Although Peden was thus banished from that pulpit to which, during the civil wars, he had been elected by the unanimous voice of a most attached people, he did not thereupon, or therefore, refrain entirely from exercising his function as a minister of the Gospel; but, having betaken himself to those fastnesses which lie betwixt Wigton and Ayrshire, he was in the habit of assembling, occasionally, around him the greater part of his congregation, as well as many belonging to the neighbouring parishes. In the meantime, after several months' vacancy, a young and half-educated lad from Aberdeen was appointed by the government in the capacity of curate. This person was, of course, hated by the parish; but this hatred was exalted to abhorrence, in consequence of his immoral and unclerical life and conversation.
William Smith and Jessie Lawson were the children, the first of a respectable farmer, and the other of a pious, though poor widow woman. There had been some difficulties in the way of the lovers—
"For the course of true love never yet run smooth;"
but these had at last been removed, and the young couple were about to be united, with the consent of relatives, in the honourable bands of matrimony. But the young and dissolute curate had caught a glimpse of Jessie; and, having been fascinated by her beauty, had not been backward in signifying, both to mother and daughter, his honourable (for they really were so in this case) intentions. Janet, however, was too sound a Covenanter to give her consent.
"Na, na," she continued; "my bairn, I wot weel, has been baptised by the holy Mr Welsh, and she has lang sucked in the milk o' the true and Covenanted Word, frae worthy and godly Mr Peden, and it will ill become her to turn her baek on her first lover, for the sake o' ony yearthly concern whatever."
In the meantime winter drew on, with its frosts, and its blasts, and its snows, and the lovers became more and more anxious to be united in the bands of hallowed love, in consequence of the pressing and importunate addresses of the curate. Here, however, a difficulty occurred, which was, however, overcome, by bribing the schoolmaster, as session-clerk, to proclaim them to empty benches, and by obtaining Peden's consent to perform the marriage-ceremony on their producing the requisite evidence of proclamation. The place appointed was the Bogle Glen, and the time midnight, on the second day of January, 1684. The night—for such meetings were usually held during night—was stormy; there being a considerable degree of snow-drift; but Peden was not easily diverted from his purpose; nor was his audience unaccustomed to such exposures. So the night-meeting for religious worship took place beneath the Gleds' Craig, from the brow or apron of which the minister officiated. Beneath him, huddled together under plaids, stood his devoted and attentive congregation, whilst the moon looked down at intervals on a landscape over which a frosty wind was ever and anon carrying the snow-drift. Beside the speaker were arranged, on chairs and stools, some young women bearing children to be baptised, and the youthful couple about to be united in marriage. The usual service proceeded, and the voice of psalms was heard amidst the solemn stillness of the midnight hour. The children were next baptised from an adjoining well, which presented itself opportunely, like the waters of Meribah, from a cleft of the rock. The young people had just been united, and Peden was in the act of pronouncing the usual benediction, when the tramp of horses' feet was suddenly heard; and, in an instant, a discharge of muskets indicated but too surely the nature of the assault. All was challenge, capture, and dispersion; through which the screams of the young bride and the menacing voice of the curate were distinctly heard.
About four o'clock of the same eventful night, the manse of New Luce was discovered to be on fire, and some hundreds of figures were seen congregated in frantic and menacing attitudes around it. At last a form was discovered, bearing off from the flames something which appeared to be inanimate. The curate's screams were heard from his bedroom-window, and, by the assistance of the military, who had now arrived, he was relieved by a rope from his critical situation; and the young lovers were next morning discovered, safe and uninjured, in their own home, and in each other's arms.
IV.—THE PROSECUTION OF THE M'MICHAELS.
The miseries of war are not confined to the battle-field and the actual return of the killed and wounded. There is an atmosphere of wo and intense suffering, which hangs dense and heavy over the whole theatre of war—the devastation and horrors of a wide-marching enemy, advancing like the simoom of the desert, and converting into a howling wilderness the peopled and rejoicing district. Life is extinguished by terror and deprivation, as well as by the sword; and with this difference, too, that the former process is so much the more severe that it is protracted and defenceless. Civil war is, in this respect in particular, the most revolting of all. The animosities and resentments of opposing parties are greatly exasperated by proximity of situation and community of country; and the revenge of the stronger directed upon the weaker party is uniformly marked by many atrocities. Of this character was, unhappily, the latter period of the domination of Charles II., together with the whole four years of the Papistical infatuation of the second James. Men, women, and children were not only shot, drowned, and spiked, but thousands who escaped this extreme fate, were so worn out by watchings, and cold, and hunger, and mental anxieties, as to fall under the power of diseases from which they never recovered.