“Please’m, there’s a pleaceman wants Mr. Sutherland.  Oh! lor’m!”

“Well, go and let Mr. Sutherland know, you stupid girl,” answered her mistress, trembling.

“Oh! lor’m!” was all Sally’s reply, as she vanished to bear the awful tidings to Hugh.

“He can’t have been housebreaking already,” said Miss Talbot to herself, as she confessed afterwards.  “But it may be forgery or embezzlement.  I told the poor deluded young man that the way of transgressors was hard.”

“Please, sir, you’re wanted, sir,” said Sally, out of breath, and pale as her Sunday apron.

“Who wants me?” asked Hugh.

“Please, sir, the pleaceman, sir,” answered Sally, and burst into tears.

Hugh was perfectly bewildered by the girl’s behaviour, and said in a tone of surprise: 

“Well, show him up, then.”

“Ooh! sir,” said Sally, with a Plutonic sigh, and began to undo the hooks of her dress; “if you wouldn’t mind, sir, just put on my frock and apron, and take a jug in your hand, an’ the pleaceman’ll never look at you.  I’ll take care of everything till you come back, sir.”  And again she burst into tears.

Sally was a great reader of the Family Herald, and knew that this was an orthodox plan of rescuing a prisoner.  The kindness of her anxiety moderated the expression of Hugh’s amusement; and having convinced her that he was in no danger, he easily prevailed upon her to bring the policeman upstairs.

Over a tumbler of toddy, the weaker ingredients of which were procured by Sally’s glad connivance, with a lingering idea of propitiation, and a gentle hint that Missus mustn’t know —­ the two Scotchmen, seated at opposite corners of the fire, had a long chat.  They began about the old country, and the places and people they both knew, and both didn’t know.  If they had met on the shores of the central lake of Africa, they could scarcely have been more couthy together.  At length Hugh referred to the object of his application to MacPherson.

“What plan would you have me pursue, John, to get hold of a man in London?”

“I could manage that for ye, sir.  I ken maist the haill mengie o’ the detaictives.”

“But you see, unfortunately, I don’t wish, for particular reasons, that the police should have anything to do with it.”

“Ay! ay!  Hm!  Hm!  I see brawly.  Ye’ll be efter a stray sheep, nae doot?”

Hugh did not reply; so leaving him to form any conclusion he pleased.

“Ye see,” MacPherson continued, “it’s no that easy to a body that’s no up to the trade.  Hae ye ony clue like, to set ye spierin’ upo’?”

“Not the least.”

The man pondered a while.

“I hae’t,” he exclaimed at last.  “What a fule I was no to think o’ that afore!  Gin’t be a puir bit yow-lammie like, ’at ye’re efter, I’ll tell ye what:  there’s ae man, a countryman o’ our ain, an’ a gentleman forbye, that’ll do mair for ye in that way, nor a’ the detaictives thegither; an’ that’s Robert Falconer, Esquire. —­ I ken him weel.”