“Mr. Magistrate, you will see to the protection of her majesty’s council.”
“Aye, my Lord Chancellor—or die wi’ ye.”
“Tush! tush! Such blathering! Die? Who said die?”
“Heavens! Who’s thumping on that door?”
“My lords, the people cry that you are reprieving the pirates!”
“I pray that no torch be set to the town. Shall I step forth and promise the people, on the honor of a magistrate, there shall be no reprieve?”
“Reprieve, Mr. Magistrate! Who spoke of reprieve?”
A gust of wind from the open door blew the petition fluttering to the floor. None stooped to pick it up.
The council adjourned. The chancellor got as far as the old Tron church when some pudding-face in the crowd shouted the pirates were reprieved. A wave of people beat against the chancellor’s coach, they smashed the glass, crashed in the panels, and might have licked up the blood of the worthy nobleman himself but for the onrushing bayonets of the city guard, and, what was more effective,—a sudden, cyclonic roar from the throng at the prison gate, announcing that Green, Madder and Simpson were departing in the death wagon for the doomful sands of Leith.
Dimmed, indeed, was the honor of Scottish lawyers when bench and bar could thus go hand in hand to cast to the wild beast of public passion the unprotected and the innocent. Even the defense—able, adroit, complete—was not purely disinterested, yet amid all those mad scenes one soul, at least, kept the noblest traditions of the law alive within him and splendidly redeems his profession. For a young, obscure lawyer sat attentively in court during the whole trial, and, on the day of doom, clad himself in a suit of complete mourning and attended at the sands of Leith, and, when Justice had completed its terrific miscarriage, he, at the risk of his life, saw to the decent interment of the poor victims. That young man was to be the future illustrious Duncan Forbes!