Fiction > Serialisations > London, 1893 - David Balfour

DAVID BALFOUR.
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there amongst my friends and enemies unremarked.
The first that I singled out was Prestongrange.
He sat well forward, like an eager horseman in the
saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued
on the minister : the doctrine was clearly to his
mind. Charles Stewart, on the other hand, was
half asleep, and looked harassed and pale. As for
Simon Eraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost
a scandal, in the midst of that attentive congrega-
tion, digging his hands in his pockets, shifting his
legs, clearing his throat, rolling up his bald eye-
brows and shooting out his eyes to right and left,
now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. At
times, too, he would take the Bible in front of him,
run it through, seem to read a bit, run it through
again, and stop and }awn prodigiously : the whole
as if for exercise.
In the course of this restlessness his eye alighted
on myself. He sat a second stupefied, then tore a
half leaf out of the Bible, scrawled upon it with a
pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his
next neighbour. The note came to Prestongrange,
who ga\"e me but the one look ; thence it vovaged
to the hands of Mr. Erskine ; thence again to
Argyle, where he sat between the other two lords
of session, and his grace turned and fixed me with
an arrogant eye. The last of those interested to
observe my presence was Charlie Stewart, and he
too began to pencil and hand about despatches,
none of which I was able to trace to their destina-
tion in the crowd.
But the passage of these notes had aroused
notice ; all who were in the secret (or supposed
themselves to be so) were whispering inform-
ation — the rest questions ; and the minister
himself seemed quite discountenanced by the
fluttering in the church and sudden stir and
whispering. His voice changed, he plainl\- faltered,
nor did he again recover the easy conviction and
full tone of his delivery. It would be a puzzle to
him till his dying day, why a sermon that had gone
with triumph through four parts, should thus mis-
carry in the fifth.
As for me, I continued to sit there. \ery wet and
weary, and a good deal anxious as to what should
happen next, but greatly exulting in my success.
CHAPTER XVF.
THE MEMORIAL.
The last word of the blessing was scarce out of
the minister's mouth before Stewart had me by the
arm. \\'e were first to be forth of the church,
and he made such extraordinar\- expedition that
we were safe within the four walls of a house
before the street had begun to be thronged with
the home-going congregation.
"Am I yet in time?" I asked.
"Ay and no," said he. "The case is over ; the
jury is enclosed, and will be so kind as let us ken
their view of it to-morrow in the morning, the same
as I could have told it to my own self three days
ago before the play began. The thing has been
public from the start. The panel kent it, \xe
max do ii.<]iat ye 7viU for /iit\' whispers he two
days ago. ' / ken my fate by what the Duke of
Argyle has Just said to Mr. Maeki/itosh.' Oh, its
been a scandal !
The great Avgyle he gaeil before,
Tie gan the cannons and guns to roar,
and the \"erv macer cried, ' Cruachan ! ' But now
that I have got vou again I'll never despair. The
oak shall go over the mvrtle yet : we'll ding the
Campbells yet in their own town. Praise God
that I should see the day ! "
He was leaping with the excitement, emptied
out his mails upon the floor that I might have a
change of clothes, and incommoded me with his
assistance as I changed. What remained to be
done, or how I was to do it, was what he never
told me nor, I believe, so much as thought of.
"^^'e'll ding the Campbells yet 1 " that was still
his overcome. And it was forced home upon my
mind how this, that had the externals of a sober
process of law, was in its essence a clan battle
between savage clans. I thought my friend the
Writer none of the least savage. Who, that had
only seen him at a counsel's back before the Lord
Ordinary or following a golf ball and laying down
his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have recog-
nised for the same person this voluble and violent
clansman ?
James Stewart's counsel were four in number —
Sheriff" Brown of Colstoun and Miller, Mr. Robert
Macintosh and Mr. Stewart of Stewart Hall. These