Walter was deeply moved. Pity and indignation stirred his heart by turns, but he had not much time for reflection; at that moment the drawling voice of the crier was heard, calling with a cadence peculiar to the Scottish courts, "Maister-Walter-Fenton." He became more alive to his own immediate danger, and ere he well knew what passed, found himself in another gloomy and pannelled apartment, one-half of which was hung with scarlet cloth. On a dais stood the vacant throne with the royal arms of Scotland glittering under a canopy of velvet, festooned and fringed with gold. Scott has given us a graphic picture of this strange tribunal, when it was presided over by the odious Duke of Lauderdale. Let us take a view of it as it appeared six years after, when that scourge of the Presbyterians had departed to render at a greater bar an account of his tyranny and enormities. CHAPTER VIII. THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 'Tis noble pride withholds thee--thou disdain'st Wrapt in thy sacred innocence--these mad Outrageous charges to refute. SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. A long table, covered with scarlet cloth, extended from the throne towards the end of the room where Walter stood. Large, red-edged, and massively gilded statute books, docquets of papers, inkstands, and the silver mace (now used by the Lords of Session), lay glittering on the table, while a large silver candelabrum, with twelve tall wax lights, shed a lustre on the striking figures of those personages who composed the select committee of council. On a low wooden side-bench lay certain fearful things, which (in his present predicament) made the heart of Walter quail; though on the field he would have faced, without flinching, the rush of a thousand charging horse; they were the instruments of torture then authorised by law; the _pilnie-winks_, the _caspie-claws_, and the _iron-boots_--all diabolical engines, such as the most refined cruelty alone could have invented. With these, both sexes, even little children were sometimes tortured until the blood spouted from the bruised and crushed limbs. The thumbikins were small steel screws like handvices, which, by compressing the thumb-joints, produced the most acute agony; and this amiable and favourite engine (which saved all trouble of cross-examining witnesses), was first introduced by one of the council, whose stern eyes were fixed on Walter Fenton, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Dalyel of Binns, a cavalier baronet of great celebrity, whose name is still justly abhorred in Scotland. He had long borne a command under the Russian standard, where his humanity had not been improved by service among Tartars and Calmucks. The boot was a strong box enclosed with iron hoops, between which and the victim's leg, the executioner, by gradual and successive blows, drove a wooden wedge with such violence, that blood, bone, and marrow were at last bruised into a hideous and pulpy mass.