sentenced, and it seems the king found out all about their plot as I
knew he would, and pardoned the men who were going to kidnap him,
while the man who wanted to stop such foolishness is to be hanged in
his name."

"That seems villainously unfair," said the beggar. "Didn't the eleven
try to do anything for you?"

"How do you know there were eleven?" cried Hutchinson, turning round
upon him.

"I thought you said eleven."

"Well, maybe I did, maybe I did; yes, there were eleven of them. They
never got my letter. Their messenger was a traitor, as is usually the
case, and merely told them I would have nothing to do with their
foolish venture; and that brings me to the point I have been coming
to. You see although I would keep my word in any case, yet I'm not so
feared to approach St. Ninians as another man might be. Young Jamie,
the king, seems to have more sense in his noodle than he gets credit
for. Some of his forbears would have snapped off the heads of that
eleven without thinking more of the matter, but he seems to have
recognised they were but poor silly bodies, and so let them go. Now
the moment they set me at liberty, a week since, I got a messenger I
could trust, and sent him to the cobbler, Flemming by name. I told
Flemming I was to be hanged, but he had still a week to get me a
reprieve. I asked him to go to the king and tell him the whole truth
of the matter, so I'm thinking that a pardon will be on the scaffold
there before me; still, the disappointment of the hundreds waiting to
see the hanging will be great."

"Good God!" cried the beggar aghast, stopping dead in the middle of
the road and regarding his comrade with horror.

"What's wrong with you?" asked the big man stopping also.

"Has it never occurred to you that the king may be away from the
palace, and no one in the place able to find him?"

"No one able to find the King of Scotland? That's an unheard-of
thing."

"Listen to me, Hutchinson. Let us avoid St. Ninians, and go direct to
Stirling; it's only a mile or two further on. Let us see the cobbler
before running your neck into a noose."

"But, man, the cobbler will be at St. Ninians, either with a pardon or
to see me hanged, like the good friend he is."

"There will be no pardon at St. Ninians. Let us to Stirling; let us to
Stirling. I know that the king has not been at home for a week past."

"How can you know that?"

"Never mind how I know it. Will you do what I tell you?"

"No