CHAPTER I.
Between Sinverness and Creffel lies the valley of Glenmora.
Sca Fells and Soutra Fells guard it on each hand, and the long, treacherous sweep of Solway Frith is its outlet.

It is a region of hills and moors, inhabited by a people of singular gravity and simplicity of character, a pastoral people, who in its solemn high places have learned how to interpret the voices of winds and watersand to devoutly love their God.
Most of them are of the purest Saxon origin; but here and there one meets the massive features and the blue bonnet of the Lowland Scots, descendants of those stern Covenanters who from the coasts of Galloway and Dumfries sought refuge in the strength of these lonely hills.

They are easily distinguished, and are very proud of their descent from this race whom "God anointed with his odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign." Thirty years ago their leader and elder was Andrew Cargill, a man of the same lineage as that famous Donald Cargill who was the Boanerges of the Covenant, and who suffered martyrdom for his faith at the town of Queensferry.

Andrew never forgot this fact, and the stern, just, uncompromising spirit of the old Protester still lived in him.

He was a man well-to-do in the world, and his comfortable stone house was one of the best known in the vale of Glenmora.
People who live amid grand scenery are not generally sensitive to it, but Andrew was.