"There must be no trifling with headaches to-night!" she explained. "I've others to think of than myself. Pray for me, dearest!" she cried, putting her hands on my breast and looking up pleadingly in my eyes. "Pray for your little girl, as she sits here all alone. Pray that I may have presence of mind!" and God knows the awe I felt as I saw the courage and spirit in that slim girlish body.
"Nancy," said I, for I felt that without words, we were banded together for the protection of a life dear to both of us, "with your knowledge of the law----" but before I could finish she interrupted me:
"Yesterday in my presence Danvers Carmichael threatened the duke's life not once but many times, with Pitcairn lying just outside the door. The law!" she cried. "It's not the law I'm afraid of--it's Hugh Pitcairn!"
The great duke lay in state in St. Giles, and the Highlands emptied themselves into Edinburgh demanding justice. The lady-mother of the dead was there, broken-hearted, and Percival Montrose, to whom the title fell; and I had a fine taste of the fealty of Gaelic-folk, for kinsfolk and clansfolk took the duke's undoing as a personal affront, and put their own matters by to get some one hanged for it.
The streets, especially those around the courts, were thronged with the late duke's following; unkempt, hot-eyed, bare-legged gillies were grouped at every corner, glowering under their tartan bonnets; I found a huddle of them squatted behind some alders on the Burnside, and came upon another set by the carriage-way, who glared at me as I passed them as if I had had some part in the undoing of their clansman.
During this time Nancy lay ill, for which, strange as it seems, I praised God, for the sickness saved her from the horrors of the coroner's inquest, McMurtrie coming to my aid in the matter by declaring it worth her life to be dragged into the affair. There was nothing more definite elicited from this tribunal, constituted largely of men under heavy obligations either to Sandy or myself, than "Death at the hands of a person or persons unknown," but the relief which came with the verdict was of short duration.
How rumor is bred none can tell, but on the day following the coroner's findings there was a waif-word wandering about that Danvers Carmichael knew more than he had told of the duke's taking off; and whether bred by servants' gossip or the talk of the fool chemist-doctor who had taken the medicine to Pitcairn on the night of the murder and encountered Danvers hatless in the snow, I can not say; but by the evening there rose a strong demand for his arrest, and two officers appeared at Arran and took the lad into custody.