Hunted and Harried by Robert Michael Ballantyne (best ebook pdf reader android .TXT) 📖

to check the savage soldiery.

It is said that afterwards his royal father--for he was an illegitimate son of the King--found fault with him for his leniency after Bothwell. We can well believe it; for in a letter which he had previously sent to the council Charles wrote that it was "his royal will and pleasure that they should prosecute the rebels with fire and sword, and all other extremities of war." Speaking at another time to Monmouth about his conduct, Charles said, "If I had been present there should have been no trouble about prisoners." To which Monmouth replied, "If that was your wish, you should not have sent me but a _butcher_!"

In the general flight Black, owing to his lame leg, stumbled over a bank, pitched on his head, and lay stunned. Quentin Dick, stooping to succour him, was knocked down from behind, and both were captured. Fortunately Monmouth chanced to be near them at the time and prevented their being slaughtered on the spot, like so many of their countrymen, of whom it is estimated that upwards of four hundred were slain in the pursuit that succeeded the fight--many of them being men of the neighbourhood, who had not been present on the actual field of battle at all. Among others Wallace's uncle, David Spence, was killed. Twelve hundred, it is said, laid down their arms and surrendered at discretion.

Wallace himself, seeing that the day was lost and further resistance useless, and having been separated from his friends in the general _melee_, sought refuge in a clump of alders on the banks of the river. Another fugitive made for the same spot about the same time. He was an old man, yet vigorous, and ran well; but the soldiers who pursued soon came up and knocked him down. Having already received several dangerous wounds in the head, the old man seemed to feel that he had reached the end of his career on earth, and calmly prepared for death. But the end had not yet come. Even among the blood-stained troops of the King there were men whose hearts were not made of flint, and who, doubtless, disapproved of the cruel work in which it was their duty to take part. Instead of giving the old man the _coup de grace_, one of the soldiers asked his name.

"Donald Cargill," answered the wounded man.

"That name sounds familiar," said the soldier. "Are not you a minister?"

"Yea, I have the honour to be one of the Lord's servants."

Upon hearing this the soldiers let him go, and bade him get off the field as fast as possible.

Cargill was not slow to obey, and soon reached the alders, where he fell almost fainting to the ground. Here he was discovered by Wallace, and recognised as the old man whom he had met in Andrew Black's hidy-hole. The poor man could scarcely walk; but with the assistance of his stout young friend, who carefully dressed his wounds, he managed to escape. Wallace himself was not so fortunate. After leaving Cargill in a place of comparative safety, he had not the heart to think only of his own escape while uncertain of the fate of his friends. He was aware, indeed, of his uncle's death, but knew nothing about Andrew Black, Quentin Dick, or Ramblin' Peter. When, therefore, night had put an end to the fiendish work, he returned cautiously to search the field of battle; but, while endeavouring to clamber over a wall, was suddenly pounced upon by half a dozen soldiers and made prisoner.

At an earlier part of the evening he would certainly have been murdered on the spot, but by that time the royalists were probably tired of indiscriminate slaughter, for they merely bound his arms and led him to a spot where those Covenanters who had been taken prisoners were guarded.

The guarding was of the strangest and cruellest. The prisoners were made to lie flat down on the ground--many of them having been previously stripped nearly naked; and if any of them ventured to change their positions, or raise their heads to implore a draught of water, they were instantly shot.

Next day the survivors were tied together in couples and driven off the ground like a herd of cattle. Will Wallace stood awaiting his turn, and watching the first band of prisoners march off. Suddenly he observed Andrew Black coupled to Quentin Dick. They passed closed to him. As they did so their eyes met.

"Losh, man, is that you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I _am_ gled to see that yer still leevin'!"

"Not more glad than I to see that you're not dead," responded Will quickly. "Where's Peter and Bruce?"

A stern command to keep silence and move on drowned the answer, and in another minute Wallace, with an unknown comrade-in-arms, had joined the procession.

Thus they were led--or rather driven--with every species of cruel indignity, to Edinburgh; but the jails there were already full; there was no place in which to stow such noxious animals! Had Charles the Second been there, according to his own statement, he would have had no difficulty in dealing with them; but bad as the Council was, it was not quite so brutal, it would seem, as the King.

"Put them in the Greyfriars Churchyard," was the order--and to that celebrated spot they were marched.

Seated at her back window in Candlemaker Row, Mrs. Black observed, with some surprise and curiosity, the sad procession wending its way among the tombs and round the church. The news of the fight at Bothwell Bridge had only just reached the city, and she knew nothing of the details. Mrs. Wallace and Jean Black were seated beside her knitting.

