The sudden glare of light suggested to the stupefied and astonished object of popular hatred the possibility of concealment or escape.  To rush to the chimney, to ascend it at the risk of suffocation, were the only means which seem to have occurred to him; but his progress was speedily stopped by one of those iron gratings, which are, for the sake of security, usually placed across the vents of buildings designed for imprisonment.  The bars, however, which impeded his farther progress, served to support him in the situation which he had gained, and he seized them with the tenacious grasp of one who esteemed himself clinging to his last hope of existence.  The lurid light, which had filled the apartment, lowered and died away; the sound of shouts was heard within the walls, and on the narrow and winding stair, which, cased within one of the turrets, gave access to the upper apartments of the prison.  The huzza of the rioters was answered by a shout wild and desperate as their own, the cry, namely, of the imprisoned felons, who, expecting to be liberated in the general confusion, welcomed the mob as their deliverers.  By some of these the apartment of Porteous was pointed out to his enemies.  The obstacle of the lock and bolts was soon overcome, and from his hiding-place the unfortunate man heard his enemies search every corner of the apartment, with oaths and maledictions, which would but shock the reader if we recorded them, but which served to prove, could it have admitted of doubt, the settled purpose of soul with which they sought his destruction.

A place of concealment so obvious to suspicion and scrutiny as that which Porteous had chosen, could not long screen him from detection.  He was dragged from his lurking place, with a violence which seemed to argue an intention to put him to death on the spot.  More than one weapon was directed towards him, when one of the rioters, the same whose female disguise had been particularly noticed by Butler, interfered in an authoritative tone.  “Are ye mad?” he said, “or would ye execute an act of justice as if it were a crime and a cruelty?  This sacrifice will lose half its savour if we do not offer it at the very horns of the altar.  We will have him die where a murderer should die, on the common gibbet—­we will have him die where he spilled the blood of so many innocents!”

A loud shout of applause followed the proposal, and the cry, “To the gallows with the murderer!—­to the Grassmarket with him!” echoed on all hands.

“Let no man hurt him,” continued the speaker; “let him make his peace with God, if he can; we will not kill both his soul and body.”

“What time did he give better folk for preparing their account?” answered several voices.  “Let us mete to him with the same measure he measured to them.”

But the opinion of the spokesman better suited the temper of those he addressed, a temper rather stubborn than impetuous, sedate though ferocious, and desirous of colouring their cruel and revengeful action with a show of justice and moderation.