ed, however, that I had occasion to pass by, and some of the
town's folk who recollected me, said whisperingly to one another, but
loud enough to be heard, that I was one of the persecuted; whereupon Mrs
M'Coul turned round and said to me, with a constrained composure,--

"Can ye tell me whilk o' yon's the head and hand o' John M'Coul, that
was executed for the covenanting at Lanerk?"

I knew the remains well, for they had been pointed out to me and I had
seen them very often, but really the sight of the two women and the
fatherless bairns so overcame me that I was unable to answer.

"It's the head and the hand beside it, that has but twa fingers left, on
the Kirkgate end o' the shelf!" replied a person in the crowd, whom I
knew at once by his voice to be Willy Sutherland the hangman, although I
had not seen him from the night of my evasion. And here let me not
forget to set down the Christian worth and constancy of that simple and
godly creature, who, rather than be instrumental in the guilty judgment
by which John M'Coul and his fellow-sufferer were doomed to die, did
himself almost endure martyrdom, and yet never swerved in his purpose,
nor was abated in his integrity, in so much, that when questioned
thereafter anent the same by the Earl of Eglinton, and his Lordship,
being moved by the simplicity of his piety, said, "Poor man, you did
well in not doing what they would have had you to do."

"My Lord," replied Willy, "you are speaking treason! and yet you
persecute to the uttermost, which shows that you go against the light of
your conscience."

"Do you say so to me, after I kept you from being hanged?" said his
Lordship.

"Keep me from being drowned, and I will still tell you the verity." The
which honesty in that poor man begat for him a compassionate regard that
the dignities of many great and many noble in that time could never
command.

When the sorrowful M'Couls had indulged themselves in their melancholy
contemplation, they went away, followed by the multitude with silence
and sympathy, till they had mounted upon the cart which they had brought
with them into the town. But from that time every one began to speak of
the impiety of leaving the bones so wofully exposed; and after the
skirmish at Drumclog, where Robin M'Coul, the eldest of the two
striplings above spoken of, happened to be, when Mr John Welsh, with
the Carrick men that went to Bothwell-brigg, was sent into Glasgow to
bury the heads and han