Or, to speak more certainly, it is the pleasure of Heaven, by some hidden agency which we cannot comprehend, to leave open this mode of discovering the wickedness of him who has defaced the image of his Creator." "I have heard this law talked of," said Sir Patrick, "and it was enforced in the Bruce's time.

This surely is no unfit period to seek, by such a mystic mode of inquiry, the truth to which no ordinary means can give us access, seeing that a general accusation of Sir John's household would full surely be met by a general denial.

Yet I must crave farther of Sir Louis, our reverend town clerk, how we shall prevent the guilty person from escaping in the interim ?" "The burghers will maintain a strict watch upon the wall, drawbridges shall be raised and portcullises lowered, from sunset to sunrise, and strong patrols maintained through the night.

This guard the burghers will willingly maintain, to secure against the escape of the murderer of their townsman." The rest of the counsellors acquiesced, by word, sign, and look, in this proposal.
"Again," said the provost, "what if any one of the suspected household refuse to submit to the ordeal of bier right ?" "He may appeal to that of combat," said the reverend city scribe, "with an opponent of equal rank; because the accused person must have his choice, in the appeal to the judgment of God, by what ordeal he will be tried.

But if he refuses both, he must be held as guilty, and so punished." The sages of the council unanimously agreed with the opinion of their provost and town clerk, and resolved, in all formality, to petition the King, as a matter of right, that the murder of their fellow citizen should be inquired into according to this ancient form, which was held to manifest the truth, and received as matter of evidence in case of murder so late as towards the end of the 17th century.