Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/337

Rh lurking, and carried him to Culross, although his daughter offered me a hundred dollars to let him go. We returned immediately to the general at Edinburgh, with Stobow and the prisoners taken by the ensign at Culross. They continued a while in confinement, but Stobow, at his trial, found friends enough to save his life, and was only banished; yet he returned home a year after, and proved as troublesome and seditious as ever, till, at the fight at Bothwell bridge, it was thought he was killed, for he was never heard of afterward.

During the time I was in the guards, about two years after the affair of mas David Williamson, at the lady Cherrytree's, I was quartered with a party at Bathgate, which is a small village, twelve miles from Edinburgh. One Sunday morning, by break of day, I and my comrade, a gallant highland gentleman, of the name of Grant, went out disguised in gray coats and bonnets, in search after some conventicle. We travelled on foot, eight or ten miles into the wild mountains, where we spied three fellows on the top of a hill, whom we conjectured to stand their as spies, to give intelligence to a conventicle, when any of the king's troopers should happen to come that way. There they stood, with long poles in there hands, till I and my friend came pretty near, and then they turned to go down the hill: when we observed this, we took a little compass, and came up with them on the other side; whereupon they stood still, leaning on their poles. Then I bounced forward upon one of them, and suddenly snatched the pole out of his hand, asked him why he carried such a pole on the Lord's day, and at the same time knocked him down with it. My comrade immediately seized on the second, and laid