The terms were sufficiently tempting, and were accordingly closed with. The two limbs of the law were quartered in a room the window of which faced the East, while the clerk was, in deference to his social status, bestowed in a room the window of which looked towards the setting sun.
Now, opposite the window of the room in which the officers slept there grew a huge tree, the great spreading branches of which creaked and moaned beneath the blast during the entire night, and now and again made a crash which caused the drowsy beagles to start in their sleep, and shiver when they had fairly awakened. Being utterly ignorant of the cause of these disturbances, and anxious to ascertain, the first glimmer of daylight brought one of the officers to the window, when, horror! there, before his eyes, swinging backwards and forwards, suspended from one of the main branches of the tree, was the body of the clerk, coated, booted, and fully attired, as if he had been taken and lynched just when ready for the road. The poor man gave a howl which nearly lifted the roof off the house. Five minutes later the domestics were alarmed by the officers rushing headlong down the stairs, and making in the direction of the door, and by Janet demanding of them in fierce tones—“What the foul fiend d’ye mak’ sic a din for?”
“W—what’s that on the t—t—tree!” gasped out the officers, simultaneously.
“Oh,” said Janet, with an eldritch laugh, “it’s a bit clerk bodie frae the Bank o’ Stirling that cam’ here last nicht to deave the Laird for siller. We’ve ta’en and hangit the silly elf.”
Not another word was needed. The limbs of the law disappeared like water poured on quick-sand, and were beyond the reach of Janet’s voice ere she had well finished her sentence. During this brief parley Janet’s confederates slipped out and cut down the man of straw, which, for the occasion, had been filling the clerk’s clothes; and, quickly divesting it of the latter, they had these deftly replaced on the chair beside the bed where lay their still soundly sleeping owner.
By and by the all-unconscious clerk came tripping leisurely downstairs.
“Are my companions not astir yet?” said he to Janet.
“Yer companions?” queried Janet, with a grim leer in her eyes; “the Laird’s gillies have ta’en them awa’ to the Holy Loch at Crianlarich and droon’d them—and they’ll be here for you directly.”
“I hear them comin’!” cried Janet, as the clerk’s heels disappeared out at the doorway.