much with my mother--indeed never long away from her side, till my
vain adventuring forth to Edinburgh in the matter of the sequestering of
the estate.

As for Earlstoun, we heard it was to be forfaulted very soon, and given
to Robert Grier of Lag, who was a very grab-all among them. Indeed no
one was better than another, for even Claverhouse got Freuch, "in
consideration," it was quaintly said, "of his good service and
sufferings." His brother David likewise got another estate in the Shire,
and Rothes and Lauderdale were as "free coups" for the wealth of the
fined and persecuted gentry. Whenever there was a man well-to-do and of
good repute, these men thought it no shame to strive to take him in a
snare, or to get him caught harbouring on his estate some intercommuned
persons. They rubbed hands and nudged one another in Council when they
heard of a rising in arms. They even cried out and shook hands for joy,
because it gave them colour for more exactions, and also for keeping an
army in the field, whose providing and accoutring was also very
profitable for them.

But at the Duchrae we abode fairly secure. At night we withdrew to the
barn, where behind the corn-mow a very safe and quaint hiding-place had
been devised. In the barn-wall, as in most of the barns in that
country-side, there were no windows of any size--in fact nothing save a
number of three-cornered wickets. These were far too small to admit the
body of a man; but by some exercise of ingenious contrivance in keeping
with the spirit of an evil time, the bottom stone of one of these
wickets had been so constructed that it turned outwards upon a hinge,
which so enlarged the opening that one man at a time had no difficulty
in passing through. This right cunning trap-door was in the gable-end of
the barn, and conducted the fugitive behind the corn-mow in which the
harvest sheaves were piled to the ceiling. Here we lay many a time while
the troopers raged about the house itself, stabbing every suspected
crevice of the corn and hay with their blades, but leaving us quite safe
behind the great pleasant-smelling mass of the mow.

Yet for all it was a not unquiet time with us, and I do not deny that I
had much pleasant fellowship with Maisie Lennox.

But I have now to tell what befel at the Duchrae one Sabbath evening,
when the pursuit had waxed dull after Bothwell, and before the Sanquhar
affair had kindled a new flame.

At that time in Galloway, all the tailor