f Douglas Water. It was a sore business for my mother,
who had the task of warding off prying eyes from our ragged household
and keeping the fugitive in life. She was a Tweedside woman, as strong
and staunch as an oak, and with a heart in her like Robert Bruce. And
she was cheerful, too, in the worst days, and would go about the place
with a bright eye and an old song on her lips. But the thing was beyond
a woman's bearing; so I had perforce to forsake my colleging and take a
hand with our family vexations. The life made me hard and watchful,
trusting no man, and brusque and stiff towards the world. And yet all
the while youth was working in me like yeast, so that a spring day or a
west wind would make me forget my troubles and thirst to be about a
kindlier business than skulking in a moorland dwelling.

My mother besought me to leave her. "What," she would say, "has young
blood to do with this bickering of kirks and old wives' lamentations?
You have to learn and see and do, Andrew. And it's time you were
beginning." But I would not listen to her, till by the mercy of God we
got my father safely forth of Scotland, and heard that he was dwelling
snugly at Leyden in as great patience as his nature allowed. Thereupon
I bethought me of my neglected colleging, and, leaving my books and
plenishing to come by the Lanark carrier, set out on foot for
Edinburgh.

The distance is only a day's walk for an active man, but I started
late, and purposed to sleep the night at a cousin's house by
Kirknewton. Often in bright summer days I had travelled the road, when
the moors lay yellow in the sun and larks made a cheerful chorus. In
such weather it is a pleasant road, with long prospects to cheer the
traveller, and kindly ale-houses to rest his legs in. But that day it
rained as if the floodgates of heaven had opened. When I crossed Clyde
by the bridge at Hyndford the water was swirling up to the key-stone.
The ways were a foot deep in mire, and about Carnwath the bog had
overflowed and the whole neighbourhood swam in a loch. It was pitiful
to see the hay afloat like water-weeds, and the green oats scarcely
showing above the black floods. In two minutes after starting I was wet
to the skin, and I thanked Providence I had left my little Dutch
_Horace_ behind me in the book-box. By three in the afternoon I was as
unkempt as any tinker, my hair plastered over my eyes, and every fold
of my coat running like a gutter.

Presently the time