accordingly, placing the stool under
the ash-tree, at the corner of the stack-yard, and by all those who were
present on that occasion the spot was ever afterwards regarded as a
hallowed place. Truly there was a scene and a sight there not likely to
be soon forgotten; for the awful cause that had brought together that
meeting was a thing which no man who had a part therein could ever in
all his days forget.

My father chose the seventy-sixth psalm, and when it was sung, he opened
the Scriptures in Second Kings, and read aloud, with a strong voice, the
twenty-third chapter, and every one likened Josiah to the old King, and
Jehoahaz to his son Charles, by whose disregard of the Covenant the
spirit of the land was then in such tribulation; and at the conclusion,
instead of kneeling to pray, as he was wont, my father stood up, and, as
if all temporal things were then of no account, he only supplicated that
the work they had in hand for that day might be approved and sanctified.

The worship being over, the family returned into the house, and having
partaken of a repast of bread and milk, my father put on his father's
sword, and my brothers, who had brought weapons of their own home with
them, also belted themselves for the road. I was owre young to be yet
trysted for war, so my father led me out by the hand, and walking
forward, followed by my brothers, the neighbours, two and two, fell into
the rear, and the women, in their plaids, came mournful and in tears at
some short distance behind.

As we were thus proceeding towards the main road, we heard the sound of
a drum and fife, and saw over the hedge of the lane that leads to the
clachan, a white banner waving aloft with the words, "SOLEMN LEAGUE AND
COVENANT" painted thereon; at the sight of which my father was much
disturbed, saying,--"This is some silly device of Nahum Chapelrig, that,
if we allow to proceed, may bring scoff and scorn upon the cause as we
enter the town;" and with that, dropping my hand, he ran forward and
stopped their vain bravery; for it was, as he had supposed, the work of
Nahum, who was marching, like a man of war, at the head of his band.
However, on my father's remonstrance, he consented to send away his
sounding instruments and idle banner, and to walk composedly along with
us.

As we reached the town-end port, we fell in with a vast number of other
persons, from different parts of the country, going to sign the
Covenant, and, on a cart, wort