Along stone passages very many, all dripping with damp like a cellar, they dragged me, till beside three doors hung with red cloth they stopped. Then instead of swearing and jesting as they had done before, the officers talked in whispers. Presently a door swung open very silently to admit me, and I set my feet upon a soft carpet. Then, also without noise, the door swung to again. I found myself alone in a cage, barriered like the cage of a wild beast. It was at one end of a vast room with black oaken ceiling, carven and panelled. Before me there was a strong breastwork of oak, and an iron bar across, chin high. Beside me and on either hand were ranged strange-looking engines, some of which I knew to be the "boots" for the torture of the legs, and the pilniewinks for the bruising of the thumbs. Also there stood at each side of the platform a man habited in black and white and with a black mask over his face. These men stood with their arms folded, and looked across the narrow space at one another as though they had been carven statues. The rest of the great room was occupied by a table, and at the table there sat a dignified company. Then I understood that I stood in the presence of the Privy Council of Scotland, which for twenty-five years had bent the land to the King's will. At the head sat cruel Queensberry, with a face louring with hate and guile--or so it seemed, seen through bars of oak and underneath gauds of iron. Still more black and forbidding was the face of the "Bluidy Advocate," Sir George Mackenzie, who sat at the table-foot, and wrote incessantly in his books. I knew none other there, save the fox face of Tarbet, called the Timeserver. When I was brought in, they were talking over some slight matter concerning a laird who had been complaining that certain ill-set persons were carrying away sea tangle from his foreshore. And I was not pleased that they should have other thoughts in their minds, when I was before them in peril of my life. At last Sir George Mackenzie turned him about and said, "Officer, whom have we here?" The officer of the court made answer very shortly and formally, "William Gordon, son of umquhile William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway, and brother of the aforementioned Alexander Gordon, condemned traitor from the prison of Blackness, presently to be examined." "Ah!" said Mackenzie, picking up his pen again, "the Glenkens messan! We'll wait for the muckle hound and take both the lowsy tykes thegether!" But Queensberry, as was his custom at Council, ran counter to the advocate in his desire, and commanded presently to interrogate me. The Duke asked me first if I had been at the wounding of the Duke Wellwood. I answered him plainly that I had. But that it was a fair fight, and that the Duke and his men had made the first onslaught.