Mrs M'Coul was more of a robust fabric, and she was without any plaid, soberly dressed in the weeds of a widow, with a clean cambric handkerchief very snodly prined over her breast. The children were likewise beinly apparelled, and the two sons were buirdly and brave laddies, the one about nine, and the other maybe eleven years old.
It would seem that this had been the first of their pilgrimages of sorrow; for they stood some time in a row at the foot of the tolbooth stair, looking up at the remains, and wondering, with tears in their eyes, which were those they had come to see.
Their appearance drew around them many onlookers, both of the country folk about the Cross and inhabitants of the town; but every one respected their sorrow, and none ventured to disturb them with any questions; for all saw that they were kith or kin to the godly men who had testified to the truth and the Covenant in death.
It happened, however, that I had occasion to pass by, and some of the town's folk who recollected me, said whisperingly to one another, but loud enough to be heard, that I was one of the persecuted; whereupon Mrs M'Coul turned round and said to me, with a constrained composure,—
"Can ye tell me whilk o' yon's the head and hand o' John M'Coul, that was executed for the covenanting at Lanerk?"
I knew the remains well, for they had been pointed out to me and I had seen them very often, but really the sight of the two women and the fatherless bairns so overcame me that I was unable to answer.
"It's the head and the hand beside it, that has but twa fingers left, on the Kirkgate end o' the shelf!" replied a person in the crowd, whom I knew at once by his voice to be Willy Sutherland the hangman, although I had not seen him from the night of my evasion. And here let me not forget to set down the Christian worth and constancy of that simple and godly creature, who, rather than be instrumental in the guilty judgment by which John M'Coul and his fellow-sufferer were doomed to die, did himself almost endure martyrdom, and yet never swerved in his purpose, nor was abated in his integrity, in so much, that when questioned thereafter anent the same by the Earl of Eglinton, and his Lordship, being moved by the simplicity of his piety, said, "Poor man, you did well in not doing what they would have had you to do."
"My Lord," replied Willy, "you are speaking treason! and yet you persecute to the uttermost, which shows that you go against the light of your conscience."
"Do you say so to me, after I kept you from being hanged?" said his Lordship.
"Keep me from being drowned, and I will still tell you the verity." The which honesty in that poor man begat for him a compassionate regard that the dignities of many great and many noble in that time could never command.