On being arraigned, the tall, slender, and dignified Kilmarnock, and Cromartie, without dignity, or self-possession, disappointed half the audience by pleading ‘Guilty.’ They were at once removed, Cromartie almost swooning. Balmerino was left standing, with the gentleman-gaoler at his side, holding the ominous axe, with its edge turned away from the prisoner. The latter conversed with the axe-bearer as unconcernedly as if both were mere spectators; while talking, he played with his fingers on the axe, and when a bystander listened to what Balmerino was saying, the stout old lord himself turned the blade of the axe in such a way as to partly hide his face, and to enable him the better to speak with the gentleman-gaoler without being heard. ◆[Sidenote: _BALMERINO._]◆ Balmerino, on being asked to plead, fenced rather than fought for his life. He was not, he said, what the indictment styled him, ‘Arthur, Lord Balmerino, of the city of Carlisle.’ He could prove, he said, that he was never within twelve miles of it. On this and other trifling objections being over-ruled, he bluntly pleaded, _Not Guilty_, and the clerk of arraigns as bluntly called out, ‘Culprit, how will you be tried?’ and Balmerino, looking at the clerk with some disgust for assuming his guilt, muttered the formula, ‘by God and my peers’; whereupon Sir Richard Lloyd opened the case against him. In a few words to the purpose he accused Balmerino with waging war against the king, and with slaughtering the king’s subjects. Sir Richard was followed by careful Serjeant Skinner, who spoke of Balmerino as ‘this unfortunate peer,’ adding: ‘I will not bring a railing accusation against this unhappy lord,’ but he marred this fair precedent by a fierce denunciation of the traitor whose treason merited death, and whose condemnation would cover his posterity with infamy. [Sidenote: _THE PROSECUTION._]