spreading out from towns, and drifting across the mountains and firths and lochs like thistledown blowing in the wind. By the evening of that day, we were reeling from the news that my uncle had indeed been among the group of prisoners taken to Edinburgh.
"It's because he was with Mr. Renwick," said Dandy Fleming, who had come all the way over from Whinnerston carrying an offering of a meal, with the kind compliments of his mother. "Anyone connected with such a great preacher is given special treatment. All the important ones have been taken off to Edinburgh."
He spoke as if this ought to be a matter of pride.
"Edinburgh!" Aunt Blair repeated faintly.
I'd heard of Edinburgh, of course. I knew that it was a place of power, where lairds and kings and great men of all kinds sat in state, sending out cruel decrees to tax and persecute the poor people of Scotland. Tam had been there once, playing his pipes for money. He'd told me stories that I hardly believed about buildings so tall they reached to the sky, and nobles wearing velvet and silk. He'd managed to stay for a month or more, his earnings keeping him fed and constantly drunk, and then he'd been taken up as a vagabond and thrown out of the city.
I shivered at the thought of Uncle Blair being imprisoned in such a dreadful place. I felt again the kindness of his hand gripping mine as he'd sat so calmly on the top of Windyhill, waiting for the dragoons to come up and take him away. A lump came into my throat as I remembered the affection in his voice.
"What's the news of Mr. Renwick?" asked Ritchie. "He got away all right, didn't he?"
"Aye." Dandy grinned. "He skipped across to Dunoon. What a man! There's no danger that stops him. It was a good job you did that day, Maggie. Ritchie's been boasting of you right and left, how you sent the dragoons off on the wrong track."
I was unused to praise, and it warmed me through.
It was only later, as I went down to the stream with buckets to fill, that I let rise to the surface a kind of resentment that had begun to grow in my head.
It's all very well for Mr. Renwick. He doesn't have a family or a farm to lose. It must be a kind of adventure for him.
And then I remembered how the young preacher had sent me reeling with the glow of his smile, and how his presence had seemed to light the room, and his words had penetrated my heart and quivered there. What was it he'd said? "His banner over me was love, and he fed me with apples, and comforted me with wine."
Yes, I thought, leaning down to scoop water into my bucket, oh yes, yes. And I repeated to myself, I give. I give.
Something in the stream caught my eye. A shoe, washed down by the current, was wedged between two stones. I fished it out. It was a woman's shoe, solid and heavy. Its owner must have run out of it in her desperate haste to flee from the dragoons after Mr. Renwick's preaching.
The horror of the attack came back to me, and with a spurt of anger I flung the shoe into a clump of gorse on the far side of the stream.
"Why?" I said out loud. "How can it be against the law to meet out in the hills and sing psalms and read the Word of God and preach sermons? What ever is wrong with that?"
I heard Uncle Blair's voice in my ear.
"The king and the great men around him desire in their wickedness to remove God from his throne as head of the kirk and put themselves in his place. And we must resist them, Maggie, or be traitors to him, and to Scotland, and to ourselves."
Could I ever care for the cause as much as Uncle Blair did? Would I give up everything and even risk death?
I knew the answer.
"No," I whispered, ashamed of myself. "No."
The knowledge frightened me. On the Day of Judgment, when I stood before almighty God, he would curse me, like Mr. Renwick said, and cast me into everlasting fire for failing to keep the faith.
But I would suffer anything for a person I loved, I told myself. Perhaps that would be enough. I'd be ready to die for someone who really loved me.
I picked up the two full buckets and began