erstood the
subject. His father's fate could not intimidate him; the lenity of the
laws which had restored to him his father's property and rights could
not melt him. That he was brave, generous, and possessed many good
qualities, only rendered him the more dangerous; that he was enlightened
and accomplished, made his crime the less excusable; that he was an
enthusiast in a wrong cause, only made him the more fit to be its
martyr. Above all, he had been the means of bringing many hundreds of
men into the field, who, without him, would never have broken the peace
of the country.

'I repeat it,' said the Colonel, 'though Heaven knows with a heart
distressed for him as an individual, that this young gentleman has
studied and fully understood the desperate game which he has played.
He threw for life or death, a coronet or a coffin; and he cannot now be
permitted, with justice to the country, to draw stakes because the dice
have gone against him.'

Such was the reasoning of those times, held even by brave and humane men
towards a vanquished enemy. Let us devoutly hope, that, in this respect
at least, we shall never see the scenes, or hold the sentiments, that
were general in Britain Sixty Years since.

CHAPTER LXVIII:

To-morrow? Oh that's sudden! Spare him! spare him!
SHAKESPEARE.

Edward, attended by his former servant Alick Polwarth, who had
re-entered his service at Edinburgh, reached Carlisle while the
commission of Oyer and Terminer on his unfortunate associates was yet
sitting. He had pushed forward in haste,--not, alas! with the most
distant hope of saving Fergus, but to see him for the last time. I ought
to have mentioned, that he had furnished funds for the defence of the
prisoners in the most liberal manner, as soon as he heard that the day
of trial was fixed. A solicitor, and the first counsel, accordingly
attended; but it was upon the same footing on which the first physicians
are usually summoned to the bedside of some dying man of rank;--the
doctors to take the advantage of some incalculable chance of an exertion
of nature--the lawyers to avail themselves of the barely possible
occurrence of some legal flaw. Edward pressed into the court, which was
extremely crowded; but by his arriving from the north, and his extreme
eagerness and agitation, it was supposed he was a relation of the
prisoners, and people made way for him. It was the third sitting of
the court, and there were two men at