accusation! A wife of five
years, and a mother of only a few weeks, that she should sin with
an honorable man who is her friend and her husband's friend! Did
Livingstone say, according to that dastard hiding in the wood, that
his heart was with us? That was with our cause, and not with me.
Did he say honor hindered him? That was not honor towards you, it
was honor towards his colors. But honor is a strange word in your ears
now, my lord. I have never thought of Livingstone more than any
other man who has a good name and has never betrayed a trust. This
night my heart is favorable to him, for I saw him in an agony about
his honor, and I judge if he were a woman's husband, and she was such
a woman as I am before God this day, he would rather die than
insult her."

"Ye wished for some weapon wherewith to take a coward's life. Here is
my sword, Jean, and here is my heart. I would not be sorry to die, and
I would rather take the last stroke from you than from my enemies. It
is not worth while to live, for I have no friend, and soon shall have
no possessions. My cause is forlorn, and my name is a byword, and now,
by my own doing, I have lost my only love. Strike just here, and my
blood will be an atonement to thee for my sin, and generations unborn
will bless the hand which slew Claverhouse.

"Ye hesitate for a moment"--for she was holding the sword by the hilt,
and her face was still clouded with gloom, although the fire was dying
down. "Then I will use that moment, not to ask your pardon, for I
judge you are not a woman to forgive--and neither should I be in your
place--but to explain. I shall not speak of my love for you, for that
now ye will not believe, nor of my shame in having received those evil
thoughts for a moment into my heart. I have never known the bitterness
of shame before, but I would fain tell how it happened, that the
remembrance of me be less black after we have parted forever. Had I
been in my natural state it had been impossible for me to doubt thee,
Jean, and if I had seen thee sin before mine eyes, I would have
thought it was another. But my mind has been distraught through
weariness of the body on the long rides, and nights without sleep as I
lay a-planning, and the desertion of friends in whom I trusted, and
the refusals of men of whom I expected loyalty, and the humiliating
helplessness before William's general, my old rival MacKay. I was
almost mad. In the night-time, I think, I was mad altogethe