We were graciously protected for the space of four hours, which we lay
asleep under the rock. Mr Witherspoon was the first who awoke, and he
sat watching beside me for some time, in great anxiety of spirit, as he
afterwards told me; for the day was far spent, and the weather, as is
often the custom in our climate, in the wane of the year, when the
morning rises bright, had become coarse and drumly, threatening a rough
night.
At last I awoke, and according to what we had previously counselled
together, we went up the course of the burn, and so got out of that
afflicting wood, and came to an open and wide moorland, over which we
held our journeying westward, guided by the sun, that with a sickly eye
was then cowering through the mist to his chamber ayont the hill.
But though all around us was a pathless scene of brown heather, here and
there patched with the deceitful green of some perilous well-e'e; though
the skies were sullen, and the bleak wind gusty, and every now and then
a straggling flake of snow, strewed in our way from the invisible hand
of the cloud, was a token of a coming drift, still a joyous
encouragement was shed into our bosoms, and we saw in the wildness of
the waste, and the omens of the storm, the blessed means with which
Providence, in that forlorn epoch, was manifestly deterring the pursuer
and the persecutor from tracking our defenceless flight. So we journeyed
onward, discoursing of many dear and tender cares, often looking round,
and listening when startled by the wind whispering to the heath and the
waving fern, till the shadows of evening began to fall, and the dangers
of the night season to darken around us.
When the snow hung on the heather like its own bells, we wished, but we
feared to seek a place of shelter. Fain would we have gone back to the
home for the fugitive, which we had found under the rock, but we knew
not how to turn ourselves; for the lights of the moon and stars were
deeply concealed in the dark folds of the wintry mantle with which the
heavens were wrapt up. Our hearts then grew weary, and more than once I
felt as if I was very willing to die.
Still we struggled on; and when it had been dark about an hour, we came
to the skirts of a field, where the strips of the stubble through the
snow showed us that some house or clachan could not be far off. We then
consulted together, and resolved rather to make our place of rest in the
lea of a stack, or an outhouse, than to apply to the dwelling; for the
thought of the untimely end of harmless Nahum Chapelrig lay like clay on
our hearts, and we could not but sorrow that, among the other woes of
the vial of the prelatic dispensation, the hearts of the people of
Scotland should be so turned against one another.
Accordingly going down the rigs, with as little interchange of discourse
as could well be, we descried, by the schimmer of the snow, and a
ghastly streak of moonlight that passed over the fields, a farm
steading, with several trees and stacks around it, and thither we softly
directed our steps. Greatly, however, were we surprised and touched with
distress, when, as we drew near, we saw that there was no light in the
house, nor the sign of fire within, nor inhabitant about the place.
On reaching the door we found it open, and on entering in, everything
seemed as if it had been suddenly abandoned; but by the help of a
pistol, which I had taken in the raid from one of Turner's disarmed
troopers, and putting our trust in the protection we had so far enjoyed,
I struck a light and kindled the fire, over which there was still
hanging, on the swee, a kail-pot, wherein the family at the time of
their flight had been preparing their dinner; and we judged by this
token, and by the visible desertion, that we were in the house of some
of God's people who had been suddenly scattered. Accordingly we scrupled
not to help ourselves from the aumrie, knowing how readily they would
pardon the freedom of need in a Gospel minister, and a covenanted
brother dejected with want and much suffering.
Having finished our supper, instead of sitting by the fire, as we at
first proposed to do, we thought it would be safer to take the blankets
from the beds and make our lair in the barn; so we accordingly retired
thither, and lay down among some unthreshed corn that was lying ready on
the floor for the flail.
But we were not well down when we heard the breathings of two persons
near us. As there was no light, and Mr Witherspoon guessing by what we
had seen, and by this concealment, that they must be some of the family,
he began to pray aloud, thereby, without letting wot they were
discovered, making them to understand what sort of guests we were. At
the conclusion an old woman spoke to us, telling us dreadful things
which a gang of soldiers had committed that afternoon, and her sad story
was often interrupted by the moans of her daughter, the farmer's wife,
who had suffered from the soldiers an unspeakable wrong.
"But what has become of our men, or where the bairns hae fled, we know
not,--we were baith demented by the outrage, and hid oursel's here after
it was owre late," said that aged person, in a voice of settled grief
that was more sorrowful to hear than any lamentation could have been,
and all the sacred exhortations that Mr Witherspoon could employ
softened not the obduracy of her inward sorrowing over her daughter, the
dishonoured wife. He, however, persuaded them to return with us to the
house; for the enemy having been there, we thought it not likely he
would that night come again. As for me, during the dismal recital, I
could not speak. The eye of my spirit was fixed on the treasure I had
left at home. Every word I heard was like the sting of an adder. My
horrors and fears rose to such a pitch, that I could no longer master
them. I started up and rushed to the door, as if it had been possible to
arrest the imagined guilt of the persecutors in my own unprotected
dwelling.
Mr Witherspoon followed me, thinking I had gone by myself, and caught me
by the arm and entreated me to be composed, and to return with him into
the house. But while he was thus kindly remonstrating with me,
something took his foot, and he stumbled and fell to the ground. The
accident served to check the frenzy of my thoughts for a moment, and I
stooped down to help him up; but in the same instant he uttered a wild
howl that made me start from him; and he then added, awfully,--
"In the name of Heaven, what is this?
"What is it?" said I, filled with unutterable dread.
"Hush, hush," he replied as he rose, "lest the poor women hear us," and
he lifted in his arms the body of a child of some four or five years
old. I could endure no more; I thought the voices of my own innocents
cried to me for help, and in the frenzy of the moment I left the godly
man, and fled like a demoniac, not knowing which way I went.