n she came near, panting and out of breath with her
haste she said--

"O, father ye manna gang hame;--twa of Carswell's men hae been speering
for you and they had swords and guns. They're o'er the hill to the linn,
for wee Willie telt them ye were gane there to a preaching."

"This comes," says the afflicted Gideon, "of speaking of secret things
before bairns; wha could hae thought, that a creature no four years old
would have been an instrument of discovery?--It'll no be safe now for
you to come hame wi' me, which I'm wae for, as ye're sae sorely weary't;
but there's a frien o' ours that lives ayont the Holmstone-hill, aboon
the auld kirk; I'll convey you thither, and she'll gi'e you a shelter
for the night."

So we turned back, and again crossed the bridge before spoken of, and
held our course towards the house of Gideon Kemp's wife's stepmother.
But it was not ordained that I was yet to enjoy the protection of a
raftered dwelling; for just as we came to the Daff-burn, down the glen
of which my godly guide was mindet to conduct me, as being a less
observable way than the open road, he saw one of Ardgowan's men coming
towards us, and that family being of the progeny of the Stuarts, were
inclined to the prelatic side.

"Hide yoursel," said he, "among the bushes."

And I den't myself in a nook of the glen, where I overheard what passed.

"I thought, Gideon," said the lad to him, "that ye would hae been at the
conventicle this afternoon. We hae heard o't a'; and Carswell has sworn
that he'll hae baith doited Swinton and Dunrod's leddy at Glasgow afore
the morn, or he'll mak a tawnle o' her tower."

"Carswell shouldna crack sae croose," replied Gideon Kemp; "for though
his castle stands proud in the green valley, the time may yet come when
horses and carts will be driven through his ha', and the foul toad and
the cauld snail be the only visitors around the unblest hearth o'
Carswell."

The way in which that gifted man said these words made my heart dinle;
but I hae lived to hear that the spirit of prophecy was assuredly in
them: for, since the Revolution, Carswell's family has gone all to
drift, and his house become a wastege;--folk say, a new road that's
talked o' between Inverkip and Greenock is to go through the very
middle o't, and so mak it an awful monument of what awaits and will
betide all those who have no mercy on their fellow-creatures, and would
exalt themselves by abetting the strength of the godless