standing by, caught her in his arms, and was
enchanted by a fond and strange enthusiasm. She was indeed no other than
the young maiden of Paisley, for whom he had found his monastic rows the
heavy fetters of a bondage that made life scarcely worth possessing; and
when she was recovered, an interchange of great tenderness took place
between them, at which the superior of the convent waxed very wroth, and
the other nuns were exceedingly scandalised. But Magdalene Sauchie, for
so she was called, heeded them not; for, on learning that popery was put
down in the land by law, she openly declared that she renounced her
vows; and during the walk to Irvine, which was jimp a mile, she leant
upon the arm of her lover: and they were soon after married, Dominick
settling in that town as a doctor of physic, whereby he afterwards
earned both gold and reputation.

But to conclude the history of the convent, which my grandfather had in
this gentle manner herret, the nuns, on reaching the foot of the
Kirkgate, where the Countess of Eglinton had provided a house for them,
began to weep anew with great vehemence, fearing that their holy life
was at an end, and that they would be tempted of men to enter into the
temporalities of the married state; but the superior, on hearing this
mournful apprehension, mounted upon the steps of the Tolbooth stair,
and, in the midst of a great concourse of people, she lifted her hands
on high, and exclaimed, as with the voice of a prophetess, "Fear not, my
chaste and pious dochters; for your sake and for my sake, I have an
assurance at this moment from the Virgin Mary herself, that the calamity
of the marriage-yoke will never be known in the Kirkgate of Irvine, but
that all maidens who hereafter may enter, or be born to dwell therein,
shall live a life of single blessedness unasked and untempted of men."
Which delightful prediction the nuns were so happy to hear, that they
dried their tears, and chanted their Ave Maria, joyfully proceeding
towards their appointed habitation. It stood, as I have been told, on
the same spot where King James the Sixth's school was afterwards
erected, and endowed out of the spoils of Carmelytes' monastery, which,
on the same day, was, by another division of the Earl of Glencairn's
power, sacked and burnt to the ground.

CHAPTER XXVII

When my grandfather had, in the manner rehearsed, disposed of those
sisters of simplicity in the Kirkgate of Irvine, he returned back i