During the season that the malady continued upon me, through the
unsuspected agency of Robin Brown, a paction was entered into with
certain of my neighbours, to take the lands of Quharist on tack among
them, and to pay me a secret stipend, by which means were obtained to
maintain me in a decency when I was able to be removed into Glasgow. And
when my strength was so far restored that I could bear the journey, the
same good man entered into a stipulation with Mrs Aird, the relict of a
Gospel minister, to receive me as a lodger, and he carried me in on his
cart to her house at the foot of the Stockwell.
With that excellent person I continued several months unmolested, but
without hearing any tidings of my son. Afflicting tales were however of
frequent occurrence, concerning the rigour wherewith the Cameronians
were hunted; so that what with anxiety, and the backwardness of nature
to rally in ailments ayont fifty, I continued to languish, incapable of
doing anything in furtherance of the vow of vengeance that I had vowed.
Nor should I suppress, that in my infirmity there was often a wildness
about my thoughts, by which I was unfitted at times to hold communion
with other men.
On these occasions I sat wondering if the things around me were not the
substanceless imageries of a dream, and fancying that those terrible
truths whereof I can yet only trust myself to hint, might be the
fallacies of a diseased sleep. And I contested as it were with the
reality of all that I saw, touched, and felt, and struggled like one
oppressed with an incubus, that I might awake and find myself again at
Quharist in the midst of my family.
At other times I felt all the loneliness of the solitude into which my
lot was then cast, and it was in vain that I tried to appease my craving
affections with the thought, that in parting with my son I had given him
to the Lord. I durst not say to myself there was aught of frenzy in that
consecration; but when I heard of Cameronians shot on the hills or
brought to the scaffold, I prayed that I might receive some token of an
accepted offering in what I had done.
Sterner feelings too had their turns of predominance. I recalled the
manifold calamities which withered my native land--the guilty
provocations that the people had received--the merciless avarice and
rapacious profligacy that had ruined so many worthies--the crimes that
had scattered so many families--and the contempt with which all our
wrongs and woes were regarded; and then I would remember my avenging
vow, and supplicate for health.
At last, one day Mrs Aird, who had been out on some household cares,
returned home in great distress of mind, telling me that the soldiers
had got hold of Mr Cargill, and had brought him into the town.
This happened about the ninth or tenth of July, in the afternoon; and
the day being very sultry, the heat had oppressed me with langour, and I
was all day as one laden with sleep. But no sooner had Mrs Aird told me
this, than I felt the langour depart from me, as if a cumbrous cloak had
been taken away, and I rose up a recruited and reanimated man. It was so
much the end of my debility of body and sorrowing of mind, that she was
loquacious with her surprise when she saw me, as it were, with a
miraculous restoration, prepare myself to go out in order to learn, if
possible, some account of my son.
When, however, I went into the street, and saw a crowd gathered around
the guard-house, my heart failed me a little, not for fear, but because
the shouts of the multitude were like the yells and derisions of insult;
and I thought they were poured upon the holy sufferer. It was not,
however, so; the Gospel-taught people of Glasgow were, notwithstanding
their prelatic thraldom, moved far otherwise, and their shouts and
scoffings were against a townsman of their own, who had reviled the man
of God on seeing him a prisoner among the soldiers in the guard-house.
Not then knowing this I halted, dubious if I should go forward; and
while standing in a swither at the corner of the Stockwell, a cart came
up from the bridge, driven by a stripling. I saw that the cart and horse
were Robin Brown's, and before I had time to look around, my son had me
by the hand.
We said little, but rejoiced to see each other again. I observed,
however, that his apparel was become old and that his eyes were grown
quick and eager like those of the hunted Cameronians whom I saw at
Kingswell.
"We hae ta'en Robin Brown's cart frae him," said he; "that I might come
wi't unjealoused into the town, to hear what's to be done wi' the
minister; but I maun tak it back the night, and maybe we'll fa' in
thegither again when I hae done my errand."
With that he parted from me, and giving the horse a touch with his whip,
drove it along towards the guard-house, whistling like a blithe country
lad that had no care.
As soon as he had so left me I went back to Mrs Aird, and providing
myself with what money I had in the house, I went to a shop and bought
certain articles of apparel, which having made up into a bundle, I
requested, the better to disguise my intent, the merchant to carry it
himself to Robin Brown the Ayr carrier's cart, and give it to the lad
who was with it, to take to Joseph Gilhaize,--a thing easy to be done,
both the horse and cart being well known in those days to the chief
merchants then in Glasgow.
When I had done this, I went to the bridge, and leaning over it, looked
into the peaceful flowing tide, and there waited for nearly an hour
before I saw my son returning; and when at last he came, I could
perceive, as he was approaching, that he did not wish I should speak to
him, while at the same time he edged towards me, and in passing, said as
it were to himself, "The bundle's safe, and he's for Edinburgh;" by
which I knew that the apparel I had bought for him was in his hands, and
that he had learnt Mr Cargill was to be sent to Edinburgh.
