noch bank.
At the sight my heart swelled within me at once sick and hot. Margaret
Lauchlison was tethered deepest down, her stake set firm in the bottom
and the post rising as high as her head.

Nigh half way up the steep bank stood our little Margaret, loosely
reeved to a sunken stob, her hands clasped before her. She still wore
the gown that I remember seeing upon her when she dwelt with us among
the hills. But even in this pass she was cheerful, and lifting her eyes
with a smile she bade me be so likewise, because that for her there was
no fear and but a short pain. Also she called me very sweetly "William,"
and asked me to commend her to Maisie Lennox--a thing which more than
all went to my heart. For it told me by the way she said it, that Maisie
and she had talked together of loves and likings, as is all maidens'
wont. The women were not tightly tied to the posts, but attached to them
with a running rove of rope, by which they could be pulled close to the
stakes, or else, at the will of the murderers, drawn up again to the
bank, as one might draw a pitcher from a well.

Already was the salt tide water beginning to flow upwards along the
Blednoch channel, bearing swirls of foam upon its breast.

Margaret Lauchlison, being an aged woman of eighty years, said no word
as the tide rose above her breast, where lowest in the river bed she
stood waiting. Her head hung down, and it was not till the water reached
her lips that she began to struggle, nor did I see her make so much as a
movement. Yet she was determined to die as she had lived, an honest,
peaceable, Christian woman of a good confession--not learned, save in
the scholarship of God, but therein of high attainment and great
experience. And all honour be to her, for even as she determined, so she
died.

Then, when some of the soldiers were for fleeching with her to take the
Test, Lag cried out (for he ever loved his devil's-broth served hot):

"Bide ye there! 'Tis needless to speak to the old besom! Let her go
quick to hell!"

But Provost Coltran, sober enough this morning, and with other things to
think of than the crows, come to the bank edge. And standing where his
feet were nearly on a level with our little Margaret's head, he said to
her:

"What see ye down there, Margaret Wilson? What think ye? Can you with
constancy suffer the choking of the salt water when it comes to your
turn?"

Now, though Coltran was a rude man, and pang full of oaths, he spo