It is distant about five miles, and Annie had not far to remove from her father's house to that of her husband. She was twenty-eight at the time of her marriage.
The Fergusons are a much older family, as families are reckoned, than the Lauries. Fergusons of Craigdarrock were attached to the courts of William the Lion and Alexander the II. (1214-1249).
Craigdarrock House stands near the foot of one of the three glens whose waters unite to form the Cairn. The hills draw together here, and give an air of seclusion to the house and grounds. The house, large and substantial, lacks the picturesqueness of Maxwelton. It is pale pink in tone with window-casings and copings of French gray. The delicate cotoneaster vine clings to the stones of it. There are pretty reaches of lawns and abundant shrubberies, and in one place Craigdarrock Water has been diverted to form a lake, spanned in one part by a high bridge. Sheep feed upon the hills topped with green pastures, at the south, and shaggy Highland cattle in the meadows below. A heavy wood overhangs to the north. There is plenty of fine timber on the grounds, beeches, and great silver firs and, especially to be named, ancient larches with knees and elbows like old oaks, given to the proprietor by George II., when the larch was first introduced into Scotland.
The present proprietor of Craigdarrock is Captain Robert Ferguson, of the fourth generation in direct descent from Annie Laurie.
Religion has always been a burning question in Scotland, and about Annie's time the flames raged with peculiar ferocity. Her father, Sir Robert Laurie, was a bitter enemy of the Covenantry, and his name finds a somewhat unenviable fame in mortuary verses of this sort cut upon gravestones:
"Douglas of Stenhouse, Laurie of Maxwelton, Caused Count Baillie give me martyrdom."
But the Fergusons were staunch Covenanters, and Annie, if we may judge from her marriage with one of that party, must have favored "compromise." Without doubt she must have worshipped with her husband in the old parish kirk, which was burned about fifty years since. The two end gables, ivy-shrouded, are still standing.
Against the east gable is the burial-ground of the Lauries, and against the west that of the Fergusons. A ponderous monument marks the grave of Annie's grandfather, cut with those hideous emblems which former generations seemed to delight in. But the burial-place of the Fergusons is singularly lacking in early monuments, and no stone marks the place of Annie's rest. It is a sweet, secluded spot, and Cock-Robin—it was September—was chanting his cheerful noonday song over the sleepers when I was there.
At Craigdarrock House is kept Annie's will, a copy of which I give. As a will, simply, it is of no special value. As Annie Laurie's, it will be read with interest.