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in great danger, was springing forward, when Claverhouse, who observed his emotion, withheld him by force, laying one hand on his arm and the other on his mouth, while he whispered, "For God's sake, think where you are!"

This movement, fortunately for him, was observed by no other of the councilors, whose attention was engaged with the dreadful scene before them.

"He is gone," said the surgeon; "he has fainted, my lords, and human nature can endure no more."

"Release him," said the duke; and added, turning to Dalzell, "he will make an old proverb good, for he'll scarce ride to-day, though he has had his boots on. I suppose we must finish with

him? >>

"Ay, dispatch his sentence, and have done with him: we have plenty of drudgery behind.”

Strong waters and essences were busily employed to recall the senses of the unfortunate captive: and when his first faint gasps intimated a return of sensation, the duke pronounced sentence of death upon him, as a traitor taken in the act of open rebellion, and adjudged him to be carried from the bar to the common place of execution, and there hanged by the neck; his head and hands to be stricken off after death, and disposed of according to the pleasure of the Council, and all and sundry his movable goods and gear escheat and inbrought to his Majesty's use.

"Doomster," he continued, "repeat the sentence to the pris

oner. "

The office of doomster was in those days, and till a much later period, held by the executioner in commendam with his ordinary functions. The duty consisted in reciting to the unhappy criminal the sentence of the law as pronounced by the judge, which acquired an additional and horrid emphasis from the recollection that the hateful personage by whom it was uttered was to be the agent of the cruelties he announced. Macbriar had scarce understood the purport of the words as first pronounced by the lord president of the Council: but he was sufficiently recovered to listen and to reply to the sentence when uttered by the harsh and odious voice of the ruffian who was to execute it; and at the last awful words, "And this I pronounce for doom," he answered boldly:

"My lords, I thank you for the only favor I looked for, or would accept, at your hands; namely, that you have sent the crushed and maimed carcass, which has this day sustained your

cruelty, to this hasty end. It were indeed little to me whether I perish on the gallows or in the prison-house; but if death, following close on what I have this day suffered, had found me in my cell of darkness and bondage, many might have lost the sight how a Christian man can suffer in the good cause. For the rest, I forgive you, my lords, for what you have appointed and I have sustained. And why should I not? Ye send me to a happy exchange,- to the company of angels and the spirits of the just, for that of frail dust and ashes. Ye send me from darkness into day- from mortality to immortality-and in a word, from earth to heaven! If the thanks, therefore, and pardon of a dying man can do you good, take them at my hand, and may your last moments be as happy as mine!"

As he spoke thus, with a countenance radiant with joy and triumph, he was withdrawn by those who had brought him into the apartment, and executed within half an hour, dying with the same enthusiastic firmness which his whole life had evinced.

THE MEETING OF JEANIE AND EFFIE DEANS

From The Heart of Mid-Lothian'

"Sweet sister, let me live!

What sin you do to save a brother's life,

Nature dispenses with the deed so far

That it becomes a virtue.»

-MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

EANIE DEANS was admitted into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her shudder, whether she remembered him?

A half-pronounced timid "No" was her answer.

"What! not remember moonlight, and Muschat's Cairn, and Rob and Rat?" said he with the same sneer. needs redding up, my jo."

"Your memory

If Jeanie's distresses had admitted of aggravation, it must have been to find her sister under the charge of such a profligate as this man. He was not, indeed, without something of good to balance so much that was evil in his character and habits. his misdemeanors he had never been bloodthirsty or cruel; and in his present occupation, he had shown himself, in a certain

In

degree, accessible to touches of humanity. But these good qualities were unknown to Jeanie; who, remembering the scene at Muschat's Cairn, could scarce find voice to acquaint him that she had an order from Bailie Middleburgh, permitting her to see her sister.

"I ken that fu' weel, my bonny doo; mair by token, I have a special charge to stay in the ward with you a' the time ye are thegither."

"Must that be sae?" asked Jeanie with an imploring voice. "Hout, ay, hinny," replied the turnkey; "and what the waur will you and your tittie be of Jim Ratcliffe hearing what ye hae to say to ilk other? Deil a word ye'll say that will gar him ken your kittle sex better than he kens them already; and another thing is, that if ye dinna speak o' breaking the Tolbooth, deil a word will I tell ower, either to do ye good or ill."

Thus saying, Ratcliffe marshaled her the way to the apartment where Effie was confined.

