It was a bleak and cold night. The Lords of the Privy Council, muffled up in their well-furred rocquelaures, with their hats flapped over their periwigs, ascended from the subterranean vaults under the Parliament House where they held their dreaded conclaves, and hurried away to their residences in the various deep and steep wynds of the ancient city. Mersington, who, overcome by sleep and wine, had remained at the table until roused by Macer Maclutchy, was the last to come forth, and he stood rubbing his eyes in the Parliament Square, and watching the black gigantic statue of King Charles with steady gravity, for he could have sworn at that moment that it seemed to be trotting hard towards him. His rallying faculties were scattered again by a stranger violently jostling him. "Haud ye dyvour loon!" exclaimed the incensed Senator; "I am the Lord Mersington." "And what art doing here, pumpkinhead?" asked Clermistonlee, who was quite breathless by having rushed up the Back Stairs, as those flights of steps which ascended from the Cowgate to the Parliament Square were named. "Are the proceedings over? Hath the villain confessed? Is he to die?" "They are over, and he shall die conform to the Act." "And how went the proceedings?" "Deil kens; I sleepit the haill time." "Driveller!" cried Clermistonlee in a towering passion; "'tis like thee; your head is as empty as my purse----" "Hee, hee, ye seem a bonnie temper to-night. But what detained you frae the board, when ye knew you were principal witness?" "The sudden indisposition of Lady Clermistonlee made it impossible for me to leave Bruntisfield--but I have this moment galloped in from The Place." "You are a kind and considerate gudeman," said Mersington drily. "And what did this fellow confess?" "His abhorrence of you----" "Ha! ha!" "His hatred of the present government, and his weariness o' this life. He spoke unco dreich and sadly, puir callant,--and sae I fell fast asleep and dozed like a top." "And did not that goosecap, the King's Advocate, give him a twinge or two of the torture?" "We brought some braw things to light without the help o' rack or screw. The tails o' his coat were as fu' o' treason as an egg's fu' o' meat. There were five and twenty autograph letters frae the bluidy and papistical Duke James----" "Stuff! But lately he was styled His most Sacred Majesty, by the grace of God, and so forth." "I speak as we wrote it in the council minutes. Five and twenty letters to the cut-throat Hieland chiefs, to the Murrays of Stormont, the Drummonds and others, some slee tod lowries we have long had our een on. But maist of a' was a notable plot of that d----ned jaud Madame Maintenon to assassinate King William." "Hah!" "From a paper found, it appears that a certain Monsieur Dumont is now disguised as a soldier in our confederate army in Flanders, watching an opportunity to shoot the King and escape."