Scotland/Scots > Wilson's tales of the Borders and of Scotland > Volume 3

THE CONSCIENCE-STiUCKEN.
47
tence, was delivered for dissection, anatomized it; and
two years after, I purchased from him, for the price ol
fifteen guineas, the entire skeleton, to supply a want in
my museum, and facilitate the osteological studies of iny
apprentices.
During the twenty years that passed after the period of
his execution, I seldom cast my eyes upon that dry crack¬
ling memorial of the unhappy man, as it hung in grim
majesty and stoical defiance of the changes of time, and of
those exacerbations of passion which, in its animated con¬
dition, penetrated its very marrow, without a cold shiver¬
ing remembrance of his sufierings. On the patella or
knee-pan of the left limb there was written, by Dr. ,
who constructed the skeleton, the words “ Walter T ,
a murderer, executed at , the — day of .” I
wrote, on the patella of the other limb—“ For the extra¬
ordinary circumstances attending his execution, see the
newspaper, published on the same dayand I re¬
tained a copy of the print in my museum, to gratify the
curiosity of those who might be interested in the fate of
the being whose bones, as they crackled to the touch, sung
that peculiar and heart-striking memento mori, which few
people, not professionally interested in the sight, can hear
and forget. The indescribable interest produced by a skele¬
ton is well known, among anatomists, to produce in young
students a peculiar facility in acquiring a knowledge of
the immense number of bones, many of them bearing long
Greek names, which go to make up the aggregate of the
human system; but the fate of Walter T , which I
always communicated to my apprentices, adding the part I
myself acted in the dark drama, imparted a peculiar interest
to the grim spectacle, which no memory, however treach¬
erous, could, even with the assistance of years, disregard
or renounce.
For a period of fifteen years after the execution of that