Now about this time (1657), George Fox comes into Scotland; boasting that "as he first set his feet upon Scottish ground he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." And he forthwith succeeds in making Quakers of Gideon, Walter, and Walter's wife. This is too much for Sir William of Harden, the eldest brother, who not only remains a staunch Jacobite, but obtains order from the Privy Council of Scotland to imprison his brother and brother's wife; that they may hold no further converse with Quakers, and also to "separate and take away their children, being two sons and a daughter, from their family and education, and to breed them in some convenient place." Which is accordingly done; and poor Walter, who had found pleasantly conversible Quakers in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, is sent to Jedburgh, with strict orders to the Jedburgh magistrates to keep Quakers out of his way. The children are sent to an orthodox school by Sir William; and of the daughter I find nothing further; but the two sons both became good scholars, and were so effectually cured of Quakerism, that the elder (I don't find his Christian name), just as he came of age, was killed in a duel with Pringle of Crichton, fought with swords in a field near Selkirk--ever since called, from the Raeburn's death, "the Raeburn meadow-spot;"--and the younger, Walter, who then became "Tutor of Raeburn," i.e., guardian to his infant nephew, intrigued in the cause of the exiled Stewarts till he had lost all he had in the world--ran a narrow risk of being hanged--was saved by the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleugh--founded a Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the conversation is said to have been maintained in Latin--and wore his beard unclipped to his dying day, vowing no razor should pass on it until the return of the Stewarts, whence he held his Border name of "Beardie." It is only when we remember how often this history must have dwelt on Sir Walter's mind that we can understand the tender subtlety of design with which he has completed, even in the weary time of his declining life, the almost eventless story of 'Redgauntlet,' and given, as we shall presently see, in connection with it, the most complete, though disguised, portion of his own biography. IV. Beardie. I find no details of Beardie's life given by Scott, but he was living at Leasudden when his landlord, Scott of Harden, [53] living at Mertoun House, addressed to him the lines given in the note to the introduction to the sixth canto of 'Marmion,' in which Scott himself partly adopts the verses, writing from Mertoun House to Richard Heber.