The Solicitor-General, however, showed a more compassionate spirit than his employers, and in the course of several debates in the House of Commons, submitted that if Lady Nithisdale paid so much respect to Government as not to appear in public, it would be cruel to make any farther search after her. It was therefore decided that unless the lady were seen in England or Scotland, she should be unmolested; but if she were observed in either of those countries, she should be secured. This might be a decision of mercy, but Lady Nithisdale could not submit to it, unless she left her son's estate to be ruined by waste and plunder. Hurried as she had been to London, she had found time only to make one arrangement, which proved to be of the utmost importance. "I had in my hands," she relates, "all the family papers, and dared trust them to nobody. My house might have been searched without warning, consequently they were far from being secure there. In this distress I had the precaution to bury them in the ground, and nobody but myself and the gardener knew where they were: I did the same with other things of value. The event proved that I had acted prudently to save these papers." Lady Nithisdale determined to return, at all risks, to Scotland; and it was, perhaps, from her care in concealing the important documents to which she refers, that the estates were not escheated. She soon put into execution the heroic determination, of which she made no boast. Her journey was full of perils; not only those incident to the time and season of the year, but the great risk of being betrayed and discovered. Little respect was paid, in that reign, when truly the spirit of chivalry was extinguished, to the weaker sex. Ladies, active and instrumental as they were in political intrigues, if found out, were made to pay the penalty of their dissaffection with hard imprisonment; or, if at large, wandered from place to place, conscious that the eye of the law pursued their footsteps. Lady Seaforth, the wife of one of the rebel lords, was reduced to necessity, even of the common necessaries of life; and Lady Widdrington and her children shared the same cruel privations.[32] Believing herself, also, to be an object of peculiar dislike to George the First, Lady Nithisdale's courage in braving the royal displeasure a second time, certainly appears to border upon folly and a rash temerity. But she knew well that if she could once reach the land of the Maxwells, the strict respect paid to the head of the clan, and the remarkable fidelity of all ranks of the Scotch to those who trust to their honour, would there prove her safeguard. The great danger was in making the journey. But the young heroic Countess dismissed all fear from her mind, and prepared for her enterprise.