ght of nothing
but the greed of gain, whether by dule to protestant or papist; so that
the sight of his hard-favoured visage, blithened with satisfaction, was
to my grandfather, who knew him well by repute, as an omen of portentous
aspect.

For two days the city continued in that dismal state, and on the third,
which was Sabbath, the churches were so filled that my grandmother,
being then in a tender condition, did not venture to enter the High
Kirk, where the Reformer was waited for by many thirsty and languishing
souls from an early hour in the morning, who desired to hear what he
would say concerning the dark deeds that had been done in France. She
therefore returned to the Lawnmarket; but my grandfather worked his way
into the heart of the crowd, where he had not long been when a murmur
announced that Master Knox was coming, and soon after he entered the
kirk.

He had now the appearance of great age and weakness, and he walked with
slow and tottering steps, wearing a virl of fur round his neck, and a
staff in one hand; godlie Richie Ballanden, his man, holding him up by
the oxter. And when he came to the foot of the pulpit, Richie, by the
help of another servant that followed with the Book, lifted him up the
steps into it, where he was seemingly so exhausted that he was
obligated to rest for the space of several minutes. No man who had never
seen him before could have thought that one so frail would have had
ability to have given out even the psalm; but when he began the spirit
descended upon him, and he was so kindled that at last his voice became
as awful as the thunders of wrath, and his arm was strengthened as with
the strength of a champion's. The kirk dirled to the foundations; the
hearts of his hearers shook, till the earth of their sins was shaken
clean from them; and he appeared in the wirlwind of inspiration, as if
his spirit was mounting, like the prophet Elijah, in a fiery chariot
immediately to the gates of heaven.

His discourse was of the children of Bethlehem slain by Herod, and he
spoke of the dreadful sound of a bell and a trumpet heard suddenly in
the midnight hour, when all were fast bound and lying defenceless in the
fetters of sleep. He described the dreadful knocking at the doors--the
bursting in of men with drawn swords--how babies were harled by the arms
from their mothers' beds and bosoms, and dashed to death upon the marble
floors. He told of parents that stood in the porches of their h