e
house.

There is a place, Shieldhill by name, that sits blithely on the
brae-face at the entering in of Annandale. The country thereabouts is
not very wild, and there are many cotter houses set about the holms and
dotted among the knowes. Westerha' enclosed the whole with a ring of his
men, and came upon them as he thought unawares, for he said the place
was like a conventicle, and rife with psalm-singers. But he was a wild
man when he found the men and women all fled, and only the bairns, as
before, feared mostly out of their lives, sitting cowering together by
the ingle, or hiding about the byres.

"I'll fear them waur," said Westerha', as he came to the third house and
found as before only two-three weans, "or my name is no James
Johnstone."

So what did this ill-set Johnstone do, but gather them all up into a
knot by a great thorn-tree that grows on the slope. This Tuesday morn
was clear and sunny--not bright, but with a kind of diffused light, warm
and without shadows, as if the whole arch of the lift were but one sun,
yet not so bright as the sun we mostly have.

There were some thirty bairns by the tree, mostly of Westerha's own
name, save those that were Jardines, Grahams, and Charterises, for those
are the common names of that country-side. The children stood together,
huddled in a cloud, too frightened to speak or even to cry aloud. And
one thing I noticed, that the lassie bairns were stiller and grat not so
much as the boys--all save one, who was a laddie of about ten years. He
stood with his hands behind his back, and his face was very white; but
he threw back his head and looked the dragoons and Annandale's wild
riders fair in the face as one that has conquered fear.

Then Westerha' rode forward almost to the midst of the cloud of bairns,
"gollering" and roaring at the bit things to frighten them, as was his
custom with such. They were mostly from six to ten years of their age;
and when I saw them thus with their feared white faces, I wished that I
had been six foot of my inches, and with twenty good men of the Glen at
my back. But I minded that I was but a boy--"stay-at-home John," as
Sandy called me--and worth nothing with my hands. So I could only fret
and be silent. I looked for my cousin Lochinvar, but he was riding at
the Graham's bridle rein, and that day I saw nothing of him. But I
wondered how this matter of the bairns liked him.

So Westerha' rode nearer to them, shouting like a shepherd