in front and on the right lay the wild, romantic hill-country
of which, in after years, it was so beautifully written:--

"O bonnie hills of Galloway oft have I stood to see,
At sunset hour, your shadows fall, all darkening on the lea;
While visions of the buried years came o'er me in their might--
As phantoms of the sepulchre--instinct with inward light!
The years, the years when Scotland groaned beneath her tyrant's hand!
And 'twas not for the heather she was called `the purple land.'
And 'twas not for her _loveliness_ her children blessed their God--
_But for secret places of the hills, and the mountain heights_
_untrod_."

"Who was the old man I found in what you call your hidy-hole?" asked
Wallace, turning suddenly to his companion.

"I'm no' sure that I have a right to answer that," said Black, regarding
Will with a half-serious, half-amused look. "Hooever, noo that ye've
ta'en service wi' me, and ken about my hidy-hole, I suppose I may trust
ye wi' a' my secrets."

"I would not press you to reveal any secrets, Mr. Black, yet I think you
are safe to trust me, seeing that you know enough about my own secrets
to bring me to the gallows if so disposed."

"Ay, I hae ye there, lad! But I'll trust ye on better grunds than that.
I believe ye to be an honest man, and that's enough for me. Weel, ye
maun ken, it's saxteen year since I howkit the hidy-hole below my hoose,
an' wad ye believe it?--they've no fund it oot yet! Not even had a
suspeecion o't, though the sodgers hae been sair puzzled, mony a time,
aboot hoo I managed to gie them the slip. An' mony's the puir body,
baith gentle and simple, that I've gien food an' shelter to whae was
very likely to hae perished o' cauld an' hunger, but for the hidy-hole.
Among ithers I've often had the persecuited ministers doon there,
readin' their Bibles or sleepin' as comfortable as ye like when the
dragoons was drinkin', roarin', an' singin' like deevils ower their
heids. My certies! if Clavers, or Sherp, or Lauderdale had an inklin'
o' the hunderd pairt o' the law-brekin' that I've done, it's a gallows
in the Gressmarkit as high as Haman's wad be ereckit for me, an' my heed
an' hauns, may be, would be bleachin' on the Nether Bow. Humph! but
they've no' gotten me yet!"

"And I sincerely hope they never will," remarked Wallace; "but you have
not yet told me the name of the old man."

"I was comin' to him," continued Black; "but wheniver I wander to