rversity and patient, unfortunate courage.

The Traquairs of Montroymont (_Mons Romanus_, as the erudite expound it)
had long held their seat about the head-waters of the Dule and in the
back parts of the moorland parish of Balweary. For two hundred years
they had enjoyed in these upland quarters a certain decency (almost to
be named distinction) of repute; and the annals of their house, or what
is remembered of them, were obscure and bloody. Ninian Traquair was
"cruallie slochtered" by the Crozers at the kirk-door of Balweary, anno
1482. Francis killed Simon Ruthven of Drumshoreland, anno 1540; bought
letters of slayers at the widow and heir, and, by a barbarous form of
compounding, married (without tocher) Simon's daughter Grizzel, which is
the way the Traquairs and Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage. About
the last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the business of this book,
among many other things, to tell.

The Traquairs were always strong for the Covenant; for the King also,
but the Covenant first; and it began to be ill days for Montroymont when
the Bishops came in and the dragoons at the heels of them. Ninian (then
laird) was an anxious husband of himself and the property, as the times
required, and it may be said of him, that he lost both. He was heavily
suspected of the Pentland Hills rebellion. When it came the length of
Bothwell Brig, he stood his trial before the Secret Council, and was
convicted of talking with some insurgents by the wayside, the subject of
the conversation not very clearly appearing, and of the reset and
maintenance of one Gale, a gardener man, who seen before Bothwell with a
musket, and afterwards, for a continuance of months, delved the garden
at Montroymont. Matters went very ill with Ninian at the Council; some
of the lords were clear for treason; and even the boot was talked of.
But he was spared that torture; and at last, having pretty good
friendship among great men, he came off with a fine of seven thousand
marks, that caused the estate to groan. In this case, as in so many
others, it was the wife that made the trouble. She was a great keeper of
conventicles; would ride ten miles to one, and when she was fined,
rejoiced greatly to suffer for the Kirk; but it was rather her husband
that suffered. She had their only son, Francis, baptized privately by
the hands of Mr. Kidd; there was that much the more to pay for! She
could neither be driven nor wiled into the parish kirk; a