eemed as hard, impenetrable, cold and cruel as
the frozen river's surface, but the stream of my feelings ran stronger
and fiercer beneath; and the time soon came when, in proportion to the
still apathy that made my brother and my friends to wonder how I so
quietly bore the events of so much, my inward struggles burst through
all outward passive forms, and, like the hurling and the drifting ice,
found no effectual obstacle to its irresistible and natural destination.

Mrs Swinton, the worthy lady of that saint, our pastor, on hearing what
had been plotted against the chaste innocence of her fair and blooming
child, came to me, and with tears, in a sense the tears of a widow, very
earnestly entreated of me that I would take the gentle Martha to her
cousin, the Laird of Garlins, in Dumfries-shire, she having heard that
some intromissions, arising out of pacts and covenants between my wife's
cousin and the Laird of Barscob, obligated me to go thither. This was on
the Monday after the battering that the cavalier got from Zachariah
Smylie's black ram; and I, reasonably thinking that there was judgment
in the request, and that I might serve, by my compliance, the helpless
residue, and the objects of a persecuted Christian's affections, I
consented to take the damsel with me as far as Garlins, in Galloway; the
which I did.

When I had left Martha Swinton with her friends, who, being persons of
pedigree and opulence, were better able to guard her, I went to the end
of my own journey; and here, from what ensued, it is needful I should
relate that, in this undertaking, I left my own house under the care of
my brother, and that I was armed with my grandfather's sword.

It happened that, on Tuesday the 13th November 1666, as I was returning
homeward from Barscob, I fell in with three godly countrymen, about a
mile south of the village of Dalry, in Galloway, and we entered into a
holy and most salutary conversation anent the sufferings and the
fortitude of God's people in that time of trouble. Discoursing with
great sobriety on that melancholious theme, we met a gang of Turner's
blackcuffs, driving before them, like beasts to the slaughter, several
miserable persons to thrash out the corn, that it might be sold, of one
of my companions, who, being himself a persecuted man, and unable to pay
the fine forfeited by his piety, had some days before been forced to
flee his house.

On seeing the soldiers and their prey coming towards us,