At last, one day, early in the morning, leaving the cave, he came to the door of the house. His brother's wife warned him of his danger, advising him to return to his place of concealment. He told her it was needless to do that, since it was discovered.
"But," said he, "there is no matter, for within forty-eight hours I will be beyond the reach of all the devil's temptations, and his instruments in hell and on earth, and they shall trouble me no more."
He had not been in the house above three hours when a party of soldiers visited the cave, and not finding him there, they searched first the barn, and next the house, stabbing the beds, but they did not enter the place where he lay.
Peden died on the 28th of January, 1686, being upwards of sixty years of age, and was privately buried in the church of Auchinleck, in the aisle of David Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck. But his ashes were not allowed to repose in peace. Though he had never been condemned by any jury, yet the enemy, being informed of his death and burial, sent a troop of dragoons, who pulled his corpse out of the grave after it had lain about six weeks, and having first broken the chest, exposed his remains to contempt, and then carried them to the gallows foot at Cumnock, two miles distant, and there buried them. The design of the soldiers in lifting the body was to hang it in chains upon the gallows at Cumnock, but this they were prevented from doing. The Countess of Dumfries and the Lady Affleck, shocked at this barbarity, earnestly interceded that the body might be again buried; and when the savage commander of the dragoons, determined to have it hung in chains, proved unrelenting, they applied to the Earl of Dumfries, a Privy Councillor, then at home, who, yielding to their request, went to the gibbet and told Murray that it was erected for malefactors and murderers, and not for such men as Mr. Peden. The corpse was accordingly reinterred at the foot of the gibbet, now within the wall of the common burial-ground of Cumnock parish, and a suitable memorial erected over the remains, on which was inscribed an appropriate epitaph.
A DAY'S WORK.
The amount of work some people get through is simply enormous. Few people are harder worked than a London physician in active practice. We know a doctor who seldom gets more than four hours' sleep out of the twenty-four. He says that it is not that he couldn't do with more, but it is as much as he can get. Many busy men are constantly at work of some kind or the other from eight in the morning till past twelve at night. Some, of course, break down, but others can do this year after year, apparently without any detriment to their health. Instances are known of professional men who have not slept for five days together, and who have not been in bed for three weeks at a time. These sound almost like travellers' tales, but they are true, although, of course, they are exceptional cases. It is astonishing what interest and energy will do in enabling a man to dispense with rest. It has been said that the twenty-four hours might be advantageously divided into three equal parts—eight hours for sleep, eight for meals, exercise, recreation, &c., and eight for mental work. Few men really require more than eight hours' sleep, but the majority of us have to do considerably more than eight hours' work in the day. It is not so much that a man wishes for the work, as that it is forced upon him. He, perhaps, is the only person who can perform a certain duty, and when, as is often the case, it is a question of life and death, it is almost impossible to refuse. Many people can never force themselves to do more than a certain amount of mental work; they get nervous and headachy, and then it is all over with them. Forced work, as a rule, tells on a man much more rapidly than purely voluntary work, for in the former case it is usually associated with anxiety. Real overwork gives rise to loss of memory, a general sense of fatigue, and particularly of discomfort about the head, poorness of appetite, lowness of spirits, and other similar symptoms. It is worry that injures more than real work. Some people are so happily constituted that they never worry much about anything, whilst others are in a fever of anxiety on every trivial occasion.—The Family Physician.