gudeman o' the Chapelhope, ye'll rue the day that ever ye saw us. If it's kend that ye countenanced us in word or deed, Iye're a ruined man; for the blood-hounds are near at hand, and they'll herry ye out and in, but and ben-Lack-a-day! lack-aday! in a wee while we may gang and come by the Chapelhope, and nouther see a lum reek nor hear a cock craw; for Clavers is on the one hand and Lag on the other, and they're coming nearer and nearer us every day, and heinming us in sairer and sairer-renounce us and deny us, as ye wish to thrive.'

till the light o' the truth began to dawn within me like the brek o' the day-sky, an' I grew as red too, for the devil needna hae envied me my feelings at that time. couldna help saying to mysel, Whow, whow, Wat Laidlaw! but ye hae made a bonny job o't this morning!-Here's twa puir creatures, worn out wi' famine and watching, come to seek a last refuge amang your bags and mosses, and ye maun fa' to and be pelting and threshing on them like an incarnate devil as ye are.-Oh, wae's me! wae's me!'-Lord, sir, I thought my heart wad burst-there was a kind o' yuke came into my een that I could hardly bruke ; but at length the muckle tears wan out wi' a sair faught, and down they came down ower my head, dribble for dribble. The men saw the pliskie that I was in, and there was a kind o' ruefu' benevolence i' their looks, I never saw ony thing like it.

"Dinna be wae for us, honest man,' said they; we hae learned to suffer-we hae kend nought else for this mony a long and bloody year, an' we look for nought else for the wee while we hae to sojourn in this weary world-we hae learned to suffer patiently, and to welcome our sufferings as

mercies.'

"Ye've won a gude length, man,' quo' I; but they're mercies that I'm never very fond o'-I wish ye had suffered under ony hand but mine, sin' it be your lot.'

"Dinna be sorry for us, honest man; there never was an act o' mair justice than this that ye hae inflicted. Last night there were fifteen o' us met at evening worship we hadna tasted meat for days and nights; to preserve our miserable lives, we stole a sheep, dressed, and ate it; and wi' this very arm that you hae disabled, did I grip and kill that sheep. It was a great sin, nae doubt, but the necessity was also great-I am sae far punished, and I hope the Lord will forgie the rest.'

"Na, na, lads, let them come-let them come their ways! Gin they should take a' the ewes and kye on the Chapelhope, I can stock it o'er again. I dinna gie a bawbee about your leagues, and covenants, and associations, for think aye there's a good deal o' faction and dourness in them; but or I'll desert a fellow a creature that's oppressed, if he's an honest man, and lippens to me, od, I'll gie them the last drap o' my heart's bluid.'

"When they heard that, they took me out to the tap of a knowe, and began to whistle like plovers-nae herd alive could hae kend but they were plovers-and or ever I wist, ilka hag, and den, and tod-hole round about, seem'd to be fu' o' plovers, for they fell a' to the whistling an' answering ane another at the same time. I had often been wondering how they staid sae lang on the heights that year, for I heard them aye whewing e'en an' morn; but little trowed I they were a' twa-handed plovers that I heard. In half an hour they had sic a squad gathered thegither as e'e never glimed on. There ye might hae seen auld gray-bearded ministers, lairds, weavers, and poor hinds, a' sharing the same hard fate. They were pale, ragged, and hungry, and several o' them lame and wounded; and they had athegither sic a haggard severity i' their demeaner, Lord forgie me, gin I wasna feared to look at them! There was ane o' them a doctor blade, wha soon set the poor chield's arm; and he said, that after a' it wasna broken, but only dislockit and sair brizzed. That doctor was the gabbiest body ever I met wi'; he spake for them a', and I whiles fearHe tried a' that ed that he sclented a wee. he could to make me a Cameronian, but I wadna grip; and when I was coming away to leave him, 'Laidlaw,' quo' he, we ken ye to be an honest, honourable man; here you see a remnant of poor, forlorn, misre presented creatures, who have thrown themselves on your mercy: if ye betray us, it will be the worse for ye both here and here. after; if you save and protect us, the pray. ers of the just win their way to Heaven, though fiends should be standing by to oppose them-Ay, there's naething can stop their journey, Laidlaw!-The winds canna blaw them aside, the clouds canna drown them, and the lights o' Heaven canna "Ah! lack-a-day, lack-a-day! If ye be the burn them; and your name, will stand at. VOL. III. No. v

"If he dinna,' quo' I, he's no what I think him.' Then he began a lang serious harangue about the riches o' free grace, and about the wickedness o' our nature; and said, that we could do nacthing o' oursells but sin. I said it was a hard construction, but I couldna argy the point ava wi' himI never was a dab at these lang-winded stories. Then they cam on about prelacy and heresies, and something they ca'd the act of abjuration. I couldna follow him out at nae rate; but I says, 'I pit nae doubt callants, but ye're right, for ye hae proven to a' the warld that ye think sae; and when a man feels conscious that he's right, I never believe he can be far wrang in sic matters. But that's no the point in question; let us consider what can be done for ye e'en now-Poor souls! God kens, my heart's sair for ye; but this land's mine, an' a' the sheep around ye, an' ye're welcome to half-a-dozen o' the best o' them in sic a case.'

