom you see before you, straining every nerve in the same service, look for no reward beyond the conscience of my duties done.  After the President, who else?  You know the answer as well as I do; ’tis partly a scandal, and you glanced at it yourself, and I reproved you for it, when you first came in.  It was the Duke and the great clan of Campbell.  Now here is a Campbell foully murdered, and that in the King’s service.  The Duke and I are Highlanders.  But we are Highlanders civilised, and it is not so with the great mass of our clans and families.  They have still savage virtues and defects.  They are still barbarians, like these Stewarts; only the Campbells were barbarians on the right side, and the Stewarts were barbarians on the wrong.  Now be you the judge.  The Campbells expect vengeance.  If they do not get it—­if this man James escape—­there will be trouble with the Campbells.  That means disturbance in the Highlands, which are uneasy and very far from being disarmed:  the disarming is a farce....”

“I can bear you out in that,” said I.

“Disturbance in the Highlands makes the hour of our old watchful enemy,” pursued his lordship, holding out a finger as he paced; “and I give you my word we may have a ’45 again with the Campbells on the other side.  To protect the life of this man Stewart—­which is forfeit already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this—­do you propose to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? . . .  These are considerations that weigh with me, and that I hope will weigh no less with yourself, Mr. Balfour, as a lover of your country, good government, and religious truth.”