f distraction, believing the
beast was the real Evil One; so that he no sooner felt himself free and
saw the lights, than he flew to his quarters as if he had been pursued
by a legion.

Some of his own soldiers that were lying in the clachan, and who had
come out with the rest of the folk, saw through the stratagem, and,
forgetting all reverence for their afflicted commander, laughed louder
and longer than any body. In short, the story was o'er the whole parish
next day, and the very weans, wherever the cavalier appeared, used to
cry ba at him, by which his very life was made a shame and a burden to
him, insomuch that he applied for leave to give up his commission, and
returned home to his kindred in the south of England, and we never heard
tell of him after.

CHAPTER LI

But although in the exploit of Mysie Gilmour, and Robin Finnie with his
confederates, we had a tasting of mirth and merriment, to the effect of
lessening the dread and fear in which our simple country folk held his
Majesty's ungracious fine-levers, the cavalier captains and soldiers,
still there was a gradual ingrowth of the weight of the oppression,
wherewith we were laden more as bondsmen and slaves than as subjects;
and, in the meantime, the spirit of that patriarch, my apostolic
grandfather, was gathering to heart and energy within the silent
recesses of my afflicted bosom.

I heard the murmuring, deep and sad, of my neighbours, at the insult and
the contumely which they were obligated to endure from the irresponsible
licentiousness of military domination,--but I said nothing; I was
driven, with my pious wife and our simple babies, from my own hearth by
the lewd conversation of the commissioned freebooters, and obligated to
make our home in an outhouse, that we might not be molested in our
prayers by their wicked ribaldry,--but I said nothing; I saw my honest
neighbours plundered--their sons insulted--and their daughters put to
shame,--but I said nothing; I was a witness when our godly minister,
after having been driven with his wife and family out to the mercy of
the winter's wind, was seized in the very time while he was worshipping
the Maker of us all, and taken like a malefactor to prison,--but I said
nothing; and I was told the story of the machinations against his
innocent virgin daughter, when she was left defenceless among us,--and
still I said nothing. Like the icy winter, tyranny had so encrusted my
soul that my taciturnity s