d musket pointed at me, and I had little
comfort in my lodging. But gradually, by my falling to the praying and
by the action of time and use, I minded the comings and goings of the
soldiers no more than those of the doves that came in to see me at the
broken part of the roof, and went out again with a wild flutter of their
wings, leaving a little woolly feather or two floating behind them.

And often as I lay I minded me how I had heard Mr. Peden say at the
Conventicle that "the prayers of the saints are like to a fire which at
first gives off only smoke and heat, but or all be done breaketh out
into a clear light and comfortable flame."

These were times of great peace for us, when the soldiers and the young
lairds that rode with them for the horsemanship part of it, went off on
their excursions, and came not back till late at eventide, with many of
the Glenkens wives' chuckies swinging head down at their saddle bows.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CUPBOARD LOVE.

The well-house was indeed a strait place, but my mother had gotten one
of our retainers to put therein a little truckle bedstead and bedding,
so that I was none so evilly bestowed. This man, whom she had perforce
to trust, was not one of our ancients, but only a stranger that had
recently come into the country and taken service with us. He had been a
soldier and had even served in His Majesty's Guards. But, being a
Covenanter at heart, he had left the service at the peril of his life
and come again to the north. His name was Patrick Laing, and he came of
decent folk over about Nithsdale. He was in high favour with the
garrison because of his feats of strength; but he had to keep carefully
out of the sight of Tam Dalzyell, Grier of Lag, and the old officers who
remembered him in the days when he had been a sergeant with the King's
colours. Also he was the only man that could keep steeks with John
Scarlet at the sword play, and I longed rarely to see him try a bout
with Wat of Lochinvar himself.

Often at night I had converse with him, when the soldiers were not
returned and it was safe for him to come to see me. Here I lay long
prostrate with the low fever or ague that had taken me after Ayrsmoss.
But because I was in my own country and within cry of my mother and
Maisie Lennox, I minded my imprisonment not so much as one might think.

My mother came not often, for she was closely watched in her incomings
and outgoings. But every eventide Maisie Lennox brough