Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters

  CHAPTER LXXVIII

  On leaving the public we went straight to the place where our blades andbelts lay, and took them up, and proceeded in an easterly direction. ButI soon found that I was no longer the man I had once been; suffering andthe fever of my frenzy had impaired my strength, and the weight offour-and-fifty years was on my back; so that I began to weary for aplace of rest for the night, and I looked often around to discover thestar of any window; but all was dark, and the bleak easterly windsearched my very bones; even my son, whose sturdy health and youthyblood made him abler to thole the night air, complained of the nippingcold.

  Many a time yet, when I remember that night, do I think with wonder andreverence of our condition. An infirm, grey-haired man, with a derangedhead and a broken heart, going forth amidst the winter's wind, with alittle boy, not passing thirteen years of age, to pull down from histhrone the guarded King of three mighty kingdoms,--and we did it,--suchwas the doom of avenging justice, and such the pleasure of Heaven. Butlet me proceed to rehearse the trials I was required to undergo beforethe accomplishment of that high predestination.

  Weary, as I have said, very cold and disconsolate, we walked hirplingtogether for some time; at last we heard the rumbling of wheels beforeus, and my son running forward came back and told me it was a carrier. Ihastened on, and with a great satisfaction found it was Robin Brown,the Ayr and Kilmarnock carrier. I had known him well for many years, andsurely it was a providential thing that we met him in our distress, forhe was the brother of a godly man, on whose head, while his family werearound him, Claverhouse, with his own bloody hands, placed the gloriousdiadem of martyrdom.

  He had been told what had befallen me and mine, and was greatly amazedto hear my voice, and that I was again come to myself; and he helpedboth my son and me into the cart; and, as he walked by the wheel, hetold me of many things which had happened during my eclipse, and of thedreadful executions at Edinburgh, of the prisoners taken at Airsmoss,and how that papist James Stuart, Duke of York, the King's brother, wasplaced at the head of the Scottish councils, and was then rioting in thedelights of cruelty, with the use of the torture and the thumbikins uponprisoners suspected, or accused of being honest to their vows and theirreligious profession. But my mind was unsettled, and his tale ofcalamity passed over it like the east wind that blew that night sofreezingly, cruel to the sense at the time, but of which the morrowshowed no memorial.

  I said nothing to Robin Brown of what my intent was, but that I was onmy way to join the Cameronians, if I knew where they might be found; andhe informed me, that after the raid of Airsmoss they had scatteredthemselves into the South Country, where, as Claverhouse had the chiefcommand, the number of their friends was likely to be daily increased,by the natural issue of his cruelties, and that vindictive exasperation,which was a passion and an affection of his mind for the discomfiture hehad met with at Drumclog.

  "But," said the worthy man, "I hope, Ringan Gilhaize, ye'll yet considerthe step before ye tak it. Ye're no at this time in a condition o'health to warsle wi' hardship, and your laddie there's owre young to beo' ony fek in the way o' war; for, ye ken, the Cameronians hae declar'twar against the King, and, being few and far apart, they're hunted downin a' places."

  "If I canna fight wi' men," replied my brave stripling, "I can help myfather; but I'm no fear't. David was but a herd laddie, maybe nae auldernor bigger than me, when he fell't the muckle Philistine wi' a stane."

  I made no answer myself to Robin Brown's remonstrance, because myresolution was girded as it were with a gir of brass and adamant, and,therefore, to reason more or farther concerning aught but of the meansto achieve my purpose, was a thing I could not abide. Only I said tohim, that being weary, and not in my wonted health, I would try tocompose myself to sleep, and he would waken me when he thought fit, forthat I would not go with him to Glasgow, but shape our way towards theSouth Country. So I stretched myself out, and my dear son laid himselfat my back, and the worthy man happing us with his plaid, we soon fellasleep.

  When the cart stopped at the Kingswell, where Robin was in the usage ofhalting half an hour, he awoke us; and there being no strangers in thehouse we alighted, and going in, warmed ourselves at the fire.

  Out of a compassion for me the mistress warmed and spiced a pint of ale;but instead of doing me any good, I had not long partaken of the samewhen I experienced a great coldness and a trembling in my limbs, in somuch that I felt myself very ill, and prayed the kind woman to allow meto lie down in a bed; which she consented to do in a most charitablemanner, causing her husband, who was a covenanted man, as I afterwardsfound, to rise out of his, and give me their own.

  The cold and the tremblings were but the symptoms and beginnings of asore malady, which soon rose to such a head that Robin Brown taigletmore than two hours for me; but still I grew worse and worse, and couldnot be removed for many days. On the fifth I was brought so nigh untothe gates of death that my son, who never left the bed-stock, thought atone time I had been released from my troubles. But I was reserved forthe task that the Lord had in store for me, and from that time I beganto recover; and nothing could exceed the tenderness wherewith I wastreated by those Samaritan Christians, the landlord and his wife of thepublic at Kingswell. This distemper, however, left a great imbecility ofbody behind it; and I wondered whether it could be of providence toprevent me from going forward with my avenging purpose against CharlesStuart and his counsellors.

  Being one day in this frame of dubiety, lying in the bed, and my sonsitting at my pillow, I said to him, "Get THE BOOK and open, and read,"which he accordingly did; and the first verse that he cast his eye uponwas the twenty-fourth of the seventh chapter of Isaiah, "With arrows andwith bows shall men come."

  "Stop" said I, "and go to the window and see who are coming;" but whenhe went thither and looked out he could see no one far nor near. Yetstill I heard the tramp of many feet, and I said to him, "Assuredly,Joseph, there are many persons coming towards this house, and I thinkthey are not men of war, for their steps are loose, and they march notin the order of battle."

  This I have thought was a wonderful sharpness of hearing with which Iwas for a season then gifted; for soon after a crowd of persons werediscovered coming over the moor towards the house, and it proved to beMr Cargill, with about some sixty of the Cameronians, who had beenhunted from out their hiding-places in the south.