Margaret Lauchlison, being an aged woman of eighty years, said no word as the tide rose above her breast, where lowest in the river bed she stood waiting. Her head hung down, and it was not till the water reached her lips that she began to struggle, nor did I see her make so much as a movement. Yet she was determined to die as she had lived, an honest, peaceable, Christian woman of a good confession--not learned, save in the scholarship of God, but therein of high attainment and great experience. And all honour be to her, for even as she determined, so she died. Then, when some of the soldiers were for fleeching with her to take the Test, Lag cried out (for he ever loved his devil's-broth served hot): "Bide ye there! 'Tis needless to speak to the old besom! Let her go quick to hell!" But Provost Coltran, sober enough this morning, and with other things to think of than the crows, come to the bank edge. And standing where his feet were nearly on a level with our little Margaret's head, he said to her: "What see ye down there, Margaret Wilson? What think ye? Can you with constancy suffer the choking of the salt water when it comes to your turn?" Now, though Coltran was a rude man, and pang full of oaths, he spoke not so unfeelingly. But to him Margaret replied, in a sweet voice that wafted up like the singing of a psalm, from the sweltering pit of pain: "I see naught but Christ struggling there in the water in the person of one of His saints!" Then the Provost came nearer still, and bending down like an elder that gives counsel, said to her, "Margaret, ye are young and ken no better. We will give you your life gin ye pray for the King. Will ye say aloud 'God save the King'?" "I desire the salvation of all men," Margaret said. "May God save him an He will!" Coltran rose with a flush of triumph in his eye. He was none so bad a man, only dazed with drink and bad company. "She has said it!" he cried, and from far and near the people took up the cry "She has said it, she has said it!" And some were glad and some shook their heads for what they counted the dishonour of the submission. Now, Blednoch sands under Wigtown town were a sight to behold that day. They were black with folk, all in scattering, changing groups. There were many clouds of folk on the sands when the lassies were "pitten doon," and in every little company there was one praying. Through them patrolled the soldiers in fours, breaking up each little band of worshippers, which dissolved only to come together again as soon as they had passed. Then the town officer, a cruel and ill-liked man, who never did well afterwards all his days, took his long-hafted halbert, and, standing on the verge of the bank, he set the end of it to Margaret Lauchlison's neck. "Bide ye doon there and clep wi' the partans, Margaret, my woman!" he said, holding her head under water till it hung loose and the life went from it.