CHAPTER XX.
A woman wails for justice at the gate, A widow'd woman, wan and desolate.
Bertha.
The council room of Perth presented a singular spectacle.

In a gloomy apartment, ill and inconveniently lighted by two windows of different form and of unequal size, were assembled, around a large oaken table, a group of men, of whom those who occupied the higher seats were merchants, that is, guild brethren, or shopkeepers, arrayed in decent dresses becoming their station, but most of them bearing, like, the Regent York, "signs of war around their aged necks"-- gorgets, namely, and baldricks, which sustained their weapons.

The lower places around the table were occupied by mechanics and artisans, the presidents, or deacons, as they were termed, of the working classes, in their ordinary clothes, somewhat better arranged than usual.

These, too, wore pieces of armour of various descriptions.

Some had the blackjack, or doublets covered with small plates of iron of a lozenge shape, which, secured through the upper angle, hung in rows above each [other], and which, swaying with the motion of the wearer's person, formed a secure defence to the body.