concerning the rigour wherewith the Cameronians
were hunted; so that what with anxiety, and the backwardness of nature
to rally in ailments ayont fifty, I continued to languish, incapable of
doing anything in furtherance of the vow of vengeance that I had vowed.
Nor should I suppress, that in my infirmity there was often a wildness
about my thoughts, by which I was unfitted at times to hold communion
with other men.

On these occasions I sat wondering if the things around me were not the
substanceless imageries of a dream, and fancying that those terrible
truths whereof I can yet only trust myself to hint, might be the
fallacies of a diseased sleep. And I contested as it were with the
reality of all that I saw, touched, and felt, and struggled like one
oppressed with an incubus, that I might awake and find myself again at
Quharist in the midst of my family.

At other times I felt all the loneliness of the solitude into which my
lot was then cast, and it was in vain that I tried to appease my craving
affections with the thought, that in parting with my son I had given him
to the Lord. I durst not say to myself there was aught of frenzy in that
consecration; but when I heard of Cameronians shot on the hills or
brought to the scaffold, I prayed that I might receive some token of an
accepted offering in what I had done.

Sterner feelings too had their turns of predominance. I recalled the
manifold calamities which withered my native land--the guilty
provocations that the people had received--the merciless avarice and
rapacious profligacy that had ruined so many worthies--the crimes that
had scattered so many families--and the contempt with which all our
wrongs and woes were regarded; and then I would remember my avenging
vow, and supplicate for health.

At last, one day Mrs Aird, who had been out on some household cares,
returned home in great distress of mind, telling me that the soldiers
had got hold of Mr Cargill, and had brought him into the town.

This happened about the ninth or tenth of July, in the afternoon; and
the day being very sultry, the heat had oppressed me with langour, and I
was all day as one laden with sleep. But no sooner had Mrs Aird told me
this, than I felt the langour depart from me, as if a cumbrous cloak had
been taken away, and I rose up a recruited and reanimated man. It was so
much the end of my debility of body and sorrowing of mind, that she was
loquacious with her surprise when she saw