If you had
been a wicked baron and compelled to stay there all the afternoon,
you would have had a rare fit of remorse. How you would have heaped
up the fire and gnawed your fingers! I think it would have come to
homicide before the evening - if it were only for the pleasure of
seeing something red! And the masters of Dunure, it is to be
noticed, were remarkable of old for inhumanity. One of these vaults
where the snow had drifted was that 'black route' where 'Mr. Alane
Stewart, Commendatour of Crossraguel,' endured his fiery trials. On
the 1st and 7th of September 1570 (ill dates for Mr. Alan!), Gilbert,
Earl of Cassilis, his chaplain, his baker, his cook, his pantryman,
and another servant, bound the Poor Commendator 'betwix an iron
chimlay and a fire,' and there cruelly roasted him until he signed
away his abbacy. it is one of the ugliest stories of an ugly period,
but not, somehow, without such a flavour of the ridiculous as makes
it hard to sympathise quite seriously with the victim. And it is
consoling to remember that he got away at last, and kept his abbacy,
and, over and above, had a pension from the Earl until he died.
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