with to make the
appropriate reply, one of their number called out with a loud, strong
voice, demanding to know why he approached their leaguer.

"To summon you in the King's name, and in that of Colonel John Grahame of
Claverhouse, specially commissioned by the right honourable Privy Council
of Scotland," answered the Cornet, "to lay down your arms, and dismiss
the followers whom ye have led into rebellion, contrary to the laws of
God, of the King, and of the country."

"Return to them that sent thee," said the insurgent leader, "and tell
them that we are this day in arms for a broken Covenant and a persecuted
Kirk; tell them that we renounce the licentious and perjured Charles
Stewart, whom you call king, even as he renounced the Covenant, after
having once and again sworn to prosecute to the utmost of his power all
the ends thereof, really, constantly, and sincerely, all the days of his
life, having no enemies but the enemies of the Covenant, and no friends
but its friends. Whereas, far from keeping the oath he had called God and
angels to witness, his first step, after his incoming into these
kingdoms, was the fearful grasping at the prerogative of the Almighty, by
that hideous Act of Supremacy, together with his expulsing, without
summons, libel, or process of law, hundreds of famous faithful preachers,
thereby wringing the bread of life out of the mouth of hungry, poor
creatures, and forcibly cramming their throats with the lifeless,
saltless, foisonless, lukewarm drammock of the fourteen false prelates,
and their sycophantic, formal, carnal, scandalous creature-curates."

"I did not come to hear you preach," answered the officer, "but to know,
in one word, if you will disperse yourselves, on condition of a free
pardon to all but the murderers of the late Archbishop of St Andrews; or
whether you will abide the attack of his majesty's forces, which will
instantly advance upon you."

"In one word, then," answered the spokesman, "we are here with our swords
on our thighs, as men that watch in the night. We will take one part and
portion together, as brethren in righteousness. Whosoever assails us in
our good cause, his blood be on his own head. So return to them that sent
thee, and God give them and thee a sight of the evil of your ways!"

"Is not your name," said the Cornet, who began to recollect having seen
the person whom he was now speaking with, "John Balfour of Burley?"

"And if it be," said the spokesman