our heedless days that often made me wonder, I
could not tell wherefore, and now, when I behold you in the prime of
manhood, it fills me with admiration and awe and makes me do homage to
you as a master."

Much more he added to the same effect, which the modesty of my
grandfather would not allow him to repeat; but when they had parted, and
my grandfather had ridden forward some two or three miles, he recalled
to mind what had passed between them, and he used to say that this
discourse with his early friend first opened to him a view of the
grievous captivity which Nature suffered in the monasteries and
convents, notwithstanding the loose lives imputed to their inmates; and
he saw that the Reformation would be hailed by many that languished in
the bondage of their vows as a great and glorious deliverance. But still
he was wont to say, even with such as these, it was overly mingled with
temporal concernments, and that they longed for it less on account of
its immortal issues than for its sensual emancipations.

And as he was proceeding on his way in this frame of mind, and thinking
on all that he had seen and learnt from the day in which he bade adieu
to his father's house, he came to a place where the road forked off in
two different airts, and not knowing which to take, he stopped his horse
and waited till a man drew nigh whom he observed coming towards him. By
this man he was told that the road leading leftward led to Kilmarnock
and Ayr, and the other on the right to Kilwinning; so, without saying
anything, he turned his horse's head into the latter, the which he was
moved to do by sundry causes and reasons. First, he had remarked that
the chances in his journey had, in a very singular manner, led him to
gain much of that sort of knowledge which the Lords of the Congregation
thirsted for; and second, he had no doubt that Winterton was in pursuit
of him to Kilmarnock, for some purpose of frustration or circumvention,
the which, though he was not able to divine, he could not but consider
important, if it was, as he thought, the prime motive of that varlet's
journey.

But he was chiefly disposed to prefer the Kilwinning road, though it was
several miles more of bout-gait, on account of the rich abbacy in that
town, hoping he might glean and gather some account how the clergy there
stood affected, the meeting with Dominick Callender having afforded him
a vista of friends and auxiliaries in the enemy's camp little though