When Copland arrived at the place of rendezvous, five out of his ten associates were no where to be seen, nor did they make their appearance, although he tarried there till two in the afternoon. The guide then conducted him by the path on which those missing should have come, and on arriving at a narrow pass in Chapelhope, he found the bodies of the four soldiers and their guide mangled and defaced in no ordinary way; and judging from this that he had been long enough in that neighbourhood, he hasted back to Traquair with the news of the loss. Clavers is said to have broke out into the most violent rage, and to have sworn that night by the Blessed Virgin and all the Holy Trinity, utterly to extirpate the seed of the d‑‑d whining psalm–singing race from the face of the earth, and that ere Beltein there should not be as much whig blood in Scotland as would make a dish of soup to a dog. He however concealed from the privy council the loss of these five men, nor did they ever know of it to this day. CHAPTER III. Things were precisely in this state, when the goodman of Chapelhope, taking his plaid and staff, went out to the heights one misty day in autumn to drive off a neighbour’s flock from his pasture; but, as Walter was wont to relate the story himself, when any stranger came there on a winter evening, as long as he lived, it may haply be acceptable to the curious, and the lovers of rustic simplicity, to read it in his own words, although he drew it out to an inordinate length, and perhaps kept his own personal feelings and prowess too much in view for the fastidious or critical reader to approve.