gnawed crusts and foul water. The stripes and terrors of the oppressor
are, however, the seeds which Providence sows in its mercy to grow into
the means that shall work his own overthrow.

The persecutions which from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves
of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them
to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition,
only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints
hardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts grew manful, and
yearned, as my grandfather said, with the zealous longings of a
righteous revenge, to sweep them away from the land as with a whirlwind.

After enduring for several years great affliction in his father's house
from his mother, a termagant woman, who was entirely under the dominion
of her confessor, my grandfather entered into a paction with two other
young lads to quit their homes for ever, and to enter the service of
some of those pious noblemen who were then active in procuring adherents
to the protestant cause, as set forth in the first covenant.
Accordingly, one morning in the spring of 1558, they bade adieu to their
fathers' doors, and set forward on foot towards Edinburgh.

"We had light hearts," said my grandfather, "for our trust was in
Heaven; we had girded ourselves for a holy enterprise, and the
confidence of our souls broke forth into songs of battle, the melodious
breathings of that unison of spirit which is alone known to the soldiers
of the great Captain of Salvation."

About noon they arrived at the Cross of Edinburgh, where they found a
crowd assembled round the Luckenbooths, waiting for the breaking up of
the States, which were then deliberating anent the proposal from the
French king that the Prince Dolphin, his son, should marry our young
queen, the fair and faulty Mary, whose doleful captivity and woful end
scarcely expiated the sins and sorrows that she caused to her ill-used
and poor misgoverned native realm of Scotland.

While they were standing in this crowd, my grandfather happened to see
one Icener Cunningham, a servant in the household of the Earl of
Glencairn, and having some acquaintance of the man before at Lithgow, he
went towards him, and after some common talk, told on what errand he and
his two companions had come to Edinburgh. It was in consequence agreed
between them that this Icener should speak to his master concerning
them, the which he did as