How did Walter’s heart smite him when he saw that one of them was the sensible, judicious, and honourable fellow with whom he fought, and whose arm he had dislocated by a blow with his stick! It was still hanging in a sling made of a double rash rope.
They would renounce nothing, confess nothing, nor yield, in the slightest degree, to the threats and insulting questions put by the general. They expected no mercy, and they cringed for none; but seemed all the while to regard him with pity and contempt. Walter often said that he was an ill judge of the cause for which these men suffered; but whatever might be said of it, they were heroes in that cause. Their complexions were sallow, and bore marks of famine and other privations; their beards untrimmed; their apparel all in rags, and their hats slouched down about their ears with sleeping on the hills. All this they had borne with resignation and without a murmur; and, when brought to the last, before the most remorseless of the human race, they shewed no symptoms of flinching or yielding up an item of the cause they had espoused.
When asked “if they would pray for the king?”
They answered, “that they would with all their hearts;—they would pray for his forgiveness, in time and place convenient, but not when every profligate bade them, which were a loathful scurrility, and a mockery of God.”
“Would they acknowledge him as their right and lawful sovereign?”
“No, that they would never do! He was a bloody and designing papist, and had usurped a prerogative that belonged not to him. To acknowledge the Duke of York for king, would be to acknowledge the divine approbation of tyranny, oppression, usurpation, and all that militates against religion or liberty, as well as justifying the abrogation of our ancient law relating to the succession; and that, besides, he had trampled on every civil and religious right, and was no king for Scotland, or any land where the inhabitants did not chuse the most abject and degrading slavery. For their parts, they would never acknowledge him; and though it was but little that their protestations and their blood could avail, they gave them freely. They had but few left to mourn for them, and these few might never know of their fate; but there was One who knew their hearts, who saw their sufferings, and in Him they trusted that the days of tyranny and oppression were wearing to a close, and that a race yet to come might acknowledge that they had not shed their blood in vain.”
Clavers ordered them all to be shot. They craved time to pray, but he objected, sullenly alleging, that he had not time to spare. Mr Copland said,—“My lord, you had better grant the poor wretches that small indulgence.” On which Clavers took out his watch, and said he would grant them two minutes, provided they did not howl. When the man with the hurt arm turned round to kneel, Walter could not help crying out to him in a voice half stifled with agony—
“Ah! lak–a–day, man! is it come to this with you, and that so soon? This is a sad sight!”
The man pretended to put on a strange and astonished look towards his benefactor.
“Whoever you are,” said he, “that pities the sufferings of a hapless stranger, I thank you. May God requite you! but think of yourself, and apply for mercy where it is to be found, for you are in the hands of those whose boast it is to despise it.”