time to run the risk of further disgrace by any charge of unreasonable leniency to rebels. Like Pilate, he was willing to let the prisoner go; but, like Pilate again, he preferred his own convenience, and the prisoner was put to death. On Defoe's list of victims murdered, as he calls it, by Claverhouse's own hand is the name of Graham of Galloway. The young man, he says, being pursued by the dragoons, had taken refuge in his mother's house; but being driven out thence was overtaken by Claverhouse and shot dead with a pistol, though he offered to surrender and begged hard for his life. Shield so words his version of the story as to make it doubtful whether the shot was fired by Claverhouse himself. In the "Cloud of Witnesses" it is not even made certain that Claverhouse was present. At the close of the year in which this alleged murder was committed Sir John Dalrymple brought his action against Claverhouse. It is not likely that so shrewd a lawyer would have overlooked such a chance as this, a case of murder committed in his own country; for murder it would certainly have been, were Defoe's story true. In 1682 military executions had not been sanctioned by law; and for a soldier to shoot a man offering to surrender would have been as clear a case of murder as was the butchery on Magus Moor. Yet throughout Dalrymple's indictment is no hint of any such offence. Claverhouse is accused of oppression by excessive fines and illegal quartering of troops, of malversation, and so forth; but of taking man's life unlawfully there is no single word. Another of Defoe's victims is Matthew Mekellwrath. Claverhouse, he says, riding through Camonel in Carrick, saw a man run across the street in front of the soldiers, as though to get out of their way, and instantly ordered him to be shot, without any examination. In the "Cloud of Witnesses" an epitaph is quoted to show that the man was shot for refusing the abjuration oath. Next we find four men dragged out of a house at Auchencloy, on Dee-side, where they had met for prayer, and shot before the door, without any examination. Defoe gives the names of the four as John Grier, Robert Fergusson, Archibald Stuart, and Robert Stuart. Shields substitutes for Archibald Stuart the name of James Macmichael. In "The Cloud of Witnesses" only Grier, Robert Stuart, and Fergusson are named. In Wodrow's pages the four men become eight: of these four, as given by Shields (Macmichael, however, being spelt Macmichan), were shot at once: two more, Smith and Hunter, were carried to Kirkcudbright and hanged after a form of trial: two, unnamed, got safe away. "It may be," adds Wodrow, "the rescue of some prisoners at Kirkcudbright by some of the wanderers, a little before this, was the pretext for all this cruelty."