Walter despised Clerk and his tenets most heartily; he saw that he was a shallow, hypocritical, and selfish being, and that he knew nothing of the principles in which he pretended to instruct them; therefore he sorely regretted the influence that he had gained over his family. Neither did he approve of the rigid and rebellious principles which he believed the Covenanters professed. When he met with any man, or community of men, who believed firmly in any thing and held it sacred, Walter revered that, and held it sacred likewise; but it was rather from a deference to the belief and feelings of his fellow creatures than his own conviction. In short, Walter was an honest, conscientious, good, old–fashioned man, but he made no great fuss about religion, and many supposed that he did not care a pin who was right or who was wrong. On the 23d of August, Clavers (I think it best to denominate him so, as he is always called by that name in the country,) dispatched nineteen men from Traquair, under the command of one Copland, a gentleman volunteer in his troop, and a very brave young man, to gain intelligence concerning the murder of the curate, and use every means to bring the perpetrators to justice. Copland and his men came to the mansion of the late chaplain, where they remained all the night, and made every enquiry that they could concerning the murderers. Several witnesses were brought in and examined, and among others the very identical girl whom the whigs took prisoner, and robbed of the dispatches. She had heard the letter read by one of the gang who seized her, while the rest stood and listened. It bore, “that great numbers of the broken and rebellious traitors kenneled in the wilds around Loch–Skene, from whence they committed depredations on all the countries about; that they likewise made religious incursions into those districts, where great multitudes attended their inflammatory harangues.” It also stated, “that a noted incendiary was to preach on such a day in Kirkinhope Linn, where the whole group might easily be surrounded and annihilated; that many of them were armed with guns, bludgeons, and broadswords, but that they were the most cowardly, heartless dogs alive; and that he himself, who had private and certain information of all their hiding places, would engage to rid the country of them in a few days, if Lag would allow him but one company of soldiers.”