43.

revolted those whom he commissioned on his errands of blood and destruction. All who have perused the "Tales of my Landlord"-and who is there that has not

that bar where there's nae cruel and partial judge-What ye gie to us, ye gie to your Maker, and he will repay you sevenfold. Dd, the body was like to gar me play the bairn and greet even out. Weel, I canna mind the half that he said, but he endit wi'must be tolerably conversant with the this: We have seen our friends all bound, character of this heartless miscreant, but banished, and destroyed; they have died we cannot help thinking that Mr. Hogg has on the field, on the scaffold, and at the stake; set him before us, in a fuller costume than but the reek o' their blood shall drive the even the very powerful writer to whom we cruel Stuarts frae the land they have dis- have alluded. A sterner malignity dargraced, and out of it a church of truth and kens in his eye-the spirit of a direr venliberty shall spring. There is still a handfu' geance compresses or convulses his lipremaining in Israel that have not yet bow- his derision of the calamities he creates is ed the kneel to Baal, nor yet kissed him expressed with a more savage indifference That remnant has fled here to escape the -a more intolerable arrogance accompa cruelty of man; but a worse fate threatens us now-we are all of us perishing with fa- nies his every word, movement, and ges mine-For these three days we have tasted ture-a deeper and more sanguinary nothing but the green moss, save a few misanthropy shades his every featurewretched trouts, eells, and adders.' Ethers, and he rushes forth in chase of his victims man!' quo' I,- For the love o' God take with a feller animosity;-in short, there care how ye eat the ethers-ye may as weel is more of the absolute devil in the Clacut your throats at aince as eat them. Na vers of Mr. Hogg than in the same por na, lad, that's meat that will never do.' I traiture by the author above referred to, said nae mair, but gae just a wave to my and a completer incorporation of every dog. Reaver,' quo' I, 'yon's away.'-In fiendish attribute is effected by the former, three minutes he had ten score o' ewes and not assuredly by the superiority of bis wedders at my hand. I grippit twa o' the best I could wale, and cut aff their heads wi' genius, but rather as it appears to us, in my ain knife. Now, doctor,' quo' I, 'take consequence of his having more diligentthese and roast them, and part them amang ly and deeply studied the character whose ye the best way ye can-ye'll find them bet- wild and atrocious features he has so finely ter than the ethers-Lord, man, it will never painted. Of this man more hereafter. do to eat ethers.' We shall now give our author's description of the district in which the Covenanters of the south and west had taken refuge at the period when Clavers, roused to a pitch of demoniac frenzy by the death, at the hands of the fugitives, of an officious "priest of the kirk" who was about to betray their haunts.

The savage ferocity with which the Covenanters were pursued by the Stuart government-their patience in sufferings and the unshrinking fortitude they evin ced whenever they fell into the hands of their merciless enemies are too well known to require being dwelt upon. The year 1685, however, the period in which the events recorded in this tale occurred, was distinguished by the more than ordinary cruelty with which, through the southern and western parts of Scotland, they were oppressed. The persecution on religious accounts, rose to its acme in that disastrous year, and a seal of proscription was set upon the Covenanters, and all who were suspected of harbouring them, or rendering the slightest succour to that unfortunate race. Among the agents of this infernal persecution, Graham, viscount of Dundee was the chief. He is more familiarly known by

the abhorred name of Clavers or Claverhouse. The character of this man seems to have been more decisively execrable than we usually meet with even among villains, and, armed with power, he exercised it with a ferocious, yet cold blooded brutality of which we recollect scarcely an example, and which not infrequently

"All the outer parts of the lands of Chapelhope are broken into thousands of deep black ruts, called by the country people moss haggs. Each of the largest of these has a green stripe along its bottom; and in this place in particular they are so numerous so intersected and complex in their lines, that foxes, and sheep, may all find there cover as a hiding-place, they are unequalled-men, with equal safety from being discovered, and may hide for days and nights without being aware of one another. The neigh bouring farms to the westward abound with inaccessible rocks, caverns, and ravines. To these mountains, therefore, the shatter ed remains of the fugitives from the field of Bothwell Bridge, as well as the broken and persecuted whigs from all the western and southern counties, fled as to their last refuge. Being unacquainted, however, with the inhabitants of the country in which they had taken shelter-with their religious princi ples, or the opinions which they held re specting the measures of government-ther durst not trust them with the secret of their

retreat. They had watches set, sounds for signals, and skulked away from one hidingplace to another at the approach of the armed troop, the careless fowler, or the solitary shepherd; yea, such precautions were they obliged to use, that they often filed from the face of one another.

