"Weel, Ringan," said my brother, "we have met again in this world; it's
a blessing I never looked for;" and he held out his two hands to take
hold of mine, but the broken links of the shackle still round my wrist
made him cry out,--
"What's this?--Whare hae ye come fra? But I need na inquire."
"I have broken out of the tolbooth o' Irvine," said I, "and I am fleeing
here with Mr Witherspoon."
"I, too," replied my brother, mournfully, "hae escaped from the hands of
the persecutors."
We then entered into some conversation concerning what had happened to
us respectively, from the fatal twenty-eighth of November, when our
power and host were scattered on Rullion-green, wherein Mr Witherspoon,
with me, rehearsed to him the accidents herein set forth, with the
circumstantials of some things that befel the godly man after I left him
with the corpse of the baby in his arms; but which being in some points
less of an adventurous nature than had happened to myself, I shall be
pardoned by the courteous reader for not enlarging upon it at greater
length. I should, however, here note, that Mr Witherspoon was not so
severely dealt with as I was; for though an outcast and a fugitive, yet
he was not a prisoner; on the contrary, under the kindly cover of the
Lady Auchterfardel, whose excellent and truly covenanted husband was a
sore sufferer by the fines of the year 1662, he received great
hospitality for the space of sixteen days, and was saved between two
feather beds, on the top of which the laird's aged mother, a bed-rid
woman, was laid, when some of Drummond's men searched the house on an
information against him.
But disconsolatory as it was to hear of such treatment of a
Gospel-minister, though lightened by the reflection of the saintly
constancy that was yet to be found in the land, and among persons too of
the Lady of Auchterfardel's degree, and severe as the trials were, both
of body and mind, which I had myself undergone, yet were they all as
nothing compared to the hardships of my brother, a man of a temperate
sobriety of manner, bearing all changes with a serene countenance and a
placable mind, while feeling them in the uttermost depths of his
capacious affections.
"On the night of the battle," said he, "it would not be easy of me to
tell which way I went, or what ensued, till I found myself with three
destitute companions on the skirts of the town of Falkirk. By that time
the morning was beginning to dawn, and we perceived not that we had
approached so nigh unto any bigget land; as the day, however, broke, the
steeple caught our eye, and we halted to consider what we ought to do.
And as we were then standing in a field diffident to enter the town, a
young woman came from a house that stands a little way off the road,
close to Graham's dyke, driving a cow to grass with a long staff, which
I the more remarked as such, because it was of the Indian cane, and
virled with silver, and headed with ivory.
"'Sirs,' said Menie Adams, for that was the damsel's name, 'I see what
ye are; but I'll no speir; howsever, be ruled by me, and gang na near
the town of Falkirk this morning, for atwish the hours of dark and dawn
there has been a congregationing o' horses and men, and other sediments
o' war, that I hae a notion there's owre meikle o' the King's power in
the place for any Covenanter to enter in, save under the peril o'
penalties. But come wi' me, and I'll go back wi' you, and in our
hay-loft you may scog yoursels till the gloaming.'
"Who could have thought," said my brother, "that in such discourse from
a young woman, not passing four-and-twenty years of age, and of a
pleasant aspect, any guilty stratagem of blood was hidden!"
He and his friends never questioned her truth, but went with her, and
she conducted them to her father's house, and lodged them in the
hay-loft.
It seems that Menie Adams was, however, at the time betrothed to the
prelatic curate that had been laid upon the parish, and that, in
consequence, aneath her courtesy, she had concealed a very treacherous
and wicked intent. For no sooner had she got my brother and his three
companions into the hay-loft, than she hies herself away to the town,
and, in the hope of pleasing her prelatic lover, informs the captain of
the troop there of the birds she had ensnared.
As soon as the false woman had thus committed the sin of perfidy, she
went to the curate to brag how she had done a service to his cause; but
he, though of the prelatic germination, being yet a person who had some
reverence for truth and the gentle mercies of humanity, was so disturbed
by her unwomanly disposition, that he bade her depart from his presence
for ever, and ran with all possible speed to waken the poor men whom she
had so betrayed.
On his way to the house he saw a party of the soldiers, whom their
officer, as in duty bound, was sending to seize the unsuspecting
sleepers, and running on before them, he just got forward in time to
give the alarm. My brother and one of them, Esau Wardrop, the wife's
brother of James Gottera, who had been so instrumental in my evasion,
were providentially enabled to get out and flee; but the other two were
taken by the soldiers and carried to prison.
The base conduct of that Menie Adams, as we some years after heard, did
not go long unvisited by the displeasure of Heaven, for, some scent of
her guilt taking wind, the whole town, in a sense, grew wud against her,
and she was mobbet, and the wells pumped upon her by the enraged
multitude; and she never recovered from the handling that she therein
suffered.
My brother and Esau Wardrop, on getting into the open fields, made all
the speed they could, like the panting hart when pursued by the hunter,
and distrusting the people of that part of the country, they travelled
all day, not venturing to approach any reeking house. Towards gloaming,
however, being hungry and faint, the craving of nature overcame their
fears, and they went up to a house where they saw a light burning.
As they approached the door they faltered a little in their resolution,
for they heard the dissonance of riot and revelry within. Their need,
however, was great, and the importunities of hunger would not be
pacified, so they knocked, and the door was soon opened by a soldier,
the party within being a horde of Dalziel's men, living at free quarters
in the house of that excellent Christian and much-persecuted man, the
Laird of Ringlewood.