A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story
and thanked God for it."

"Now, I would offer thanks for the other things. If I were an American it would gladden my heart to have a son like that. The young man thinks he has been doing his duty; be a little proud of him. I'll be bound he deserves it. Who arrested him?"

"Some soldiers from the Highland regiment."

"How did they happen to know? Could Macpherson have informed? Oh, impossible! What am I saying? Where was he taken?"

"At Elder Semple's landing."

"You confound me, Bradley. I will stake my honor on the Semples's loyalty--father and son both. What was he doing there?"

"He had the old reason for calamity--a woman. He is in love with the Elder's granddaughter, and Agnes thinks he must have landed hoping to see her."

"You mean, he had a tryst with her?"

"I only surmise. I can tell nothing surely."

"I will go with you to court, Bradley. Can you send a man with a message to Colonel Pennington?"

This done they went out together, and many looked curiously at the lord and the saddler walking the streets of New York in company. For in those days the lines of caste were severely drawn. When they entered the courtroom the case of the Semples was being heard; but Harry sat a little apart, on either side of him a soldier. The father fixed his eyes upon him, and a proud flush warmed his white face at the sight of the lad's dauntless bearing and calm, almost cheerful, aspect.

Lord Medway looked first toward the Semples, and conspicuously bowed to both of them. The Elder was evidently sick, fretful, and suffering. Neil was wounded in every fiber of his proud nature. The loyalty, the honor, the good name of the Semples had been, he believed, irrevocably injured; for he was lawyer enough to know that it is nearly as bad to be suspected as to be guilty. And, small as the matter seemed in comparison, he was intensely mortified at the personal disarray of his father and himself. The men who arrested them had given them no time to arrange their clothing, and Neil knew they looked more suspiciously guilty for want of their clean laces and the renovating influences of water and brushes.

The assistant magistrate, Peter DuBois, was just questioning Elder Semple.


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