a pit, while the head was set
up on a pole at Westminster Hall.

The Duke of Hamilton, who was executed in the year 1649, was warned of
his fate by a witch. She said the king would be put to death, and that
he would be his successor. This prediction being delivered somewhat
ambiguously, Hamilton misunderstood its meaning. His impression was
that he was to obtain the crown (which led him to act treacherously
towards his Majesty), whereas the beldam meant that he would succeed
the king on the scaffold.

Peden, one of the celebrated Covenanters, who was persecuted for
righteousness' sake, foretold many of the woes that Scotland would
pass through before the Church could have peace. The good old man died
a natural death in his bed, and his bones were decently interred by
the Boswells of Auchinleck in their family vault, under the deep
shadows of wide spreading plane-trees. This honour coming to the ears
of the soldiers in the garrison of Sorn, forty days after the
interment, they cruelly rifled the tomb of its dead. There is a
tradition in the district to the present day, that when the soldiers
burst open the coffin and tore off the shroud, there came a sudden
blast like a whirlwind, though the day had previously been without a
breath of stirring air, which caught up the shroud, and twisted it
round a large projecting branch of one of the plane-trees. From that
day the branch withered away, and remained, for ages like a black
shrivelled arm uplifted to heaven, as a protest against the
sacrilegious crime. This is only one of the many wondrous tales
concerning Peden, who was known far and wide as "The Prophet." Peden's
remains were carried to the hill above Cumnock, where the common
gallows stood, and there, in spite of the remonstrances of the
Boswells and the Countess of Dumfries, suspended on the gibbet. When
cut down, the body was interred, like that of a felon, at the foot of
the gallows-tree. At that time the churchyard of Cumnock was in the
town, but the old residenters, generation after generation, on seeing
their end approaching, desired to be buried beside the old prophet.
Thus the gallows-hill of Cumnock became the ordinary burying-ground of
the town. Two old thorn bushes mark the spot where the prophet's ashes
rest, in the midst of the remains of those he loved while in the land
that groaned under the despotic sway of relentless tyrants.

Though Peden died, as we have stated, a natural death, he suffered
grea