Some time previous to this, there had been a fellowship meeting, at a place called Tallo–Lins, of the wanderers that lurked about Chapelhope and the adjacent mountains. About eighty had assembled, merely to spend the night in prayer, reading the Scriptures, &c. The curate of Tweedsmuir, a poor dissolute wretch, sent a flaming account of this in writing to the privy council, magnifying that simple affair to a great and dangerous meeting of armed men. The council took the alarm, raised the hue and cry, and offered a reward for the apprehending of any one who had been at the meeting of Tallo–Lins. The curate, learning that a party of the king’s troops was lodged that night in his parish and neighbourhood, came to Tweedshaws at a late hour, and requested to speak with the captain of the party. He then informed Douglas of the meeting, shewed him the council’s letter and proclamation, and finally told him that there was a man in a cottage hard by whom he strongly suspected to have formed one at the meeting alluded to in the proclamation. There being no conveniency for lodging so many people at Tweedshaws, Douglas and the curate drank together all the night, as did the soldiers in another party. A number of friends to the prisoners had given them money when they left Dumfries for Edinburgh, to supply as well as they might the privations to which they would be subjected; but here the military took the greater part of it from them to supply their intemperance. About the break of day, they went and surrounded a shepherd’s cottage belonging to the farm of Corehead, having been led thither by the curate, where they found the shepherd an old man, his daughter, and one Edward M’Cane, son to a merchant in Lanarkshire, who was courting this shepherdess, a beautiful young maiden. The curate having got intelligence that a stranger was at that house, immediately suspected him to be one of the wanderers, and on this surmise the information was given. The curate acknowledged the shepherd and his daughter as parishioners, but of M’Cane, he said, he knew nothing, and had no doubt that he was one of the rebellious whigs. They fell to examine the youth, but they were all affected with the liquor they had drunk over night, and made a mere farce of it, paying no regard to his answers, or, if they did, it was merely to misconstrue or mock them. He denied having been at the meeting at Tallo–Linns, and all acquaintance with the individuals whom they named as having been there present. Finding that they could make nothing of him whereon to ground a charge, Douglas made them search him for arms; for being somewhat drunk, he took it highly amiss that he should have been brought out of his way for nothing. M’Cane judged himself safe on that score, for he knew that he had neither knife, razor, bodkin, nor edged instrument of any kind about him; but as ill luck would have it, he chanced to have an old gun–flint in his waistcoat pocket. Douglas instantly pronounced this to be