was very kindly received; for the gudewife was of a stirring, household
nature, and Theophilus himself, albeit douce and temperate for a
publican, was a man obliging and hospitable, not only as became him in
his trade but from a disinterested good-will. He was, indeed, as my
grandfather came afterwards to know, really a person holden in great
respect and repute by the visitors and pilgrims who resorted to the
abbey, and by none more than by the worthy wives of Irvine, the most
regular of his customers. For they being then in the darkness of
papistry, were as much given to the idolatry of holidays and masses as,
thanks be and praise! they are now to the hunting out of sound gospel
preachers and sacramental occasions. Many a stoup of burnt wine and
spiced ale they were wont at Pace and Yule and other papistal high times
to partake of together in the house of Theophilus Lugton, happy and well
content when their possets were flavoured with the ghostly conversation
of some gawsie monk well versed in the mysteries of requiems and
purgatory.

Having parted with his horse to be taken to the stable by Theophilus
himself, my grandfather walked into the house, and Dame Lugton set for
him an elbow-chair by the chimla lug, and while she was preparing
something for a repast they fell into conversation, in the course of
which she informed him that a messenger had come to the abbey that
forenoon from Edinburgh, and a rumour had been bruited about soon after
his arrival that there was great cause to dread a rising among the
heretics, for, being ingrained with papistry, she so spoke of the
Reformers.

This news troubled my grandfather not a little, and the more he inquired
concerning the tidings the more reason he got to be alarmed and to
suspect that the bearer was Winterton, who being still in the town, and
then at the abbey--his horse was in Theophilus Lugton's stable--he could
not but think that in coming to Kilwinning instead of going right on to
Kilmarnock he had run into the lion's mouth. But, seeing it was so, and
could not be helped, he put his trust in the Lord and resolved to swerve
in no point from the straight line which he had laid down for himself.

While he was eating of Dame Lugton's fare with the relishing sauce of a
keen appetite, in a manner that no one who saw him could have supposed
he was almost sick with a surfeit of anxieties, one James Coom, a smith,
came in for a mutchkin-cap of ale, and he, seeing a travell