gave a heavy sigh, and died.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The burial of Marion Ruet was decently attended by Bailie Kilspinnie and
all his family; and though he did not carry the head himself, he yet
ordered their eldest son to do so, because, whatever her faults had
been, she was still the youth's mother. And my grandfather, with his
wife, having spent some time after with their friends at Crail, returned
homeward by themselves, passing over to Edinburgh, that they might taste
once more of the elixir of salvation as dispensed by John Knox, who had
been for some time in a complaining way, and it was by many thought that
the end of his preaching was drawing nigh.

It happened that the dreadful tidings of the murder of the protestants
in France, by the command of "the accursed king," reached Edinburgh in
the night before my grandfather and wife returned thither; and he used
to speak of the consternation that they found reigning in the city when
they arrived there, as a thing very awful to think of. Every shop was
shut, and every window closed; for it was the usage in those days, when
death was in a house, to close all the windows, so that the appearance
of the town was as if, for the obduracy of their idolatrous sovereign,
the destroying angel had slain all the first-born, and that a dead body
was then lying in every family.

There was also a terrifying solemnity in the streets; for, though they
were as if all the people had come forth in panic and sad wonderment,
many were clothed in black, and there was a funereal stillness--a dismal
sense of calamity that hushed the voices of men, and friends meeting one
another, lifted their hands, and shuddering, passed by without speaking.
My grandfather saw but one, between Leith Wynd and the door of the house
in the Lawnmarket, where he proposed to lodge, that wore a smile, and it
was not of pleasure, but of avarice counting its gains.

The man was one Hans Berghen, an armourer that had feathered his nest in
the raids of the war with the Queen Regent. He was a Norman by birth,
and had learnt the tempering of steel in Germany. In his youth he had
been in the Imperator's service, and had likewise worked in the arsenal
of Venetia. Some said he was perfected in his trade by the infidel at
Constantinopolis; but, however this might be, no man of that time was
more famous among roisters and moss-troopers, for the edge and metal of
his weapons, than that same blasphemous incomer, who thou