Kilmarnock) was coming back condemned to Death from his Trial before
his Peers at Westminster, his Lordship being of a merry, Epicurean
temper, and caring no more for Death than a Sailor does for a wet Shirt,
stopped the coach at a Fruiterer's at Charing Cross, where he must needs
ask Mr. Lieutenant's Attendant to buy him some Honey-Blobbs, which is
the Scottish name for ripe Gooseberries.

"And King Geordie maun pay for the bit fruitie; for King James's auld
soldier has nae siller of his ain save twa guineas for Jock Headsman,"
quoth he in his jocular manner, meaning that those about him must pay
for the Gooseberries; for indeed this Lord was very poor, and I have
heard was, when in town, so much driven as to borrow money from the man
who keeps the Tennis-court in James Street, Haymarket.

Well, it so happened that the Season was a backward one; and the
Fruiterer sends his duty out to his Lordship, saying that he has no ripe
Gooseberries, but that of green ones he has a store, to which that
unfortunate Nobleman is heartily welcome.

"I'll e'en try one," says my Lord; and from a Punnet they brought him he
picks a Green Gooseberry; when, wonderful to relate, it swells in his
hand to the bigness at least of an egg-plum, and turns the colour of
Blood. "The de'il's in the Honey-Blobb," cries my Lord in a tiff, and
flings it out of window, where it made a great red stain on the
pavement.

And this the Warder who stood by, and the Messenger who was in the coach
itself, told me.

Less need is there to speak of such strange adventures as my Lady
Nithisdale's child (that was born soon after her Lord's escape from the
Tower, in which, with such a noble valour and self-sacrifice, she aided
him) being brought into the World with a broad Axe figured, as though by
a Limner, on its Neck; or of the Countess of Cromartie's infant (she
likewise Lay-in while the Earl was under sentence) having a thin red
line or thread right round its neck. These things are perhaps to be
accounted more as Phenomena of nature than as ominous prognostications,
and I so dismiss 'em. But it is worth while to note that, for all the
good authority we have of Lord Kilmarnock's Waiting-woman being
affrighted by the vision of a Bloody Head, the story itself, or at least
something germane to it, is as old as the Hills. During my travels in
Sweden, I was told of a very strange mischance that had happened to one
of their Kings who was named Charles;--but Charle