"See that!" says he. "But there! I may be right or wrong, that's guesswork at the best, and let me get to my facts again. It comes to my ears that James and the witnesses--the witnesses, Mr. Balfour!--lay in close dungeons, and shackled forbye, in the military prison at Fort William; none allowed in to them, nor they to write. The witnesses, Mr. Balfour; heard ye ever the match of that? I assure ye, no old, crooked Stewart of the gang ever outfaced the law more impudently. It's clean in the two eyes of the Act of Parliament of 1700, anent wrongous imprisonment. No sooner did I get the news than I petitioned the Lord Justice Clerk. I have his word to-day. There's law for ye! here's justice!" He put a paper in my hand, that same mealy-mouthed, false-faced paper that was printed since in the pamphlet "by a bystander," for behoof (as the title says) of James's "poor widow and five children." "See," said Stewart, "he couldn't dare to refuse me access to my client, so he _recommends the commanding officer to let me in_. Recommends!--the Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland recommends. Is not the purpose of such language plain? They hope the officer may be so dull, or so very much the reverse, as to refuse the recommendation. I would have to make the journey back again betwixt here and Fort William. There would follow a fresh delay till I got fresh authority, and they had disavowed the officer--military man, notoriously ignorant of the law, and that--I ken the cant of it. Then the journey a third time; and there we should be on the immediate heels of the trial before I had received my first instruction. Am I not right to call this a conspiracy?" "It will bear that colour," said I. "And I'll go on to prove it you outright," said he. "They have the right to hold James in prison, yet they cannot deny me to visit him. They have no right to hold the witnesses; but am I to get a sight of them, that should be as free as the Lord Justice Clerk himself? See--read: _For the rest, refuses to give any orders to keepers of prisons who are not accused as having done anything contrary to the duties of their office_. Anything contrary! Sirs! And the Act of seventeen hunner! Mr. Balfour, this makes my heart to burst. The heather is on fire inside my wame." "And the plain English of that phrase," said I, "is that the witnesses are still to lie in prison and you are not to see them?" "And I am not to see them until Inverary, when the court is set!" cries he, "and then to hear Prestongrange upon _the anxious responsibilities of his office and the great facilities afforded the defence!_ But I'll begowk them there, Mr. David. I have a plan to waylay the witnesses upon the road, and see if I cannae get a little harle of justice out of the _military man notoriously ignorant of the law_ that shall command the party."