perpetrated on this man had been minutely pre-arranged by the Privy
Council. We mention a few in order that the reader may the better
understand the inconceivable brutality of the Government against which
the Scottish Covenanters had to contend. Besides the barbarities
connected with poor Cameron's head and hands, it was arranged that
Hackston's body was to be drawn backward on a hurdle to the cross of
Edinburgh, where, in the first place, his right hand was to be struck
off, and after some time his left hand. Thereafter he was to be hanged
up and cut down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to
the people by the hangman, and then to be burnt in a fire on the
scaffold. Afterwards his head was to be cut off, and his body, divided
into four quarters, to be sent respectively to Saint Andrews, Glasgow,
Leith, and Burntisland.

In carrying out his fiendish instructions the bungling executioner was a
long time mangling the wrist of Hackston's right arm before he succeeded
in separating the hand. Hackston quietly advised him to be more careful
to strike in the joint of the left. Having been drawn up and let fall
with a jerk, three times, life was not extinct, for it is said that when
the heart was torn out it moved after falling on the scaffold.

Several others who had been with Cameron were betrayed at this time, by
apostate comrades, tried under torture, and executed; and the
persecution became so hot that field-preaching was almost extinguished.
The veteran Donald Cargill, however still maintained his ground.

This able, uncompromising, yet affectionate and charitable man had
prepared a famous document called the "Queensferry Paper," of which it
has been said that it contains "the very pith of sound constitutional
doctrine regarding both civil and ecclesiastical rights." Once,
however, he mistook his mission. In the presence of a large
congregation at Torwood he went so far as to excommunicate Charles the
Second; the Dukes of York, Lauderdale, and Rothes; Sir Cu McKenzie and
Dalziel of Binns. That these despots richly deserved whatever
excommunication might imply can hardly be denied, but it is equally
certain that prolonged and severe persecution had stirred up poor
Cargill upon this occasion to overstep his duty as a teacher of love to
God and man.

Heavily did Cargill pay for his errors--as well as for his long and
conscientious adherence to duty. Five thousand merks were offered for
him,