“I fell asleep to such thoughts.  Then I dreamed of—­or I saw—­a woman fair as the daughters of God, and she said, ’I will go with thee to Glasgow!’ With a strange feeling of being hurried and pressed I awoke—­wide awake, and without any conscious will of my own, I answered, ‘I am ready.  I am ready now.’

“As I left the cottage it was striking twelve, and I wondered what means of reaching Glasgow I should find at midnight.  But I walked straight to the pier, and there was a small steamer with her steam up.  She was blowing her whistle impatiently, and when the skipper saw me coming, he called to me, in a passion, ’Well, then, is it all night I shall wait for thee?’

“I soon perceived that there was a mistake, and that it was not John Balmuto he had been instructed to wait for.  But I heeded not that; I was under orders I durst not disobey.  She was a trading steamer, with a perishable cargo of game and lobsters, and so she touched at no place whatever till we reached Glasgow.  One of her passengers was David MacPherson of Harris, a very good man, who had known me in my visitations.  He was going to Glasgow as a witness in a case to be tried between the Harris fishers and their commission house in Glasgow.

“As we walked together from the steamer, he said to me, ’Let us go round by the court house, John, and I’ll find out when I’ll be required.’  That was to my mind; I did not feel as if I could go astray, whatever road was taken, and I turned with him the way he desired to go.  He found the lawyer who needed him in the court house, and while they talked together I went forward and listened to the case that was in hand.

“It was a trial for murder, and I could not keep my eyes off the young man who was charged with the crime.  He seemed to be quite broken down with shame and sorrow.  Before MacPherson called me the court closed and the constables took him away.  As he passed me our eyes met, and my heart dirled and burned, and I could not make out whatever would be the matter with me.  All night his face haunted me.  I was sure I had seen it some place; and besides it would blend itself with the dream which had brought me to Glasgow.

“In the morning I was early at the court house and I saw the prisoner brought in.  There was the most marvelous change in his looks.  He walked like a man who has lost fear, and his face was quite calm.  But now it troubled me more than ever.  Whatever had I to do with the young man?  Yet I could not bear to leave him.

“I listened and found out that he was accused of murdering his uncle.  They had been traveling together and were known to have been at Ullapool on the thirtieth of May.  On the first of June the elder man was found in a lonely place near Oban, dead, and, without doubt, from violence.  The chain of circumstantial evidence against his nephew was very strong.  To judge by it I would have said myself to him, ’Thou art certainly guilty.’