ed to consider what we ought to do.
And as we were then standing in a field diffident to enter the town, a
young woman came from a house that stands a little way off the road,
close to Graham's dyke, driving a cow to grass with a long staff, which
I the more remarked as such, because it was of the Indian cane, and
virled with silver, and headed with ivory.

"'Sirs,' said Menie Adams, for that was the damsel's name, 'I see what
ye are; but I'll no speir; howsever, be ruled by me, and gang na near
the town of Falkirk this morning, for atwish the hours of dark and dawn
there has been a congregationing o' horses and men, and other sediments
o' war, that I hae a notion there's owre meikle o' the King's power in
the place for any Covenanter to enter in, save under the peril o'
penalties. But come wi' me, and I'll go back wi' you, and in our
hay-loft you may scog yoursels till the gloaming.'

"Who could have thought," said my brother, "that in such discourse from
a young woman, not passing four-and-twenty years of age, and of a
pleasant aspect, any guilty stratagem of blood was hidden!"

He and his friends never questioned her truth, but went with her, and
she conducted them to her father's house, and lodged them in the
hay-loft.

It seems that Menie Adams was, however, at the time betrothed to the
prelatic curate that had been laid upon the parish, and that, in
consequence, aneath her courtesy, she had concealed a very treacherous
and wicked intent. For no sooner had she got my brother and his three
companions into the hay-loft, than she hies herself away to the town,
and, in the hope of pleasing her prelatic lover, informs the captain of
the troop there of the birds she had ensnared.

As soon as the false woman had thus committed the sin of perfidy, she
went to the curate to brag how she had done a service to his cause; but
he, though of the prelatic germination, being yet a person who had some
reverence for truth and the gentle mercies of humanity, was so disturbed
by her unwomanly disposition, that he bade her depart from his presence
for ever, and ran with all possible speed to waken the poor men whom she
had so betrayed.

On his way to the house he saw a party of the soldiers, whom their
officer, as in duty bound, was sending to seize the unsuspecting
sleepers, and running on before them, he just got forward in time to
give the alarm. My brother and one of them, Esau Wardrop, the wife's
brother of James Gottera, w