s. All this they were
enabled to do with such fortitude and decorum that no one aboard the
Perth boat could have divined that they were not honest men in great
trouble of mind at discovering they had come into the wrong boat.

But nothing showed more that Providence had a hand in all this than what
ensued, for all the passengers in the boat had been at St Andrews to
hear the trial and see the martyrdom, and they were sharp and vehement
not only in their condemnation of the mitred Antichrist, but grieved
with a sincere sorrow that none of the nobles of Scotland would stand
forth in their ancient bravery to resist and overthrow a race of
oppressors more grievous than the Southrons that trode on the neck of
their fathers in the hero-stirring times of the Wallace wight and King
Robert the Bruce. Truly, there was a spirit of unison and indignation in
the company on board that boat, everyone thirsting with a holy ardour to
avenge the cruelties of which the papistical priesthood were daily
growing more and more crouse in the perpetration, and they made the
shores ring with the olden song of--

"O for my ain king, quo' gude Wallace,
The rightfu' king of fair Scotlan';
Between me and my sovereign dear
I think I see some ill seed sawn."

It was the grey of the morning before they reached Perth, and as soon as
they were put on the land the bailie took my grandfather with him to the
house of one Sawners Ruthven, a blanket-weaver with whom he had
dealings, a staid and discreet man, who, when he had supplied them with
breakfast, exhorted them not to tarry in the town, then a place that had
fallen under the suspicion of the clergy, the lordly monks of Scoone
taking great power and authority, in despite of the magistrates, against
all that fell under their evil thoughts anent heresy. And he counselled
them not to proceed, as my grandfather had proposed, straight on to
Edinburgh by the Queensferry, but to hasten up the country to Crieff and
thence take the road to Stirling. In this there was much prudence, but
Bailie Kilspinnie was in sore tribulation on account of his children,
whom he had left at his home in Crail, fearing that the talons of
Antichrist would lay hold of them and keep them as hostages till he was
given up to suffer for what he had done, none doubting that Baal, for so
he nicknamed the prelatic Hamilton, would impute to him the
unpardonable sin of heresy and schism, and leave no stone unturned to
bri