on sagely.

"What is your crime?" inquired his majesty.

"Oh, the crime's neither here nor there. If they want to hang a man,
they'll hang him crime or no crime."

"But why should they want to hang a man with so many friends?"

"Well, you see a man may have many friends and yet two or three
powerful enemies. My crime, as you call it, is that I'm related to the
Douglases; that's the real crime; but that's not what I'm to be hanged
for. Oh no, it's all done according to the legal satisfaction of the
lawyers. I'm hanged for treason to the king; a right royal crime, that
dubs a man a gentleman as much as if the king's sword slaps his bended
back; a crime that better men than me have often suffered for, and
that many will suffer for yet ere kings are abolished, I'm thinking.
You see, as I said, I married into the Douglas family, and when the
Earl of Angus let this young sprig of a king slip through his fingers,
it was as much as one's very life was worth to whisper the name of
Douglas. Now I think the Earl of Angus a good man, and when he was
driven to England, and the Douglases scattered far and wide by this
rapscallion callant with a crown on his head, I being an outspoken
man, gave my opinion of the king, damn him, and there were plenty to
report it. I did not deny it, indeed I do not deny it to-day,
therefore my neck's like to be longer before the sun goes down."

"But surely," exclaimed the beggar, "they will not hang a man in
Scotland for merely saying a hasty word against the king?"

"There's more happens in this realm than the king kens of, and all
done in his name too. But to speak truth, there was a bit extra
against me as well. A wheen of the daft bodies in Stirling made up a
slip of a plot to trap the king and put him in hiding for a while
until he listened to what they called reason. There were two weavers
among them and weavers are always plotting; a cobbler, and such like
people, and they sent word, would I come and help them. I was fool
enough to write them a note, and entrusted it to their messenger. I
told them to leave the king alone until I came to Stirling, and then I
would just nab him myself, put him under my oxter and walk down
towards the Border with him, for I knew that if they went on they'd
but lose their silly heads. And so, wishing no harm to the king, I
made my way to Stirling, but did not get within a mile of it, for they
tripped me up at St. Ninians, having captured my letter. So I was