Pitiless hands thrust him forward again, and he is placed on some steps; the noose is adjusted round his neck. No cap is used to hide his awful face. At a given signal the steps are drawn away, and the man swings in the air and is slowly strangled to death. A great cheer rises from the crowd, but it is mingled with groans.
Thus did Peter Treskin meet his doom. He lived like a coward; he died like a coward. He had talents and abilities that, properly directed, would have gained him high position, but he chose the wrong path, and it ended in a dog’s death.
He well deserved his ignominious fate, and yet, even at the present day, there are some who believe he was a martyr. But these people may be classed amongst those who believe not, even though an angel comes down from heaven to teach.
THE CLUE OF THE DEAD HAND
THE STORY OF AN EDINBURGH MYSTERY
CHAPTER I.
NEW YEAR’S EVE: THE MYSTERY BEGINS.
A strange, weird sort of place was Corbie Hall. There was an eeriness about it that was calculated to make one shudder. For years it had been practically a ruin, and tenantless.
Although an old place, it was without any particular history, except a tradition that a favourite of Queen Mary had once lived there, and suddenly disappeared in a mysterious way. He was supposed to have been murdered and buried secretly.
The last tenant was one Robert Crease, a wild roisterer, who had travelled much beyond the seas, scraped money together, purchased the Hall, surrounded himself with a number of boon companions, and turned night into day. Corbie Hall stood just to the north of Blackford Hill, as those who are old enough will remember.
In ‘Rab’ Crease’s time it was a lonely enough place; but he and his brother roisterers were not affected by the solitude, and many were the curious tales told about their orgies.
However, Rab came to grief one night. He had been into the town for some purpose, and, staggering home in a storm of wind and rain with a greater burden of liquor than he could comfortably carry, he missed his way, pitched headlong into a quarry, and broke his neck.