had received in the battle were still untouched, and he
was feverish from the pain. This was another cause of rejoicing to his
foes; but they were careful to give him food lest he should escape them
as Kinnoull had done. And at each halting-place there came a minister to
heap insults and reproaches on his head, which he seldom deigned to
answer. But though the ministers of peace and goodwill had no words bad
enough for him, one is glad to think that Leslie the general did what he
could, and allowed his friends to see him whenever they asked to do so,
and also permitted him to accept and wear the clothes of a gentleman,
which were given him by the people of Dundee. It was to Leslie also that
he probably owed a last interview with his two little boys, when he
stopped for the night at the castle of Kinnaird, from which he had been
married.

* * * * *

From Dundee the prisoner was brought by ship to Leith, and taken to the
palace of Holyrood, where he was received by the magistrates of the city
in their robes of office, with the provost (or mayor) at their head.
Here the order of the Parliament was read, and he listened 'with a
majesty and state becoming him, and kept a countenance high.' Then his
friends, who, like himself, were prisoners, were ordered to walk,
chained two together, through the streets, and behind came Montrose,
seated bareheaded on a chair in a cart driven by the hangman. The
streets of the old town were crowded by people who came to mock and
jeer, but remained dumb with shame and pity. The cart slowly went on its
way, and at seven the Tolbooth prison was reached, with the gallows
thirty feet high standing as it had stood twelve years before beside the
city cross.

* * * * *

The last days of Montrose were disturbed by the constant visits of
ministers, who tried to force from him a confession of treachery to the
covenant, but in vain.

'The covenant which I took,' he said, 'I own it and adhere to it.
Bishops I care not for. I never intended to advance their interest. But
when the king had granted you all your desires, and you were everyone
sitting under his vine and under his fig tree--that then you should have
taken a party in England by the hand and entered into a league and
covenant with them against the king was the thing I judged my duty to
oppose to the yondmost.'

These words are the explanation of Montrose's conduct in changing