"The torture! the torture! Oh, rather let me die! Holy abbot--my lords--I ask you not for pardon, because I am innocent. I think not of vengeance, because I am a woman--and though an earl's daughter and an earl's sistar, a poor and helpless one--but I implore death, because ye have dishonoured me by these accusations and by these bonds--cruelly and falsely dishonoured me. Put me to death, but not to the torture; for oh, I am weak, very weak, and will tell you anything. Let me die! let me die! Oh, save me, Sir Adam Otterburn--oh yes, everything--thou who hast done it all, save me from these frightful men!" As Birrel and Sanders Screw approached the shrinking girl, with their stolid visages and huge hands, though half suffocated by sobs, she gave a low, wild cry of agony and horror, and closing her eyes, became perfectly passive. The judges looked on unmoved; a thrill pervaded the hearts of the people, and Redhall felt the perspiration trickle over his brow, though his blood ran cold through his veins. "Oh, Roland, Roland! my love! my love! I am dying now," said Jane, in a low voice (that was heard by Redhall alone), as she was lifted from her seat. Redhall's momentary pity died; he sat down with one of his freezing smiles--such smiles as can only be given by one who has alike outlived the hopes of his heart and the feelings of humanity. "_The torture,_" repeated the lord president. Redhall dipped his pen mechanically in the inkstand, and Dobbie uncovered the rack; then, as every man respired more freely, a low, but unintentional hiss seemed to pervade the hall. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE RACK--THE DEVIL'S MARK. "If on the rack you strain our bursting sinews; If from the bleeding trunk you lop our limbs; Or with slow fires protract the hours of pain, We must abide it all."--_Boadicea_. As yet neither the boot nor thumb screws had been adopted by the Scottish courts; the ancient rack alone was the instrument of torture, and now it stood before the eyes of the startled people in all its naked and mysterious horror. Though totally repugnant to the fundamental laws of Scotland, which are based on those of Rome, the practice of obtaining confessions by torture in the Privy Council and High Court of Justiciary was not discontinued until a hundred and sixty years after the date of our history, in the reign of William III., who, whatever he was in South Britain, will ever be remembered in the north as one who was merciless as a Mohawk. The rack, which Dobbie had uncovered, was a large frame of oak, raised three feet from the floor, like a long, narrow bed without spars, but having two rings at the head and two at the foot. The aspect of this engine, with all its accompanying blocks, pulleys, chains, and handspikes in the sockets of the windlass, froze Father St. Bernard with horror. He crossed himself, beat his breast, and closed his eyes.