One wonders just how much of Jean's own words the minister-memorialist got into this, his sum of her confession. Her speech would be coloured inevitably by the phrasing she had caught from her spiritual advisers, and the sum of it would almost unavoidably have something of the memorialist's own fashion of thought. I would give a good deal to know if Jean did actually refer to the Almighty as "the Lord's Majesty," and hope for "grace at his Majesty's hands." I do not think I am being oversubtle when I fancy that, if Jean did use those words, I see an element of confusion in her scaffold confession--the trembling confusion remaining from a lost hope. As a Scot, I have no recollection of ever hearing the Almighty referred to as "the Lord's Majesty" or as "his Majesty." It does not ring naturally to my ear. Nor, at the long distance from which I recollect reading works of early Scottish divines, can I think of these forms being used in such a context. I may be--I very probably am--all wrong, but I have a feeling that up to the last Jean Livingstone believed royal clemency would be shown to her, and that this belief appears in the use of these unwonted phrases. However that may be, Jean's conduct seems to have been heroic and unfaltering. She prayed, and one of her relations or friends brought "a clean cloath" to tie over her eyes. Jean herself had prepared for this operation, for she took a pin out of her mouth and gave it into the friend's hand to help the fastening. The minister-memorialist, having taken farewell of her for the last time, could not bear the prospect of what was about to happen. He descended from the scaffold and went away. "But she," he says, as a constant saint of God, humbled herself on her knees, and offered her neck to the axe, laying her neck, sweetly and graciously, in the place appointed, moving to and fro, till she got a rest for her neck to lay in. When her head was now made fast to "the Maiden" the executioner came behind her and pulled out her feet, that her neck might be stretched out longer, and so made more meet for the stroke of the axe; but she, as it was reported to me by him who saw it and held her by the hands at this time, drew her legs twice to her again, labouring to sit on her knees, till she should give up her spirit to the Lord! During this time, which was long, for the axe was but slowly loosed, and fell not down hastily, after laying of her head, her tongue was not idle, but she continued crying to the Lord, and uttered with a loud voice those her wonted words, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon me! Into thy hand, Lord, I commend my soul!" When she came to the middle of this last sentence, and had said, "Into thy hand, Lord," at the pronouncing of the word "Lord" the axe fell; which was diligently marked by one of her friends, who still held her by the hand, and reported this to me. IV