ther up my mangled limbs, and give me honoured burial?

My last hour is arrived: I see my tormentor once more approaching me in
this wild. Oh, that the earth would swallow me up, or the hill fall and
cover me! Farewell for ever!

September 7, 1712.--My devoted, princely, but sanguine friend has been
with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond
measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the
eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event
which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He
said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving
my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with his
presence. But now, seeing that I was certainly to be driven from my
sanctuary that night, and that there would be a number of infernals
watching to make a prey of my body, he came to caution me not to
despair, for that he would protect me at all risks, if the power
remained with him. He then repeated an ejaculatory prayer, which I was
to pronounce, if in great extremity. I objected to the words as
equivocal, and susceptible of being rendered in a meaning perfectly
dreadful; but he reasoned against this, and all reasoning with him is
to no purpose. He said he did not ask me to repeat the words unless
greatly straitened; and that I saw his strength and power giving way,
and when perhaps nothing else could save me.

The dreaded hour of night arrived; and, as he said, I was expelled from
the family residence, and ordered to a byre, or cow-house, that stood
parallel with the dwelling-house behind, where, on a divot loft, my
humble bedstead stood, and the cattle grunted and puffed below me. How
unlike the splendid halls of Dalcastle! And to what I am now reduced,
let the reflecting reader judge. Lord, thou knowest all that I have
done for Thy cause on earth! Why then art Thou laying Thy hand so sore
upon me? Why hast Thou set me as a butt of Thy malice? But Thy will
must be done! Thou wilt repay me in a better world. Amen.

September 8.--My first night of trial in this place is overpast! Would
that it were the last that I should ever see in this detested world! If
the horrors of hell are equal to those I have suffered, eternity will
be of short duration there, for no created energy can support them for
one single month, or week. I have been buffeted as never living
creature was. My vitals have all been torn, and