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Sure, no reasonable woman would hesitate. But alas !" Here his argument was stopped by the consciousness that Lady Ashton was not always reasonable, in his sense of the word. "To prefer some clownish Merse laird to the gallant young nobleman, and to the secure possession of Ravenswood upon terms of easy compromise it would be the act of a madwoman!"
The fallow didna pay eighteenpence to the pound; and there was three thousand gaen out o' my five! It was nae use, wi' a young family, to talk o' living on the interest o' our money now. 'We maun tak' a farm, says I; and baith Jeannie and her mother saw there was naething else for it. So I took a farm which lay partly in the Lammermoors and partly in the Merse.
I inquired of Mr Hall of Whitehall, who had frequent opportunities of traversing those mountains which lie between his house in the Merse and Edinburgh; and I particularly entreated him to examine the bed of the Whittater, which he executed to my satisfaction.
The pecuniary remuneration of the clergy was such as would have moved the pity of the most needy curate who thought it a privilege to drink his ale and smoke his pipe in the kitchen of an English manor house. Even in the fertile Merse there were parishes of which the minister received only from four to eight pounds sterling in cash.
"And wherefore, in Heaven's name, should we not be happy on such a day as this was an hour agone? But now the sun is out of the sky." "I see him plainer than ever I did in the Merse," said my master, looking up where the sun was bright in the west. "But what would you?
One of the banished brethren, in a letter written at the time, states that all the ministers in the Lothians and the Merse, with only ten exceptions, had subscribed; that John Erskine of Dun had not only subscribed, but was making himself a pest to the ministers in the North by importuning them to follow his example; that John Craig, so long Knox's colleague, had given in and was speaking hotly against those who held out; that even the redoubtable John Durie had 'cracked his curple' at last; and that the pulpits of Edinburgh were silent, except a very few 'who sigh and sob under the Cross.
Most grudgingly was the boon bestowed, and not until the boy had obtained security for his good behaviour to the extent of two thousand pounds sterling was he allowed to return to the Merse. Meantime Redbraes Castle was constantly kept under supervision.
When, however, he had crossed the border into the country known as the Merse, north of Berwick, the Earl of Dunbar fell upon him at West Nesbit, and completely defeated him. Hepburn himself, with a large number of his men, fell in the battle; and many important prisoners were captured. This battle was fought on the same day that Glendower defeated Mortimer.
He saw the host defiling "in three battells," with six thousand men in each, their spears shining, their banners waving, Homes and Hepburns in the front, with Merse and Teviotdale and all the forces of the Border, and the men of Lothian in the rear: while in the main body rose the ensigns of all the great lords who had already beaten and humbled him Bell-the-Cat and the other barons who had hanged his friends before his eyes but now bearing his own royal standard, with his son among them, the bitterest thought of all.
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