't.
Old Play.

I know not why it is that a single deed of violence and cruelty affects
our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. I
had seen that day several of my brave countrymen fall in battle: it
seemed to me that they met a lot appropriate to humanity, and my bosom,
though thrilling with interest, was affected with nothing of that
sickening horror with which I beheld the unfortunate Morris put to death
without resistance, and in cold blood. I looked at my companion, Mr.
Jarvie, whose face reflected the feelings which were painted in mine.
Indeed he could not so suppress his horror, but that the words escaped
him in a low and broken whisper,--

"I take up my protest against this deed, as a bloody and cruel murder--it
is a cursed deed, and God will avenge it in his due way and time."

"Then you do not fear to follow?" said the virago, bending on him a look
of death, such as that with which a hawk looks at his prey ere he
pounces.

"Kinswoman," said the Bailie, "nae man willingly wad cut short his thread
of life before the end o' his pirn was fairly measured off on the
yarn-winles--And I hae muckle to do, an I be spared, in this
warld--public and private business, as weel that belonging to the
magistracy as to my ain particular; and nae doubt I hae some to depend
on me, as puir Mattie, wha is an orphan--She's a far-awa' cousin o' the
Laird o' Limmerfield. Sae that, laying a' this thegither--skin for skin,
yea all that a man hath, will he give for his life."

"And were I to set you at liberty," said the imperious dame, "what name
could you give to the drowning of that Saxon dog?"

"Uh! uh!--hem! hem!" said the Bailie, clearing his throat as well as he
could, "I suld study to say as little on that score as might be--least
said is sunest mended."

"But if you were called on by the courts, as you term them, of justice,"
she again demanded, "what then would be your answer?"

The Bailie looked this way and that way, like a person who meditates an
escape, and then answered in the tone of one who, seeing no means of
accomplishing a retreat, determines to stand the brunt of battle--"I see
what you are driving me to the wa' about. But I'll tell you't plain,
kinswoman,--I behoved just to speak according to my ain conscience; and
though your ain gudeman, that I wish had been here for his ain sake and
mine, as wool as the puir Hieland creature Dougal,