in
there was the hazard of any trouble that might balk her pious purpose.

After daunering from place to place, and seeing nothing of the
stripling, he was obligated to give twalpennies to a stabler's lad to
search for him, who soon brought him to the vintner's, where my
grandfather, putting on the look of a losel and roister, gave him a
groat, and bade him go to the madam's dwelling, and tell her that he
would be, from the gloaming, all the night at the Widow Dingwall's,
where he would rejoice exceedingly if she could come and spend an hour
or two.

The stripling, so fee'd, was right glad, and made himself so familiar
towards my grandfather, that Lucky Kilfauns observing it, the better to
conceal their plot, feigned to be most obstreperous, flyting at him with
all her pith and bir, and chiding my grandfather, as being as scant o'
grace as a gaberlunzie, or a novice of the Dominicans. However, they
worked so well together, that the gilly never misdoubted either her or
my grandfather, and took the errand to his mistress, from whom he soon
came with a light foot and a glaikit eye, saying she would na fail to
keep the tryst.

That this new proof of the progress she was making in guilt and sin
might be the more tenderly broken to her chaste and gentle sister, Lucky
Kilfauns herself undertook to tell Elspa what had been covenanted to
prepare her for the meeting. My grandfather would fain have had a milder
mediatrix, for the vintner's worthy wife was wroth against the
concubine, calling her offence redder than the crimson of schism, and
blacker than the broth of the burning brimstone of heresy, with many
other vehement terms of indignation, none worse than the wicked woman
deserved, though harsh to be heard by a sister, that grieved for her
unregenerate condition far more than if she had come from Crail to St
Andrews only to lay her head in the coffin.

The paction between all parties being thus covenanted, and Lucky
Kilfauns gone to prepare the fortitude of Elspa Ruet for the trial it
was to undergo, my grandfather walked out alone to pass the time till
the trysted hour. It was then late in the afternoon, and as he sauntered
along he could not but observe that something was busy with the minds
and imaginations of the people. Knots of the douce and elderly
shopkeepers were seen standing in the streets with their heads laid
together; and as he walked towards the priory he met the provost between
two of the bailies, with t