It was a moving sight to look upon the eloquent face of the preacher, which bespoke the inmost feelings of his soul, and to see his thin white locks fluttering in the breeze, while his wasted hands were alternately folded or upraised to enforce his earnest words. The multitude, hushed into rapt and breathless stillness, were unconscious of a figure stealing swiftly up the glen, until a slight scream fell from the lips of a woman, and Susan Gray of Hartrigge interrupted the sermon by hastily running to meet what appeared to be a wayfaring man, whose ragged garb and miserable appearance proclaimed that he had been long on the road and had suffered many privations. The minister paused, and turned his eyes towards the wanderer, in whose changed countenance he recognised the features of his first-born son. The unexpected arrival of Hartrigge broke up the conventicle, and his relations, who were all present, flocked round him, while his friends and neighbours pressed closely behind, eager to hear the story of his adventures. But he seemed breathless, and unable to speak for a moment, and then his words were of ominous import. "It is surely madness to be holding a meeting here, and the dragoons so near! They have pursued me since daybreak, and I have only escaped through being familiar with every by-path on the way. Scatter yourselves quickly, for they will be upon us in a moment. Father and David, let us make haste together to our usual hiding. I have longed for the Corbie’s Cliff all day." Just then a watcher on the western height blew a warning note on the trumpet, and in a few moments the assemblage melted away like mist in the noonday sun. Jane Gray entreated her brother-in-law, Adam Hepburn, to flee with the ministers and Hartrigge to the friendly shelter of the Corbie’s Cliff, but he stoutly refused, saying that the soldiers would not be likely to trouble Rowallan again, seeing they had met with so little success on their previous visit. But Jane herself was not at all sanguine, and as they stole homewards by the most unfrequented field paths, her mind was filled with strange misgivings regarding Martha Miller, the maid, who had gone home to spend the Sabbath day with her parents at the North Lodge, on Inverburn. She was walking a little in advance of Adam, and was the first to ascend the little hill, from which a glimpse of Rowallan could be had. She stood still there, for in the distance she saw the gleam of steel, and a party of horsemen riding rapidly up the road to the farm. "See yonder, Adam!" she said, in a trembling whisper; "you must flee at once, either to the cave at Hartrigge, or into the Corbie’s Hole, if you can reach it unseen." "What! and allow you, a defenceless woman, to go down alone among these brutal fellows?" inquired Adam, incredulously. "You hardly know what you say, Jane."