The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

INTRODUCTION TO ROB. ROY. 35
for a licence to return to England, promising to bring Allan Breck thither
along with him. But the intended victim was put upon his guard by two
countrymen, who suspected James's intentions towards him. He escaped
from his kidnapper, after, as MacGregor alleged, robbing his portmanteau
of some clothes and:four snuff-boxes. Such a charge, it may be observed,
could scarce have been made unless the parties had been living on a footing
of intimacy, and had access to each other's baggage.
Although James Drummond had thus missed his blow in the matter of
Allan Breck Stewart, he used his licence to make a journey to London, and
had an interview, as he avers, with Lord Holdernesse. His Lordship, and
the Under-Secretary, put many puzzling questions to him; and, as he says,
offered him a situation, which would bring him bread, in the Government's
service. This office was advantageous as to emolument; but in the opinion
of James Drummond, his acceptance of it would have been a disgrace to
his birth, and have rendered him a scourge to his country. If such a tempting offer and sturdy rejection had any foundation in fact, it probably relates
to some plan of espionage on the Jacobites, which the Government might
hope to carry on by means of a man who, in the matter of Allan Breck
Stewart, had shown no great nicety of feeling. Drummond MacGregor was
so far accommodating as to intimate his willingness to act in any station in
which other gentlemen of honour served, but not otherwise;-an answer
which, compared with some passages of his past life, may remind the reader
of Ancient Pistol standing upon his reputation.
Having thus proved intractable, as he tells the story, to the proposals of
Lord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered instantly to quit England.
On his return to France, his condition seems to have been utterly disastrous. He was seized with fever and gravel - ill, consequently, in body,
and weakened and dispirited in mind. Allan Breck Stewart threatened'to
put him to death in revenge of the designs he had harboured against him.*
The Stewart clan were in the highest degree unfriendly to him: and his
late expedition to London had been attended with many suspicious circumstances, amongst which it was not the slightest that he had kept his purpose secret from his chief Bohaldie. His intercourse with Lord Holdernesse
was suspicious. The Jacobites were probably, like Don Bernard de Castel
Blazo, in Gil Blas, little disposed to like those who kept company with
Alguazils. MacDonnell, of Lochgarry, a man of unquestioned honour,
lodged an information against James Drummond before the High Bailie of
Dunkirk, accusing him of being a spy, so that he found himself obliged to
leave that town and come to Paris, with only the sum of thirteen livres for
his immediate subsistence, and with absolute beggary staring him in the
face.
WTe do not offer the convicted common thief, the accomplice in MacLaren's
assassination, or the manager of the outrage against Jean Key, as an object
of sympathy; but it is melancholy to look on the dying struggles even of a
wolf or a tiger, creatures of a species directly hostile to our own; and, in
like manner, the utter distress of this man, whose faults may have sprung
from a wild system of education, working on a haughty temper, will not be
- Allan Breck Stewart was a nian likelv in such a matter to keep his word. James Drumlnond MacGregor
and he, like Katherine and Petruchio, were well matched' for a couple of quiet ones." Allan Breck lived
till the beginning of the French Revolution. About 1789, a friend of nmine, then residing at Paris, was invited
to see some procession whichr was supposed likely to interest him, from the windows of an apartment occupied by a Scottish Benedictine priest. He found, sitting by the fire, a tall, thin, raw-boned, grim-looking, old
nlan, with the petit croix of St. Louis. His visage was strongly nlarked by the irregular projections of the
cheek-bones and chin. His eyes were grey. His grizzled hair exhibited marks of having been red, and his
complexion was weather-beaten, and remarkably freckled. Some civilities in French passed between the old
man and my friend, in the course of which they talked of the streets and squares of Paris, till at length the
old soldier, for sulch he seemed, and such he was, said with a sigh, in a sharp Highland accent,' Dell ane o'
them a' is worth the Hie street of Edinburgh!" On inquiry, this admirer of Auld Reekie, which he was never
to see again, proved to be Allan Breck Stewart. He lived decently on his little-pension. and had, in no sub.
sequent period of his life, shown anything of the savage mood in which he is generally believed to have
assassinated the enemy and oppressor, as he supposed him, of his family and clan.