But there was, after all, a method in his madness. There was a particular reason for the peculiar usages which his imagination conjured up; and it was this:--During the hottest period of the Persecution, Old Bluntie, who was by profession a shoemaker, had taken to this (to him) well-known and familiar recess. There he remained during the day; but at night he stole out, with the beasts of prey, to obtain food. His wife (for he had no children) had been shot, one day, by a dragoon, as she stood in her doorway. The man simply exclaimed--"That's the Covenanting b----!" fired his pistol, and the woman fell. Bluntie became, ever after this, altogether reckless; his only object was, by one means or another, by hook or by crook, to lead or decoy the persecutors into ambushes and danger. It was he mainly who decoyed the party into the Pass of Enterkin, already described in these papers. He pretended to turn informer; but when the cave was searched, the inmate was flown; but a rifle-gun, from behind a hedge, seldom missed its mark. Another plan of his was of a somewhat original character. Creehope Linn divides, as I have already described, a sandstone rock, over which there lies a deep layer of moss, surmounted by close and tall heather--at least this was the case formerly, and may be so still. For a considerable way below the fall known by the name of the "Grey Mare's Tail," the linn _almost_ meets above, and the heather _altogether_--to an inexperienced stranger, there is no evidence whatever of the dreadful abyss, of sixty feet depth, which yawns beneath. The ground around is level, and the water moves on at such a distance from the surface, that, unless in floods, it is quite inaudible. Clavers at this time was a stranger in the southern district, to which, in consequence of Turner's rising at Dumfries, he had been recently appointed; and his men were, of course, equally strangers. Old Bluntie caused a report to be conveyed to Clavers, whilst stationed at Croalchapel, in the neighbourhood, that a number of the friends of the Covenant, with old Cargill at their head, were to have a meeting, or conventicle, in a hollow glen, fifty yards south of the Linn. It was, of course, to take place at night, and by favour of a harvest moon. Having been deceived by false intelligence on other occasions, Clavers ordered Red Rob to lead a troop of ten men into an adjoining cleugh, and there to dismiss one of them on foot to reconnoitre the ground. All this was done. But when the soldier came within sight of the place of meeting, he found only one man, whom he immediately hailed. The figure started, and ran swiftly away, whilst a ball went fully more swiftly in pursuit, but missed its mark. The soldier pursued sword in hand, and Bluntie made the best of his way onward towards the mountain pass of Bellybught. But, all at once, the soldier disappeared. He had sunk through the heather, and was not to be seen. The other nine dragoons, who had heard the report,