such as to inflame the heated tempers of an illiterate peasantry to madness.  It is important to distinguish men of this stamp from the genuine sufferers for conscience’ sake.  The latter men were, indeed, often wrought up by their crafty leaders to a pitch of blind and brutal fury which has done much to lessen the sympathy that is justly theirs.  But they were at the bottom simple, sincere, and pious; and they can at least plead the excuse of a long and relentless persecution for acts which the others inspired and directed for motives which it would be difficult, perhaps, to correctly analyse, but assuredly were not founded on an unmixed love either for their country or their faith.  Stripped of the veil of religious enthusiasm which they knew so well how to assume, men of the stamp of Sharp’s murderers were in truth no other than those brawling and selfish demagogues whom times of stir and revolution always have brought and always will bring to the front.  There need, in these days, be no difficulty in understanding the characters of men who dress Murder in the cloak of Religion and call her Liberty.

Every child knows the story of the tragedy on Magus Moor.  It will be enough here to remind my readers, once more, that it was no preconcerted plan, but a pure accident—­or, as the murderers themselves called it, a gift from God.  The men I have named, with a few others, were really after one Carmichael, who had made himself particularly odious by his activity in collecting the fines levied on the disaffected.  But Carmichael, who was out hunting on the hills, had got wind of their design and made his way home by another route.  As the party were about to separate in sullen disappointment, a messenger came to tell them that the Archbishop’s coach was in sight on the road to Saint Andrews.  The opportunity was too good to be lost.  Hackston was asked to take the command, but declined, alleging his cause of quarrel with Sharp, which would, he declared, “mar the glory of the action, for it would be imputed to his particular revenge.”  But, he added, he would not leave them, nor “hinder them from what God had called them to.”  Upon this, Balfour said, “Gentlemen, follow me;” and the whole party, some nine or ten in number, rode off after the carriage, which could be seen in the distance labouring heavily over the rugged track that traversed the lonely expanse of heath.  How the butcher’s work was done:  how Sharp crawled on his knees to Hackston, saying, “You are a gentleman—­you will protect me,” and how Hackston answered, “Sir, I shall never lay a hand on you”:  how Balfour and the rest then drew their swords and finished what their pistols had begun; and how the daughter was herself wounded in her efforts to cover the body of her father—­these things are familiar to all.

From May 6th to 29th no letters from Claverhouse have survived; but on the latter date he sent a short despatch from Falkirk, announcing his intention of joining his forces with Lord Ross to scatter a conventicle of eighteen parishes which, he had just received news, were about (on the following Sunday) to meet at Kilbryde Moor, four miles from Glasgow.  The following Sunday was June 1st, on which day Claverhouse was indeed engaged with a conventicle; but in a fashion very different from any he had anticipated.