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Esau Wardrop, with the young laird and my grandfather, seeing it was in vain to stop the progress of the fire, did all that in them lay to rescue some of the furniture, while poor old Ringlewood and his aged and gentle lady, being both too infirm to lend any help, stood on the green, and saw the devouring element pass from room to room, till their ancient dwelling was utterly destroyed.
After leaving Ringlewood, the two fugitives, by divers journeyings and sore passages through moss and moor, crossed the Balloch ferry, and coming down the north side of the Clyde frith to Ardmore, they boated across to Greenock, where, in little more than an hour after their arrival, they were taken in Euphan Blair's public in Cartsdyke, and the same night marched off to Glasgow; of all which I have already given intimation in recording my own trials at Inverkip.
Ringlewood himself, who had remonstrated against their insolence to his aged leddy, they had tied in his arm-chair and placed at the head of his own table, round which they sat carousing, and singing the roister ribaldry of camp songs.
Fain would they have remained longer there, but the threat of the soldiers to accuse them as the incendiaries made Ringlewood urge them to depart; saying, that maybe a time would come when it would be in his power to thank them for their help in that dreadful night.
My brother and Esau Wardrop staid with Ringlewood till the morning, and had, for the space of three or four hours, a restoring sleep.
Their need, however, was great, and the importunities of hunger would not be pacified, so they knocked, and the door was soon opened by a soldier, the party within being a horde of Dalziel's men, living at free quarters in the house of that excellent Christian and much-persecuted man, the Laird of Ringlewood.
My brother seeing the flames rising, and that the infuriated war-wolves thought only of themselves, ran to extricate Ringlewood from the cords with which he was tied; and calling to the leddy and her grandson to quit the burning house, every one was soon out of danger from the fire.
In the meantime the light of the burning spread over the country; but the people knowing that soldiers were quartered in Ringlewood, stood aloof in the dread of firearms, thinking the conflagration might be caused by some contest of war; so that the mansion of a gentleman much beloved of all his neighbours was allowed to burn to the ground before their eyes, without any one venturing to come to help him, to so great a degree had distrust and the outrages of military riot at that epoch altered the hearts of men.
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