Here they had lived, bearing
a respectable rank amongst the gentry of their province, though
neither wealthy nor powerful. This general regard had been much
augmented by the skill, courage, and enterprise which had been
displayed by Walter Avenel, the last Baron.
When Scotland began to recover from the dreadful shock she had
sustained after the battle of Pinkie-Cleuch, Avenel was one of the
first who, assembling a small force, set an example in those bloody
and unsparing skirmishes, which showed that a nation, though conquered
and overrun by invaders, may yet wage against them such a war of
detail as shall in the end become fatal to the foreigners. In one of
these, however, Walter Avenel fell, and the news which came to the
house of his fathers was followed by the distracting intelligence,
that a party of Englishmen were coming to plunder the mansion and
lands of his widow, in order, by this act of terror, to prevent others
from following the example of the deceased.
The unfortunate lady had no better refuge than the miserable cottage
of a shepherd among the hills, to which she was hastily removed,
scarce conscious where or for what purpose her terrified attendants
were removing her and her infant daughter from her own house. Here she
was tended with all the duteous service of ancient times by the
shepherd's wife, Tibb Tacket, who in better days had been her own
bowerwoman.
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