[#] Sir Launcelot Kennedy, of Palgowan and Kirrieoch, appears somewhat to have confused the dates of the first and second trials of John Mure of Auchendrayne. Indeed, weakness in exact chronology is common to his record and to the contemporary Historie of the Kennedies, which was written about the same time by a partisan of the other side—it may even be by John Mure of Auchendrayne himself.
And though many a face was joyous as were ours, eke many were sad and lowering. For it is strange that such ill men should have some to love them, or at least so it was with John Mure the elder. And so there were in the city Mures by the score, fighting, black-avised MacKerrows, cankered Craufords, with all the disbanded Bargany discontents from the south of Carrick, Drummurchie's broken band from the hill-lands of Barr, together with many others. So that we kept our swords, as at our first visit to the town in the days of Gilbert Kennedy, free in their scabbards while we ruffled it along the pavement.
And I mind what my mother said, the first time she went down the plainstones with me. We met young Anthony Kennedy of Benane, and I perceived that it was his intent to take the wall of me. So I squared myself, and went a little before with my hand on my rapier hilt and my elbows wide, also cocking fiercely my bonnet over my eye—which assurance feared Anthony so greatly that he meekly took the pavement edge, and I went by with my mother on my arm, having, as I thought, come off very well in the matter.
But my mother stood stock still in amazement.
'Laddie, laddie, I kenned na what had taken ye—ye prinked and passaged for a' the world like our bantam cock at Kirrieoch, when he hears his neighbour at Kirriemore craw in the prime of the morn. Gin ye gang on that gait, ye will get your kame berried and scarted, my lad. So listen your auld mither, and walk mair humbly.'
At this I was somewhat shamed, and dropped behind like a little whipped messan; for my mother has a brisk tongue. My father said not a word, but there was a look of dry humorsomeness upon his face which I knew and feared more than my mother's clip-wit tongue.
CHAPTER XLIX
THE GREAT DAY OF TRIAL
At last, however, the trial was set, and we all summoned for our evidence. It was to be held in the High Court of Justiciary, and was a right solemn thing. A hot day in mid-summer it proved, with the narrow, overcrowded bounds of the town drowsed with heat, and yet eaten up with a plague of flies. The room of the trial was a large one, with a dais for the judges at the end, the boxes for the prisoners, and a tall stool with steps and a bar on which to rest the hands, for the witnesses.
And in the long, dark, low, oak-panelled room what a crush of people! For the report of the monstrous dealing of the Mures and the strangeness of their crimes, had caused a mighty coil in the town of Edinburgh and in the country round about. So that all the time of the trial there was a constant hum about the doors—now a continuous murmur that forced its way within, and now a louder roar as the doors were opened and shut by the officers of the court. Also, in order to show themselves busybodies, these pot-bellied stripe-jackets went and came every minute or two, pushing right and left with their halberts, which the poor folk had very peaceably to abide as best they might.