"My life and lang fasting!" exclaimed Simon, "ye surely wouldna be speaking o' sic a thing as hanging to an auld man like me. If we were to be shot or beheaded--though I would like neither the ane nor the ither--it wouldna be a thing in particular to be complained o'; but to be hanged like a dog is so disgracefu' and unchristian-like, that I would rather die ten times in a day, than feel a hempen cravat about my neck ance. And, moreover, I must say that hanging is not treating my dear young maister and kinsman as he ocht to be treated. His birth, his rank, and the memory o' his ancestors and mine, demand mair respect; and therefore, I say, gae tell your maister, that, if he is determined that we are to die--though I have no ambition to cut my breath before my time--that I think, as a gentleman, it is his duty to see that we die the death o' gentlemen. "Silence, Simon," cried the young laird; "let Murray hang us in his bedchamber if he will. No matter what manner o' death we die, provided only that we die like men. Let him hang us if he dare, and the disgrace be his that is coward enough so to make an end of his enemy. "O sir," said Simon, "but that is poor comfort to a man that has to leave a small family behind him. "Simon! are you afraid to die?" cried the captive laird, in a tone of rebuke. "No, your honour," said Simon--"that is, I am no more afraid to die than other men are, or ought to be--but only ye'll observe, sir, that I have no ambition--not, as I may say, to draw my last breath upon a wuddy, but to have it very unnaturally stopped. Begging your pardon, but you are a young man, while I have a wife and family that would be left to mourn for me!--and O sir! the wife and the bits o' bairns press unco sairly upon a man's heart, when death tries to come in the way between him and them. In exploits like that in which we were last night engaged, and also in battles abroad, I have faced danger in every shape a hundred times--yet, sir, to be shot in a moment, as it were, or to be run through the body, and to die honourably on the field, is a very different thing from deliberately walking up a ladder to the branch o' a tree, from which we are never to come doun in life again. And mair than that, if we had been o' Johnny Faa's gang, they couldna hae treated us mair disrespectfully than to condemn us to the death that they have decreed for us." "Providing ye die bravely, Simon," said the young laird, "it is little matter what manner o' death ye die; and as for your wife and weans, fear not; my faither's house will provide for them. For, though I fall now, there will be other heirs left to the estate o' Harden." While the prisoners thus conversed in the place of their confinement, Lady Murray spoke unto her husband, saying--"And what, Sir Gideon, if it be a fair question, may ye intend to do wi' the braw young laird o' Harden, now that he is in your power?"