Or, to speak more certainly,
it is the pleasure of Heaven, by some hidden agency which we cannot
comprehend, to leave open this mode of discovering the wickedness
of him who has defaced the image of his Creator."
"I have heard this law talked of," said Sir Patrick, "and it was
enforced in the Bruce's time. This surely is no unfit period to seek,
by such a mystic mode of inquiry, the truth to which no ordinary
means can give us access, seeing that a general accusation of Sir
John's household would full surely be met by a general denial. Yet
I must crave farther of Sir Louis, our reverend town clerk, how we
shall prevent the guilty person from escaping in the interim?"
"The burghers will maintain a strict watch upon the wall, drawbridges
shall be raised and portcullises lowered, from sunset to sunrise,
and strong patrols maintained through the night. This guard the
burghers will willingly maintain, to secure against the escape of
the murderer of their townsman."
The rest of the counsellors acquiesced, by word, sign, and look,
in this proposal.
"Again," said the provost, "what if any one of the suspected
household refuse to submit to the ordeal of bier right?"
"He may appeal to that of combat," said the reverend city scribe,
"with an opponent of equal rank; because the accused person must
have his choice, in the appeal to the judgment of God, by what
ordeal he will be tried. But if he refuses both, he must be held
as guilty, and so punished.
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