my griefs
in forgetfulness. When I woke the day was far spent, and the light
through the iron stainchers of the little window showed that the shadows
of the twilight were darkening over the world. I raised myself on my
elbow, and listened to the murmur of the multitude that I heard still
lingering around the prison; and sometimes I thought that I discovered
the voice of a friend.

In that situation, and thinking of all those dear cares which filled my
heart with tenderness and fear, and of the agonising grief of my little
boy, the sound of whose cries still echoed in my bosom, I rose upon my
knees and committed myself entirely to the custody of Him that can give
the light of liberty to the captive even in the gloom of the dungeon.
And when I had done so I again prepared to lay myself on the ground; but
a rustle in the darkness of the room drew my attention, and in the same
moment a kind hand was laid on mine.

"Sarah Lochrig," said I, for I knew my wife's gentle pressure,--"How is
it that you are with me in this doleful place? How found you entrance,
and I not hear you come in?"

But before she had time to make any answer, another's fond arms were
round my neck, and my affectionate young Michael wept upon my shoulder.

Bear with me, courteous reader, when I think of those things,--that wife
and that child, and all that I loved so fondly, are no more! But it is
not meet that I should yet tell how my spirit was turned into iron and
my heart into stone. Therefore will I still endeavour to relate, as with
the equanimity of one that writes but of indifferent things, what
further ensued during the thirteen days of my captivity.

Sarah Lochrig, with the mildness of her benign voice, when we had
mingled a few tears, told me that, after I went to Galloway with Martha
Swinton, she had been moved by our neighbours to come with our children
into the town, as being safer for a lanerly woman and a family left
without its head; and a providential thing it was that she had done so;
for on the very night that my brother came off with the men of the
parish to join us, as I have noted down in its proper place, a gang of
dragoons plundered both his house and mine; and but that our treasures
had been timeously removed, his family having also gone that day into
Kilmarnock, the outrages might have been unspeakable.

We then had some household discourse, anent what was to be done in the
event of things coming to the worst with me; and i