The same falsehood he disseminated among the crowd, averring, with unblushing effrontery, to those who were nighest to the car, that he owed his death to his having been willing to execute the Duke of Rothsay's pleasure.

For a time he repeated these words, sullenly and doggedly, in the manner of one reciting a task, or a liar who endeavours by reiteration to obtain a credit for his words which he is internally sensible they do not deserve.

But when he lifted up his eyes, and beheld in the distance the black outline of a gallows, at least forty feet high, with its ladder and its fatal cord, rising against the horizon, he became suddenly silent, and the friar could observe that he trembled very much.
"Be comforted, my son," said the good priest, "you have confessed the truth, and received absolution.

Your penitence will be accepted according to your sincerity; and though you have been a man of bloody hands and cruel heart, yet, by the church's prayers, you shall be in due time assoilzied from the penal fires of purgatory." These assurances were calculated rather to augment than to diminish the terrors of the culprit, who was agitated by doubts whether the mode suggested for his preservation from death would to a certainty be effectual, and some suspicion whether there was really any purpose of employing them in his favour, for he knew his master well enough to be aware of the indifference with which he would sacrifice one who might on some future occasion be a dangerous evidence against him.
His doom, however, was sealed, and there was no escaping from it.

They slowly approached the fatal tree, which was erected on a bank by the river's side, about half a mile from the walls of the city--a site chosen that the body of the wretch, which was to remain food for the carrion crows, might be seen from a distance in every direction.
Here the priest delivered Bonthron to the executioner, by whom he was assisted up the ladder, and to all appearance despatched according to the usual forms of the law.