wing:

"The just sense whereof"--the sufferings of the country--"made us
choose, rather to betake ourselves to the fields for self-defence, than
to stay at home, burdened daily with the calamities of others, and
tortured with the fears of our own approaching misery."[15]

The whole body, too, swore the Covenant, to which ceremony the epitaph
at the head of this chapter seems to refer.

A report that Dalzell was approaching drove them from Lanark to
Bathgate, where, on the evening of Monday the 26th, the wearied army
stopped. But at twelve o'clock the cry, which served them for a trumpet,
of "Horse! horse!" and "Mount the prisoner!" resounded through the
night-shrouded town, and called the peasants from their well-earned rest
to toil onwards in their march. The wind howled fiercely over the
moorland; a close, thick, wetting rain descended. Chilled to the bone,
worn out with long fatigue, sinking to the knees in mire, onward they
marched to destruction. One by one the weary peasants fell off from
their ranks to sleep, and die in the rain-soaked moor, or to seek some
house by the wayside wherein to hide till daybreak. One by one at first,
then in gradually increasing numbers, at every shelter that was seen,
whole troops left the waning squadrons, and rushed to hide themselves
from the ferocity of the tempest. To right and left nought could be
descried but the broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their
fellow-rebels seen dimly through the murky night, plodding onwards
through the sinking moss. Those who kept together--a miserable
few--often halted to rest themselves, and to allow their lagging
comrades to overtake them. Then onward they went again, still hoping for
assistance, reinforcement, and supplies; onward again, through the wind,
and the rain, and the darkness--onward to their defeat at Pentland, and
their scaffold at Edinburgh. It was calculated that they lost one half
of their army on that disastrous night-march.

Next night they reached the village of Colinton, four miles from
Edinburgh, where they halted for the last time.[16]

FOOTNOTES:

[9] "A Cloud of Witnesses," p. 376.

[10] Wodrow, pp. 19, 20.

[11] "A Hind Let Loose," p. 123.

[12] Turner, p. 163.

[13] Turner, p. 198.

[14] _Ibid._ p. 167.

[15] Wodrow, p. 29.

[16] Turner, Wodrow, and "Church History" by James Kirkton, an outed
minister of the period.

IV

RULLION GREEN

"From Covenanters wit