she said, glancing at me with her bold
black eyes.

As I went I could hear behind us the soft words and low speech of Maisie
Lennox, who came with my cousin Wat and Margaret of Glen Vernock. What
was the matter of their speech I could not discover, though I own I was
eager to learn. But they seemed to agree well together, which seemed
strange to me, for I was a much older acquaintance than he.

Now, especially when in the wilder places, we came to walk all four
together, it seemed a very pleasant thing to me to go thus to the
worship of God in company. And I began from that hour to think kindlier
of the field-folks' way of hearing a preacher in the open country. This,
as I well know, says but little for me; yet I will be plain and conceal
nothing of the way by which I was led from being a careless and formal
home-keeper, to cast in my lot with the remnant who abode in the fields
and were persecuted.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE GREAT CONVENTICLE BY THE DEE WATER.

_A Note to the Reader._

_I am warned that there are many folk who care not to hear what
things were truly said and done at a conventicle of the hill-folk.
I have told the tale so that such may omit the reading of these two
chapters. Nevertheless, if they will take a friend's word, it might
be for their advantage to read the whole._

_W. G._

On our way to the conventicle we came to the place that is called the
Moat of the Duchrae Bank, and found much people already gathered there.
It is a very lonely place on the edge of a beautiful and still water,
called the Lane of Grenoch. In the midst of the water, and immediately
opposite to the moat, there is an island, called the Hollan Isle, full
of coverts and hiding-places among hazel bushes, which grow there in
thick matted copses. Beyond that again there are only the moors and the
mountains for thirty miles. The country all about is lairy and boggy,
impossible for horses to ride; while over to the eastward a little, the
main road passes to Kells and Carsphairn, but out of sight behind the
shoulder of the hill.

There was a preaching-tent erected on a little eminence in the middle of
the round bare top of the moat. The people sat all about, and those who
arrived late clustered on the farther bank, across the ditch.

I observed that every man came fully armed. For the oppressions of
Lauderdale in Scotland, and especially the severities of John Graham and
Robert Grier in