ses, gazing quietly at the prostrate man,
as if in mild surprise at his unusual stillness.

Beyond this he could not see with the physical eye; but with the mental
orb he saw a dark vista of ruined character, blighted hopes, and dismal
prospects. The vision sufficed to fix his decision. Quietly, like a
warrior's wraith, he sheathed his sword and betook himself to the covert
of the peat-morass and the heather hill.

He was not the first good man and true who had sought the same shelter.

At the time of which we write Scotland had for many years been in a
woeful plight--with tyranny draining her life-blood, cupidity grasping
her wealth, hypocrisy and bigotry misconstruing her motives and
falsifying her character. Charles the Second filled the throne.
Unprincipled men, alike in Church and State, made use of their position
and power to gain their own ends and enslave the people. The King,
determined to root out Presbytery from Scotland, as less subservient to
his despotic aims, and forcibly to impose Prelacy on her as a
stepping-stone to Popery, had no difficulty in finding ecclesiastical
and courtly bravos to carry out his designs; and for a long series of
dismal years persecution stalked red-handed through the land.

Happily for the well-being of future generations, our covenanting
forefathers stood their ground with Christian heroism, for both civil
and religious liberty were involved in the struggle. Their so-called
fanaticism consisted in a refusal to give up the worship of God after
the manner dictated by conscience and practised by their forefathers; in
declining to attend the ministry of the ignorant, and too often vicious,
curates forced upon them; and in refusing to take the oath of allegiance
just referred to by Will Wallace.

Conventicles, as they were called--or the gathering together of
Christians in houses and barns, or on the hillsides, to worship God--
were illegally pronounced illegal by the King and Council; and
disobedience to the tyrannous law was punished with imprisonment,
torture, confiscation of property, and death. To enforce these
penalties the greater part of Scotland--especially the south and west--
was overrun by troops, and treated as if it were a conquered country.
The people--holding that in some matters it is incumbent to "obey God
rather than man," and that they were bound "not to forsake the
assembling of themselves together"--resolved to set the intolerable law
at defiance, an