ck, for there they found her and Mrs. Wallace and Jean
in deepest sorrow over the terrible news just brought to them by Jock
Bruce.

Andrew Black, he told them, had been sent a prisoner to the Bass Rock,
and Will Wallace, with two hundred others, had been banished to the
plantations in Barbadoes, where they were to be sold as slaves.

Quentin sat down, covered his face with both hands, and groaned aloud on
hearing this. Peter, who had recovered by that time, looked about him
with the expressionless face of one whose reason has been unseated.
Observing that Jean was sitting apart, sobbing as if her heart would
break, he went quietly to her, and, taking one of her hands, began to
stroke it gently. "Dinna greet, Jean," he said; "the Lord will deliver
them. Marion aye telt me that, an' I believe she was richt."

Truly these unfortunate people needed all the consolation that the Word
could give them, for banishment to the plantations usually meant
banishment for life, and as to the hundreds who found a prison on the
bleak and rugged Bass Rock at the mouth of the Forth, many of these also
found a grave.

After the battle of Bothwell Bridge the persecutions which had been so
severe for so many years were continued with intensified bitterness.
Not only were all the old tyrannical laws carried into force with
increased severity, but new and harsher laws were enacted. Among other
things the common soldiers were given the right to carry these laws into
effect--in other words, to murder and plunder according to their own
will and pleasure. And now, in 1680, began what has been termed _the
killing-time_; in which Graham of Claverhouse (afterwards Viscount
Dundee), Grierson of Lagg, Dalziel, and others, became pre-eminently
notorious for their wanton cruelty in slaughtering men, women, and even
children.

On 22nd June 1680 twenty armed horsemen rode up the main street of the
burgh of Sanquhar. The troop was headed by Richard Cameron and his
brother Michael, who, dismounting, nailed to the cross a paper which the
latter read aloud. It was the famous "Declaration of Sanquhar," in
which Charles Stuart was publicly disowned.

While the fields of Scotland were being traversed and devastated by a
lawless banditti, authorised by a lawless and covenant-breaking king and
Government, those indomitable men who held with Cameron and Cargill
united themselves more closely together, and thus entered into a new
bond pledging themselve