When
the psalm ceased, an echo, like a spirit's voice, was heard dying away,
high up among the magnificent architecture of the cliffs; and once more
might be noticed in the silence, the reviving voice of the waterfall.

Just then, a large stone fell from the top of the cliff into the pool, a
loud voice was heard, and a plaid was hung over on the point of a
shepherd's staff. Their wakeful sentinel had descried danger, and this was
his warning. Forthwith, the congregation rose. There were paths, dangerous
to unpracticed feet, along the ledges of the rocks, leading up to several
caves and places of concealment. The more active and young assisted the
elder, more especially the old pastor, and the women with the infants; and
many minutes had not elapsed, till not a living creature was visible in
the channel of the stream, but all of them were hidden, or nearly so, in
the clefts and caverns.

The shepherd who had given the alarm, had lain down again instantly in his
plaid on the greensward, upon the summit of these precipices. A party of
soldiers was immediately upon him, and demanded what signals he had been
making, and to whom; when one of them, looking over the edge of the cliff,
exclaimed, "See, see! Humphrey, We have caught the whole tabernacle of the
Lord in a net at last. There they are, praising God among the stones of
the river Mouse. These are the Cartland Craigs. A noble cathedral!" "Fling
the lying sentinel over the cliffs. Here is a canting Covenanter for you,
deceiving honest soldiers on the very Sabbath day. Over with him, over
with him; out of the gallery into the pit." But the shepherd had vanished
like a shadow, and, mixing with the tall, green broom and bushes, was
making his unseen way toward a wood. "Satan has saved his servant; but
come, my lads, follow me. I know the way down into the bed of the stream,
and the steps up to Wallace's Cave. They are called, 'kittle nine stanes;'
The hunt's up. We'll all be in at the death. Halloo! my boys, halloo!"

The soldiers dashed down a less precipitous part of the wooded banks, a
little below the "craigs," and hurried up the channel. But when they
reached the altar where the old, gray-haired minister had been seen
standing, and the rocks that had been covered with people, all was silent
and solitary; not a creature to be seen. "Here is a Bible, dropped by some
of them," cried a soldier, and, with his foot, he spun it away into the
pool. "A bonnet, a bonnet," crie