had made upon the place of combat, which charged
the Duke of Rothsay with being director of the ambuscade by which
the unfortunate bonnet maker had suffered. The same falsehood he
disseminated among the crowd, averring, with unblushing effrontery, to
those who were nighest to the car, that he owed his death to his having
been willing to execute the Duke of Rothsay's pleasure. For a time
he repeated these words, sullenly and doggedly, in the manner of one
reciting a task, or a liar who endeavours by reiteration to obtain
a credit for his words which he is internally sensible they do not
deserve. But when he lifted up his eyes, and beheld in the distance the
black outline of a gallows, at least forty feet high, with its ladder
and its fatal cord, rising against the horizon, he became suddenly
silent, and the friar could observe that he trembled very much.

"Be comforted, my son," said the good priest, "you have confessed
the truth, and received absolution. Your penitence will be accepted
according to your sincerity; and though you have been a man of bloody
hands and cruel heart, yet, by the church's prayers, you shall be in due
time assoilzied from the penal fires of purgatory."

These assurances were calculated rather to augment than to diminish
the terrors of the culprit, who was agitated by doubts whether the
mode suggested for his preservation from death would to a certainty be
effectual, and some suspicion whether there was really any purpose of
employing them in his favour, for he knew his master well enough to be
aware of the indifference with which he would sacrifice one who might on
some future occasion be a dangerous evidence against him.

His doom, however, was sealed, and there was no escaping from it. They
slowly approached the fatal tree, which was erected on a bank by the
river's side, about half a mile from the walls of the city--a site
chosen that the body of the wretch, which was to remain food for the
carrion crows, might be seen from a distance in every direction.
Here the priest delivered Bonthron to the executioner, by whom he was
assisted up the ladder, and to all appearance despatched according to
the usual forms of the law. He seemed to struggle for life for a
minute, but soon after hung still and inanimate. The executioner, after
remaining upon duty for more than half an hour, as if to permit the
last spark of life to be extinguished, announced to the admirers of such
spectacles that the irons