The shepherd who had given the alarm, had lain down again instantly in his plaid on the greensward, upon the summit of these precipices.  A party of soldiers was immediately upon him, and demanded what signals he had been making, and to whom; when one of them, looking over the edge of the cliff, exclaimed, “See, see!  Humphrey, We have caught the whole tabernacle of the Lord in a net at last.  There they are, praising God among the stones of the river Mouse.  These are the Cartland Craigs.  A noble cathedral!” “Fling the lying sentinel over the cliffs.  Here is a canting Covenanter for you, deceiving honest soldiers on the very Sabbath day.  Over with him, over with him; out of the gallery into the pit.”  But the shepherd had vanished like a shadow, and, mixing with the tall, green broom and bushes, was making his unseen way toward a wood.  “Satan has saved his servant; but come, my lads, follow me.  I know the way down into the bed of the stream, and the steps up to Wallace’s Cave.  They are called, ‘kittle nine stanes;’ The hunt’s up.  We’ll all be in at the death.  Halloo! my boys, halloo!”

The soldiers dashed down a less precipitous part of the wooded banks, a little below the “craigs,” and hurried up the channel.  But when they reached the altar where the old, gray-haired minister had been seen standing, and the rocks that had been covered with people, all was silent and solitary; not a creature to be seen.  “Here is a Bible, dropped by some of them,” cried a soldier, and, with his foot, he spun it away into the pool.  “A bonnet, a bonnet,” cried another; “now for the pretty, sanctified face, that rolled its demure eyes below it.”  But after a few jests and oaths, the soldiers stood still, eying with a kind of mysterious dread the black and silent walls of the rocks that hemmed them in, and hearing only the small voice of the stream that sent a profounder stillness through the heart of that majestic solitude.  “What if these cowardly Covenanters should tumble down upon our heads pieces of rock, from their hiding places!  Advance, or retreat?”

There was no reply; for a slight fear was upon every man.  Musket or bayonet could be of little use to men obliged to clamber up rocks, along slender paths, leading they know not where.  And they were aware that armed men nowadays worshiped God; men of iron hearts, who feared not the glitter of the soldier’s arms, neither barrel nor bayonet; men of long stride, firm step, and broad breast, who, on the open field, would have overthrown the marshaled line, and gone first and foremost, if a city had to be taken by storm.