whenever he should see him; that done, there was nothing for it but to
wait quietly. The post was so uncertain in those days that he had but
slight hope that either of his letters would ever reach their
destination. No answer came to either of his letters.

Four years later Malcolm went over to Paris, and cautiously made
inquiries; but no one had heard anything of Colonel Leslie from the day
he had been arrested. The regiment was away fighting in the Low
Countries, and the only thing Malcolm could do was to call upon the
people who had had charge of the child, to give them his address in case
the colonel should ever appear to inquire of them. He found, however, the
house tenanted by other people. He learned that the last occupants had
left years before. The neighbors remembered that one morning early some
officers of the law had come to the house, and the man had been seized
and carried away. He had been released some months later, only to find
that his wife had died of grief and anxiety, and he had then sold off his
goods and gone no one knew whither. Malcolm, therefore, returned to
Glasgow, with the feeling that he had gained nothing by his journey.



CHAPTER II: The Jacobite Agent.


So twelve years passed. Ronald Leslie grew up a sturdy lad, full of fun
and mischief in spite of the sober atmosphere of the bailie's house; and
neither flogging at school nor lecturing at home appeared to have the
slightest effect in reducing him to that state of sober tranquillity
which was in Mrs. Anderson's eyes the thing to be most desired in boys.
Andrew was less deeply shocked than his wife at the discovery of Ronald's