As we went Kate McGhie walked by my side, and we talked together. She told me that she came against her parents' will, though not without her father's knowledge; and that it was her great love for Maisie Lennox, who was her friend and gossip, which had first drawn her to a belief in the faith of the hill-folk. "But there is one thing," said she, "that I cannot hold with them in. I am no rebel, and I care not to disown the authority of the King!" "Yet you look not like a sufferer in silence!" I said, smiling at her. "Are you a maid of the Quaker folk?" At which she was fain to laugh and deny it. "But," I said, "if you are a King's woman, you will surely find yourself in a strange company to-day. Yet there is one here of the same mind as yourself." Then she entreated me to tell her who that might be. "Oh, not I," I replied, "I have had enough of Charles Stuart. I could eat with ease all I like of him, or his brother either! It is my cousin of Lochinvar, who has been lately put to the horn and outlawed." At the name she seemed much surprised. "It were well not to name him here," she said, "for the chief men know of his past companying with Claverhouse and other malignants, and they might distrust his honesty and yours." We had other pleasant talk by the way, and she told me of all her house, of her uncle that was at Kirkcudbright with Captain Winram and the garrison there, and of her father that had forbidden her to go to the field-meetings. "Which is perhaps why I am here!" she said, glancing at me with her bold black eyes. As I went I could hear behind us the soft words and low speech of Maisie Lennox, who came with my cousin Wat and Margaret of Glen Vernock. What was the matter of their speech I could not discover, though I own I was eager to learn. But they seemed to agree well together, which seemed strange to me, for I was a much older acquaintance than he. Now, especially when in the wilder places, we came to walk all four together, it seemed a very pleasant thing to me to go thus to the worship of God in company. And I began from that hour to think kindlier of the field-folks' way of hearing a preacher in the open country. This, as I well know, says but little for me; yet I will be plain and conceal nothing of the way by which I was led from being a careless and formal home-keeper, to cast in my lot with the remnant who abode in the fields and were persecuted. CHAPTER XXI. THE GREAT CONVENTICLE BY THE DEE WATER. _A Note to the Reader._ _I am warned that there are many folk who care not to hear what things were truly said and done at a conventicle of the hill-folk. I have told the tale so that such may omit the reading of these two chapters. Nevertheless, if they will take a friend's word, it might be for their advantage to read the whole._ _W. G._