er husband, a creditable man, being
then living, and one of the bailies of Crail. Nor is it to be debated
that the scene was such as ought not to have been seen in a Christian
land; but in those days the blasphemous progeny of the Roman harlot were
bold with the audacious sinfulness of their parent, and set little store
by the fear of God or the contempt of man. It was a sore trial and a
struggle in the bosom of my grandfather that day to think of making a
show of homage and service towards the mitred Belial and high priest of
the abominations wherewith the realm was polluted, and when he rose from
under his paw he shuddered, and felt as if he had received the foul erls
of perdition from the Evil One. Many a bitter tear he long after shed in
secret for the hypocrisy of that hour, the guilt of which was never
sweetened to his conscience, even by the thought that he maybe thereby
helped to further the great redemption of his native land in the blessed
cleansing of the Reformation.

CHAPTER IV

Sir David Hamilton conducted my grandfather back through the garden and
the sallyport to the castle, where he made him acquainted with his
Grace's seneschal, by whom he was hospitably entertained when the knight
had left them together, receiving from him a cup of hippocras and a
plentiful repast, the like of which, for the savouriness of the viands,
was seldom seen out of the howfs of the monks.

The seneschal was called by name Leonard Meldrum, and was a most douce
and composed character, well stricken in years, and though engrained
with the errors of papistry, as was natural for one bred and cherished
in the house of the speaking horn of the Beast, for such the high priest
of St Andrews was well likened to, he was nevertheless a man of a humane
heart and great tenderness of conscience.

The while my grandfather was sitting with him at the board, he lamented
that the Church, so he denominated the papal abomination, was so far
gone with the spirit of punishment and of cruelty as rather to shock
men's minds into schism and rebellion than to allure them back into
worship and reverence, and to a repentance of their heresies--a strain
of discourse which my grandfather so little expected to hear within the
gates and precincts of the guilty castle of St Andrews that it made him
for a time distrust the sincerity of the old man, and he was very
guarded in what he himself answered thereto. Leonard Meldrum was,
however, honest in