“That seems villainously unfair,” said the beggar. “Didn’t the eleven try to do anything for you?”
“How do you know there were eleven?” cried Hutchinson, turning round upon him.
“I thought you said eleven.”
“Well, maybe I did, maybe I did; yes, there were eleven of them. They never got my letter. Their messenger was a traitor, as is usually the case, and merely told them I would have nothing to do with their foolish venture; and that brings me to the point I have been coming to. You see although I would keep my word in any case, yet I’m not so feared to approach St. Ninians as another man might be. Young Jamie, the king, seems to have more sense in his noodle than he gets credit for. Some of his forbears would have snapped off the heads of that eleven without thinking more of the matter, but he seems to have recognised they were but poor silly bodies, and so let them go. Now the moment they set me at liberty, a week since, I got a messenger I could trust, and sent him to the cobbler, Flemming by name. I told Flemming I was to be hanged, but he had still a week to get me a reprieve. I asked him to go to the king and tell him the whole truth of the matter, so I’m thinking that a pardon will be on the scaffold there before me; still, the disappointment of the hundreds waiting to see the hanging will be great.”
“Good God!” cried the beggar aghast, stopping dead in the middle of the road and regarding his comrade with horror.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked the big man stopping also.
“Has it never occurred to you that the king may be away from the palace, and no one in the place able to find him?”
“No one able to find the King of Scotland? That’s an unheard-of thing.”
“Listen to me, Hutchinson. Let us avoid St. Ninians, and go direct to Stirling; it’s only a mile or two further on. Let us see the cobbler before running your neck into a noose.”
“But, man, the cobbler will be at St. Ninians, either with a pardon or to see me hanged, like the good friend he is.”