the Lord's servants."
Upon hearing this the soldiers let him go, and bade him get off thefield as fast as possible.
Cargill was not slow to obey, and soon reached the alders, where he fellalmost fainting to the ground. Here he was discovered by Wallace, andrecognised 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 stoutyoung friend, who carefully dressed his wounds, he managed to escape.Wallace himself was not so fortunate. After leaving Cargill in a placeof comparative safety, he had not the heart to think only of his ownescape 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 endto the fiendish work, he returned cautiously to search the field ofbattle; but, while endeavouring to clamber over a wall, was suddenlypounced upon by half a dozen soldiers and made prisoner.
At an earlier part of the evening he would certainly have been murderedon the spot, but by that time the royalists were probably tired ofindiscriminate slaughter, for they merely bound his arms and led him toa spot where those Covenanters who had been taken prisoners wereguarded.
The guarding was of the strangest and cruellest. The prisoners weremade to lie flat down on the ground--many of them having been previouslystripped nearly naked; and if any of them ventured to change theirpositions, or raise their heads to implore a draught of water, they wereinstantly shot.
Next day the survivors were tied together in couples and driven off theground like a herd of cattle. Will Wallace stood awaiting his turn, andwatching the first band of prisoners march off. Suddenly he observedAndrew Black coupled to Quentin Dick. They passed closed to him. Asthey did so their eyes met.
"Losh, man, is that you?" exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting uphis 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 Willquickly. "Where's Peter and Bruce?"
A stern command to keep silence and move on drowned the answer, and inanother minute Wallace, with an unknown comrade-in-arms, had joined theprocession.
Thus they were led--or rather driven--with every species of cruelindignity, to Edinburgh; but the jails there were already full; therewas no place in which to stow such noxious animals! Had Charles theSecond been there, according to his own statement, he would have had nodifficulty in dealing with them; but bad as the Council was, it was notquite so brutal, it would seem, as the King.
"Put them in the Greyfriars Churchyard," was the order--and to thatcelebrated spot they were marched.
Seated at her back window in Candlemaker Row, Mrs. Black observed, withsome surprise and curiosity, the sad procession wending its way amongthe tombs and round the church. The news of the fight at BothwellBridge had only just reached the city, and she knew nothing of thedetails. 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, asshe gazed earnestly at the procession, "If--if it's them, uncle Andrewan'--an'--the others may be amang them!"
The procession was not more than a hundred yards distant--near enoughfor 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 sixfeet from the ground. She doubled round a tombstone, and, runningtowards the prisoners, got near enough to see the head of the processionpass through a large iron gate at the south-west corner of thechurchyard, and to see clearly that her uncle and Quentin Dick werethere--tied together. Here a soldier stopped her. As she turned toentreat permission to pass on she encountered the anxious gaze of WillWallace as he passed. There was time for the glance of recognition,that was all. A few minutes more and the long procession had passedinto what afterwards proved to be one of the most terrible prisons ofwhich we have any record in history.
Jean Black was thrust out of the churchyard along with a crowd of otherswho had entered by the front gate. Filled with dismay and anxiousforebodings, 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 thebattle of Bothwell Bridge, was a small narrow space enclosed by veryhigh 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 thewind and rain, without bedding or sufficient food, with the dank grassfor their couches and graves for pillows, did most of theseunfortunates--from twelve to fifteen hundred--live during the succeedingfive months. They were rigorously guarded night and day by sentinelswho were held answerable with their lives for the safe keeping of theprisoners. During the daytime they stood or moved about uneasily. Atnights if any of them ventured to rise the sentinels had orders to fireupon them. If they had been dogs they could not have been treatedworse. Being men, their sufferings were terrible--inconceivable. Erelong many a poor fellow found a death-bed among the graves of thatgloomy enclosure. To add to their misery, friends were seldom permittedto visit them, and those who did obtain leave were chiefly females, whowere exposed to the insults of the guards.
A week or so after their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood oneafternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dickand Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass andtheir garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to havedeepened their despair, for they remained silent for an unusually longtime.
"This _is_ awfu'!" said Black at last with a deep sigh. "If there wasony 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 doan' maist naethin' to think on--it's--it's awfu'!"
As the honest man could not get no further than this idea--and the ideaitself was a mere truism--no response was drawn from his companions, whosat with clenched fists, staring vacantly before them. Probably thefirst stage of incipient madness had set in with all of them.
"Did Jean give you any hope yesterday?" asked Wallace languidly; for hehad asked the same question every day since the poor girl had beenpermitted to hold a brief conversation with her uncle at the iron gate,towards which only one prisoner at a time was allowed to approach. Theanswer 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 bitteremphasis. "Man indeed! It's my opeenion that man, when left tohissel', 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 totheirsel'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 theyett to see his auld mither--he's deeing this afternoon. I went ower tothe 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 theday. 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 freeman 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 lowgroan escaped him; for the youth Anderson had made a deep impression onthe three friends during the week they had suffered together. Wallace,without replying, went straight over to the tomb where Anderson lay. Hewas followed by the other two. On reaching the spot they observed thathe lay on his back, with closed eyes and a smile resting on his youngface.
"He sleeps," sai
d Wallace softly.
"Ay, he sleeps weel," said Black, shaking his head slowly. "I ken thelook o' _that_ sleep. An' yonder's his puir mither at the yett. Bideby him, Quentin, while I gang an' brek it to her."
It chanced that Mrs. Anderson and Jean came to the gate at the samemoment. On hearing that her son was dead the poor woman uttered a lowwail, and would have fallen if Jean had not caught her and let hergently down on one of the graves. Jean was, as we have said, singularlysympathetic. She had overheard what her uncle had said, and forthwithsat down beside the bereaved woman, drew her head down on her breast andtried to comfort her, as she had formerly tried to