in “Old Mortality” is done not only with all the author’s literary genius, but a wonderful fidelity to historical truth; and while the accuracy of the portrait of Claverhouse—­“Bonny Dundee”—­will always be disputed, no lover of romance will question its brilliant charm.  The immediate popularity of “Old Mortality” was less than many of the “Waverley Novels,” only two editions, amounting to 4,000 copies, being sold in six weeks.

I.—­Tillietudlem Castle

“Most readers,” says the manuscript of Mr. Pattieson, “must have witnessed with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of the village school.  The buoyant spirit of childhood may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout and song and frolic; but there is one individual who partakes of the relief, whose feelings are not so obvious, or so apt to receive sympathy—­the teacher himself.”

The reader may form some conception of the relief which a solitary walk, on a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered for so many hours in plying the irksome task of public instruction.

To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy life; and it was in one of them that I met, for the first time, the religious itinerant known in various parts of Scotland by the title of “Old Mortality.”  He was busily engaged in deepening with his chisel the letters of the inscription upon the monument of the slaughtered Presbyterians—­those champions of the Covenant whose deeds and sufferings were his favourite theme.

For nearly thirty years this pious enthusiast visited annually the graves of those who suffered for the cause during the reigns of the last two Stuarts, most numerous in the districts of Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries.  To talk of their exploits was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the business of his life.

My readers will understand that in embodying into one narrative many of the anecdotes I derived from Old Mortality, I have endeavoured to correct and verify them from the most authentic sources of tradition afforded by the representatives of either party.  Peace to their memory!

    “Implacable resentment was their crime,
    And grievous has the expiation been.”

Under the reign of the last Stuarts, frequent musters of the people, both for military exercise and for sports and pastimes, were appointed by authority, and the Sheriff of Lanark was holding the wappen-schaw of a wild district, on the day our narrative commences, May 5, 1679.

The lord-lieutenant of the country alone, who was of ducal rank, pretended to the magnificence of a wheel-carriage, but near it might be seen the erect form of Lady Margaret Bellenden on her sober palfrey, and her granddaughter; the fair-haired Edith appeared beside her aged relative like Spring, close to Winter.

Many civilities passed between her ladyship and the representatives of sundry ancient royal families, and not a young man of rank passed by them in the course of the muster, but carried himself more erect in the saddle and displayed his horsemanship to the best advantage in the eyes of Miss Edith Bellenden.