made a play at the marriage of Mr. John
Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us
to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the
occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the
Castle of Edinburgh--then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame
to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers--and "the Captain with ane or
twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox
loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of
his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at
Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke
from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to
them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.

[Illustration: THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS]

Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a
portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in
the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the
noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to
the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has
shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.

Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of
Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,
the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that
maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."

"I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I
could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the
space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me
so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.
Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go
hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a
furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude
godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey
to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant
lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first
entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and
vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out
of it."

Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of
Knox's prophecies, especially