“I will look in for the papers as I return,” said the steward. “You are as wilful on your own points as your neighbour. But you must give way, as you preach that she ought—”
“I do not preach that, sir, I assure you. I wish, for her own peace, that she would yield herself to God’s disposal; but I would have her, in the strength of law and justice, resist the oppression of man.”
The steward smiled, nodded, and left Annie to read the newspapers.
The time was short. Lady Carse was asleep; but Annie woke her, and left one paper with her while she went home to read the other. She was absorbed in the narrative of the march of the rebels southwards, and their intention of proceeding to London, eating children, as the newspaper said, after the manner of Highlanders, all the way as they went, when Lady Carse burst in, trembling from head to foot, and unable to speak. She showed to Annie a short paragraph, which told that a vessel chartered by Mr Hope, advocate, of Edinburgh, and bound to the Western Islands, had put into the Horseshoe harbour in Lorn, to land a lady whom the captain refused to carry to her destination through a quarrel on the ground of difference of political sentiment. The lady, wife of a minister of the kirk, had sought the aid of the resident tenant to be escorted home through the disturbed districts in Argyle, while the vessel proceeded on its way—not unwatched, however, as Mr Hope’s attachment to the house of Stuart was no secret, etcetera, etcetera.
The widow was perplexed; but Lady Carse knew that Mr Hope, her lawyer and her friend, was a Jacobite—the only fault he had, she declared. She was persuaded that the lady was Mrs Ruthven, and that the vessel was on its way to rescue her—might arrive at any hour of the day or night.
“But,” said Annie, “this lady is loyal to King George, and you reproached the Ruthvens for being on the other side.”
“O! I was wrong about her, no doubt. I detest him; but she is a good creature; and I was quite wrong ever to suspect her.”
“And you think your loyalty to the king would do you no harm with Mr Hope? You think he would exert himself for you without thinking of your politics?”
“Why, don’t you see what is before your eyes?” cried Lady Carse. “Is it not there, as plain as black and white can make it?”
The fact was so, though the lady’s reasoning was not good. The vessel, with armed men in it, was sent by Mr Hope to rescue Lady Carse; and Mrs Ruthven was to act as guide. In consequence of a quarrel between the captain and her, she was set ashore at the place where the little town of Oban has since arisen; and the vessel sailed on out of sight. It was an illegal proceeding of Mr Hope’s, and resorted to only when his attempts to obtain a warrant from the proper authority to search for and liberate Lady Carse were frustrated by the influence of her husband and his friends.