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on sagely. "What is your crime?" inquired his majesty. "Oh, the crime's neither here nor there. If they want to hang a man, they'll hang him crime or no crime." "But why should they want to hang a man with so many friends?" "Well, you see a man may have many friends and yet two or three powerful enemies. My crime, as you call it, is that I'm related to the Douglases; that's the real crime; but that's not what I'm to be hanged for. Oh no, it's all done according to the legal satisfaction of the lawyers. I'm hanged for treason to the king; a right royal crime, that dubs a man a gentleman as much as if the king's sword slaps his bended back; a crime that better men than me have often suffered for, and that many will suffer for yet ere kings are abolished, I'm thinking. You see, as I said, I married into the Douglas family, and when the Earl of Angus let this young sprig of a king slip through his fingers, it was as much as one's very life was worth to whisper the name of Douglas. Now I think the Earl of Angus a good man, and when he was driven to England, and the Douglases scattered far and wide by this rapscallion callant with a crown on his head, I being an outspoken man, gave my opinion of the king, damn him, and there were plenty to report it. I did not deny it, indeed I do not deny it to-day, therefore my neck's like to be longer before the sun goes down." "But surely," exclaimed the beggar, "they will not hang a man in Scotland for merely saying a hasty word against the king?" "There's more happens in this realm than the king kens of, and all done in his name too. But to speak truth, there was a bit extra against me as well. A wheen of the daft bodies in Stirling made up a slip of a plot to trap the king and put him in hiding for a while until he listened to what they called reason. There were two weavers among them and weavers are always plotting; a cobbler, and such like people, and they sent word, would I come and help them. I was fool enough to write them a note, and entrusted it to their messenger. I told them to leave the king alone until I came to Stirling, and then I would just nab him myself, put him under my oxter and walk down towards the Border with him, for I knew that if they went on they'd but lose their silly heads. And so, wishing no harm to the king, I made my way to Stirling, but did not get within a mile of it, for they tripped me up at St. Ninians, having captured my letter. So I was
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