seized the poker, tongs, and shovel. Mrs. Black opened her
back window and pointed to the churchyard.

"Yer only chance!" she said.

Andrew Black leaped out at once. Wallace followed like a harlequin.
Quentin Dick felt that there was no time for him to follow without being
seen. Dropping his poker he sprang through the doorway, and, closing
the door on himself, began to thunder against it, just as an officer
leading some of the town-guard reached the landing.

"Open, I say!" cried Quentin furiously, "I'm _sure_ the rebels cam in
here. Dinna be keepin' the gentlemen o' the gaird waitin' here. Open,
I say, or I'll drive the door in!"

Bursting the door open, as though in fulfilment of his threat, Quentin
sprang in, and looking hastily round, cried, as if in towering wrath,
"Whaur are they? Whaur are thae pestiferous rebels?"

"There's nae rebels here, gentlemen," said Mrs. Black. "Ye're welcome
to seek."

"They maun hae gaen up the next stair," said Quentin, turning to the
officer.

"And pray, who are you, that ye seem so anxious to catch the rebels?"

"Wha am I?" repeated Quentin with glaring eyes, and a sort of grasping
of his strong fingers that suggested the idea of tearing some one to
pieces. "Div 'ee no see that I'm a shepherd? The sufferin's than I hae
gaen through an' endured on accoont o' thae rebels is past--But c'way,
sirs, they'll escape us if we stand haverin' here."

So saying the bold man dashed down the stair and into the next house,
followed by the town-guards, who did not know him. The prisoners'
guards were fortunately searching in another direction. A strict search
was made in the next house, at which Quentin assisted. When they were
yet in the thick of it he went quietly down-stairs and walked away from
the scene, as he expressed it, "hotchin'"--by which he meant chuckling.

But poor Andrew Black and Will Wallace were not so fortunate. A search
which was made in the outer churchyard resulted in their being
discovered among the tombs, and they were forthwith conducted to the
Tolbooth prison.

When Ramblin' Peter, after many narrow escapes, reached the farm in
Dumfries in a half-famished state, he sat down among the desolate ruins
and howled with grief. Having thus relieved his feelings, he dried his
eyes and proceeded in his usual sedate manner to examine things in
detail. He soon found that his master had been wrong in supposing that
the hidy-hole had been discovered or des