With that she slipped down the ladder, and the next minute I heard her singing at her work, for all as if there was never but one party in the world and that God’s party.

“O God, do thou raise up thyself, The earth to judgment call; For thou, as thine inheritance, Shall take the nations all.”

I made a burrow deep in the hay and covered myself and the Book and lay there stifling with a drumming heart. I remember--I remember! I clasped that Book, and I cried, but not aloud, “O I was reading Ye! If Ye are, save me now, save me and Mysie! And Ye will not let Sandy suffer that’s doing a friend’s part. Save! Save!”

But they came into the barn. I heard them below, and one mounted the ladder. “It’s dusk as sin up here!” Below him said another, “Look out that he doesn’t dirk you through the hay!” The first, at that, contented himself with a small trampling that did not bring him where I lay under the eaves. Presently he spoke. “Time lost to toss all this stuff aside! Easiest to fire it, and that’s what we’ll do. If he’s here he’ll come out, and if he isn’t it won’t be Holyrood that’s burnt!”

He went down the ladder. Presently I smelled the brand. I came out. They had taken away the ladder, so I held by my hands and dropped from the loft, flame singing now in my ears. The lower room was filled with smoke; through it I could just see them without the door, waiting for the tod smoked out. I had no weapon. Out I came, helpless as the tod. I was big and strong--“Big David Scott”--But what was that against five armed men? If I turned wolf from tod and sprang at their throats, then more surely still Hawley’s gallows in the Grasmarket! I walked out of the barn, hands up.

Oh, waly, waly, waly, Mysie Johnston!

The Tolbooth opened once more and swallowed me. I lay there two months expecting hanging. To this day I do not know the truth of my escaping that death. Some influence somewhere, but whose it was I do not know. Mysie had not the strength. Maybe after all it was God. But lying there in the dungeon that was for folk like me, for big, strong young men who broke gaol, I cursed God and was glad his book was burned in that burning barn.

In August I was taken from prison and marched with five Jacobites, young and middle-aged men, to Leith and set aboard the brig, King William, bound for Virginia and carrying thither a great parcel of poor men signed for servants to planters, and we six who had not signed but who natheless went.