for the permanent suspension of the carcass
not having been got ready, the concluding ceremony of disembowelling the
dead body and attaching it finally to the gibbet would be deferred till
the next morning at sunrise.

Notwithstanding the early hour which he had named, Master Smotherwell
had a reasonable attendance of rabble at the place of execution, to
see the final proceedings of justice with its victim. But great was the
astonishment and resentment of these amateurs to find that the dead body
had been removed from the gibbet. They were not, however, long at a loss
to guess the cause of its disappearance. Bonthron had been the follower
of a baron whose estates lay in Fife, and was himself a native of that
province. What was more natural than that some of the Fife men, whose
boats were frequently plying on the river, should have clandestinely
removed the body of their countryman from the place of public shame? The
crowd vented their rage against Smotherwell for not completing his
job on the preceding evening; and had not he and his assistant betaken
themselves to a boat, and escaped across the Tay, they would have run
some risk of being pelted to death. The event, however, was too much in
the spirit of the times to be much wondered at. Its real cause we shall
explain in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Let gallows gape for dogs, let men go free.

Henry V.

The incidents of a narrative of this kind must be adapted to each other,
as the wards of a key must tally accurately with those of the lock to
which it belongs. The reader, however gentle, will not hold himself
obliged to rest satisfied with the mere fact that such and such
occurrences took place, which is, generally speaking, all that in
ordinary life he can know of what is passing around him; but he is
desirous, while reading for amusement, of knowing the interior movements
occasioning the course of events. This is a legitimate and reasonable
curiosity; for every man hath a right to open and examine the mechanism
of his own watch, put together for his proper use, although he is not
permitted to pry into the interior of the timepiece which, for general
information, is displayed on the town steeple.

It would be, therefore, uncourteous to leave my readers under any doubt
concerning the agency which removed the assassin Bonthron from the
gallows--an event which some of the Perth citizens ascribed to the foul
fiend himself, while others w