"I don't understand at all," I answered. "When you refuse to see Sandy, who, in his own great distress, has never forgot you for a moment, I don't see why you should be sending for Pitcairn."
"I want to see neither Sandy nor any of the Arran people," she answered.
"And you've no word of comfort for Danvers?" I asked.
"None," she returned. "I have not one word of comfort or anything else to send to Danvers Carmichael, and I'd like to have it generally known."
Although I saw him not, I knew that Pitcairn came to Stair that afternoon; but, before God, by no message carried by me; and the following morning I visited him in his offices, finding him at a desk in the inner room looking frozenly out under his dome-like forehead in a way to suggest that his natural greeting would be: "What are you prepared to swear to?"
"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: