The enclosure at the south-western corner of Greyfriars Churchyard, which had been chosen as the prison of the men who were spared after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, was a small narrow space enclosed by very high walls, and guarded by a strong iron gate—the same gate, probably, which still hangs there at the present day.

 

There, among the tombs, without any covering to shelter them from the wind and rain, without bedding or sufficient food, with the dank grass for their couches and graves for pillows, did most of these unfortunates—from twelve to fifteen hundred—live during the succeeding five months. They were rigorously guarded night and day by sentinels who were held answerable with their lives for the safe keeping of the prisoners. During the daytime they stood or moved about uneasily. At nights if any of them ventured to rise the sentinels had orders to fire upon them. If they had been dogs they could not have been treated worse. Being men, their sufferings were terrible—inconceivable. Ere long many a poor fellow found a death-bed among the graves of that gloomy enclosure. To add to their misery, friends were seldom permitted to visit them, and those who did obtain leave were chiefly females, who were exposed to the insults of the guards.

 

A week or so after their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood one afternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dick and Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass and their garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to have deepened their despair, for they remained silent for an unusually long time.

 

“This is awfu’!” said Black at last with a deep sigh. “If there was ony chance o’ makin’ a dash an’ fechtin’ to the end, I wad tak’ comfort; but to be left here to sterve an’ rot, nicht an’ day, wi’ naethin’ to do an’ maist naethin’ to think on—it’s—it’s awfu’!”

 

As the honest man could not get no further than this idea—and the idea itself was a mere truism—no response was drawn from his companions, who sat with clenched fists, staring vacantly before them. Probably the first stage of incipient madness had set in with all of them.

 

“Did Jean give you any hope yesterday?” asked Wallace languidly; for he had asked the same question every day since the poor girl had been permitted to hold a brief conversation with her uncle at the iron gate, towards which only one prisoner at a time was allowed to approach. The answer had always been the same.

 

“Na, na. She bids me hope, indeed, in the Lord—an’ she’s right there; but as for man, what can we hope frae him?”

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