Recrossing the stream called the Leith, they rode towards a knoll that rose amid the marshy ground near the castle loch of Corstorphine. There a dozen of the cavalier troopers were dismounted, and leaning on their swords or carbines, were holding their bridles in a cluster round Dundee, who was still on horseback, and in the act of addressing a disarmed prisoner, in whom with surprise and sorrow they recognized the young Laird of Holsterlee.
Cool and collected, with folded arms he firmly encountered the large dark eyes of Dundee, which were fixed with stern scrutiny upon him. The group of his comrades surveyed him with glances of mingled scorn and pity.
"Holsterlee!" said the Viscount, who held in one hand a long Scots pistol, in the other a letter; "how little could I once have suspected that you, the best cavalier of the king's life guard, and one in whose loyalty and high spirit I trusted so much, would stoop to this dishonour! The attempt simply of deserting to take service with this vile usurper, though bad enough in itself, is as nothing compared to the treachery which this stray letter has revealed. Fool and villain! thou knowest that I am the last hope of the king's cause in Scotland, and that if I fall it will be buried in my grave; and yet thou art in league with this accursed Convention to destroy me! A thousand English guineas for my head, thou villanous scape-the-gallows and companion of grooms and horseboys, who hast squandered away a fair repute and noble patrimony among rakehelly gamesters and women of pleasure, dost thou value the head of a Scottish peer at a sum so trifling? hah!" He uttered a bitter laugh. "What," he resumed, "hast thou to urge, that I should not hang thee from the branch of this beech tree?"
"That I am a gentleman," replied Holsterlee boldly; "a lesser baron of blood and coat-armour by twelve descents, and should not die the death of a peasant churl or faulty hound."
"Right!" exclaimed Dundee, whose dark and terrible eyes began to fill with their dusky fire. "A gentleman should die by the hand of another, for every punishment is disgraceful. DEATH is the only relief from the consciousness of crime. Thou shalt have the honour of perishing by the hand of the first cavalier in Scotland. _Thus_ shalt thou die--now God receive thy soul!" and pointing upward with his bridle hand, he levelled the pistol and fired. The ball passed through the brain of Holsterlee, and flattened against the plastered wail of a neighbouring cottage. The body sank prostrate on the turf, quivered for a moment, and then lay still and stiffening, with upturned eyes and relaxed jaws.