ioners, was
"safe and gentle." They put her bare legs into a pair of stocks, and laid
on them iron bars, augmenting their weight one by one, till Margaret,
unable to bear the pain, cried out to be released, promising to confess
the truth as they wished to have it. But when released she only denied the
charges with fresh passion; so they had recourse to the iron bars again.
After a time, pain and weakness overcame her again, and she shrieked
aloud, "Tak off! tak off! and befoir God I will show ye the whole form!"
She then confessed--whatever they chose to ask her; but unfortunately, in
her ravings, included one Isobel Crawford, who when arrested--as she was
on the instant--attempted no defence, but, paralyzed and stupefied,
admitted everything with which she was charged. Margaret's trial
proceeded: sullen and despairing, she assented to the most monstrous
counts: she knew there was no hope, and she seemed to take a bitter pride
in suffering her tormentors to befool themselves to the utmost. In the
midst of her anguish her husband, Alexander Dein, entered the court,
accompanied by a lawyer. And then her despair passed, and she thought she
saw a glimmer of life and salvation. She asked to be defended. "All that
I have confessed," she said, "was in an agony of torture; and before God
all that I have spoken is false and untrue. But," she added pathetically,
turning to her husband, "ye have been owre lang in coming!" Her defence
did her no good; she was condemned, and at the stake entreated that no
harm might befall Isobel Crawford, who was utterly and entirely innocent.
To whom did she make this prayer? to hearts turned wild and wolfish by
superstition; to hearts made fiendish by fear; to men with nothing of
humanity save its form--with nothing of religion save its terrors. She
might as well have prayed to the fierce winds blowing round the
court-house, or the rough waves lashing the barren shore! She was taken to
the stake, there strangled and burnt: bearing herself bravely to the last.
Poor, brave, beautiful, young Margaret! we, at this long lapse of time,
cannot even read of her fate without tears; it needed all the savageness
of superstition to harden the hearts of the living against the actual
presence of her beauty, her courage, and her despair!

Isobel Crawford was now tried; "after the assistant minister, Mr. David
Dickson, had made earnest prayer to God for opening her obdurate and
closed heart, she was subjected to