"Doomster," he continued, "repeat the sentence to the prisoner." The office of Doomster was in those days, and till a much later period, held by the executioner in commendam, with his ordinary functions. [Note: See a note on the subject of this office in the Heart of Mid-Lothian.] The duty consisted in reciting to the unhappy criminal the sentence of the law as pronounced by the judge, which acquired an additional and horrid emphasis from the recollection, that the hateful personage by whom it was uttered was to be the agent of the cruelties he denounced. Macbriar had scarce understood the purport of the words as first pronounced by the Lord President of the Council; but he was sufficiently recovered to listen and to reply to the sentence when uttered by the harsh and odious voice of the ruffian who was to execute it, and at the last awful words, "And this I pronounce for doom," he answered boldly--" My Lords, I thank you for the only favour I looked for, or would accept at your hands, namely, that you have sent the crushed and maimed carcass, which has this day sustained your cruelty, to this hasty end. It were indeed little to me whether I perish on the gallows or in the prison-house; but if death, following close on what I have this day suffered, had found me in my cell of darkness and bondage, many might have lost the sight how a Christian man can suffer in the good cause. For the rest, I forgive you, my Lords, for what you have appointed and I have sustained--And why should I not?--Ye send me to a happy exchange--to the company of angels and the spirits of the just, for that of frail dust and ashes--Ye send me from darkness into day--from mortality to immortality--and, in a word, from earth to heaven!--If the thanks, therefore, and pardon of a dying man can do you good, take them at my hand, and may your last moments be as happy as mine!" As he spoke thus, with a countenance radiant with joy and triumph, he was withdrawn by those who had brought him into the apartment, and executed within half an hour, dying with the same enthusiastic firmness which his whole life had evinced. The Council broke up, and Morton found himself again in the carriage with General Grahame. "Marvellous firmness and gallantry!" said Morton, as he reflected upon Macbriar's conduct; "what a pity it is that with such self-devotion and heroism should have been mingled the fiercer features of his sect!" "You mean," said Claverhouse, "his resolution to condemn you to death?-- To that he would have reconciled himself by a single text; for example, 'And Phinehas arose and executed judgment,' or something to the same purpose.--But wot ye where you are now bound, Mr Morton?" "We are on the road to Leith, I observe," answered Morton. "Can I not be permitted to see my friends ere I leave my native land?"