After about a quarter of an hour spent in solitary musing on the strange
vicissitudes of his late life, the attention of Morton was summoned to
the window by a great noise in the street beneath. Trumpets, drums, and
kettle-drums, contended in noise with the shouts of a numerous rabble,
and apprised him that the royal cavalry were passing in the triumphal
attitude which Claverhouse had mentioned. The magistrates of the city,
attended by their guard of halberds, had met the victors with their
welcome at the gate of the city, and now preceded them as a part of the
procession. The next object was two heads borne upon pikes; and before
each bloody head were carried the hands of the dismembered sufferers,
which were, by the brutal mockery of those who bore them, often
approached towards each other as if in the attitude of exhortation or
prayer. These bloody trophies belonged to two preachers who had fallen at
Bothwell Bridge. After them came a cart led by the executioner's
assistant, in which were placed Macbriar, and other two prisoners, who
seemed of the same profession. They were bareheaded, and strongly bound,
yet looked around them with an air rather of triumph than dismay, and
appeared in no respect moved either by the fate of their companions, of
which the bloody evidences were carried before them, or by dread of their
own approaching execution, which these preliminaries so plainly
indicated.
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