trength
was in a manner utterly gone with fatigue, in so much that Mr
Witherspoon said it would be as well to fall into the hands of the enemy
as to die in the wood. I however encouraged him to be of good cheer;
and it so happened, in that very moment of despair, that I observed a
little cavern nook aneath a rock that overhung the burn, and thither I
proposed we should wade and rest ourselves in the cave, trusting that
Providence would be pleased to guide our persecutors into some other
path. So we passed the water, and laid ourselves down under the shelter
of the rock, where we soon after fell asleep.

CHAPTER LVI

We were graciously protected for the space of four hours, which we lay
asleep under the rock. Mr Witherspoon was the first who awoke, and he
sat watching beside me for some time, in great anxiety of spirit, as he
afterwards told me; for the day was far spent, and the weather, as is
often the custom in our climate, in the wane of the year, when the
morning rises bright, had become coarse and drumly, threatening a rough
night.

At last I awoke, and according to what we had previously counselled
together, we went up the course of the burn, and so got out of that
afflicting wood, and came to an open and wide moorland, over which we
held our journeying westward, guided by the sun, that with a sickly eye
was then cowering through the mist to his chamber ayont the hill.

But though all around us was a pathless scene of brown heather, here and
there patched with the deceitful green of some perilous well-e'e; though
the skies were sullen, and the bleak wind gusty, and every now and then
a straggling flake of snow, strewed in our way from the invisible hand
of the cloud, was a token of a coming drift, still a joyous
encouragement was shed into our bosoms, and we saw in the wildness of
the waste, and the omens of the storm, the blessed means with which
Providence, in that forlorn epoch, was manifestly deterring the pursuer
and the persecutor from tracking our defenceless flight. So we journeyed
onward, discoursing of many dear and tender cares, often looking round,
and listening when startled by the wind whispering to the heath and the
waving fern, till the shadows of evening began to fall, and the dangers
of the night season to darken around us.

When the snow hung on the heather like its own bells, we wished, but we
feared to seek a place of shelter. Fain would we have gone back to the
home for the fugi