Even then no one believed that the doom would be inflicted.  Royal blood had never flowed beneath the headsman’s axe; and it would have been infinitely more congenial to Scottish feelings if the King had sent a party of men-at-arms to fall on the Master in the high road, and cut him off, or had burnt him alive in his castle.  The verdict ’served him right’ would have been universally returned, and rejoiced in; but a regular trial of a man of such birth was unheard of, and shocking to the feelings even of those whom that irresistible force of the King’s had compelled to sit in judgment upon him.  No one could avow it face to face with the King; but every one felt it an outrage to find that no rank was exempt from law.

Duke Murdoch, his son Alexander, and his father-in-law Lennox, were tried the next day, and many a deed of dark treason was laid to their charge.  The Earl of Lennox had been the scourge of Scotland for more than half the eighty years of his life, but his extreme age might have excited some pity; Murdoch had erred rather negatively than positively; and Alexander, ruffian as he was, had been bred to nothing better.  Each had deserved the utmost penalty of the law again and again, and yet there did seem more scope for mercy in their case than in that of Walter.

But the King was inexorable.  He set Malcolm aside as he had set others.

’I know what you would say, lad.  Lennox is old, and Alexander is young, and Albany is a fool; and Walter has injured you, so you are bound to speak for him.  Take it all as said.  But these are the men who have been foremost in making our country a desert!  Did I pardon them, with what face could I ever make any man suffer for crime?  And, in the state of this land, ruth to the guilty high would be treason to the sackless low.’

So Stirling saw the unprecedented sight of three generations suffering for their crimes upon the same scaffold—­the white-haired Lennox, the Duke of Albany in the prime of life, Walter in the flush and strength of early manhood, Alexander in the bloom of youth.  They all met their fate undauntedly; for if Murdoch’s heart in any measure failed him, he was afraid to give way in presence of the proud bold Walter, who maintained an iron rigidity of demeanour with the wild fortitude of a Red Indian at the stake, and in like manner could by no means comprehend that King James acted from any motive save malice, for having been so long kept out of his kingdom.  ‘It was his turn now,’ said poor Murdoch, even when most desirous of bringing himself to die in a state of Christian forgiveness; nor could any power on earth show any of the criminals that the King acted in the eternal interests of right and justice.

Thus it was with the whole country; and when the four majestic-looking men stood bare-headed on the scaffold, in view even of their own fair towers of Doune, and one by one bowed their heads on the block, perverse Scottish nature broke out into pity for their fate, and wrath against the King, who could thus turn against his own blood, and disgrace the royal lineage.