few, obeyed; he refused, and went out of town with these few, and kept a
meeting. When he returned, his father told him, he was past for the
first time, but it behoved him to mount guard to-morrow.--He refused:
his father was angry, and urged him with the practices of others. He
told his father, he would hang his faith upon no man's belt, &c. On
the morrow, when the drums beat to mount the guard, being the day of his
social meeting, he went out of the town under a heavy load of reproach,
and even from professors, who made no bones to say, that it was not
principle of conscience he hesitated upon, but that he might have
liberty to strole through the country: because he attended these
meetings; which was no easy matter to bear. Orders were given to
apprehend him; but at that time he escaped their hand, and wandered from
one place to another, until the beginning of August 1678, that he came
to Carrick communion at Maybole: and what his exercise was there,
himself thus expresses: "I was wonderfully trysted there; but not so as
at the other. I went to the first table, and then went and heard worthy
Messrs. Kid and Cameron preach at a little distance from the meeting,
who never left the fields till they sealed and crowned it with their
blood. I cannot say but the Lord was kind to me, on the day after there,
and on the fast day in the middle of the week after that, near the
borders of Kilmarnock parish, where a division arose about the
indulgence, which to this day is never yet done away. After my return
home, I was made to enter into covenant with him upon his own terms
against the indulgence and all other compliances: and, because through
the Lord's strength I resolved to keep my bargain, and not to join with
them, it was said, I had got new light; and I was much reproached, yet I
got much of the Lord's kindness when attending the preached gospel in
the field, to which I would sometimes go twenty miles."

And having thus wandered to and fro for some time, he went to Edinburgh
to see the prisoners, and then returned home to Stirling in the end of
the week. Late on Saturday night, he heard of a field preaching, and
seeing the soldiers and troopers marching out of the town to attack the
people at that meeting, he made himself ready, and, with a few others,
went toward the meeting: and, being armed, they arrived near the place;
but the soldiers coming forward, the people still, as they approached,
seeing the enemy, turned off.