Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS AND OF SCOTLAND. HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE. WITH A GLOSSARY. REVISED BY ALEXANDER LEIGHTON ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS. VOL. XVI. LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. 1885. CONTENTS. THE LEVELLER, _(JOHN MACKAY WILSON)_ THE OLD CHRONICLER'S TALES, _(ALEXANDER LEIGHTON)_ THE DEATH OF JAMES III. GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT. _(PROFESSOR THOMAS GILLESPIE_) V.--THE RESCUE AT ENTERKIN VI.--THE FATAL MISTAKE VII.--BONNY MARY GIBSON VIII.--THE ESKDALEMUIR STORY IX.--THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY THE COUNTESS OF CASSILIS, _(ALEXANDER CAMPBELL)_ THE HAPPY CONCLUSION, _(ANON.)_ MR SAMUEL RAMSAY THRIVEN: A TALE OF LOVE AND BANKRUPTCY, _(ALEXANDER LEIGHTON)_ THE MAN-OF-WAR'S MAN, _(JOHN HOWELL)_ THE ANGLER'S TALE, _(OLIVER RICHARDSON)_ PERSEVERANCE; OR, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RODERIC GRAY, _(JOHN MACKAY WILSON)_ THE IRISH REAPER, _(JOHN MACKAY WILSON)_ GRACE CAMERON, _(ALEXANDER CAMPBELL)_ THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE, _(ANON.)_ WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND. THE LEVELLER. How far the term, "A Leveller," is provincial, or confined to the Borders, I am not certain; for before I had left them, to become as a pilgrim on the earth, the phrase had fallen into disuse, and the events, or rather the cause which brought it into existence, had passed away. But, twenty-five or even twenty years ago, in these parts, there was no epithet more familiar to the lips of every schoolboy than that of a _Leveller_. The juvenile lovers of mirth and mischief displayed their loyalty, by _smeeking_ the houses or burning the effigies of the Levellers; and he was a good subject and a perfect gentleman, who, out of his liberality and patriotism, contributed a shilling to purchase powder to make the head of the effigy go off in a rocket, and its fingers start away in squibs. Levellers were persecuted by the young, and suspected by the old. Every town and village in the kingdom had its coterie of Levellers. They did not congregate together; for, as being suspected individuals, their so doing would have been attended with danger; but there was a sympathy and a sort of brotherhood amongst those in the same place, and they met in twos and threes, at the corners of the streets, in the fields, or the workshop, and not unfrequently at the operating rooms of the barber, as though there had been a secret understanding in the growth of their beards. Some of them were generally seen waiting the arrival of the mail, and running across the street, or the highway, as the case might be, eagerly inquiring of the