Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate; nor was there any magistrate nearer than Inverary.

Mac Ian, now fully sensible of the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to the very last moment an act on which his life and his estate depended, set off for Inverary in great distress.

He carried with him a letter from Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, a respectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had suffered severely for his Whig principles.

In this letter the Colonel expressed a goodnatured hope that, even out of season, a lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep, would be gladly received.

Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, and did not stop even at his own house, though it lay nigh to the road.