ain was unable to say that either man had
assaulted him, or, indeed, that he had any clear recollection of
anything that had happened after he left the inn. They might have got
off--indeed they _would_ have got off--but for one unfortunate
circumstance, which in the eyes of the jury completely damned them. In
possession of one of them was found a guinea, which the captain had no
hesitation in identifying as a peculiarly-marked coin which he had
carried about with him for many years. That was enough for the jury.
They and counsel for the prosecution would credit no explanation.

The story told by Hislop and Wallace was that on the night of the
assault they had been drinking and playing cards in a public-house in
Kelso; that late in the evening a soldier had come in and had joined in
the game, losing a considerable sum; that in consequence of his losses
he had produced a guinea, and had asked if any of the company could
change it. Hislop had given change, and the guinea found in his
possession was that which he had got from the soldier. "A story that
would not for a moment hold water," said counsel, when the unfortunate
men failed to produce evidence in support of their story; and the judge,
in his summing up, agreeing with the opinion of counsel for the
prosecution, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and both men were
condemned to be hanged.

On May 17, 1785, this sentence was carried out. But here arose
circumstances which caused the credulous--and in those days most people
were credulous--first to doubt, and finally to believe implicitly in the
innocence of the convicted men. From first to last Wallace and Hislop
had both most strongly protested that they were entirely guiltless.
That, of course, went for nothing. But when, on the day of execution,
the ropes which were used to hang the poor creatures both broke; when
the man who ran to fetch sounder hemp fell as he hurried, and broke his
leg, then the credulous and fickle public began to imagine that
Providence was intervening to save men falsely convicted. Then, too, the
tale spread abroad among a simple-minded people how a girl, sick unto
death, had said to her mother that when Hislop's time came she would be
in heaven with him; and it was told that as Hislop's body, after
execution, was carried into that same tenement, in a room of which the
sick girl lay, her spirit fled. Judgment, also, was said to have fallen
on a woman who occupied a room in that house, a