hat made him
fain to see the end thereof. So he called in the vintner's wife and paid
her the lawin', telling her to say to the friend who had been with him,
when he came back, that he would soon return.

The vintner's wife was a buxom and jolly dame, and before taking up the
money, she gave a pawkie look at the stripling, and as my grandfather
and he were going out at the door, she hit the gilly a bilf on the back,
saying it was a ne'er-do-weel trade he had ta'en up, and that he wasna
blate to wile awa' her customers, crying after him, "I redde ye warn
your madam that gin she sends you here again, I'll maybe let his Grace
ken that her cauldron needs clouting." However, the graceless gilly but
laughed at the vintner's wife, winking as he patted the side of his nose
with his fore-finger, which testified that he held her vows of vengeance
in very little reverence; and then he went on, my grandfather following.

They walked up the street till they came to the priory yett, when,
turning down a wynd to the left, he led my grandfather along between two
dykes, till they were come to a house that stood by itself within a fair
garden. But instead of going to the door in an honest manner, he bade
him stop, and going forward he whistled shrilly, and then flung three
stones against a butt, that was standing at the corner of the house on a
gauntrees to kep rain water from the spouting image of a stone puddock
that vomited what was gathered from the roof in the rones, and soon
after an upper casement was opened, and a damsel looked forth; she
however said nothing to the stripling, but she made certain signs which
he understood, and then she drew in her head, shutting the casement
softly, and he came back to my grandfather, to whom he said it was not
commodious at that time for him to be received into the house, but if he
would come back in the dark, at eight o'clock, all things would be ready
for his reception.

To this suggestion my grandfather made no scruple to assent, but
promised to be there; and he bargained with the lad to come for him,
giving him at the same time three placks for a largess. He then returned
to the vintner's, where he found the Crail man sitting waiting for him;
and the vintner's wife, when she saw him so soon back, jeered him, and
would fain have been jocose, which he often after thought a woful
immorality, considering the dreadful martyrdom of a godly man that had
been done that day in the town; but at the