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 cause like a soldier. He will perhaps listen more favourably to a blunt and unvarnished defence than a tricking and time-serving judge might do. And, indeed, in a time when justice is, in all its branches, so completely corrupted, I would rather lose my life by open military violence than be conjured out of it by the hocus-pocus of some arbitrary lawyer, who lends the knowledge he has of the statutes made for our protection, to wrest them to our destruction."

"You are lost—you are lost, if you are to plead your cause with Claverhouse!" sighed Edith; "root and branch-work was the mildest of his expressions. The unhappy primate was his intimate friend and early patron. 'No excuse, no subterfuge,' said his letter, 'shall save either those connected with the deed, or such as have given them countenance and shelter from the ample and bitter penalty of the law, until I shall have taken as many lives in vengeance of this atrocious murder, as