Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

The hearers had no difficulty in finding the living
representatives of all three, and especially of the
last, who stood pre-eminent among the dark figures
around him for his relentless cruelty and
unfathomable perfidy. The words changed Sharp
into a pillar o£ salt: he was henceforth known as
"the Judas of the Scottish Kirk."
When Hugh McKail was sentenced to the
gallows he was only twenty-six years of age. He
was a person of excellent education, great elevation
of soul, an impressive eloquence, and his person
seemed to have molded itself so as to shadow forth
the noble lineaments of the spirit that dwelt within
it. He had a freshness and even gaiety of mind
which the near approach of a violent death could
not extinguish. On entering the prison after his
trial, some one asked him how his limb was. "The
fear of my neck," he replied, "makes me forget my
leg." In prison he discoursed sweetly and
encouragingly to his fellow-sufferers. On the night
before his execution he laid him down, and sank in
quiet sleep. When he appeared on the scaffold it
was with a countenance so sweet and grave, and an
477