and his men dragged puir old Tam McHaffie out o' his bed, tho'
he was ill wi' fever, an' shot him."

Having conducted Quentin and Peter to the secret place where his friends
were hidden, McCubine was asked anxiously, by the former, if he knew
anything about the Wilsons.

"Ay, we ken this," answered Gordon, "that although the auld folk have
agreed to attend the curates for the sake o' peace, the twa lassies have
refused, and been driven out o' hoose an' hame. They maun hae been
wanderin' amang the hills noo for months--if they're no catched by this
time."

Hearing this, Quentin sprang up.

"We maun rescue them, Peter," he said.

"Ay," returned the boy. "Jean Black will expect that for Aggie's sake;
she's her bosom freend, ye ken."

Refusing to delay for even half an hour, the two friends hurried away.
They had scarcely left, and the six hunted men were still standing on
the road where they had bidden them God-speed, when Bruce with his
dragoons suddenly appeared--surprised and captured them all. With the
brutal promptitude peculiar to that well-named "killing-time," four of
them were drawn up on the road and instantly shot, and buried where they
fell, by Lochenkit Moor, where a monument now marks their resting place.

The two spared men, Gordon and McCubine, were then, without reason
assigned, bound and carried away. Next day the party came to the Cluden
Water, crossing which they followed the road which leads to Dumfries,
until they reached the neighbourhood of Irongray. There is a field
there with a mound in it, on which grows a clump of old oak-trees. Here
the two friends were doomed without trial to die. It is said that the
minister of Irongray at that time was suspected of favourable leanings
toward the Covenanters, and that the proprietor of the neighbouring farm
of Hallhill betrayed similar symptoms; hence the selection of the
particular spot between the two places, in order to intimidate both the
minister and the farmer. This may well have been the case, for history
shows that a very strong and indomitable covenanting spirit prevailed
among the parishioners of Irongray as well as among the people of the
South and West of Scotland generally. Indeed Wodrow, the historian,
says that the people of Irongray were the first to offer strenuous
opposition to the settlement of the curates.

When Gordon and McCubine were standing under the fatal tree with the
ropes round their necks, a sorrowing acquainta