, was wickedly reported against us as a
tumult and a riot, wearing the aspect of rebellion; and accordingly, on
the second day after he was sent from Irvine to Glasgow, a gang of
Turner's worst troopers came to live at heck and manger among us. None
suffered more from those ruthless men than did my brother's house and
mine; for our name was honoured among the true and faithful, and we had
committed the unpardonable sin against the prelacy of harbouring our
minister and his destitute family, when they were driven from their home
in a wild and wintry night.

We were both together, with old Zachariah Smylie, fined each in a heavy
sum.

Thinking that by paying the money down we should rid ourselves and our
neighbours of the presence and burden of the devouring soldiery, our
friends, to enable us, made a gathering among them, and brought us the
means, for we had not a sufficiency of our own. But this, instead of
mitigating the oppression, became a reason with the officer set over us
to persecute us still more; for he pretended to see in that
neighbourliness the evidences of a treasonous combination; so that he
not only took the money, but made a pretext of the readiness with which
it was paid to double his severity. Sixteen domineering camp reprobates
were quartered on four honest families, and five of them were on mine.

What an example their conduct and conversation was at my sober hearth I
need not attempt to describe. For some days they rampaged as if we had
been barbarians, and the best in the house was not good enough for their
ravenous wastrie;--but I was resolved to keep a uniform and steady
abstinence from all cause of offence. So seeing they were passing from
insolence into a strain of familiarity towards my wife and her two
servant-lasses, we gave up the house and made our abode in the barn.

This silent rebuke for some time was not without a wholesome effect; and
in the end they were so far tamed into civility by our blameless and
peaceful demeanour that I could discern more than one of them beginning
to be touched with the humanity of respect for our unmerited punishment.
But their officer, Lieutenant Swaby, an Englisher by birth, and a sinner
by education, was of an incorrigible depravity of heart. He happened to
cast his eye on Martha Swinton, the minister's eldest daughter, then but
in her sixteenth year, and notwithstanding the sore affliction that she
was in, with her mother, on account of her godly fath