"Wha'll they be, noo?" soliloquised Mrs. Black.

"Maybe prisoners taken at Bothwell Brig," suggested Mrs. Wallace.

Jean started, dropped her knitting, and said in a low, anxious voice, as she gazed earnestly at the procession, "If--if it's them, uncle Andrew an'--an'--the others may be amang them!"

The procession was not more than a hundred yards distant--near enough for sharp, loving eyes to distinguish friends.

"I see them!" cried Jean eagerly.

Next moment she had leaped over the window, which was not much over six feet from the ground. She doubled round a tombstone, and, running towards the prisoners, got near enough to see the head of the procession pass through a large iron gate at the south-west corner of the churchyard, and to see clearly that her uncle and Quentin Dick were there--tied together. Here a soldier stopped her. As she turned to entreat permission to pass on she encountered the anxious gaze of Will Wallace as he passed. There was time for the glance of recognition, that was all. A few minutes more and the long procession had passed into what afterwards proved to be one of the most terrible prisons of which we have any record in history.

Jean Black was thrust out of the churchyard along with a crowd of others who had entered by the front gate. Filled with dismay and anxious forebodings, she returned to her temporary home in the Row.


CHAPTER NINE.


AMONG THE TOMBS.

The enclosure at the south-western corner of Greyfriars Churchyard, which had been chosen as the prison of the men who were spared after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, was a small narrow space enclosed by very high walls, and guarded by a strong iron gate--the same gate, probably, which still hangs there at the present day.

There, among the tombs, without any covering to shelter them from the wind and rain, without bedding or sufficient food, with the dank grass for their couches and graves for pillows, did most of these unfortunates--from twelve to fifteen hundred--live during the succeeding five months. They were rigorously guarded night and day by sentinels who were held answerable with their lives for the safe keeping of the prisoners. During the daytime they stood or moved about uneasily. At nights if any of them ventured to rise the sentinels had orders to fire upon them. If they had been dogs they could not have been treated worse. Being men, their sufferings were terrible--inconceivable. Ere long many a poor fellow found a death-bed among the graves of that gloomy enclosure. To add to their misery, friends were seldom permitted to visit them, and those who did obtain leave were chiefly females, who were exposed to the insults of the guards.

A week or so after their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood one afternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dick and Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass and their garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to have deepened their despair, for they remained silent for an unusually long time.

"This _is_ awfu'!" said Black at last with a deep sigh. "If there was ony chance o' makin' a dash an' fechtin' to the end, I wad tak' comfort; but to be left here to sterve an' rot, nicht an' day, wi' naethin' to do an' maist naethin' to think on--it's--it's awfu'!"

As the honest man could not get no further than this idea--and the idea itself was a mere truism--no response was drawn from his companions, who sat with clenched fists, staring vacantly before them. Probably the first stage of incipient madness had set in with all of them.

"Did Jean give you any hope yesterday?" asked Wallace languidly; for he had asked the same question every day since the poor girl had been permitted to hold a brief conversation with her uncle at the iron gate, towards which only one prisoner at a time was allowed to approach. The answer had always been the same.

"Na, na. She bids me hope, indeed, in the Lord--an' she's right there; but as for man, what can we hope frae _him_?"

"Ye may weel ask that!" exclaimed Quentin Dick, with sudden and bitter emphasis. "Man indeed! It's my opeenion that man, when left to hissel', is nae better than the deevil. I' faith, I think he's waur, for he's mair contemptible."

"Ye may be right, Quentin, for a' I ken; but some men are no' left to theirsel's. There's that puir young chiel Anderson, that was shot i' the lungs an' has scarce been able the last day or twa to crawl to the yett to see his auld mither--he's deeing this afternoon. I went ower to the tombstane that keeps the east wund aff him, an' he said to me, `Andry, man,' said he, `I'll no' be able to crawl to see my mither the day. I'll vera likely be deid before she comes. Wull ye tell her no' to greet for me, for I'm restin' on the Lord Jesus, an' I'll be a free man afore night, singing the praises o' redeeming love, and waitin' for _her_ to come?'"

Quentin had covered his face with his hands while Black spoke, and a low groan escaped him; for the youth Anderson had made a deep impression on the three friends during the week they had suffered together. Wallace, without replying, went straight over to the tomb where Anderson lay. He was followed by the other two. On reaching the spot they observed that he lay on his back, with