de great use of her
visible consternation, and pled that she was by herself; for in truth she
had every appearance of being so. He was, however, a dure man, no doubt
well enough versed in the particulars and punctualities of the law for an
ordinary plea; but no of the right sort of knowledge and talent to take
up the case of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill example and a winsome
nature, and clothed in the allurement of loveliness, as the judge himself
said to the jury.

On the night before the day of execution, she was brought over in a
chaise from Ayr between two town-officers, and placed again in our hands,
and still she never spoke.

Nothing could exceed the compassion that every one had for poor Jeanie,
so she wasna committed to a common cell, but laid in the council-room,
where the ladies of the town made up a comfortable bed for her, and some
of them sat up all night and prayed for her; but her thoughts were gone,
and she sat silent.

In the morning, by break of day, her wanton mother, that had been
trolloping in Glasgow, came to the tolbooth door, and made a dreadful
wally-waeing, and the ladies were obligated, for the sake of peace, to
bid her be let in. But Jeanie noticed her not, still sitting with her
eyes cast down, waiting the coming on of the hour of her doom. The
wicked mother first tried to rouse her by weeping and distraction, and
then she took to upbraiding; but Jeanie seemed to heed her not, save only
once, and then she but looked at the misleart tinkler, and shook her
head. I happened to come into the room at this time, and seeing all the
charitable ladies weeping around, and the randy mother talking to the
poor lassie as loudly and vehement as if she had been both deaf and
sullen, I commanded the officers, with a voice of authority, to remove
the mother, by which we had for a season peace, till the hour came.

There had not been an execution in the town in the memory of the oldest
person then living; the last that suffered was one of the martyrs in the
time of the persecution, so that we were not skilled in the business, and
had besides no hangman, but were necessitated to borrow the Ayr one.
Indeed, I being the youngest bailie, was in terror that the obligation
might have fallen to me.

A scaffold was erected at the Tron, just under the tolbooth windows, by
Thomas Gimblet, the master-of-work, who had a good penny of profit by the
job, for he contracted with the town-council, and had the boa