rds after
the business was done to the bargain; but Thomas was then deacon of the
wrights, and himself a member of our body.

At the hour appointed, Jeanie, dressed in white, was led out by the town-
officers, and in the midst of the magistrates from among the ladies, with
her hands tied behind her with a black riband. At the first sight of her
at the tolbooth stairhead, a universal sob rose from all the multitude,
and the sternest e'e couldna refrain from shedding a tear. We marched
slowly down the stair, and on to the foot of the scaffold, where her
younger brother, Willy, that was stable-boy at my lord's, was standing by
himself, in an open ring made round him in the crowd; every one
compassionating the dejected laddie, for he was a fine youth, and of an
orderly spirit.

As his sister came towards the foot of the ladder, he ran towards her,
and embraced her with a wail of sorrow that melted every heart, and made
us all stop in the middle of our solemnity. Jeanie looked at him, (for
her hands were tied,) and a silent tear was seen to drop from her cheek.
But in the course of little more than a minute, all was quiet, and we
proceeded to ascend the scaffold. Willy, who had by this time dried his
eyes, went up with us, and when Mr Pittle had said the prayer, and sung
the psalm, in which the whole multitude joined, as it were with the
contrition of sorrow, the hangman stepped forward to put on the fatal
cap, but Willy took it out of his hand, and placed it on his sister
himself, and then kneeling down, with his back towards her closing his
eyes and shutting his ears with his hands, he saw not nor heard when she
was launched into eternity.

When the awful act was over, and the stir was for the magistrates to
return, and the body to be cut down, poor Willy rose, and without looking
round, went down the steps of the scaffold; the multitude made a lane for
him to pass, and he went on through them hiding his face, and gaed
straight out of the town. As for the mother, we were obligated, in the
course of the same year, to drum her out of the town, for stealing
thirteen choppin bottles from William Gallon's, the vintner's, and
selling them for whisky to Maggie Picken, that was tried at the same time
for the reset.

CHAPTER X--A RIOT

Nothing very material, after Jeanie Gaisling's affair, happened in the
town till the time of my first provostry, when an event arose with an
aspect of exceeding danger to the lives