CHAPTER LXVIII:.
To-morrow?
Oh that's sudden! Spare him! spare him! SHAKESPEARE.
Edward, attended by his former servant Alick Polwarth, who had re-entered his service at Edinburgh, reached Carlisle while the commission of Oyer and Terminer on his unfortunate associates was yet sitting.

He had pushed forward in haste,--not, alas! with the most distant hope of saving Fergus, but to see him for the last time.

I ought to have mentioned, that he had furnished funds for the defence of the prisoners in the most liberal manner, as soon as he heard that the day of trial was fixed.

A solicitor, and the first counsel, accordingly attended; but it was upon the same footing on which the first physicians are usually summoned to the bedside of some dying man of rank;--the doctors to take the advantage of some incalculable chance of an exertion of nature--the lawyers to avail themselves of the barely possible occurrence of some legal flaw.

Edward pressed into the court, which was extremely crowded; but by his arriving from the north, and his extreme eagerness and agitation, it was supposed he was a relation of the prisoners, and people made way for him.