y!
I am glad to see you. I have been with several of your relations; the good
lady your mother was of great use to us at Perth."

Through the crowd I elbowed my way and waited for the three condemned
Scotch lords to pass into their carriages. Balmerino, bluff and soldierly,
led the way; next came the tall and elegant Kilmarnock; Lord Cromartie,
plainly nervous and depressed, brought up the rear. Balmerino recognized
me, nodded almost imperceptibly, but of course gave no other sign of
knowing the gawky apprentice who gaped at him along with a thousand
others. Some one in the crowd cried out, "Which is Balmerino?" The old
lord turned courteously, and said with a bow, "I am Balmerino." At the
door of the coach he stopped to shake hands with his fellow-sufferers.

"I am sorry that I alone cannot pay the debt, gentlemen. But after all
'tis but what we owe to nature sooner or later, the common debt of all. I
bear in mind what Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the night before his head paid
forfeit.

"'Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.'

"Poor Murray drags out a miserable life despised by all, but we go to our
God with clean hands. By St. Andrew, the better lot is ours."

"I think of my poor wife and eight fatherless bairns," said Cromartie
sadly.

Rough Arthur Elphinstone's comforting hand fell on his shoulder.

"A driech outlook, my friend. You must commend them to the God of orphans
if the worst befalls. As for us-- Well, in the next world we will not be
tried by a whig jury."

Balmerino stepped into the coach which was waiting to convey him to the
Tower. The gentleman-gaoler followed with the official axe, the edge of
which still pointed toward its victim. He must have handled it carelessly
in getting into the carriage, for I heard Balmerino bark out,

"Take care, man, or you'll break my shins with that d----d axe."

They were the last words I ever heard from his lips. The door slammed and
the coach drove away to the prison, from which my Lord came forth only to
meet the headsman and his block.

Sadly I made my way towards the city through the jostling crowds of
sightseers. Another batch of captives from the North was to pass through
the town that day on their way to prison, and a fleering rabble surged to
and fro about the streets of London in gala dress, boisterous, jovial,
pitiless. From high to low by common consent the town made holiday.