Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ...came to be very friendly, and to exchange compliments and courtesies. The captain praised his new companion's courage and magnanimity in standing to his resolution, though he was but one to twenty.. ' But he still stuck to his point, and as before he had peremptorily and fiercely, now soothingly and-politely he desired to know who and what his new friend was. Blackhal evaded this with an ingenuity worthy of the famed casuistic capacities of the great society to which he belonged. He explained that, having once refused to give an explanation on account of the manner of asking, if he now satisfied their curiosity his compliance might be attributed to fear. He prayed of the captain not to press upon his honour by urging such a request; when they next met he would be as explicit as they could desire. As the night wore on and the liquor flowed, the friendship of the captain for his new acquaintance grew ever warmer. " And," says the father, " when I did go to my horse, the captain and the minister and all the soldiers embraced me, and the captain must needs help me to tie my valise unto my saddle, and hold ray stirrup; but I would not suffer him to do the last, although I could not get him hindered from the first, and I had much ado to hinder him from the last." His reflection on his escape is: " My resolution was, all the time that I was in Scotland, to defend myself as long as I could stand, and in mine own defence die rather by the hands of gentlemen than of the hangman--but my day was not yet come to die at that occasion." He run scarcely less risk one day approaching Stirling, when it was in the hands of the Covenanters. It was Sunday--the churches were about to disperse, and he found that the road by which he was to pass the Forth led straight...