s only by watching his opportunity that Alexander
Gordon could come home to see his wife, and put his hand upon his
bairns' heads as they lay a-row in their cots. Yet come he sometimes
did, especially when the soldiers of the garrison were away on duty in
the more distant parts of Galloway. Then the wanderer would steal
indoors in the gloaming, soft-footed like a thief, into his own house,
and sit talking with his wife and an old retainer or two who were fit to
be trusted with the secret. Yet while he sat there one was ever on the
watch, and at the slightest signs of King's men in the neighbourhood
Alexander Gordon rushed out and ran to the great oak tree, which you may
see to this day standing in sadly-diminished glory in front of the great
house of Earlstoun.

Now it stands alone, all the trees of the forest having been cut away
from around it during the subsequent poverty which fell upon the family.
A rope ladder lay snugly concealed among the ivy that clad the trunk of
the tree. Up this Alexander Gordon climbed. When he arrived at the top
he pulled the ladder after him, and found himself upon an ingeniously
constructed platform built with a shelter over it from the rain, high
among the branchy tops of the great oak. His faithful wife, Jean
Hamilton, could make signals to him out of one of the top windows of
Earlstoun whether it was safe for him to approach the house, or whether
he had better remain hidden among the leaves. If you go now to look for
the tree, it is indeed plain and easy to be seen. But though now so
shorn and lonely, there is no doubt that two hundred years ago it stood
undistinguished among a thousand others that thronged the woodland about
the Tower of Earlstoun.

Often, in order to give Alexander Gordon a false sense of security, the
garrison would be withdrawn for a week or two, and then in the middle of
some mirky night or early in the morning twilight the house would be
surrounded and the whole place ransacked in search of its absent master.

On one occasion, the man who came running along the narrow river path
from Dairy had hardly time to arouse Gordon before the dragoons were
heard clattering down through the wood from the high-road. There was no
time to gain the great oak in safety, where he had so often hid in time
of need. All Alexander Gordon could do was to put on the rough jerkin of
a labouring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the
scolding assistance of a maid-