Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

116
THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
they could remain in perfect security, when the
drift was streaming along the heath, and covering the
entire face of the wilderness with one uniform sheet
of whiteness. In such cases no enemy durst venture
abroad, and the soldiers left the desert to the free
occupancy of the worthies, who were happy to greet
the scowling of the sky, which prevented the intru¬
sion of their persecutors, and “compelled the men of
blood to couch within their dens.” When a company
of friends met in the solitary shieling, the floor of
which was strewed with the tufted heather, affording
a soft and comfortable couch on which to recline,
they felt unspeakably relieved; they knew that
they Avere secure from interruption; they could
speak aloud ; they could raise their song of praise;
and pray from the fulness of their hearts without
the fear of detection; and when they happened to
be furnished with provisions, they could spend days
and nights together, enjoying a happiness of which
their persecutors could form no conception. Many
a time did the youthful Eenwick occupy these
shielings, where he made a fire of heath or sticks
to warm his shivering frame and to dry his dripping
clothes, while his precarious food was conveyed to
him from great distances, and mostly by children,
who durst not let their parents know of it. It is
not on external circumstances that a man’s hap¬
piness depends, it is on the state of his own mind;
and when a man is at peace with God, no situation
can render him unhappy; and hence the comfort
which this poor tossed remnant experienced in the
midst of all privations.
But, in enumerating the various means of shelter
with which the wanderers in the desert were fur-