He was leaping with excitement, emptied out his mails upon the floor that I might have a change of clothes, and incommoded me with his assistance as I changed.  What remained to be done, or how I was to do it, was what he never told me nor, I believe, so much as thought of.  “We’ll ding the Camphells yet!” that was still his overcome.  And it was forced home upon my mind how this, that had the externals of a sober process of law, was in its essence a clan battle between savage clans.  I thought my friend the Writer none of the least savage.  Who, that had only seen him at a counsel’s back before the Lord Ordinary or following a golf ball and laying down his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have recognised for the same person this voluble and violent clansman?

James Stewart’s counsel were four in number—­Sheriffs Brown of Colstoun and Miller, Mr. Robert Macintosh and Mr. Stewart younger of Stewart Hall.  These were covenanted to dine with the Writer after sermon, and I was very obligingly included of the party.  No sooner the cloth lifted, and the first bowl very artfully compounded by Sheriff Miller, than we fell to the subject in hand.  I made a short narration of my seizure and captivity, and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances of the murder.  It will be remembered this was the first time I had had my say out, or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the consequence was very dispiriting to the others and (I must own) disappointing to myself.

“To sum up,” said Colstoun, “you prove that Alan was on the spot; you have heard him proffer menaces against Glenure; and though you assure us he was not the man who fired, you leave a strong impression that he was in league with him, and consenting, perhaps immediately assisting, in the act.  You show him besides, at the risk of his own liberty, actively furthering the criminal’s escape.  And the rest of your testimony (so far as the least material) depends on the bare word of Alan or of James, the two accused.  In short, you do not at all break, but only lengthen by one personage, the chain that binds our client to the murderer; and I need scarcely say that the introduction of a third accomplice rather aggravates that appearance of a conspiracy which has been our stumbling block from the beginning.”

“I am of the same opinion,” said Sheriff Miller.  “I think we may all be very much obliged to Prestongrange for taking a most uncomfortable witness out of our way.  And chiefly, I think, Mr. Balfour himself might be obliged.  For you talk of a third accomplice, but Mr. Balfour (in my view) has very much the appearance of a fourth.”

“Allow me, sirs!” interposed Stewart the Writer.  “There is another view.  Here we have a witness—­never fash whether material or not—­a witness in this cause, kidnapped by that old, lawless, bandit crew of the Glengyle Macgregors, and sequestered for near upon a month in a bourock of old cold ruins on the Bass.  Move that and see what dirt you fling on the proceedings!  Sirs, this is a tale to make the world ring with!  It would be strange, with such a grip as this, if we couldnae squeeze out a pardon for my client.”