y also will not tell.

CHAPTER LV.

THE RED MAIDEN.

The great day which we had been expecting dawned, and lo! it was even as
any other day. The air was shrewdly cold when I awoke very early in the
morning, just as I had awaked from sleep every morning since I can
remember. It was my custom to begin to say the little prayer which my
mother had taught me before I was fairly awake. This I did when I was
but a boy, for the economising of time; and I continued the practice
when I put away most other childish things. I declare solemnly that I
was past the middle of the prayer, before the thought came to me that
this was the morn of the day on which I was to die. Even then, by God's
extreme mercy, fear did not take me utterly by the throat.

I had dreamed of the day often, and shivered to think of that awaking.
But now that it was here, it seemed to me like any morn in the years,
when I used to awake in the little sunlit tourelle at Earlstoun to the
noise of the singing of birds, and turn my thoughts upon riding to the
Duchrae by the Grenoch side to see Maisie Lennox--little Maisie May,
whom now I should see no more.

So by the strengthening mercy of God I was enabled to finish my mother's
prayer with some composure. And also to remember her and Maisie,
commending them both to the gracious care of One who is able to keep.

Then came the Chancellor's Commissioner to tell us that by the high
favour of his master, we were to be headed in the early morn. And that,
too, in the company of the great Earl of Cantyre, who, after lying long
in prison, was that day, for rebellion in the Highlands and the Isles,
condemned to lose his head. No higher favour could be granted, though it
seemed not so much to me as doubtless to some, that I should lay my head
beside an Earl's on the block of the Maiden, instead of setting my neck
in a rope at the hands of the common executioner in the Grassmarket.

But there is no doubt that all Scotland, and especially all the clan
Gordon, would think differently of the matter--ay, even my mother. And
to Wat such a death would seem almost like an accolade.

They read me my warrant in my death dungeon by the light of a dim
rushlight. But that of Anton Lennox they read not, for a reason that has
already appeared, though they told us not of it at the time. Yet because
the messenger was expected to arrive every moment with it, Anton, who
shared my favour of execution, was to accompany us to the