from
one side to another; but little he guessed that the new king, by whose
express orders he had undertaken his present hopeless mission, had only
a few days before, at the conference of Breda, consented to bid his
viceroy disband his army and to leave Scotland. This knowledge, which
would have added bitterness to his fate, was spared him; as was the
further revelation of the baseness of Charles II., who gave orders to
his messenger not to deliver the document if he found Montrose likely to
get the upper hand.

* * * * *

As an act of extraordinary generosity the Parliament, which had voted to
colonel Strachan a diamond clasp for his share in the final defeat of
Montrose, permitted the prisoner's friends to provide him with a proper
dress, so that he might appear suitably before them. Their courtesy did
not, however, extend to a barber to shave him--a favour which, as he
said, 'might have been allowed to a dog.' But he must have looked very
splendid as he stood at the bar of the House, in black cloth trimmed
with silver, and a deep lace collar, with a scarlet cloak likewise
trimmed with silver falling over his shoulders, a band of silver on his
beaver hat, and scarlet shoes and stockings.

A long list of his crimes was read to him, and these one by one he
denied. 'For the league,' he said, 'I thank God I never was in it, and
so could not break it. Never was any man's blood spilt save in battle,
and even then, many thousand lives have I preserved. As for my coming at
this time, it was by his majesty's just commands'--the commands of the
king who a week earlier had abandoned him! But of what use are words and
denial when the doom is already fixed? The chancellor's reply was merely
a series of insults, and then the prisoner was ordered to kneel and hear
the sentence read by Warriston, by whose side he had stood on the
scaffold in 1638 when the first covenant was read, and old Lord Rothes
had made his dark prophecy.

He had known beforehand what it would be--hanging, drawing, and
quartering, with a copy of his last declaration and the history of his
wars tied round his neck, and no burial for his body unless he confessed
his guilt at the last. This did not trouble him. 'I will carry honour
and fidelity with me to the grave' he had said eight years before, and
that no grave was to be allowed him mattered little.

The ceremony over, he was led back to the Tolbooth, where his gaoler
kept h