It is one thing to spear a tiger,
another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter-
house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the
image of his judge.
Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words
and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance
awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of
Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the hooded stag, of the splendour and
crime, the velvet and bright iron of the past; and dismissed them with a
cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the Hunter's Bog, and the heavens
were dark above him and the grass of the field an offence. "This is my
father," he said. "I draw my life from him; the flesh upon my bones is
his, the bread I am fed with is the wages of these horrors." He
recalled his mother, and ground his forehead in the earth. He thought
of flight, and where was he to flee to? of other lives, but was there
any life worth living in this den of savage and jeering animals?
The interval before the execution was like a violent dream.
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