Early the next morning, Tuesday, May 21st, he was waked by a loud noise of drums and trumpets. He asked his guards what these unusual sounds might mean, and was told that the soldiers were being mustered to arms, lest the malignants should attempt a rescue. "What!" he said, "is it possible that I, who was such a terror to these good men when alive and prosperous, continue still so formidable to them now that I am bound for slaughter? Then I should be still more terrible to them when dead!" Even now his persecutors would not leave him in peace. As he was preparing for the last scene, Johnston of Warriston, the chief instigator, it is said, of all this barbarity, came into his cell. Montrose was dressing his hair, which he wore long, after the fashion of the Cavaliers. "Why," sneered this brutal fellow, "is James Graham so careful of his locks?" "My head is yet my own," was the answer; "I will arrange it to my taste. To-night, when it will be yours, treat it as you please." At three in the afternoon Montrose was led out to die. The largest crowd ever assembled on the streets of Edinburgh was gathered round the place of execution; every house-top, window, and balcony was thronged with spectators. At one end of the scaffold stood the chief magistrates of the city, at the other a group of the inevitable ministers. Beside the hangman was a bench on which were arranged in ghastly order the implements of butchery. A space was kept clear round the scaffold by a strong force of soldiers. As Montrose walked down the High Street from the Tolbooth, surrounded by his guards, in the same rich dress that he had worn before the Parliament, all were struck with his calm and noble bearing. "He stepped along the street," wrote an eye-witness, "with so great state, and there appeared in his countenance so much beauty, majesty, and gravity, as amazed all the beholders. And many of his enemies did acknowledge him to be the bravest subject in the world; and in him a gallantry that graced all the crowd, more beseeming a monarch than a peer." He mounted the steps and stood upon the scaffold. The grace granted to even the meanest criminals was denied to him; he was not allowed to address the people. But to the magistrates and others round him he thus for the last time justified himself.