Sharpitlaw; but I was ne'er like to be sequestered o' land and gudes but
ance, and that was lang syne, afore I was married. But whisht, whisht!
here's the Court coming."
As he spoke, the five Lords of Justiciary, in their long robes of
scarlet, faced with white, and preceded by their mace-bearer, entered
with the usual formalities, and took their places upon the bench of
judgment.
The audience rose to receive them; and the bustle occasioned by their
entrance was hardly composed, when a great noise and confusion of persons
struggling, and forcibly endeavouring to enter at the doors of the
Court-room, and of the galleries, announced that the prisoner was about
to be placed at the bar. This tumult takes place when the doors, at first
only opened to those either having right to be present, or to the better
and more qualified ranks, are at length laid open to all whose curiosity
induces them to be present on the occasion. With inflamed countenances
and dishevelled dresses, struggling with, and sometimes tumbling over
each other, in rushed the rude multitude, while a few soldiers, forming,
as it were, the centre of the tide, could scarce, with all their efforts,
clear a passage for the prisoner to the place which she was to occupy. By
the authority of the Court, and the exertions of its officers, the tumult
among the spectators was at length appeased, and the unhappy girl brought
forward, and placed betwixt two sentinels with drawn bayonets, as a
prisoner at the bar, where she was to abide her deliverance for good or
evil, according to the issue of her trial.
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