The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

your poisoned chalice.—I say, remember Porteous, and
say that you had good counsel from
“One of his Slayers.”
The magistrate read over this extraordinary letter
twice or thrice. At first he was tempted to throw it aside
as the production of a madman, so little did “the scraps
from play-books,” as he termed the poetical quotation,
resemble the correspondence of a rational being. On a
re-perusal, however, he thought that, amid its incoherence,
he could discover something like a tone of awakened
passion, though expressed in a manner quaint and
unusual.
“It is a cruelly severe statute,” said the magistrate to
his assistant, “and I wish the girl could be taken from
under the letter of it. A child may have been born, and
it may have been conveyed away while the mother was
insensible, or it may have perished for want of that relief
which the poor creature herself—helpless, terrified,
distracted, despairing, and exhausted—may have been
Sir Walter Scott
233
unable to afford to it. And yet it is certain, if the woman
is found guilty under the statute, execution will follow.
The crime has been too common, and examples are necessary.”
“But if this other wench,” said the city-clerk, “can
speak to her sister communicating her situation, it will
take the case from under the statute.”
“Very true,” replied the Bailie; “and I will walk out
one of these days to St. Leonard’s, and examine the girl
myself. I know something of their father Deans—an old
true-blue Cameronian, who would see house and family
go to wreck ere he would disgrace his testimony by a
sinful complying with the defections of the times; and
such he will probably uphold the taking an oath before
a civil magistrate. If they are to go on and flourish with
their bull-headed obstinacy, the legislature must pass
an act to take their affirmations, as in the case of Quakers.
But surely neither a father nor a sister will scruple
in a case of this kind. As I said before, I will go speak
with them myself, when the hurry of this Porteous investigation
is somewhat over; their pride and spirit of