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We staid with them till far in the year, hearing often, through James Plowter, of our friends; and above all the joyous news, in little more than a week after our landing, of Sarah Lochrig having been permitted to leave the tolbooth of Irvine, without further dule than a reproof from Provost Reid, that had more in it of commendation than reproach.
Sarah Lochrig, with the mildness of her benign voice, when we had mingled a few tears, told me that, after I went to Galloway with Martha Swinton, she had been moved by our neighbours to come with our children into the town, as being safer for a lanerly woman and a family left without its head; and a providential thing it was that she had done so; for on the very night that my brother came off with the men of the parish to join us, as I have noted down in its proper place, a gang of dragoons plundered both his house and mine; and but that our treasures had been timeously removed, his family having also gone that day into Kilmarnock, the outrages might have been unspeakable.
I glowered upon him, as he has often since told me, with a shudder, and cried, "But I hae left Sarah Lochrig in their hands, and, like a coward, run away to save mysel." "Compose yoursel, Ringan, and let us reason together," was his discreet reply.
And yet, though maybe unworthy, Lord, thou knowest by the nightly anthems of thankfulness that rose from my hearth, that the chief sentiment in my breast, in those moments of melody, was my inward acknowledgment to Thee for having made this world so bright to me, with an offspring so good and fair, and with Sarah Lochrig, their mother, she whose life was the sweetness in the cup of my felicity.
The thought of having left Sarah Lochrig within bolts and bars, a ready victim to the tyranny which so thirsted for blood, lightened within me as the lightnings of heaven in a storm. I threw myself on the ground, I grasped the earth, I gathered myself as it were into a knot, and howled with horror at my own selfish baseness.
And when I had done so I again prepared to lay myself on the ground; but a rustle in the darkness of the room drew my attention, and in the same moment a kind hand was laid on mine. "Sarah Lochrig," said I, for I knew my wife's gentle pressure, "How is it that you are with me in this doleful place? How found you entrance, and I not hear you come in?"
The deep sleep into which I had fallen when Sarah Lochrig and my son were admitted to see me, and during the season of which they had sat in silence beside me till revived nature again unsealed my eyes, was so refreshing, that after they were gone away I was enabled to consider my condition with a composed mind, and free from the heats of passion and anxiety wherewith I had previously been so greatly tossed.
I therefore resolved to return to Edinburgh; for the longing of my grandfather's spirit to see the current and course of public events flowing from their fountain-head, was upon me, and I had not yet so satisfied the yearnings of justice as to be able to look again on the ashes of my house and the tomb of Sarah Lochrig and her daughters.
I was therefore too easily entreated of Archibald Lochrig, my wife's cousin, and one of my cautioners, to stop in his house that evening. But next morning, being much refreshed with a pleasant sleep and the fallacious cheering of happy dreams, I left Ayr, with my son, before the break of day, and we travelled with light feet, for our hearts were lifted up with hope.
This was, in many respects, a more lenient sentence than I had expected; and in the hope that perhaps Sarah Lochrig might have been able to provide the money, so as to render the granting of the bonds and the procuring of cautioners unnecessary, I sent over a man on horseback to tell her the news, and the man in returning brought my son Joseph behind him, sent by his mother to urge me to give the bonds at once, as she had not been able to raise so much money; and the more to incite me, if there had been need for incitement, she had willed Joseph to tell me that a party of Claverhouse's dragoons had been quartered on the house that morning, to live there till the fine was paid.
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