Shame, fear, and grief, had contended for mastery in the poor prisoner's bosom during the whole morning, while she had looked forward to this meeting; but when the door opened, all gave way to a confused and strange feeling that had a tinge of joy in it, as throwing herself on her sister's neck, she ejaculated, "My dear Jeanie! my dear Jeanie! it's lang since I hae seen ye." Jeanie returned the embrace with an earnestness that partook almost of rapture; but it was only a flitting emotion, like a sunbeam unexpectedly penetrating betwixt the clouds of a tempest, and obscured almost as soon as visible. The sisters walked together to the side of the pallet bed and sat down side by side, took hold of each other's hands, and looked each other in the face, but without speaking a word. In this posture they remained for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually faded from their features, and gave way to the most intense expression, first of melancholy, and then of agony; till, throwing themselves again into each other's arms, they, to use the language of Scripture, lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.

Even the hard-hearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy. It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character and station. The unglazed window of the miserable chamber was open, and the beams

of a bright sun fell right upon the bed where the sufferers were seated. a gentleness that had something of reverence in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter, and seemed thus to throw a veil over a scene so sorrowful.

"Ye are ill, Effie," were the first words Jeanie could utter; "ye are very ill."

"Oh, what wad I gie to be ten times waur, Jeanie!" was the reply; "what wad I gie to be cauld dead afore the ten o'clock bell the morn! And our father- but I am his bairn nae langer now Oh, I hae nae friend left in the warld!-Oh that I were lying dead at my mother's side, in Newbattle kirk-yard!"

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"Hout, lassie," said Ratcliffe, willing to show the interest which he absolutely felt: "dinna be sae dooms doon-hearted as a’ that, Advocate there's mony a tod hunted that's na killed. Langtale has brought folk through waur snappers than a' this, and there's no a cleverer agent than Nichil Novit e'er drew a bill of suspension. Hanged or unhanged, they are weel aff has sic an agent and counsel: ane's sure o' fair play. Ye are a bonny lass, too, and ye wad busk up your cockernony a bit; and a bonny lass will find favor wi' judge and jury, when they would strap up a grewsome carle like me for the fifteenth part of a flea's hide and tallow, d-n them."

To this homely strain of consolation the mourners returned no answer; indeed, they were so much lost in their own sorrows as to have become insensible of Ratcliffe's presence.

"O Effie," said her elder sister, "how could you conceal your situation from me? O woman, had I deserved this at your hand? Had ye spoke but ae word-sorry we might hae been, and shamed we might hae been, but this awfu' dispensation had never come ower us."

"And what gude wad that hae dune?" answered the prisoner. "Na, na, Jeanie, a' was ower when ance I forgot what I promised when I faulded down the leaf of my Bible. See," she said, producing the sacred volume, "the book opens aye at the place o' itsell. Oh, see, Jeanie, what a fearfu' Scripture!"

Jeanie took her sister's Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at this impressive text in the book of Job: "He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone. And mine hope hath he removed like a tree."

"Isna that ower true a doctrine?" said the prisoner: “isna my crown, my honor, removed? And what am I but a poor, wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and beast may tread it under foot? I thought o' the bonny bit thorn that our father rooted out o' the yard last May, when it had a' the flush o' blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod them a' to pieces wi' their feet. I little thought, when I was wae for the bit silly green bush and its flowers, that I was to gang the same gate mysell."

"Oh, if ye had spoken ae word," again sobbed Jeanie,-“if I were free to swear that ye had said but ae word of how it stude wi' ye, they couldna hae touched your life this day."

"Could they na?" said Effie, with something like awakened interest,- for life is dear even to those who feel it is a burden: "wha tauld ye that, Jeanie?"

"It was ane that kend what he was saying weel eneugh,» replied Jeanie, who had a natural reluctance at mentioning even the name of her sister's seducer.

"Wha was it?

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I conjure you to tell me," said Effie, seating herself upright. "Wha could tak interest in sic a cast-by as I am now? Was it was it him?»

"Hout," said Ratcliffe, "what signifies keeping the poor lassie in a swither? I'se uphaud it's been Robertson that learned ye that doctrine when ye saw him at Muschat's Cairn."

"Was it him?" said Effie, catching eagerly at his words; "was it him, Jeanie, indeed? Oh, I see it was him: poor lad, and I was thinking his heart was as hard as the nether millstane,and him in sic danger on his ain part,- poor George!"

Somewhat indignant at this burst of tender feeling toward the author of her misery, Jeanie could not help exclaiming, "O Effie, how can ye speak that gate of sic a man as that?"

"We maun forgie our enemies, ye ken," said poor Effie, with a timid look and a subdued voice, for her conscience told her what a different character the feelings with which she regarded her seducer bore, compared with the Christian charity under which she attempted to veil it.

"And ye hae suffered a' this for him, and ye can think of loving him still?" said her sister, in a voice betwixt pity and blame.

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