devotions. Macbriar, whose fierce zeal did not perhaps exclude some
feelings of doubt and compunction, began to expostulate in prayer, as if
to wring from the Deity a signal that the bloody sacrifice they proposed
was an acceptable service. The eyes and ears of his hearers were
anxiously strained, as if to gain some sight or sound which might be
converted or wrested into a type of approbation, and ever and anon dark
looks were turned on the dial-plate of the time-piece, to watch its
progress towards the moment of execution.

Morton's eye frequently took the same course, with the sad reflection,
that there appeared no posibility of his life being expanded beyond the
narrow segment which the index had yet to travel on the circle until it
arrived at the fatal hour. Faith in his religion, with a constant
unyielding principle of honour, and the sense of conscious innocence,
enabled him to pass through this dreadful interval with less agitation
than he himself could have expected, had the situation been prophesied to
him. Yet there was a want of that eager and animating sense of right
which supported him in similar circumstances, when in the power of
Claverhouse. Then he was conscious, that, amid the spectators, were many
who were lamenting his condition, and some who applauded his conduct. But
now, among these pale-eyed and ferocious zealots, whose hardened brows
were soon to be bent, not merely with indifference, but with triumph,
upon his execution,--without a friend to speak a kindly word, or give a
look either of sympathy or encouragement,--awaiting till the sword
destined to slay him crept out of the scabbard gradually, and as it were
by strawbreadths, and condemned to drink the bitterness of death drop by
drop,--it is no wonder that his feelings were less composed than they had
been on any former occasion of danger. His destined executioners, as he
gazed around them, seemed to alter their forms and features, like
spectres in a feverish dream; their figures became larger, and their
faces more disturbed; and, as an excited imagination predominated over
the realities which his eyes received, he could have thought himself
surrounded rather by a band of demons than of human beings; the walls
seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on
his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the
prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of the organ.

[Illustration: Morton Awaiti