get him out of their hands before he gets there. At any rate what we have
got to do now is to mark every ship in the port sailing for London, and
to find out whether passages are taken for a prisoner and his guard in
any of them. I will make that my business, and between times get a score
of trusty fellows together in readiness to start if they should send him
by land; but I doubt not that you are right, and that he will be taken
off by ship."

The days of waiting passed slowly to Ronald, and Andrew Anderson once or
twice obtained permission to see him. The bailie wisely abstained from
any reproaches, and sought only to persuade him to make a clean breast of
the business, and to tell all he knew about a plot which could but end in
failure and ruin to all concerned. Although his belief in Ronald's
truthfulness was great he could not credit that the story which he had
told contained all the facts of the matter. To the bailie it seemed
incredible that merely from an abstract feeling in favour of the Stuarts
Ronald would have risked his life and liberty in aiding the escape of a
Jacobite agent, unless he was in some way deeply involved in the plot;
and he regarded Ronald's assurances to the contrary as the outcome of
what he considered an entirely mistaken sense of loyalty to the Stuart
cause.

"It's all very well, Ronald," he said, shaking his head sadly; "but when
they get you to London they will find means to make you open your mouth.
They have done away with the thumb screws and the rack, but there are
other ways of making a prisoner speak, and it would be far better for you
to make a clean breast of it at once. Janet is grieving for you as if you
were her own son, and I cannot myself attend to my business. Who would
have thought that so young a lad should have got himself mixed up in such
sair trouble!"