Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 11
General
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 11
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Fiction
We fear we would but weaken the effect of the reader's more impressive
conceptions, were we to attempt to describe the feelings of M'Intyre
during the days of agonising suspense between the period of his
comrade's arrestment and the judgment which followed. He refused all
sustenance; and, from being one of the most active and cheerful men in
the regiment, became careless in his duties and morose in his temper,
and seemed as if he courted, or would willingly have done something
calculated to expose him to the same fate which he had no doubt
awaited his unhappy comrade. The two unfortunate men--for the one was
scarcely less an object of compassion than the other--had frequent
interviews previous to M'Leod's receiving the sentence which was
thought due to his offence; and these were of the most heartrending
description. These men, of stout frame and lion heart, who side by
side had often marched unappalled up to the cannon's mouth, wept in
each other's arms like women. Words they had none, or they were but
few.
At length the fatal judgment was passed. M'Leod was condemned to be
shot; and the sentence was ordered to be carried into execution on the
afternoon of the same day on which it was awarded. The unhappy victim
of military law shrunk not at the contemplation of the miserable fate
that awaited him. He heard it announced with unmoved countenance and
unshrinking nerve; his only remark, simply expressed in his native
language, being, "that, as to being shot, he minded it not; but he
could have wished that it had been on the field of battle." Although
prepared for the dreadful intelligence which was to inform him of the
doom of his comrade--for he had no doubt from the first that it would
be so--M'Intyre knew not yet the one-half of the misery that awaited
him in connection with the impending death of his friend. It was
possible to aggravate to him the horrors of that event tenfold, and to
increase inconceivably the torture of his already agonised mind--and
poor M'Intyre found it was so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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