nd felt that we were
standing on holy ground. "Oh," thought we, "that some courteous cairn would
blab it out what 'tis they are!" But the cairns were silent; and hence the
necessity we are under of professing our ignorance of what they refused to
divulge. But there is a large opening in the side of one of these cairns,
respecting which tradition has preserved a pretty distinct narrative, which
we shall now venture, for the first time, to put under types, for the
instruction of our readers.

The whole hill country, in Dumfriesshire and Galloway in particular, is
riddled, as it were, with caves and hiding-places. These, no doubt,
afforded refuge, during the eight-and-twenty years of inhuman persecution,
to the poor Covenanter; but they were not, in general, constructed for or
by him. They existed from time immemorial, and were the work of that son of
night and darkness--the smuggler, who, in passing from the Brow at the
mouth of the Nith, from Bombay, near Kirkcudbright, or from the estuary of
the Cree, with untaxed goods from the Isle of Man--then a separate and
independent kingdom--found it convenient to conceal both his goods and
himself from the observation of the officers of excise. So frequent are
these concealed caves in the locality to which we refer, that, in passing
through the long, rank heather, we have more than once disappeared in an
instant, and found ourselves several feet below the level of the upper
world, and in the midst of a damp, but roomy subterraneous apartment of
considerable extent. We believe that they are now, in these piping times of
peace and preventive service, generally filled up and closed by the
shepherds, as they were dangerous pitfalls in the way of their flocks. In
the time, however, to which we refer--namely, in the year 1683--they were
not only open, but kept, as it were, in a state of repair, being tenanted
by the poor, persecuted remnant (as they expressed it) of God's people.
That the reader may fully understand the incidents of this narrative, it
will be necessary that he and we travel back some hundred and fifty years,
and some miles from the farm-house of Auchincairn, that we may have ocular
demonstration of the curious contrivances to which the love of life, of
liberty, and of a good conscience, had compelled our forefathers to have
recourse. That cairn which appears so entire and complete, of which the
stones seem to have been huddled together without any reference to
arrangem