t he might stop
and hear me. He endeavored to escape out of my hands, but I kept such
strong hold that he dragged me upon my knees from the middle of the room
to the very door of the drawing-room." One of the attendants of the King
caught the unfortunate lady round the waist, while another dragged the
King's coat-skirt out of her hands. "The petition, which I had
endeavored to thrust into his pocket, fell down in the scuffle, and I
almost fainted away through grief and disappointment." Seldom, perhaps,
in the history of royalty is there a description of so ungracious,
unkingly, and even brutal reception of a petition presented by a
distracted wife praying for a pardon to her husband.

[Sidenote: 1716--This most constant wife]

Then Lady Nithisdale determined to effect her husband's escape. She
communicated her design to a Mrs. Mills, and took another lady with her
also. This lady was of tall and slender make, and she carried under her
own riding-hood one that Lady Nithisdale had prepared for Mrs. Mills, as
Mrs. Mills was to lend hers to Lord Nithisdale, so that in going out he
might be taken for her. Mrs. Mills was also "not only of the same
height, but nearly of the same size as my lord." On their arrival at the
Tower, Mrs. Morgan was allowed to go in with {140} Lady Nithisdale.
[Sidenote: 1716--Lord Nithisdale's escape] Only one at a time could be
introduced by the lady. She left the riding-hood and other things behind
her. Then Lady Nithisdale went downstairs to meet Mrs. Mills, who held
her handkerchief to her face, "as was very natural for a woman to do when
she was going to bid her last farewell to a friend on the eve of his
execution. I had indeed desired her to do it, that my lord might go out
in the same manner." Mrs. Mills's eyebrows were a light color, and Lord
Nithisdale's were dark and thick. "So," says Lady Nithisdale, "I had
prepared some paint of the color of hers to disguise his with. I also
bought an artificial head-dress of the same color as hers, and I painted
his face with white, and his cheeks with rouge to hide his long beard,
which he had not time to shave. All this provision I had before left in
the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before had
endeared me to, let me go quietly with my company, and were not so
strictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more so as they
were persuaded, from what I had told them the day before, that the
prisoners