"From the midst of that inhospitable wilderness from those dark mosses and unfrequented caverns-the prayers of the persecuted race nightly arose to the throne of the Almighty-prayers, as all testified who heard them, fraught with the most simple pathos, as well as the most bold and vehement sublimity. In the solemn gloom of the evening, after the last rays of day had disappeared, and again in the morning before they began to streamer the east, the song of praise was sung to that Being, under whose fatherly chastisement they were patiently suffering. These psalms, always chanted with ardour and wild melody, and borne on the light breezes of the twilight, were often heard at a great distance. The heart of the peasant grew chill, and his hairs stood all on end, as he hasted home to alarm the cottage circle with a tale of horror. Lights were seen moving by night in wilds and caverns where human thing never resided, and where the foot of man seldom had trode.

"The shepherds knew, or thought they knew, that no human being frequented these places; and they believed, as well they might, that whole hordes of spirits had taken possession of their remote and solitary dells. They lived in terror and consternation. Those who had no tie in the country left it, and retreated into the vales, where the habitations of men are numerous, and where the fairy, the brownie, or the walk ing ghost, is rarely seen. Such as had friends whom they could not leave, or sheep and cattle upon the lands, as the farmers and shepherds had, were obliged to remain, but their astonishment and awe continued to increase. They knew there was but one Being to whom they could apply for protection against these unearthly visitants; family worship was begun both at evening and morning in the farmer's hall and the most remote hamlet; and that age introduced a spirit of devotion into those regions, which one hundred and thirty years continuance of the utmost laxity and indecision in religious principles has not yet been able wholly to eradicate.

"It is likewise necessary to mention here, though perfectly well known, that every corner of that distracted country was furnished with a gownsman, to instruct the inhabitants in the mild and benignant principles of prelacy, but chiefly to act as spies upon the detested whigs. In the fulfilment of this last task they were not remiss; they proved the most inveterate and incorrigible enemies that the poor Covenanters had, even though heaven, earth and hell seemed to have combined against them.

"The officiating priestat the kirk of Saint Mary of the Lowes had been particularly active in this part of his commission. The smallest number could not be convened for the purposes of public devotion-two or three straggiers could not be seen crossing the country, but information was instantly sent to Clavers, or some of his officers; and at the same time, these devotional meetings were always described to be of the most atrocious and rebellious nature. The whigs became grievously incensed against this ecclesiastic, for, in the bleakest mountain of their native land, they could not enjoy a lair in common with the foxes and the wildgoats in peace, nor worship their God without annoyance in the dens and caves of the earth. Their conventicles, though held in places ever so remote, were broke in upon and dispersed by armed troops, and their ministers and brethren carried away to prisons, to banishment, and to death. They wazed desperate; and what will not des perate men do? They waylaid, and seized upon one of the priest's emissaries by night, a young female, who was running on a message to Grierson of Lag. Overcome with fear at being in custody of such frightfullooking fellows, with their sallow cheeks and long beards, she confessed the whole, and gave up her despatches. They were of the most aggravated nature. Forthwith two or three of the most hardy of the whigs, without the concurrence or knowledge of their brethren, posted straight to the Virgin's chapel that very night, shot the chaplain, and buried him at a small distance from his own little solitary mansion; at the same time giving out to the country, that he was a sorcerer, an adulterer, and a character every way evil. His name has accordingly been handed down to posterity as a most horrid necromancer.

"This was a rash and unpremeditated act; and, as might well have been foreseen, the cure proved worse than the disease. It brought the armed troops upon them both from the east and the west. Dundee came to Traquair, and stationed companies of troops in a line across the country. The Laird of Lag placed a body of men in the narrowest pass of Moffatdale, in the only path by which these mountains are accessible. Thus all communication was cut off between the mountain-men and the western counties; for every one who went or came by that way, these soldiers took pri soner, searched, and examined; and one lad, who was coming from Moffat, carrying more 'bread than they thought he could well account for, they shot dead on the spot just as he had dropt on his kness to pray.

"A curate, named Clerk, still remained, to keep an eye npon the whigs and pester them. He had the charge of two chapels in that vicinity; the one at a place now called Kirkhope, which was dedicated to Saint Irene, a saint of whom the narrator of this story could give no account. The other