This latter circumstance, however, opened to me a new light with respect
to the Cameronians, and I guessed that they had friends in the town with
whom they were in secret correspondence. But, alas! the espionage was
not all on their part, as I very soon was taught to know by experience.
Though the interviews with Joseph my son passed, as I have herein
narrated, they had not escaped observance. For some time before, though
I was seen but as I was, an invalid man, somewhat unsettled in his mind,
there were persons who marvelled wherefore it was that I dwelt in such
sequestration with Mrs Aird; and their marvelling set the espial of the
prelacy upon me. And it so fell out that some of those evil persons,
who, for hire or malice, had made themselves the beagles of the
persecutors, happened to notice the manner in which my son came up to me
when he entered the city driving Robert Brown's cart, and they jealoused
somewhat of the truth.
They followed him unsuspected, and saw in what manner he mingled with
the crowd; and they traced him returning out of the town with seemingly
no other cause for having come into it, than to receive the little store
of apparel that I had provided for him. This was ground enough to
justify any molestation against us, and accordingly the same night I was
arrested, and carried next morning to Edinburgh. The cruel officers
would have forced me to walk with the soldiers, but every one who beheld
my pale face and emaciated frame, cried out against it, and a cart was
allowed to me.
On reaching Edinburgh, I was placed in the tolbooth, where many other
sufferers for the cause of the Gospel were then lying. It was a foul and
an unwholesome den: many of the guiltless inmates were so wasted that
they were rather like frightful effigies of death than living men. Their
skins were yellow, and their hands were roped and warpt with veins and
sinews in a manner very awful to see. Their eyes were vivid with a
strange distemperature, and there was a charnel-house anatomy in the
melancholy with which they welcomed a new brother in affliction, that
made me feel, when I entered among them, as if I had come into the dark
abode of spectres, and manes, and dismal shadows.
The prison was crowded over-much, and though life was to many not worth
the care of preservation, they yet esteemed it as the gift of their
Maker, and as such considered it their duty to prolong for His sake. It
was, therefore, a rule with them to stand in successive bands at the
windows, in order that they might taste of the living air from without;
and knowing from dismal experience, that those who came in the last
suffered at first more than those who were before, it was a charitable
self-denial among them to allow to such a longer period of the window,
their only solace.
Thus it was that on the morning of the third day after I had been
immured in that doleful place, I was standing with several others
behind a party of those who were in possession of the enjoyment, in
order that we might take their places when the hour expired; and while
we were thus awaiting in patience the tedious elapse of the weary
moments, a noise was heard in the streets, as of the approach of a
multitude.
There was something in the coming sound of that tumult unlike the noise
of any other multitude;--ever and anon a feeble shouting, and then the
roll of a drum; but the general sough was a murmur of horror followed by
a rushing as if the people were scared by some dreadful sight.
The noise grew louder and nearer, and hoarse bursts of aversion and
anger, mingled with lamentations, were distinctly heard. Every one in
the prison pressed to the window, wondering what hideous procession
could occasion the expression of such contrarious feelings in the
populace, and all eager to catch a glimpse of the dismal pageant,
expecting that it was some devoted victim, who, according to the
practice of the time, was treated as a sentenced criminal, even as he
was conveyed to his trial.
"What do you see?" said I to one of the prisoners, who clung to the bars
of iron with which the window near where I stood was grated, and who
thereby saw farther down the street.
"I can see but the crowd coming," said he, "and every one is looking as
if he grewed at something not yet in sight."
At that moment, and while he was speaking, there was a sudden silence in
the street.
"What has happened?" said one of the sufferers near me: my heart beat so
wildly that I would not myself inquire.
"They have stopped," was the answer; "but now they come. I see the
magistrates. Their guard is before them,--the provost is first--they are
coming two and two--and they look very sorrowful."
"Are there but the magistrates?" said I, making an effort to press in
closer to the window.
"Aye, now it is at hand," said the man who was clinging to the grating
of the window. "The soldiers are marching on each side--I see the
prisoners;--their hands are tied behind, ilk loaded wi' a goad of
iron--they are bareheaded--ane--twa--three--four--five--they are five
fatherly-looking men."
"They are Cameronians," said I, somewhat released, I know not wherefore,
unless it was because he spoke of no youth being among them.
"Hush!" said he, "here is another--He is on horseback--I see the horse's
head--Oh! the sufferer is an old grey-headed minister--his head is
uncovered--he is placed with his face to the horse's tail--his hands are
tied, and his feet are fastened with a rope beneath the horse's
belly.--Hush! they are passing under the window."
At that moment a shriek of horror rose from all then looking out, and
every one recoiled from the window. In the same instant a bloody head on
a halbert was held up to us.--I looked--I saw the ghastly features, and
I would have kissed those lifeless lips; for, O! they were my son's.