for us to explain why." - "The panel, who (whatever else he may be)

appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady." - "Neither the

panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as

even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of

sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means,

under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit

rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and

heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the

speaker in his task, made them tingle in the ears.

When all was over, Archie came forth again into a changed world. Had

there been the least redeeming greatness in the crime, any obscurity,

any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood. But the culprit stood,

with his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal agony, without defence

or excuse: a thing to cover up with blushes: a being so much sunk

beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the

judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be

conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger,

another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter-

house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the

image of his judge.

Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words

and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance

awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of

Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the hooded stag, of the splendour and

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