The ashes of
his ancestors were scarcely lively company, but Sir Patrick found "great
comfort and constant entertainment" by repeating to himself Buchanan's
Latin Version of the Psalms. Each night, too, the prisoner was cheered
by a visit from his daughter Grisell. Through an open glen by the
Swindon Burn, down what is called The Lady's Walk, Grisell nightly came
to the vault with her little store of provisions. She was an
imaginative, poetic little maid, and the whisper of the wind in the lime
trees that grew on either hand would make her shiver, and yet more
loudly would her heart thump when in the darkness she stumbled over the
graves in the kirkyard, and remembered all the tales she had ever heard
of bogles and of ghosts. That lonely walk in the night must always have
been full of terrors, yet Grisell's love for her father was so great
that she steadfastly braved them all. One fear only she had--that of the
soldiers. The wind moaning through the trees or rustling the long grass,
the sound of a rabbit or some other wild thing in the bracken, the
sudden bark of a dog,--all these made her sure that some spy had found
out her secret, and sent her running as fast as her little legs could
carry her to try to save her father from his captors.
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