ient
kindnesses of his family, 'do you not know that it is death for you to
be found here?'

So saying he made his young master dismount, and carried away all his
horseman's gear and his arms, which he hid in a heap of field-manure
behind the house. Then he took Earlstoun to his own house, and put upon
him a long dress of his wife's. Hardly had he been clean-shaven, and
arrayed in a clean white mutch (cap), when the troopers came clattering
into the town. They had heard that he and some others of the prominent
rebels had passed that way; and they went from door to door, knocking
and asking, 'Saw ye anything of Sandy Gordon of Earlstoun?'

So going from house to house they came to the door of the ancient Gordon
retainer, and Earlstoun had hardly time to run to the corner and begin
to rock the cradle with his foot before the soldiers came to ask the
same question there. But they passed on without suspicion, only saying
one to the other as they went out, 'My certes, Billy, but yon was a
sturdy hizzie!'

After that there was nothing but the heather and the mountain cave for
Alexander Gordon for many a day. He had wealth of adventures, travelling
by night, hiding and sleeping by day. Sometimes he would venture to the
house of one who sympathised with the Covenanters, only to find that
the troopers were already in possession. Sometimes, in utter weariness,
he slept so long that when he awoke he would find a party searching for
him quite close at hand; then there was nothing for it but to lie close
like a hare in a covert till the danger passed by.

Once when he came to his own house of Earlstoun he was only an hour or
two there before the soldiers arrived to search for him. His wife had
hardly time to stow him in a secret recess behind the ceiling of a room
over the kitchen, in which place he abode several days, having his meals
passed to him from above, and breathing through a crevice in the wall.

[Illustration: 'Sometimes he would find a party searching for him quite
close at hand']

After this misadventure he was sometimes in Galloway and sometimes in
Holland for three or four years. He might even have remained in the Low
Countries, but his services were so necessary to his party in Scotland
that he was repeatedly summoned to come over into Galloway and the West
to take up the work of organising resistance to the Government.

During most of this time the Tower of Earlstoun was a barracks of the
soldiers, and it wa