On leaving the public we went straight to the place where our blades and
belts lay, and took them up, and proceeded in an easterly direction. But
I soon found that I was no longer the man I had once been; suffering and
the fever of my frenzy had impaired my strength, and the weight of
four-and-fifty years was on my back; so that I began to weary for a
place of rest for the night, and I looked often around to discover the
star of any window; but all was dark, and the bleak easterly wind
searched my very bones; even my son, whose sturdy health and youthy
blood made him abler to thole the night air, complained of the nipping
cold.
Many a time yet, when I remember that night, do I think with wonder and
reverence of our condition. An infirm, grey-haired man, with a deranged
head and a broken heart, going forth amidst the winter's wind, with a
little boy, not passing thirteen years of age, to pull down from his
throne the guarded King of three mighty kingdoms,--and we did it,--such
was the doom of avenging justice, and such the pleasure of Heaven. But
let me proceed to rehearse the trials I was required to undergo before
the accomplishment of that high predestination.
Weary, as I have said, very cold and disconsolate, we walked hirpling
together for some time; at last we heard the rumbling of wheels before
us, and my son running forward came back and told me it was a carrier. I
hastened on, and with a great satisfaction found it was Robin Brown,
the Ayr and Kilmarnock carrier. I had known him well for many years, and
surely it was a providential thing that we met him in our distress, for
he was the brother of a godly man, on whose head, while his family were
around him, Claverhouse, with his own bloody hands, placed the glorious
diadem of martyrdom.
He had been told what had befallen me and mine, and was greatly amazed
to hear my voice, and that I was again come to myself; and he helped
both my son and me into the cart; and, as he walked by the wheel, he
told me of many things which had happened during my eclipse, and of the
dreadful executions at Edinburgh, of the prisoners taken at Airsmoss,
and how that papist James Stuart, Duke of York, the King's brother, was
placed at the head of the Scottish councils, and was then rioting in the
delights of cruelty, with the use of the torture and the thumbikins upon
prisoners suspected, or accused of being honest to their vows and their
religious profession. But my mind was unsettled, and his tale of
calamity passed over it like the east wind that blew that night so
freezingly, cruel to the sense at the time, but of which the morrow
showed no memorial.
I said nothing to Robin Brown of what my intent was, but that I was on
my way to join the Cameronians, if I knew where they might be found; and
he informed me, that after the raid of Airsmoss they had scattered
themselves into the South Country, where, as Claverhouse had the chief
command, the number of their friends was likely to be daily increased,
by the natural issue of his cruelties, and that vindictive exasperation,
which was a passion and an affection of his mind for the discomfiture he
had met with at Drumclog.
"But," said the worthy man, "I hope, Ringan Gilhaize, ye'll yet consider
the step before ye tak it. Ye're no at this time in a condition o'
health to warsle wi' hardship, and your laddie there's owre young to be
o' ony fek in the way o' war; for, ye ken, the Cameronians hae declar't
war against the King, and, being few and far apart, they're hunted down
in a' places."
"If I canna fight wi' men," replied my brave stripling, "I can help my
father; but I'm no fear't. David was but a herd laddie, maybe nae aulder
nor bigger than me, when he fell't the muckle Philistine wi' a stane."
I made no answer myself to Robin Brown's remonstrance, because my
resolution was girded as it were with a gir of brass and adamant, and,
therefore, to reason more or farther concerning aught but of the means
to achieve my purpose, was a thing I could not abide. Only I said to
him, that being weary, and not in my wonted health, I would try to
compose myself to sleep, and he would waken me when he thought fit, for
that I would not go with him to Glasgow, but shape our way towards the
South Country. So I stretched myself out, and my dear son laid himself
at my back, and the worthy man happing us with his plaid, we soon fell
asleep.
When the cart stopped at the Kingswell, where Robin was in the usage of
halting half an hour, he awoke us; and there being no strangers in the
house we alighted, and going in, warmed ourselves at the fire.
Out of a compassion for me the mistress warmed and spiced a pint of ale;
but instead of doing me any good, I had not long partaken of the same
when I experienced a great coldness and a trembling in my limbs, in so
much that I felt myself very ill, and prayed the kind woman to allow me
to lie down in a bed; which she consented to do in a most charitable
manner, causing her husband, who was a covenanted man, as I afterwards
found, to rise out of his, and give me their own.
The cold and the tremblings were but the symptoms and beginnings of a
sore malady, which soon rose to such a head that Robin Brown taiglet
more than two hours for me; but still I grew worse and worse, and could
not be removed for many days. On the fifth I was brought so nigh unto
the gates of death that my son, who never left the bed-stock, thought at
one time I had been released from my troubles. But I was reserved for
the task that the Lord had in store for me, and from that time I began
to recover; and nothing could exceed the tenderness wherewith I was
treated by those Samaritan Christians, the landlord and his wife of the
public at Kingswell. This distemper, however, left a great imbecility of
body behind it; and I wondered whether it could be of providence to
prevent me from going forward with my avenging purpose against Charles
Stuart and his counsellors.
Being one day in this frame of dubiety, lying in the bed, and my son
sitting at my pillow, I said to him, "Get THE BOOK and open, and read,"
which he accordingly did; and the first verse that he cast his eye upon
was the twenty-fourth of the seventh chapter of Isaiah, "With arrows and
with bows shall men come."
"Stop" said I, "and go to the window and see who are coming;" but when
he went thither and looked out he could see no one far nor near. Yet
still I heard the tramp of many feet, and I said to him, "Assuredly,
Joseph, there are many persons coming towards this house, and I think
they are not men of war, for their steps are loose, and they march not
in the order of battle."
This I have thought was a wonderful sharpness of hearing with which I
was for a season then gifted; for soon after a crowd of persons were
discovered coming over the moor towards the house, and it proved to be
Mr Cargill, with about some sixty of the Cameronians, who had been
hunted from out their hiding-places in the south.