"Cousin David, that is just the finishing touch!" she exclaimed, in no small glee. "Your appearance would deceive the cleverest person in the world, I am sure. You look exactly like an aged dame who has weathered a good many storms on the road. If you don't reach Inverburn in safety in my mother's old gown, my name isn't Ailie Kilgour."
"What say you, Uncle Edward?" asked David Gray, turning to the old man.
"Truly, lad, the deception is most wonderful," he replied. "Of course it is hardly a fitting thing for a minister of the kirk to tramp the country in an old wife's gown, but desperate ills need desperate remedies. So I would say, take the lassie's advice, and God go with you."
"Well, I will," said David Gray, "for in my own person and garb I am convinced I should never reach Inverburn alive, nor, indeed, get beyond the environs of Edinburgh."
"You said the pursuers went by the Lanark road," said Ailie. "Your plan will be to go to Stirling, and then across the moors. I daresay you will find the way."
"Easily," responded David Gray, cheerfully. "You are a clever, far-seeing woman, cousin; the thought of such a disguise would never have entered my head."
"It will be a great joy to me, Cousin David, if I am rewarded by saving your life," she said, with a smile and a tear, and so the matter was settled.
All that day David Gray remained in hiding in his uncle's abode, and early on the following morning he bade them both a warm farewell, and set out upon his journey back to his native place. As Ailie watched the gaunt, uncouth-looking figure with the basket and the big cotton umbrella stalking down the street, the very picture of a practised peddling woman, she scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry. So a woman's ingenuity twice outwitted the sharpness of the Government.
We have been long absent from the vale of Inverburn, yet truly nothing of note was happening there, only a dreary and despairing waiting for the dawning of a brighter day, occasionally deepened and intensified by some deed of violence or brutal pillage executed by the dragoons, who infested the entire west of Scotland. Since the fateful day of Bothwell severities had been increased, greater licence given to the soldiery, and less mercy extended to the suffering country folk, whether there were anything against them or not. Along the entire course of the Clyde the country presented a most dismal aspect. In place of smiling homesteads and rich and fertile fields, there was nothing to be seen but smouldering ruins and tract upon tract of desolate wastes, which had not been upturned by the plough for many a year. The population, though now sadly thinned, was in a state bordering upon starvation, everything they had formerly possessed having been stolen from them, and every means of subsistence removed. Yet still it seemed as if the words of Scripture must needs be literally fulfilled, since from him that had not was taken even that which he had. Hundreds had no shelter in the wide earth save that afforded by glens and caves and mountain fastnesses, and even there they were not safe.
The farm of Hartrigge had not escaped these later desolations, for now all that remained of that once substantial and even imposing homestead was one cot-house, which had escaped the flames on account of it being detached from the main buildings, and having thus been overlooked by the ruffians, who, after pillaging the entire place, had set it on fire.