power of the magistrates to overlook the accusation; so we were
obligated to cause a precognition to be taken, and the search left
no doubt of the wilfulness of the murder. Jeanie was in consequence
removed to the tolbooth, where she lay till the lords were coming to
Ayr, when she was sent thither to stand her trial before them; but,
from the hour she did the deed, she never spoke.

Her trial was a short procedure, and she was cast to be hanged--and
not only to be hanged, but ordered to be executed in our town, and
her body given to the doctors to make an atomy. The execution of
Jeanie was what all expected would happen; but when the news reached
the town of the other parts of the sentence, the wail was as the
sough of a pestilence, and fain would the council have got it
dispensed with. But the Lord Advocate was just wud at the crime,
both because there had been no previous concealment, so as to have
been an extenuation for the shame of the birth, and because Jeanie
would neither divulge the name of the father, nor make answer to all
the interrogatories that were put to her--standing at the bar like a
dumbie, and looking round her, and at the judges, like a demented
creature, and beautiful as a Flanders' baby. It was thought by
many, that her advocate might have made great use of her visible
consternation, and pled that she was by herself; for in truth she
had every appearance of being so. He was, however, a dure man, no
doubt well enough versed in the particulars and punctualities of the
law for an ordinary plea; but no of the right sort of knowledge and
talent to take up the case of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill
example and a winsome nature, and clothed in the allurement of
loveliness, as the judge himself said to the jury.

On the night before the day of execution, she was brought over in a