With regard to some points upon which the public odium was directed to the young Chevalier and his party, Lord Kilmarnock was very explicit in his last conversations with Mr. Foster. We have already seen how far he was enabled to clear himself concerning his conduct to the prisoners at Inverness. A report having been industriously circulated, probably with a view to excuse the barbarities of the Duke of Cumberland, that an order had been issued in the Pretender's council at Inverness, to destroy the prisoners who might be taken at the battle of Culloden, Mr. Foster put the question to Lord Kilmarnock, Whether that statement were true? "I can most sincerely and freely answer, No," was the satisfactory reply; and a similar contradiction was given by the dying man to every accusation of a similar tendency.[382] On Monday the eleventh of August, General Williamson desired Mr. Foster, "in the gentlest terms that he could use, to apprize Lord Kilmarnock, that he had received the order for his, and for Lord Balmerino's execution." Mr. Foster at first refused to undertake this office. "I was so shocked at it," writes the good man "that I could not think of delivering the message myself, but would endeavour to prepare the unfortunate Lord for it, by divesting him, as far as I could, of all hope of life." Such, indeed, had been the continual aim of all the reverend minister's counsels; and he had hoped to entrust the last mournful task of informing him of the order to other hands. On finding Lord Kilmarnock in a very resigned and calm state of mind, he ventured, however, to hint to him how necessary was that diligent and constant preparation for death which he had endeavoured to impress upon his mind. This was sufficient: the ill-fated prisoner immediately inquired, "whether the warrant for his execution was come down?" "I told him that it was," relates Mr. Foster, "and that the day fixed upon was the following Monday." Lord Kilmarnock received this intimation with a solemn consciousness of the awful nature of its import; but no signs of terror nor of anxiety added to the sorrows of that hour. In the course of conversation, he observed to Mr. Foster, that "he was chiefly concerned about the consequences of death, in comparison of which he considered the 'thing itself' a trifle: with regard to the manner of his death he had, he thought, no great reason to be terrified, for that the stroke appeared to be scarcely so much as the drawing of a tooth, or the first shock of a cold bath upon a weak and fearful temper." At the last hour, nevertheless, the crowd,--the scaffold,--the doom, upset that sublime and heavenly resignation,--the weakness of the flesh prevailed, although only for an instant.