"When she was coming to the place of execution," saith Robert Lindesay in his Chronicle, "thair gathered an hudge multitud of people, and especiallie of vomen, cursing her for being so unhappie as to committ such damnable deidis; to whom she turned with an ireful countenance, saying-- "'_Whairfoir chyde ye me, as if I had committed an unworthie act? Give me credence and trow me, if ye had experience of eating of mens and womens flesch, ye wald think it so delitious, that ye wald never forbear it agane!_' "So without any signe of repentance," concludes the historian, "this vnhappie traitour deid in the sight of the people." Her ashes, with those of her terrible parents, were scattered on the waters of the Tay; and a black whin-stone in the causewayed market-place long remained to indicate the spot where they perished. Hew Borthwick was the child whom the priest saved: hence it was that he shuddered to pass through the central street of Dundee. The good old prebend, who had given him his own name, reared him for the Church, in the hope that through his piety and prayers the atrocious lives of his parents might in some measure be atoned for; but Hew broke his vows, and came forth into the world, to fulfil the terrible mission for which fate seemed to destine him. The people of Dundee and Angus knew not that he was the rescued child of the terrible Ewain Gavelrigg, the ogre of the Sidlaws: for the secret was known only to the prebends of Dunblane; and animated either by pity for the wretch himself, or a sense of shame that their holy cloister had once been desecrated by his presence, they locked the secret in their own breasts,--unfortunately, we may add, for many of the actors in our drama, and most unfortunately indeed for the whole of Scotland, as the event proved. An hour's walk along the rough and shingly beach brought Hew Borthwick to the gates of Broughty, the strong walls of which, when occupied by a gallant garrison, twice defied the Regent Arran with eight pieces of cannon and eight thousand infantry. The barbican, with its flanking towers and strong curtain wall was then well mounted by heavy culverins of yetlan iron, to sweep the river; but the smaller guns, which faced the salt marshes on the north, and the links of Moniefieth on the east, were composed of iron rings, enclosing malleable iron bars. Like other royal castles, it was garrisoned by a company of the king's _Wageours_, as the people named the enlisted soldiers of those military bands by which James III., at a time when standing armies were unknown, with a foresight far in advance of his age, provided for the security of the kingdom; especially towards the frontier of England.