rough of the cross-well, opposite the tolbooth-stair foot.

When the clock struck ten, the time appointed, I was ready dressed in my
wife's apparel, having, in the course of the day, broken the chain of
the shackle on my arm; and the door being opened by Willie Sutherland in
the usual manner, I came out, holding a napkin to my face and weeping in
sincerity very bitterly, with the thought of what might ensue to Sarah
Lochrig, whom I left behind in my place.

In reverence to my grief the honest man said nothing, but walked by my
side till he had let me out at the outer stair-head door, where he
parted from me, carrying the keys to Mungo Robeson's house, aneath the
tolbooth, while I walked towards James Gottera's cart, and was presently
in the inside of the hogget.

With great presence of mind and a soldierly self-possession, that
venturous friend then drew the horse's head from the trough, and began
to drive it down the street to the town-end port, striving as he did so
to whistle, till he was rebuked for so doing, as I heard, by an old
woman then going home, who said to him that it was a shame to hear such
profanity in Irvine when a martyr doomed to die was lying in the
tolbooth. To the which he replied scoffingly, "that martyr was a new
name for a sworn rebel to king and country,"--words which so kindled the
worthy woman's ire, that she began to ban his prelatic ungodliness to
such a degree that a crowd collected, which made me tremble. For the
people sided with the zealous carlan, and spoke fiercely, threatening to
gar James Gottera ride the stang for his sinfulness in so traducing
persecuted Christians. What might have come to pass is hard to say, had
not Providence been pleased, in that most critical and perilous time, to
cause a foul lum in a thacket house in the Sea-gate to take fire, by
which an alarm was spread that drew off the mob, and allowed James
Gottera to pass without farther molestation out at the town-end port.

CHAPTER LXIII

From the time of my evasion from the tolbooth, and during the
controversy between James Gottera and the mob in the street, there was a
whirlwind in my mind that made me incapable of reason. But when we had
passed through the town-end port, and the cart had stopped at the
minister's carse till I could throw off my female weeds and put on a
sailor's garb, provided for the occasion, tongue nor pen cannot express
the passion wherewith my yearning soul was then affected.