on the road.

It was a sunny morning in June, and all things were bright, and blithe,
and blooming. The spirits of youth, joy and enjoyment were spread about
on the earth. The butterflies, like floating lilies, sailed from blossom
to blossom, and the gowans, the bright and beautiful eyes of the summer,
shone with gladness, as Nature walked on bank and brae, in maiden pride,
spreading and showing her new flowery mantle to the sun. The very airs
that stirred the glittering trees were soft and genial as the breath of
life; and the leaves of the aspine seemed to lap the sunshine like the
tongues of young and happy creatures that delight in their food.

As my grandfather and Elspa Ruet rode along together, they partook of
the universal benignity with which all things seemed that morning so
graciously adorned, and their hearts were filled with the hope that
their united endeavours to save her fallen sister would be blessed with
success. But when they came in sight of the papal towers and gorgeous
edifices of St Andrews, which then raised their proud heads, like Babel,
so audaciously to the heavens, they both became silent.

My grandfather's thoughts ran on what might ensue if the Archbishop were
to subject him to his dominion, and he resolved, as early as possible,
to make known his arrival to the Lord James Stuart, who, in virtue of
being head of the priory, was then resident there, and to claim his
protection. Accordingly he determined to ride with Elspa Ruet to the
house of the vintner in the Shoegate, of which I have already spoken,
and to leave her under the care of Lucky Kilfauns, as the hostess was
called, until he had done so. But fears and sorrows were busy with the
fancy of his fair companion; and it was to her a bitter thing, as she
afterwards told him, to think that the purpose of her errand was to
entreat a beloved sister to leave a life of shame and sin, and sadly
doubting if she would succeed.

Being thus occupied with their respective cogitations, they entered the
city in silence, and reached the vintner's door without having exchanged
a word for several miles. There Elspa alighted, and being commended to
the care of Lucky Kilfauns, who, though of a free outspoken nature, was
a most creditable matron, my grandfather left her, and rode up the gait
to the priory yett, where, on his arrival, he made himself known to the
porter, and was admitted to the Lord Prior, as the Lord James was there
papistically called