"Hugh," said I, "ye've doubtless heard of the trouble young Mr. Carmichael is in----" here I waited. He nodded, as one might who had but a certain number of words given him at birth and was fearful that the supply might run out. "It has occurred to me," I went on, "that your old friendship for me and my old friendship for Sandy being common knowledge, ye might show a fine courtesy by standing aside in the case and letting Mr. Inge take it altogether. Such a thing can be done, I know, for when the Lord-President himself had Ferrars to try, who was a known man to him, he asked to be relieved from presiding." "I attended to the duke's affairs when he was living. I shall attend to them now that he is dead," he replied stolidly. "There is an ethical side to the matter as well, for I believe him to have been killed by the young----" he caught himself at this, with a correction. "I have my beliefs in the case," he amended. "But ye can rest by this, if a man is innocent of a crime in this country he can prove it. It is a prosecution, not a persecution, that will be conducted by the government." And here a lighter vein seemed to take him, for he added: "And so, Jock Stair, you would come to me to use an old friendship to buy the laddie off! Ye're a nice citizen; a fine, public-spirited body!" "Hugh Pitcairn," I answered, "if you were in trouble, and it needed the last shilling I had in the world to help ye, you'd find me beside ye, with it held out in my hand; and it seems a little thing I am asking of you, and not for myself either----" "Your daughter's a better man than you," he broke in on me. "It was a fine thing she did--a fine, public-spirited thing!" "Ye've trained her well in the lawing," I said, leading him on a bit, for Nancy had held the silence of the dead concerning the murder since the day of his visit, and I had no knowledge of what he meant. "Mark you," he said, and there was almost a glow upon his face, "the first day that she was able to sit up after her illness Nancy Stair sent for me. 'Mr. Pitcairn,' said she, 'a most unwelcome task has come to me, and I am needing your advice.' And on this she went over the talk, part of which I had overheard, between herself and the young Carmichael, with neither heat nor fallacy of emphasis, as accurately as I might have done myself," he ended, as though higher praise were inconceivable. "There's a girl for ye!" he cried. "I've set but little store by her verse-making; or her charity work, which is sentiment; but by the lawing the very female quality of her mind has been changed, for she is able to put a duty to her country before her own feelings. Ye might take a lesson from your daughter in that, Jock Stair!" he finished. I rode back to Stair on a gallop and went straight to Nancy's room.