'"
"Aye!" whimpered a wounded man who lay partly across the Borderer's
legs. "'The Lord was as an enemy; He hath swallowed up Israel.' And I'm
thinkin', 'gin He send nae help, and that sune, we're no muckle better
than deid men. Eh! weary fa' the day I left my ain pleugh stilts, an' my
ain fireside."
"Na, na, freend. He that setteth his hand to the plough, let him not
look back," answered the Borderer. "'Gin I win oot o' this, I trow I'll
'hew Agag in pieces before the Lord,' or a's dune. We will yet smite the
Philistines, destroy utterly the Amalakites! Aye! smite them hip and
thigh, even from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof!"
This fiery Borderer, Ringan Oliver by name, a man of gigantic strength
and great courage, a strong pillar of the Covenant, was a native of
Jedwater, where he and his fathers before him had for generations
occupied the small holding of Smailcleuchfoot. From the turmoil of the
disastrous flight after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and from the
close search of the pursuing soldiers, Ringan Oliver did eventually
escape, sore battered, and not without much difficulty and danger, and
for many a month thereafter he lay in hiding; caves, holes in the moors,
and dripping peat hags, were his shelter, heather and ferns his bed,
many a time when the hunt waxed hot.
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