He seemed to struggle for life for a minute, but soon after hung still and inanimate.

The executioner, after remaining upon duty for more than half an hour, as if to permit the last spark of life to be extinguished, announced to the admirers of such spectacles that the irons for the permanent suspension of the carcass not having been got ready, the concluding ceremony of disembowelling the dead body and attaching it finally to the gibbet would be deferred till the next morning at sunrise.
Notwithstanding the early hour which he had named, Master Smotherwell had a reasonable attendance of rabble at the place of execution, to see the final proceedings of justice with its victim.

But great was the astonishment and resentment of these amateurs to find that the dead body had been removed from the gibbet.

They were not, however, long at a loss to guess the cause of its disappearance.

Bonthron had been the follower of a baron whose estates lay in Fife, and was himself a native of that province.