The jailor looked in amazement, first at the woman, and then at the instrument.
"What!" he at length said, "take a fiddle to a man who's going to be hanged! That is ridiculous."
"It is his wish," said the former, briefly. "The wish of a dying man. Will you convey it to him?"
"Oh, if it be his wish, he shall surely have it," said the jailor; "but it is the oddest wish I ever heard."
"You _will_ convey it to him, then?" replied the stranger, with the same sententious brevity as before.
The woman curtsied and withdrew in the same cold, stern, and formal manner she had maintained throughout the interview. On her departure, the jailor proceeded to Macpherson's dungeon with the extraordinary commission with which he had been charged. The latter, on seeing the well-known instrument, snatched it eagerly and delightedly from its bearer, exclaiming--"Welcome, welcome! thou dear companion of better days! thou solacer of many a heavy care! thou delight of many a happy hour! Faithful Eneas!" And with the wild, strange, and romantic recklessness of his nature, he immediately began to play in the sweetest tones imaginable--tones which seemed to have acquired additional pathos from the circumstances of the performer--some of the melancholy airs of his native land; and from that hour till the hour of the minstrel's doom, these strains were almost constantly heard pouring through the small grated window of his dungeon. But they were soon to cease for ever. Macpherson was, in a few days afterwards, brought to trial, and condemned to be hanged at the cross of Banff.
On the day on which he suffered the last penalty of the law, he requested the jailor to send some one with his violin to him to the place of execution. The request was complied with. The instrument was put into his hands as he stood at the foot of the gallows, when he played over the melancholy air known by the name of "Macpherson's Lament." It had been composed by himself while in prison. On concluding the pathetic strain, he grasped his violin by the neck, dashed it to pieces against the gallows, and flung the fragments into the grave prepared for himself at the foot of the gibbet. In a few minutes after, that grave was occupied by all that remained of Macpherson the Freebooter.
