Yet stay--have we not some Jedwood men in our troop ?" "Plenty of Turnbulls, Rutherfords, Ainslies, and so forth," said Balveny.
"Call me an inquest of these together; they are all good men and true, saving a little shifting for their living.

Do you see to the execution of these felons, while I hold a court in the great hall, and we'll try whether the jury or the provost marshal do their work first; we will have Jedwood justice--hang in haste and try at leisure." "Yet stay, my lord," said Ramorny, "you may rue your haste--will you grant me a word out of earshot ?" "Not for worlds!" said Douglas; "speak out what thou hast to say before all that are here present." "Know all; then," said Ramorny, aloud, "that this noble Earl had letters from the Duke of Albany and myself, sent him by the hand of yon cowardly deserter, Buncle--let him deny it if he dare--counselling the removal of the Duke for a space from court, and his seclusion in this Castle of Falkland." "But not a word," replied Douglas, sternly smiling, "of his being flung into a dungeon--famished--strangled.

Away with the wretches, Balveny, they pollute God's air too long!" The prisoners were dragged off to the battlements.

But while the means of execution were in the act of being prepared, the apothecary expressed so ardent a desire to see Catharine once more, and, as he said, for the good of his soul, that the maiden, in hopes his obduracy might have undergone some change even at the last hour, consented again to go to the battlements, and face a scene which her heart recoiled from.
A single glance showed her Bonthron, sunk in total and drunken insensibility; Ramorny, stripped of his armour, endeavouring in vain to conceal fear, while he spoke with a priest, whose good offices he had solicited; and Dwining, the same humble, obsequious looking, crouching individual she had always known him.

He held in his hand a little silver pen, with which he had been writing on a scrap of parchment.
"Catharine," he said--"he, he, he!--I wish to speak to thee on the nature of my religious faith." "If such be thy intention, why lose time with me?
Speak with this good father." "The good father," said Dwining, "is--he, he!--already a worshipper of the deity whom I have served.