“I am sore vexed to have made our father angry,” he said, “but the answer came upon me suddenly, and in truth it was a proper jest--for, of course, a leopard could not play back-sword.” CHAPTER VIII. THE MUSTER OF THE HILL FOLK. Men who know the strange history of the later life of me, Quintin MacClellan, may wonder that the present narrative discovers so little concerning my changes of opinion and stresses of spiritual conflict. But of these things I have written in extension elsewhere, and those who desire more than a personal narrative know well where to find the recital of my difficulties, covenantings, and combatings for the cause. For myself, the memory of the day on the Bennan top was more than enough, and made me a high Covenant man for life. So that when I heard how King James was fled and his son-in-law, William of Orange, landed I could not contain myself, but bade Hob and David to come with me and light a beacon-fire on the top of the Millyea, that fair and shapely mountain. This after severe labour we did, and they say that the light was seen over a dozen parishes. Then there came word to the Glenkens that there was to be a Convention in Edinburgh of men chosen out of every shire and county, called and presided over by Duke Hamilton. But it was the bruit of the countryside that this parliament would turn out even as the others, and be ground under the heel of the old kingsmen and malignants.[4] So about this time there came to see my father two men grave and grey, their beards blanched with dripping hill-caves and with sleeping out in the snell winds and biting frosts of many a winter, without better shelter than some cold moss-hag or the bieldy side of a snow wreath. “There is to be a great rising of the Seven Thousand. The whole West is marching to Edinburgh!” cried in at the door the elder of the two--one Steel, a noted Covenanter from Lesmahago. But the other, when his dark cloak blew back, showed a man of slender figure, but with a face of calm resolve and indomitable courage--the proven face of a soldier. He was in a fair uniform--that, as I afterwards found, of one of the Prince of Orange’s Scots-Dutch regiments. “This,” said Steel to my father, “is Colonel William Gordon, brother of Earlstoun, who is come directly from the Prince of Orange to represent his cause in his own country of the West.” In a moment a spark lighted in my heart, blazed up and leaped to my tongue. “What,” I cried, “William Gordon--who carried the banner at Sanquhar and fought shoulder to shoulder with Cameron at Ayrsmoss.” For it was my mother’s favourite tale. The slender man with the calm soldier-like face smiled quietly and made me a little bow, the like of which for grace I had never seen in our land. It had so much of foreign habitude in it, mixed with a simple and personal kindliness native to the man. “Ah,” he said, “I am ten years older since then--I fear me not ten years wiser.”