had been pardoned, would you now be here as a witness at all?’ The Attorney-General came to the rescue. It was an improper question, he said, resting upon the supposition of a fact which had not happened. Lord Talbot insisted: he asked Murray, ‘Do you believe your life depends upon the conformity of the evidence you shall give on this trial, with former examinations which you have undergone?’ There was a fight over this matter, but a lull came in the fray, and then Murray spoke with a certain dignity, and said: ‘I am upon my oath and obliged to tell the truth; and I say that possibly and very probably, had I been in another situation of life, I should not have appeared before your Lordships as a witness against the noble Lord at the Bar.’ There was a touch of mournful sarcasm in Murray’s truthful answer, which escaped Lord Talbot, for he remarked: ‘I am extremely well satisfied with the gentleman’s answer; and it gives me a much better opinion of his evidence than I had before.’ [Sidenote: _THE VERDICT._] The conclusion of the protracted affair was that Lovat was pronounced _guilty_ by the unanimous verdict of 117 peers. He made no defence by which he could profit; and when he spoke in arrest of judgment, he said little to the purpose. There was a sorry sort of humour in one or two of his remarks. He had suffered in this trial by two Murrays, he said, by the bitter evidence of one, and the fatal eloquence of another, by which he was hurried into eternity. Nevertheless, though the eloquence had been employed against him, he had listened to it with pleasure. ‘I had great need of my friend Murray’s eloquence for half an hour, myself; _then_, it would have been altogether agreeable to me!’ In whatever he himself had done, there was, he said, really no malicious intention. If he had not been ill-used by the Government in London, there would have been no rebellion in the Frasers’ country. George I. had been his ‘dear master;’ for George II. he had the greatest respect. He hoped the Lords would intercede to procure for him the royal mercy. The Commons had been severe against him, let them now be merciful. Nothing of this availed Lovat. The peevish Lord Hardwicke called him to order; and then, with a calm satisfaction, pronounced the horrible sentence which told a traitor how he should die. Lovat put a good face on this bad matter.――‘God bless you all!’ he said, ‘I bid you an everlasting farewell.’ And then, with a grim humour, he remarked:――‘We shall not meet all in the same place again, I am quite sure of that!’ He afterwards desired, if he _must_ die, that it should be in the old style of the Scottish nobility,――by the Maiden. [Sidenote: _GENTLEMAN HARRY._]