The Highland host came on us in want, and, but for their license to destroy, in beggary. Yet when they returned to their wild homes among the distant hills, they were laden as with the household wealth of a realm, in so much that they were rendered defenceless by the weight of their spoil. At the bridge of Glasgow the students of the College and the other brave youths of that town, looking on them with true Scottish hearts, and wrathful to see that the barbarians had been such robbers of their fellow-subjects, stopped above two thousand of them, and took from them their congregations of goods and wares, wearing apparel, pots, pans, and gridirons, and other furniture, wherewith they had burdened themselves like bearers at a flitting. My house was stript to a wastage, and every thing was taken away; what was too heavy to be easily transported was, after being carried some distance, left on the road. The very shoes were taken off my wife's feet, and "ye'll no be a refuse to gi'e me that," said a red-haired reprobate as he took hold of Sarah Lochrig's hand and robbed her of her wedding-ring. I was present and saw the deed; I felt my hands clench, but in my spirit I discovered that it was then the hour of outrage, and that the Avenger's time was not yet come. CHAPTER LXIX Rarely has it fallen to the lot of man to be so blessed with such children as mine; but surely I was unworthy of the blessing. And yet, though maybe unworthy, Lord, thou knowest by the nightly anthems of thankfulness that rose from my hearth, that the chief sentiment in my breast, in those moments of melody, was my inward acknowledgment to Thee for having made this world so bright to me, with an offspring so good and fair, and with Sarah Lochrig, their mother, she whose life was the sweetness in the cup of my felicity. Let me not, however, hurry on, nor forget that I am but an historian, and that it befits not the juridical pen of the character to dwell upon my own woes when I have to tell of the sufferings of others. The trials and the tribulations which I had heard so much of, and whereof I had witnessed so many, made me in a sense but little liable to be moved when told of any new outrage. But the sight of that Highlander wrenching from Sarah Lochrig's finger our wedding-ring did, in its effects and influences, cause a change in my nature as sudden and as wonderful as that which the rod of Moses underwent in being quickened into a serpent.