The streets, especially those around the courts, were thronged with the late duke's following; unkempt, hot-eyed, bare-legged gillies were grouped at every corner, glowering under their tartan bonnets; I found a huddle of them squatted behind some alders on the Burnside, and came upon another set by the carriage-way, who glared at me as I passed them as if I had had some part in the undoing of their clansman. During this time Nancy lay ill, for which, strange as it seems, I praised God, for the sickness saved her from the horrors of the coroner's inquest, McMurtrie coming to my aid in the matter by declaring it worth her life to be dragged into the affair. There was nothing more definite elicited from this tribunal, constituted largely of men under heavy obligations either to Sandy or myself, than "Death at the hands of a person or persons unknown," but the relief which came with the verdict was of short duration. How rumor is bred none can tell, but on the day following the coroner's findings there was a waif-word wandering about that Danvers Carmichael knew more than he had told of the duke's taking off; and whether bred by servants' gossip or the talk of the fool chemist-doctor who had taken the medicine to Pitcairn on the night of the murder and encountered Danvers hatless in the snow, I can not say; but by the evening there rose a strong demand for his arrest, and two officers appeared at Arran and took the lad into custody. Nancy, who had not left her room from that dreadful night, but who had recovered herself enough to sit up a little at a time, received the news in silence, asking if it were possible for me to get the exact testimony given before the coroner for her to see; and going through it, sitting in the bed, with flushed face and feverish eyes. "It's not so bad," she said, as she put it aside; "not so bad. Will ye ride out and ask Mr. Pitcairn to come to me?" she asked. "Pitcairn? Ye'll not be wanting Pitcairn," I answered. "It's Magendie we are having up from London for the defense." "I--want--to--see--Mr.--Pitcairn," she said slowly. "I don't understand at all," I answered. "When you refuse to see Sandy, who, in his own great distress, has never forgot you for a moment, I don't see why you should be sending for Pitcairn." "I want to see neither Sandy nor any of the Arran people," she answered. "And you've no word of comfort for Danvers?" I asked. "None," she returned. "I have not one word of comfort or anything else to send to Danvers Carmichael, and I'd like to have it generally known." Although I saw him not, I knew that Pitcairn came to Stair that afternoon; but, before God, by no message carried by me; and the following morning I visited him in his offices, finding him at a desk in the inner room looking frozenly out under his dome-like forehead in a way to suggest that his natural greeting would be: "What are you prepared to swear to?"