of this woful murder;
but I ran for help to the house; and just as I turned the corner of the
barn, two soldiers met me, and I became their prisoner.

One of them was a ruthless reprobate, who wanted to put me to death; but
the other beggit my life: at the moment, however, my spirit was as it
were in the midst of thunders and a whirlwind.

They took from me my pistols and my grandfather's sword and I could not
speak; they tied my hands behind me with a cutting string, and I thought
it was a dream. The air I breathed was as suffocating as sulphur; I
gasped with the sandy thirst of the burning desert, and my throat was as
the drowth of the parched earth in the wilderness of Kedar.

Soon after this other soldiers came from another farm, where they had
been committing similar outrages, and they laughed and were merry as
they rehearsed their exploits of guilt. They taunted me and plucked me
by the lip; but their boasting of what they had done flashed more
fiercely over my spirit than even these indignities, and I inwardly
chided the slow anger of the mysterious Heavens for permitting the rage
of those agents of the apostate James Sharp and his compeers, whom a
mansworn king had so cruelly dressed with his authority.

But even in the midst of these repinings and bitter breathings, it was
whispered into the ears of my understanding, as with the voice of a
seraph, that the Lord in all things moveth according to His established
laws; and I was comforted to think that in the enormities whereof I was
a witness and partaker, there was a tempering of the hearts of the
people, that they might become as swords of steel, to work out the
deliverance of the land from the bloody methods of prelatic and
arbitrary domination; in so much, that when the soldiers prepared to
return to their quarters in Irvine, I walked with them--their captive,
it is true; but my steps were firm, and they marvelled to one another at
the proudness of my tread.

There was at the time a general sorrowing throughout the country, at the
avenging visitations wherewith all those who had been in the raid, or
who had harboured the fugitives, were visited. Hundreds that sympathised
with the sufferings of their friends, flocked to the town to learn who
had been taken, and who were put to death or reserved for punishment.
The crowd came pressing around as I was conducted up the gait to the
tolbooth; the women wept, but the men looked doure, and the children
wondered