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fell asleep: and a little thereafter the said man coming to the family asked for Mr. Peden, and desired access to the cave, to ly with him: When in bed he found Mr. Peden slumbering, but in a little he awoke, and, naming the man, asked him how he did? The soldiers came that night, but missed their prey. The next morning, when these said men returned, he said, "Lads it was well I came to this house yesternight, otherwise ye had been among their bloody hands this day.
28. In the said year 1685 he came to Welwood, to Captain John Campbell’s, he having escaped out of Canongate-Tolbooth in the month of August 1684. Being in danger every day he resolved to go to America and took farewell of his friends, and went aboard of a ship. Mr. Peden said to his mother, "Mistress, what is became of John?" She said. "He is gone to America." He said, "No, no! he is not gone; Send for him, for he will never see America." Accordingly it was so; a storm arose, where he was in great danger, but was preserved, and is yet alive.
29. ⟨Since⟩ the publishing of the former passages of Mr. Peden’s life and death I received two letters from Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun in the year 1725, & 1726, since gone to his grave; shewing, that he was not only fully satisfied, but much refreshed with the passages, requesting me not to delay the publishing of all that I proposed; and that he longed to see them before he went off the stage: Knowing that my day is far spent, being long since I was his fellow-prisoner, and taught him from my own experience, how to manage the great weight of irons that was upon his legs; and wishing that all the Lord's people, who have any zeal for the sworn-to and sealed testimony and savoury remembrance of the names of Christ’s slain witnesses for the same, and of the Lord's signal manifestations of his faithfulness and all-sufficiency to them in their life & death, would give me an encouragement in such a piece of good and great generation-work, which may be useful
