In the grey dawning of the sweet summer morning they came within sight of the grey towers and turrets of the city.
CHAPTER XXIII.
IN CAPTIVITY.
The prisons in Edinburgh were so full that they could hold no more. What, then, was to be done with the twelve hundred victims brought from the slaughter at Bothwell Bridge?
The Government ordered that they should be shut into the churchyard of the Greyfriars, and there kept unceasing watch over day and night. So the old burying-ground, made memorable and sacred by another great gathering which had assembled within its boundaries forty years before, was now converted into an open gaol, the horrors of which pen could never describe.
In the Grass-market there abode still Edward Kilgour, the merchant, brother-in-law to the late minister of Inverburn. Although a zealous and worthy Presbyterian, he had never joined with his brethren in arms, but had followed the dictates of his conscience and religion more quietly at home, attending to his business and the affairs of his household, and had thus escaped molestation. He was a man now stricken in years, but was still able to perform the duties of his calling, and attend personally in his place of business. His daughter Ailie, now a middle-aged woman, had remained unmarried for her father's sake, and kept his house.
When they heard of the arrival of the prisoners from Bothwell, they were both much exercised in their minds as to whether any of their Inverburn kinsfolk should be among them.
"I'll go up, Ailie," said the old man, "I'll go up to the kirkyard, and, if permitted to approach the gates, see whether I can discern any of the faces of our dear ones among that pitiful throng. Very sure am I that, unless your cousins Andrew and David and Adam Hepburn were slain on the field, they will be there, for they would never turn their backs upon the foe."
"Do not needlessly expose yourself, father," said his daughter, anxiously. "Though you find any of my cousins there, what profit will it be but only to vex us, seeing we cannot help them?"
"You may be right, but I cannot sit still at home till I learn whether any of them be there," said the old man, quietly, and, getting his plaid about his shoulders, went out upon his quest.