"

"Run, Daniel, run!" cried Mary eagerly. And the old man and his son went
out in search of him.

Their inquiries were fruitless. Days, weeks, and months rolled on, but
nothing more was heard of poor Philip. Mary refused to be comforted; and
the exhortations, the kindness, and the tenderness shown towards her by
the Rev. Mr. Duncan, if not hateful, were disagreeable. Dark thoughts,
too, had taken possession of her father's mind, and he frequently sank
into melancholy; for the thought haunted him that his adopted son, on
being driven from his house, had laid violent hands upon his own life;
and this idea embittered every day of his existence.

More than ten years had passed since Philip had left the house of John
Brydone. The Commonwealth was at an end, and the second Charles had been
recalled; but exile had not taught him wisdom, nor the fate of his
father discretion. He madly attempted to be the lord and ruler of the
people's conscience, as well as King of Britain. He was a libertine with
some virtues--a bigot without religion. In the pride, or rather folly of
his heart, he attempted to force Prelacy upon the people of Scotland;
and he let his bloodhounds loose, to hunt the followers of the Covenant
from hill to hill, to murder them on their own hearths, and, with the
blood of his victims, to blot out the word _conscience_ from the
vocabulary of Scotchmen. The Covenanters sought their God in the desert
and on the mountains which He had reared; they worshipped him in the
temples which His own hands had framed; and there the persecutor sought
them, the destroyer found them, and the sword of the tyrant was bathed
in the blood of the worshipper! Even the family altar was profaned; and
to raise the voice of prayer and praise in the cottage to the King of
kings, was held to be as treason against him who professed to represent
Him on earth. At this period, too, Graham of Claverhouse--whom some have
painted as an angel, but whose actions were worthy of a fiend--at the
head of his troopers, who were called by the profane, _the ruling elders
of the kirk_, was carrying death and cold-blooded cruelty throughout the
land.

Now, it was on a winter night in the year 1677, a party of troopers were
passing near the house of old John Brydone, and he was known to them not
only as being one who was a defender of the Covenant, but also as one
who harboured the preachers, and whose house was regarded as a
conventicle.

"Let us rouse