The Advocate then told how Fassifern, in summer, 1752, a year before his arrest in 1753, got his bag of papers from Mr. Macfarlane and returned it, since when no mortal has seen the incriminated deeds. This, of course, is the crucial point; but Mr. Macfarlane had himself prepared Fassifern’s claim from the very deeds which, having disappeared, are now said to have been recently forged. Mr. Macfarlane can have seen nothing suspicious in them, or he would not have made them the basis of a claim drawn up by himself. His suspicions of 1751 would have revived, and he would have abandoned the case. He still acts daily for Fassifern, but Fassifern has not recovered the documents, nor tried seriously to recover them. On these grounds bail was again refused. No decision was arrived at by the Lords of Session till January 1755. By that time all danger from Jacobitism was over. Charles was deserted by Prussia, by the Earl Marischal, and by his English adherents. The Lords found Fassifern guilty of abstracting his own papers, from the bag in Mr. Macfarlane’s custody. These papers it was inferred, were forged. He was sentenced to ten years of banishment, which he passed at Alnwick. Charles Stewart was deprived of his office of notary public. ‘Some of the Lords were of opinion that there was not a proof of guilt sufficient to infer any punishment. But others were of a different opinion.’ In Fassifern’s plea he complained of Colonel Crawfurd’s frequent examinations of Charles Stewart, and of a present of 10_l._ made by him to that notary. Innocent or guilty, Fassifern was ‘uprooted, which is what we ought chiefly to have in view,’ to quote Colonel Crawfurd. The gross oppressiveness of the proceedings, the unexplained delays, the series of charges ‘dropped out,’ the bullying and cajoling of prisoners under examination, the unconcealed political motive, and the rewards of farms which, we learn, were given to the informers, are all characteristic of justice in Scotland after Culloden. The improbability of the charge, against ‘a sensible careful man,’ must be set against the mystery of the disappearance of the papers. In that disappearance the ‘uprooters’ had, of course, no less interest than the accused. After nearly two years _sub squalore carceris_, Fassifern was condemned for suborning the forgery of papers not in evidence. In fact, after all the schemes for his uprooting, he was (in cricketing phrase) ‘given out’—several of the Fifteen dissenting—‘for obstructing the field.’ What is the legal name for this offence?