first came in sight of the Castle and Arthur's Seat-how I prayed to be kept from the temptations to which I knew I should be exposed in the city on which I was entering and how I resolved, that if sinners enticed me I should consent not. Alas! my prayers, my resolutions were alike insincere-I was tempted-the warnings, the advices, the example of pious parents -thank God, they are in their graves, they at least have not seen my fall-were all in vain. I fell-you know what I have been-what I have done. I knew better things-I have no excuse —I have no hope-the revisiting Spirit of God has long abandoned me. Haliday," said he, with deep and desperate energy, "I repeat it,where to go-what to do, I know not. All that I know is, and of this I am certain, of this I am as conscious as of my existence-I am a lost soul."

Haliday was astonished. Ere he could reply, his comrade was gone. As he stood, not knowing whether to follow him, or re-enter the house, the report of a carabine roused him from his reverie-it was Cotterel's. Whether it had gone off accidentally, or whether he had turned it against himself, was never known. Haliday found him leaning against a wall, mortally wounded. He caught him in his arms.

"Cotterel!” said he, “how is this?”

The wounded trooper made no reply. He was carried to the guard-house-his wound was pronounced mortal.

Being asked, during the night, by Haliday— who was really attached to him, and who watched his dying couch when all others fled from it— how he did

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Haliday," said he, " Is it you?—I have sown the wind, I am reaping the whirlwind—I have

been a wicked wretch.

'The bloody and deceitful man,' it is written, shall not live out half his days.' I have not lived the half of mine-I am a dying man.'

Lying silent for a short time, he said—

"You remember the farm-house of Kirklee, which we searched by the General's orders. Walter Beaton made his escape. He had a son -he was blindfolded, and made to kneel on the green, and told, that unless he would discover his father, he would be shot. We fired, as you remember, several pistols at his ear. The General then, with his own hand, shot him through the head. We left him weltering in his blood. Haliday! did the boy recover?was he here?-say that he was."

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If I did say that he recovered," said Haliday, "or that he was here, I should say what was not true. No, Cotterel, he was shot dead.” Then," said the dying man, it has been a delusion. I thought I saw that fair-haired boy standing at my side, in the bloom of youth and beauty-he spoke, too, and assured me that he had recovered, and that he had come to forgive me. Wo is me-it has been a dream. I thought too, that once more I was a child-that the scenes of Knockdailie, Muirkirk, the sands of Wigton, Drumclog, Bothwell, the Canongate, were no realities, but delusions of the imagination-that my hands were not red with bloodand that the guilt of torturing and slaying the people of God was not lying like a mountain of fire upon my soul. I was for a moment happy, and shed tears of joy-all this too was a dream. I know it was-I am again awake to the only feeling I can ever be conscious of a sense of my utter hatefulness-of being reprobated and lost for ever.'

Clinging to his comrade, whom, as he afterwards informed me, he warned to abandon his evil crimes, and to flee from his wicked companions even to the ends of the earth-as his thoughts wandered back to the past, or shot forward to the future-uttering lamentations over misspent time, and his apprehensions of a coming and undone eternity-the wretched Cotterel fell back and died.

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CHAPTER XVII.

MY TRIAL AND SENTENCE.

DANGEROUSLY Wounded and weak though I was through loss of blood, the next day after my apprehension, I was carried from the tolbooth before the privy council. The members who sat this day at that dreadful board, were Perth and Lauderdale, Dalzell and Paterson bishop of Edinburgh. On being placed at the foot of the table between two halberdiers, and on my name being proclaimed aloud by the clerk, I was thus addressed and interrogated by the chancellor.

of

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The

Mr. Welwood, I am grieved to see a person your rank and education at this table. lords of his majesty's council are willing, however, to believe that you have been drawn into this horrid and wicked rebellion partly through the rashness and inexperience of youth, and mainly through the bad counsels of others, and being satisfied, from the place you held in the rebel army, that you are in a condition to open up the secret springs and source of this rebellion, and to make important disclosures respecting those who have had an active hand in promoting it, they are desirous of stating, through me, that if you will frankly and fully declare what you know on these points, your life will be spared."

"My Lord," I replied, "as to the springs of what your Lordship is pleased to term a rebel

lion, I know only one, which I shall state to the council, if it is their pleasure to hear it."

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By all means," said Lauderdale, "let us hear it."

"Twenty long years," I replied, "of intolerable tyranny, persecution, and oppression,

"The prisoner, my Lords," said Lauderdale, throwing himself back on his seat, "is mad!"

"No, my Lord," I replied, "I am not mad; but if wanderings on moors and mountains for days without food, and nights without sleep, till at last, faint and exhausted, sinking helpless to the earth; if having the flesh mangled by instruments of horrid cruelty,-if the sight of a sister murdered in the bloom and beauty of her days -of the grey hairs of a beloved mother brought down with sorrow to the grave-of a father's house ruined, his name, memory, and honours, with all my own hopes and prospects about to perish,-if calamities like these, not to speak of others, could have made me mad-mad I should have been; but I thank God, that when my heart and flesh have fainted, my reason has not failed."

"Well, well," said Perth," be it so; there is, however, you would do well to remember, a practical as well as a mental madness, of which it grieves me to say, that in thus undervaluing the favour of the council, and in thus abusing the liberty of speech by special favour granted to you, you have given a melancholy illustration. Once more, Mr. Welwood, I desire to say, that if you will make the disclosures of what you cannot but know, your life will be spared."

"The real origin of the rising in arms at Drumclog and Bothwell," I replied, "however