■WILLIAM AND MARY.

279

alarm and break up tlie whole scheme.” But Dundee was oh- chap.stinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems, like many 1( . B3 ' -other brave men, to have been less proof against the danger ofassassination than against any other form of danger. He knewwhat the hatred of the Covenanters was: he knew how well hehad earned their hatred; and he was haunted by that conscious-ness of inexpiable guilt, and by that dread of a terrible retri-bution, which the ancient potytheists personified under theawful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satans andBeelzebubs who had shared his crimes, and who now sharedhis perils, were ready to be the companions of his flight.

Meanwhile the Convention had assembled. Mackenzie was Tumui-

tuoussit-

on his legs, and was pathetically lamenting the hard condition ting of ^of the Estates, at once commanded by the guns of a fortress TOition.and menaced by a fanatical rabble, when he was interrupted bysome se-ntinels who came running from the posts near theCastle. They had seen Dundee at the head of fifty horse on theStirling road. That road ran close under the huge rock onwhich the citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ram-parts, and had made a sign that he had something to say. Dun-dee had climbed high enough to hear and to be heard, and wasthen actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that momentthe hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the assemblyregarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in the faithhad been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentarydeliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamiltonhimself, who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, hadhitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and im-partiality , was the loudest and fiercest man in the hall. “ It ishigh time,” he cried, “that we should look to ourselves. Theenemies of our religion and of our civil freedom are musteringall around us; and we may well suspect that they have accom-plices even here. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table.