from the folk of the time it extorted a certain admiration. The authorities were as cruel as the criminals. A boy burns down a house and he is himself burned alive at the Cross as an example. In 1675 two striplings named Clarke and Ramsay, seventeen and fifteen years old, robbed and poisoned their master, an old man named Anderson. His nephew, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, warned by a recurring dream, set off for Edinburgh, and instituted investigations which led to the discovery of the crime. The youthful culprits were hanged “both in regard to the theft clearly proven and for terror that the Italian trick of sending men to the other world in figs and possits might not come overseas to our Island.” Now and again there is a redeeming touch in the dark story. In 1528 there was an encounter between the Douglases and the Hamiltons at Holyrood Palace. A groom of the Earl of Lennox spied Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, who had slain his master, among the crowd. He presently attacked Sir James in a narrow gallery, and wounded him in six places, though none was mortal. The groom was discovered and dragged off to torture and mutilation. His right hand was hacked off; whereupon “he observed with a sarcastic smile that it was punished less than it deserved for having failed to revenge his beloved master.” I have mentioned the Gallow Lee between Edinburgh and Leith. It was the chosen spot for the execution of witches, and for the hanging in chains of great criminals. The hillock was composed of very excellent sand. When the New Town was built it had been long disused as a place of execution, and the owner of the soil had no difficulty in disposing of a long succession of cartloads to the builders. He insisted on immediate payment and immediately spent the money at an adjacent tavern, maintained if not instituted for his special benefit. He drank to the last grain as well as to the last drop and vanishes from history, the most extreme and consistent of countless Edinburgh topers!