he young laird; "let Murray hang us in his
bedchamber if he will. No matter what manner o' death we die, provided
only that we die like men. Let him hang us if he dare, and the disgrace
be his that is coward enough so to make an end of his enemy.

"O sir," said Simon, "but that is poor comfort to a man that has to
leave a small family behind him.

"Simon! are you afraid to die?" cried the captive laird, in a tone of
rebuke.

"No, your honour," said Simon--"that is, I am no more afraid to die than
other men are, or ought to be--but only ye'll observe, sir, that I have
no ambition--not, as I may say, to draw my last breath upon a wuddy, but
to have it very unnaturally stopped. Begging your pardon, but you are a
young man, while I have a wife and family that would be left to mourn
for me!--and O sir! the wife and the bits o' bairns press unco sairly
upon a man's heart, when death tries to come in the way between him and
them. In exploits like that in which we were last night engaged, and
also in battles abroad, I have faced danger in every shape a hundred
times--yet, sir, to be shot in a moment, as it were, or to be run
through the body, and to die honourably on the field, is a very
different thing from deliberately walking up a ladder to the branch o'
a tree, from which we are never to come doun in life again. And mair
than that, if we had been o' Johnny Faa's gang, they couldna hae treated
us mair disrespectfully than to condemn us to the death that they have
decreed for us."

"Providing ye die bravely, Simon," said the young laird, "it is little
matter what manner o' death ye die; and as for your wife and weans, fear
not; my faither's house will provide for them. For, though I fall now,
there will be other heirs left to the estate o' Harden."

While the prisoners thus conversed in the place of their confinement,
Lady Murray spoke unto her husband, saying--"And what, Sir Gideon, if
it be a fair question, may ye intend to do wi' the braw young laird o'
Harden, now that he is in your power?"

He drew her gently by the arm towards the window, and pointing towards
a tree which grew at the distance of a few yards, he said--"Do ye see
yonder branch o' the elm tree that is waving in the wind? To-morrow,
young Scott and his kinsman shall swing there together, or hereafter say
that I am no Murray."

"O guidman!" said she, "it is because I was terrified that ye would be
doing the like o' that, that caused me to ask the que