n instead of
accompanying them toward Edinburgh.

The lad told us that his sister was now confined in the Thieves' Hole at
Wigtown. He told us of her sham trial, and, spite of our sore hearts, he
almost made us laugh with his account of the indictment which Winram and
Coltran--in their cups, as I presume--had laid against her. Along with
our Margaret had been tried her little sister of thirteen named Agnes.
Both these young things had been most barbarously treated by the noble
judges of Wigtown--Sheriff Davie Graham, Lag, Strachan, and Winram.
Worst of all was Davie Graham, for having his hands upon the fines, he
desired above all to amerce Gilbert Wilson, the tenant of Glen Vernock
in the parish of Peninghame. Gilbert was a man well to do, keeping a
good stock both of nolt and sheep upon a large ground, and so the more
apt to be fined. He was a quiet, thewless, pleasantly conforming man,
that was willing to let his hearing of the curates keep his head. But he
could not help his children, as alas! who can? For years he was harassed
with having to go to Wigtown every court day. He was near eaten out of
house and home with having soldiers constantly quartered upon him. And
all because his children had chosen to endure hardship cheerfully for
the good cause, and to serve under the blue banner that has the cross
upon it--at least so far as young bairns may. So from a child Margaret
Wilson had companied with those that spoke and loved the truth. She had
spent much of her time, ever since she was a lassie of ten, with my
sober Maisie Lennox at the Duchrae. And afterwards, when she grew to be
of age when lassies think of the lads, Margaret, for the sake of her
faith and for naught else, lived on the wild mountains, in the bogs and
caves of the hillsides.

To me Margaret Wilson ever seemed the stillest of quiet maids; but, as
our Maisie used to say, she was terribly set in her opinions when once
she had taken her stand. Now at eighteen she was grown to a tall maid,
with a great blowing mass of lint white hair that shone like gold with
the sun on it. Well might she have been spared to be some man's delight,
had she not been (as she said when the lads speered her) trysted to
another lot. The first party of soldiers to whom she was delivered,
pitying her youth, let her go to her own home from the crossing of the
water at Cree. But by misadventure she travelled on to the town of
Wigtown--where with the little lass Agnes in her han