Then it was proposed, as the tyke had actually swallowed the better part, if not the whole test, that though he had brought it up again, yet it were better to try if he would swallow it again; “but this project was universally rejected, baith by the maist charitable, as bootless, and by the mair severe, or too great a favor.”
As regarded the condemned tyke, “matters being thus precipitat, and all hopes of reprieve uncertain, a wylie loun advised him to lay by the sheep’s (which had done him so little good) and put on the fox’s skin;” wherefore, like a sensible dog, “hiding his own tail between his legs, and griping another’s train, he passed through all the gates undiscovered and swa was missing:—
‘Thus he was forc’d when light did fail,
To give them the flap with a fox’s tail.’”
What became of him was unknown, and “the news of the tyke’s escape being blazed abroad, the court assembleth to consult what was then anent to be done.”
By one it was said that “the affronting escape, and other misdemeaners of that tyke were so great, that the highest severity was too little;”
Another said, “sine he is gone, let him go, what have we more to do, but put another in his place;”
A third said, “his presumptuous and treasonable carriage, would be of ill example to others, unless due punishment followed thereupon;”
A fourth said, “had he not been confident of his own innocency he wold never have byden a tryal, and since he met with such a surprising verdict, what could he do less than flee for his life? wold not the best in the court, if he had been in his circumstances done the like?”
A fifth said, “if he had been condemned, and hanged in time, he had not played us this prank, but seeing we have missed himself, let us seaze well on what he hath left behind him.”