.

"As for helping you awa, sir, I'll ne'er do it, ne'er; you hae sinned,
and you'll pay the penalty, as a man should do."

"Uncle, have mercy on me."

"Justice has a voice as weel as mercy. O waly, waly!" cried the
wretched old man, going back to the pathetic Gaelic of his childhood,
"O waly, waly! to think o' the sin and the shame o' it. Plenty o'
Callendars hae died before their time, but it has been wi' their faces
to their foes and their claymores in their hands. O Davie, Davie! my
lad, my lad! My Davie!"

His agony shook him as a great wind shakes the tree-tops, and David
stood watching him in a misery still keener and more hopeless. For a
few moments neither spoke. Then John rose wearily and said,

"I'll go with you, David, to the proper place. Justice must be
done--yes, yes, it is just and right."

Then he lifted up his eyes, and clasping his hands, cried out,

"But, O my heavenly Father, be merciful, be merciful, for love is the
fulfilling of the law. Come, David, we hae delayed o'er long."

"Where are you going, uncle?"

"You ken where weel enough."

"Dear uncle, be merciful. At least let us go see Dr. Morrison first.
Whatever he says I will do."

"I'll do that; I'll be glad to do that; maybe he'll find me a road out
o' this sair, sair strait. God help us all, for vain is the help o'
man."

CHAPTER VII.

When they entered Dr. Morrison's house the doctor entered with them.
He was wet through, and his swarthy face was in a glow of excitement.
A stranger was with him, and this stranger he hastily took into a room
behind the parlor, and then he came back to his visitors.

"Well, John, what is the matter?"

"Murder. Murder is the matter, doctor," and with a strange, quiet
precision he went over David's confession, for David had quite broken
down and was sobbing with all the abandon of a little child. During
the recital the minister's face was wonderful in its changes of
expression, but at the last a kind of adoring hopefulness was the most
decided.

"John," he said, "what were you going to do wi' that sorrowfu' lad?"

"I was going to gie him up to justice, minister, as it was right and
just to do; but first we must see about--about the body."

"That has, without doot, been already cared for. On the warst o'
nights there are plenty o' folk passing o'er Glasgow Green after the
tea-hour. It is David we must care for now. Why should we gie him up
to the law? Not but what 'the law is good,