Covenanters -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Scotland -- History -- Stuarts, to the Union, 1371-1707 -- Fiction
Some concern for the state of his wife and young family weighed with my
grandfather while he was in communion with Jordanhill; but after parting
from him, and going back to the Saracen's inn in the Gallowgait, where
Bailie Kilspinnie and his daughter were, he had an inward urging of the
spirit, moving him to be of the enterprise, on a persuasion, as I have
heard him tell himself, that without he was there something would arise
to balk the undertaking. So he was in consequence troubled in thought,
and held himself aloof from the familiar talk of his friends all the
remainder of the day, wishing that he might be able to overcome the
thirst which Captain Crawford had bred within him to join his company.
Bailie Kilspinnie seeing him in this perplexity of soul, spoke to him as
a friend, and searched to know what had taken possession of him, and my
grandfather, partly moved by his entreaty and partly by the thought of
the great palpable Antichrist of Scotland, who had done the bailie's
fireside such damage and detriment, being in a manner exposed to their
taking, told him what had been propounded by Jordanhill.
"Say you so," cried the bailie, remembering the offence done to his
family, "say you so; and that he is in a girn that wants but a manly
hand to grip him. Body and soul o' me, if the thing's within the power
of the arm of flesh he shall be taken and brought to the wuddy, if the
Lord permits justice to be done within the realm of Scotland."
The which bold and valorous breathing of the honest magistrate of Crail
kindled the smoking yearnings of my grandfather into a bright and
blazing flame, and he replied,--
"Then, sir, if you be so minded, I cannot perforce abide behind, but
will go forth with you to the battle, and swither not with the sword
till we have effected some notable achievement."
They accordingly went forthwith to Captain Crawford and proffered to him
their service; and he was gladdened that my grandfather had come to so
warlike a purpose; but he looked sharply at the bailie, and twice smiled
to my grandfather, as if in doubt of his soldiership, saying, "But,
Gilhaize, since you recommend him, he must be a good man and true."
So the same night they set out at dusk, with a chosen troop and band of
not more than two hundred men. A boat, provided with ladders, dropped
down the river with the tide, to be before them.
By midnight the expedition reached the bottom of Dumbuckhill, where,
having ascertained that the boat was arrived, Jordanhill directed those
aboard to keep her close in with the shore, and move with their march.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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