"I wonder," said my son, "that they did na speak to me: I thought they had a black look."
"No doubt, Joseph," was my answer, "the men are no lost to a' sense of shame. They canna but be rebuked at the sight of a man that, maybe against their will, poor fellows, they were sent to oppress."
"I dinna like them the day, father, they're unco like ill-doers," said the thoughtful and observing stripling.
But my spirit was at the time full of good-will towards all men, and I reasoned with him against giving way to unkind thoughts, expounding, to the best of my ability, the nature of Gospel-charity, and the heavenlyness of good-will, saying to him,—
"The nature of charity's like the light o' the sun, by which all things are cherished. It is the brightness of the soul, and the glorious quality which proves our celestial descent. Our other feelings are common to a' creatures, but the feeling of charity is divine. It's the only thing in which man partakes of the nature of God."
Discoursing in this scriptural manner, we reached the Gowan-brae. My heart beat high with gladness. My son bounded forward to tell his mother and sisters of my coming. On gaining the brow of the hill he leapt from the ground with a frantic cry and clasped his hands. I ran towards him—but I remember no more—though at times something crosses my mind, and I have wild visions of roofless walls, and a crowd of weeping women and silent men digging among ashes, and a beautiful body, all dropping wet, brought on a deal from the mill-dam, and of men, as it was carried by, seizing me by the arms and tying my hands,—and then I fancy myself in a house fastened to a chair;—and sometimes I think I was lifted out and placed to beek in the sun and to taste the fresh air. But what these things import I dare only guess, for no one has ever told me what became of my benign Sarah Lochrig and our two blooming daughters;—all is phantasma that I recollect of the day of my return home. I said my soul was iron, and my heart converted into stone. O that they were indeed so! But sorrowing is a vain thing, and my task must not stand still.
When I left Ayr the leaves were green, and the fields gay, and the waters glad; and when the yellow leaf rustled on the ground, and the waters were drumly, and the river roaring, I was somehow, I know not by what means, in the kirk-yard, and a film fell from the eyes of my reason, and I looked around, and my little boy had hold of me by the hand, and I said to him, "Joseph, what's yon sae big and green in our lair?" and he gazed in my face, and the tears came into his eyes, and he replied,—
"Father, they are a' in the same grave." I took my hand out of his;—I walked slowly to the green tomb;—I knelt down, and I caused my son to kneel beside me, and I vowed enmity for ever against Charles Stuart and all of his line; and I prayed, in the words of the Psalmist, that when he was judged he might be condemned. Then we rose; but my son said to me,—
"Father, I canna wish his condemnation; but I'll fight by your side till we have harlt him down from his bloody throne."
And I felt that I had forgotten I was a Christian, and I again knelt down and prayed, but it was for the sin I had done in the vengeance of the latter clause. "Nevertheless, Lord," I then cried, "as Thou Thyself didst take the sceptre from Saul, and gave the crown to David, make me an instrument to work out the purposes of Thy dreadful justice, which in time will come to be."