ing, to add the weight of
her betrayal. My lord gave her the oath in his most roaring voice, and
added an intolerant warning.

"Mind what ye say now, Janet," said he. "I have an e'e upon ye, I'm ill
to jest with."

Presently, after she was tremblingly embarked on her story, "And what
made ye do this, ye auld runt?" the Court interposed. "Do ye mean to
tell me ye was the panel's mistress?"

"If you please, ma loard," whined the female.

"Godsake! ye made a bonny couple," observed his lordship; and there was
something so formidable and ferocious in his scorn that not even the
galleries thought to laugh.

The summing up contained some jewels.

"These two peetiable creatures seem to have made up thegither, it's not
for us to explain why."--"The panel, who (whatever else he may be)
appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady."--"Neither the
panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as
even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of
sentencing, my lord had this _obiter dictum_: "I have been the means,
under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit
rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and
heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the
speaker in his task, made them tingle in the ears.

When all was over, Archie came forth again into a changed world. Had
there been the least redeeming greatness in the crime, any obscurity,
any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood. But the culprit stood,
with his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal agony, without defence
or excuse: a thing to cover up with blushes: a being so much sunk
beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the
judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be
conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger,
another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the
slaughter-house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and
infected the image of his judge.

Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words
and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance
awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of
Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the hooded stag, of the splendour and
crime, the velvet and bright iron of the past; and dismissed them with a
cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the Hunter's Bog, an