“Ay,” said the old gentleman, full of sympathy, “that is just what I thought--my old friend’s name, douce honest man! that never did anything to be ashamed of in all his days.” The blood came back to her face with a rush. “And how can you tell,” she said, “whether there’s anything to be ashamed of there? You said yourself it was a wild place. They cannot be on their p’s and q’s as we are, choosing their company. I am a decent woman myself, and have been, as you say, all my days; but who could tell what kind of folk I might have got among had I been there?” She rose up and began to walk about the room in sudden excitement. “He would interfere to help the weak one,” she said. “If there was a weak side, he would be upon that; he would be helping somebody. Him--murder a man! You were his father’s friend, I know; but did you ever see Robbie Ogilvy, my son?--and, if not, man! how daur you speak, and speak of shame and my laddie together, to me?” Mr Somerville was so taken by surprise that he could not find a word to say. “I thought,” he began--and then he stopped short. Had not shame already been busy with Robbie Ogilvy’s name? But however much he had been in possession of his faculties and recollections, silence was the wiser way. “There is one thing,” Mrs Ogilvy said; “if this be true, and if it be _him_--there will be a trial, and he will need defence. He must have the best defence, the best advocate. You will send somebody out at once without losing a day. Oh, I’m old, I’m weak, I’m an old woman that knows nothing! I’ve never been from home. But what is all that. What is all that to my Robbie? I think, Mr Somerville, I will go myself.” “You must not think of that,” he cried. “A wild unsettled country, and miles and miles, in all probability, to be done on horseback, and no certainty where to find him--if it is him--on one side of the continent or the other. For, you will see, none of them were taken. Not the chief person, who will doubtless be a very different sort of person, nor--any of the others. They will all be away from that place like the lightning. They will not bide to be put through an interrogatory or stand their trial. I will tell you what I will do. I will write to our correspondents most particularly. I will bid them employ the sharpest fellow they can find about there to follow him and run him down.” “Run him down!” she cried, with a mixture of horror and indignation,--“my boy! You use words that are ill chosen and drive me out of my senses,” she added, with a certain dignity. “But you are well meaning, Mr Somerville, and not an injudicious person in business so far as I have seen. You will write to no correspondents. There must be sharp fellows here, and men that have been about the world. You will send one of them. If I go myself or not, I will take a little time to think; but without losing a day or a moment you will send one of them.”