pitifully alluded to his having to rise by 4 o’clock, in order to be at Westminster by 9. He spoke of his frequent fainting fits; he often asked leave to retire, and, in short, he so exasperated the Lord High Steward as to make that official grow peevish, and to wrathfully advise Lord Lovat to keep _his_ temper. When the Attorney-General called his first witness, Chevis of Murtoun, the lawyer described him, with solemn facetiousness, as being as near a neighbour as man could be to Lovat, but as far apart from him as was possible in thought and action. Lovat protested against the legal competency of the witness, he being Lovat’s tenant and vassal. Hours were spent over this objection, and the old lord wearied the clerk, whom he called upon to read ancient Acts of Parliament, from beginning to end. The protest was disallowed; and the witness having been asked if he owed Lovat money, and if a verdict of guilty might help him not to pay it, emphatically declared that he owed Lovat nothing. He then went into a long array of evidence, sufficient to have beheaded Lovat many times over, as a traitor to the reigning family, and indeed no faithful servant of the family desiring to reign. The traitor himself laughed when this witness quoted a ballad in English, which Lovat had composed, ‘in Erse’:―― When young Charley does come over, There will be blows and blood good store. ‘When,’ said the witness, ‘I refused a commission offered me by the Pretender, Lord Lovat told me I was guilty of High Treason.’ Further, Lovat had drunk ‘Confusion to the White Horse and the whole generation of them;’ and had cursed both the Reformation and the Revolution. Lovat retorted by showing that this not disinterested witness was a loyal man living at the expense of Government. ‘He is trying to hang an old man to save himself,’ said Lovat. This was warmly denied, but Lovat was right in the implication. [Sidenote: _FATHER AND SON._] Lovat’s secretary, Fraser, was a dangerous witness. He proved that, by Lord Lovat’s order, he, the secretary, wrote to Lord Loudon (in the service of George II.) informing him that he was unable to keep his son out of the rebellion, and another letter to the Pretender that, though unable to go himself to help to restore the Stuarts, he had sent his eldest son to their standard. It was shown that the son was disgusted at his father’s double-dealing, and only yielded to him at last (in joining the army of Charles Edward), on the ground that he was bound to obey his sire and the chief of the clan Fraser. Undoubtedly, the attempt to save himself by the sacrificing of his son, was the blackest spot in Lovat’s mean, black, and cruel character. According to Walpole, ‘he told’ Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, ‘We will hang my eldest son and then my second shall marry your niece!’ [Sidenote: _THE FRASERS._]