servant. When the troopers entered to
search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently
'flyting' the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to
'draw a stick across his back' if he did not work to a better tune.

[Illustration: Alexander Gordon wood-chopping in the disguise of a
labourer]

The commander ordered him to drop his axe, and to point out the
different rooms and hiding-places about the castle. Alexander Gordon did
so with an air of indifference, as if hunting Whigs were much the same
to him as cleaving firewood. He did his duty with a stupid unconcern
which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon as they allowed
him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the same stolidity and
rustic boorishness that had marked his conduct.

Some of the officers came up to him and questioned him as to his
master's hiding-place in the woods. But as to this he gave them no
satisfaction.

'My master,' he said, 'has no hiding-place that I know of. I always find
him here when I have occasion to seek for him, and that is all I care
about. But I am sure that if he thought you were seeking him he would
immediately show himself to you, for that is ever his custom.'

This was one of the answers with a double meaning that were so much in
the fashion of the time and so characteristic of the people.

On leaving, the commander of the troop said, 'Ye are a stupid kindly
nowt, man. See that ye get no harm in such a rebel service.'

Sometimes, however, searching waxed so hot and close that Gordon had to
withdraw himself altogether out of Galloway and seek quieter parts of
the country. On one occasion he was speeding up the Water of Ae when he
found himself so weary that he was compelled to lie down under a bush of
heather and rest before proceeding on his journey. It so chanced that a
noted King's man, Dalyell of Glenae, was riding homewards over the moor.
His horse started back in astonishment, having nearly stumbled over the
body of a sleeping man. It was Alexander Gordon. Hearing the horse's
feet he leaped up, and Dalyell called upon him to surrender. But that
was no word to say to a Gordon of Earlstoun. Gordon instantly drew his
sword, and, though unmounted, his lightness of foot on the heather and
moss more than counterbalanced the advantages of the horseman, and the
King's man found himself matched at all points; for the Laird of
Earlstoun was in his day a famous sworder.

Soon the C