he clock on the following day, there came officers to the
Tolbooth Port and cried my name, to which I answered with a quaking
heart--not for death, but for torture. So they took me out and delivered
me to the guard, who haled me by back ways and closes to a little door
let into the side of a great hulk of grey wall.

Along stone passages very many, all dripping with damp like a cellar,
they dragged me, till beside three doors hung with red cloth they
stopped. Then instead of swearing and jesting as they had done before,
the officers talked in whispers.

Presently a door swung open very silently to admit me, and I set my feet
upon a soft carpet. Then, also without noise, the door swung to again. I
found myself alone in a cage, barriered like the cage of a wild beast.
It was at one end of a vast room with black oaken ceiling, carven and
panelled. Before me there was a strong breastwork of oak, and an iron
bar across, chin high. Beside me and on either hand were ranged
strange-looking engines, some of which I knew to be the "boots" for the
torture of the legs, and the pilniewinks for the bruising of the thumbs.
Also there stood at each side of the platform a man habited in black and
white and with a black mask over his face. These men stood with their
arms folded, and looked across the narrow space at one another as though
they had been carven statues.

The rest of the great room was occupied by a table, and at the table
there sat a dignified company. Then I understood that I stood in the
presence of the Privy Council of Scotland, which for twenty-five years
had bent the land to the King's will. At the head sat cruel Queensberry,
with a face louring with hate and guile--or so it seemed, seen through
bars of oak and underneath gauds of iron.

Still more black and forbidding was the face of the "Bluidy Advocate,"
Sir George Mackenzie, who sat at the table-foot, and wrote incessantly
in his books. I knew none other there, save the fox face of Tarbet,
called the Timeserver.

When I was brought in, they were talking over some slight matter
concerning a laird who had been complaining that certain ill-set persons
were carrying away sea tangle from his foreshore. And I was not pleased
that they should have other thoughts in their minds, when I was before
them in peril of my life.

At last Sir George Mackenzie turned him about and said, "Officer, whom
have we here?"

The officer of the court made answer very shortly and for