flat on his grouff ayont a bramble bush, while my grandfather began to
lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the
spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he
then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the
grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the
closer that the horsemen came he was strengthened to sing the louder and
the clearer.

"Saw ye twa fellows ganging this gait?" cried the foremost of the
pursuers, pulling up.

"What like were they?" said my grandfather, in a simple manner.

"Ane of them was o' his Grace's guard," replied the man, "but the other,
curse tak me gin I ken what he was like, but he's the bailie or provost
of a burrough's town, and should by rights hae a big belly."

To this my grandfather answered briskly, "Nae sic twa ha'e past me, but
as I was coming along whistling, thinking o' naething, twa sturdy loons,
ane o' them no unlike the hempies o' the castle, ran skirring along, and
I hae a thought that they took the road to Crail or Dysart."

"That was my thought, too," cried the horseman, as he turned his beast,
and the rest that were with him doing the same, bidding my grandfather
good-night, away they scampered back; by which a blessed deliverance was
there wrought to him and his companion on that spot, in that night.

As soon as the horsemen had gone by, Bailie Kilspinnie came from his
hiding-place, and both he and my grandfather proved that no bird-lime
was on their feet till they got to the ferry-house at the waterside,
where they found two boats taking passengers on board, one for Dundee
and the other for Perth. Here my grandfather's great gift of
foreknowledge was again proven, for he proposed that they should bargain
with the skipper of the Dundee boat to take them to that town and pay
him like the other passengers, at once, in an open manner, but that, as
the night was cloudy and dark, they should go cannily aboard the boat
for Perth, as it were in mistake, and feign not to discover their error
till they were far up the river when they should proceed to the town,
letting wot that by the return of the tide they would go in the morning
by the Perth boat to Dundee, with which Master Kilspinnie was well
acquainted, he having had many times, in the way of his traffic as a
plaiding merchant, cause to use the same, and thereby knew it went twice
a week, and that the morrow was one of the day