n the charge against me, I own
I trembled, and desired to compromise. The Abbess Martha, of Elcho
nunnery, being my mother's kinswoman, I told her my distresses, and
obtained her promise that she would receive me, if, renouncing worldly
love and thoughts of wedlock, I would take the veil in her sisterhood.
She had conversation on the topic, I doubt not, with the Dominican
Francis, and both joined in singing the same song.

"'Remain in the world,' said they, 'and thy father and thou shall be
brought to trial as heretics; assume the veil, and the errors of both
shall be forgiven and cancelled.' They spoke not even of recantation
of errors of doctrine: all should be peace if I would but enter the
convent."

"I doubt not--I doubt not," said Simon: "the old glover is thought rich,
and his wealth would follow his daughter to the convent of Elcho, unless
what the Dominicans might claim as their own share. So this was thy call
to the veil, these thy objections to Henry Wynd?"

"Indeed, father, the course was urged on all hands, nor did my own
mind recoil from it. Sir John Ramorny threatened me with the powerful
vengeance of the young Prince, if I continued to repel his wicked suit;
and as for poor Henry, it is but of late that I have discovered, to
my own surprise--that--that I love his virtues more than I dislike his
faults. Alas! the discovery has only been made to render my quitting the
world more difficult than when I thought I had thee only to regret."

She rested her head on her hand and wept bitterly.

"All this is folly," said the glover. "Never was there an extremity so
pinching, but what a wise man might find counsel if he was daring enough
to act upon it. This has never been the land or the people over whom
priests could rule in the name of Rome, without their usurpation being
controlled. If they are to punish each honest burgher who says the
monks love gold, and that the lives of some of them cry shame upon the
doctrines they teach, why, truly, Stephen Smotherwell will not lack
employment; and if all foolish maidens are to be secluded from the world
because they follow the erring doctrines of a popular preaching friar,
they must enlarge the nunneries and receive their inmates on slighter
composition. Our privileges have been often defended against the Pope
himself by our good monarchs of yore, and when he pretended to interfere
with the temporal government of the kingdom, there wanted not a Scottish
Parliament