“I desire to be carried before some civil magistrate,” said the Bailie—“the sherra or the judge of the bounds;—I am not obliged to answer every red-coat that speers questions at me.”
“Well, sir, I shall know how to manage you if you are silent—And you, sir” (to me), “what may your name be?”
“Francis Osbaldistone, sir.”
“What, a son of Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone of Northumberland?”
“No, sir,” interrupted the Bailie; “a son of the great William Osbaldistone of the House of Osbaldistone and Tresham, Crane-Alley, London.”
“I am afraid, sir,” said the officer, “your name only increases the suspicions against you, and lays me under the necessity of requesting that you will give up what papers you have in charge.”
I observed the Highlanders look anxiously at each other when this proposal was made.
“I had none,” I replied, “to surrender.”
The officer commanded me to be disarmed and searched. To have resisted would have been madness. I accordingly gave up my arms, and submitted to a search, which was conducted as civilly as an operation of the kind well could. They found nothing except the note which I had received that night through the hand of the landlady.
“This is different from what I expected,” said the officer; “but it affords us good grounds for detaining you. Here I find you in written communication with the outlawed robber, Robert MacGregor Campbell, who has been so long the plague of this district—How do you account for that?”