“Nor I since I left the Mearns,” I cried, suddenly thinking of Isobel and forgetting all that lay between that lass and me. “Oh! oh!” cried Kilbride. “And that's the way of it? Therms more than Clemie Walkinshaw, is there? I was ill to convince that a nephew of Andy Greig's began the game at the age of twenty-odd with a lady that might have been his mother.” I felt very much ashamed that he should have any knowledge of this part of my history, and seeing it he took to bantering me. “Come, come!” said he, “you must save my reputation with myself for penetration, for I aye argued with Buhot that your tanglement with madame was something short of innocency for all your mim look, and he was for swearing the lady had found a fool.” “I am beat to understand how my affairs came to be the topic of dispute with you and Buhot?” said I, astonished. “And what for no'?” said he. “Wasn't the man's business to find out things, and would you have me with no interest in a ploy when it turned up? There were but the two ways of it--you were all the gomeral in love that Buhot thought you, or you were Andy Greig's nephew and willing to win the woman's favour (for all her antiquity) by keeping Buhot in the news of Hamilton's movements.” “Good God!” I cried, “that was a horrible alternative!” even then failing to grasp all that he implied. “Maybe,” he said pawkily; “but you cannot deny you kept them very well informed upon your master's movements, otherwise it had gone very hard perhaps with his Royal Highness.” “Me!” I cried. “I would have as soon informed upon my father. And who was there to inform?” Kilbride looked at me curiously as if he half doubted my innocence. “It is seldom I have found the man Buhot in a lie of the sort,” said he, “but he led me to understand that what information he had of the movements of the priest came from yourself.” I jumped to my feet, and almost choked in denying it. “Oh, very well, very well!” said Kilbride coolly. “There is no need to make a _fracas_ about the matter. I am just telling you what Buhot told me. And troth! it was a circumstantial story he had of it; for he said that the Marshal Duke de Bellisle, and Monsieur Florentin, and Monsieur Berrier, and all the others of the Cabinet, had Fleuriau's name and direction from yourself, and found the plot had some connection with the affair of Damiens. George Kelly, the Prince's secretary, was another man that told me.” He gazed along the deck of the scow we sat in, as if thinking hard, and then turned to me with a hesitating suggestion. “Perhaps,” said he, “you are forgetting. Perhaps you wrote the woman and told her innocently enough, and that would come to the same thing.” I was overwhelmed with confusion at the idea, though the possibility of my letters being used had once before occurred to me.