but in vain, for he lived long enough to bring
home vengeance to the murderers.

Then Innermarky took the dead man's
signet ring, and sent one of the dead man's
purchased servants on the dead man's horse,
with a cunning story to his wife, as from her
husband, ordering her to send him a particular
box, containing the bond of tailyie, and
all that had followed betwixt him and laird
John. The wife, though troubled by so
blind a message, delivered to the man what
he sought, and let him go. But there
happened to be about the house a youth related
to the family, who, being a close friend to
the young laird, then sick, desired to go to
Aberdeen and see him. This youth had
gone to the stable to intercede with the
servant that he might carry him behind him,
and, by the man's confusion of statement,
was led to suspect, he knew not what; but,
further knowledge he resolved to have.
Therefore, he stepped out a little beyond the
entry, watching the servant's coming, and, as
he went by, suddenly leapt up behind him,
where he would stay, till he had sufficient
reason why he should not. The contest
became such, that the servant drew his dirk to
rid him of the youth's trouble, which the
other wrung out of his hands, and downright
killed him with it, and brought back the box
with the writs and horse to the house of
Innes. Into the midst of the confusion
suffered by the lady, came another of the
servants in from Aberdeen, to tell the
manner of her husband's slaughter. She
secured, therefore, his writings, and fled to
her friends, by whom she was brought to
make complaint before the king.

But of public justice there was then so
little dread, that Innermarky, five weeks
after the event, obtained from his chief a
disposition of the estate in his own favour.
The avenger of blood was the son of the
murdered man, at first taken under the care
of his relative, the Earl of Huntly. Two or
three years afterwards the young laird of
Cromy went north, with a commission for
the avenging of his father's murder, and the
laird of Innes went as well as Innermarky
into hiding. Innermarky skulked among the
hills, then made a retreat for himself in the
house of Edinglasvie. There, Cromy at
length surprised him; the same young man
who had killed his servant being the first
to force a way into his den; and, for this
venturesome act he was, all his life after,
called Craig-in-peril. Innermarky's head
was cut off, taken to Edinburgh, and cast
exultingly at the king's feet, by the elder
Cromy's widow.

Again, in the career of George Auchinleck
of Balmanno, there are incidents which
present to our minds vividly the wildness of
those times. Auchinleck had been a friend
to the Regent, Morton, in his days of power.
His position was then so secure, that he
could thrust his sword through Captain
Nesbit's body in the Edinburgh High Street,
quietly walk on to the Court of Session, and
there sit as if he had done no wrong. Once,
when Auchinleck stood within the bar of the
Tolbooth, a decayed old man pressed forward
to him, and, when Auchinleck asked what
he wanted, said, "I am Oliver Sinclair;"
and, without another word, turned and
departed. Oliver Sinclair, then a broken man,
had once been a king's favourite, and men
talked of his strange presentment of himself
to Auchinleck, because it seemed to mean,
Be not too proud, I was as you are, and your
end is yet to come. And the end came.
With the decline of Morton's power, fell the
prosperity of Morton's friend. Four of his
private enemies beset Auchinleck when he
was walking in the High Street of
Edinburgh, near St. Giles's church, and by one of
them he was shot through the body, but not
killed. He survived to fall in the following
March into the hands of the Earl of Arran,
by whom he was put to the torture, in order
to extract from him confession of certain
crimes which he denied.

Of the use of torture, here is an example.
John Master of Orkney was accused,
without sufficient ground, of practising by
witchcraft and otherwise, against his brother's
life. The case rested on the confession of an
old woman, Alison Balfour, who had been
executed as a witch in December, fifteen
hundred and ninety-four. When she made
her confession it was under this pressure of
suffering: she had been kept forty-eight
hours in the cashielaws—an iron case for the
leg, to which fire was applied till it become
insupportably painful. At the same time,
her aged husband, a man of ninety-one years,
her eldest son and her daughter were likewise
kept under torture, the father being in
"the lang irons of fifty stane wecht," the son
fixed in the boots (a foot-screw) with fifty-
seven strokes, and the daughter in the pilniewinks
(a finger-screw), that they "being sae
tormented beside her, might move her to
make any confession for their relief." From
another person, a man, the desired statement
was extorted, "he being kept in the cashielaws
eleven days and eleven nights,—twice in
the day by the space of fourteen days callit
(driven) in the boots, he being nakit, in the
meantime, and scourgit with tows (ropes) in
sic sort that they left neither flesh nor hide
upon him."

In proportion as the working of the law
was rude, it was intrusive, and concerned
itself with private matters. A child might
receive sentence from the presbytery for
passing his father without reverent salutation.
The Aberdeen town council fined a
householder or his wife thirteen and fourpence,
a craftsman six and eightpence, for
absence from sermon on Sunday "afore and
after noon," or on Tuesday and Thursday
"afore noon." "And in case ony merchand
or burgess of guild be found within his