isguided presbyterians; at all events, a more lenient policy could
do no harm; and if it did no good, it would at least be free from those
imputed cruelties, which are supposed to justify the long-continued
resistance that has brought the royal authority into such difficulties."

At this juncture of their conversation a gentleman announced, that his
master was ready to proceed with them to the palace, and they forthwith
retired. Thus did I obtain a glimpse of the inner mind of the Privy
Council, by which I clearly saw, that what with those members who
satisfied their consciences as to iniquity, because it was made
seemingly lawful by human statutes, and what with those who, like Lord
Perth, considered the kingdom the King's estate, and the people his
tenantry, not the subjects of laws by which he was bound as much as
they; together with those others who, like the Bishop, considered mercy
and justice as expedients of state policy, that there was no hope for
the peace and religious liberties of the presbyterians, merely by
resistance; and I, from that time, began to think it was only through
the instrumentality of the Prince of Orange, then heir-presumptive to
the crown, failing James Stuart, Duke of York, that my vow could be
effectually brought to pass.

CHAPTER LXXXIII

As soon as those of the Privy Council had, with their attendants, left
the house, and proceeded to join the Duke of York in the palace, the
charitable damsel came to me, and conveyed me, undiscovered, through the
hall and into the Cowgate, where she had provided a man, a friend of her
own, one Charles Brownlee, who had been himself in the hands of the
Philistines, to conduct me out of the town; and by him I was guided in
safety through the Cowgate, and put into a house just without the same,
where his mother resided.

"Here," said he, "it will be as well for you to bide out the daylight,
and being now forth the town-wall, ye'll can gang where ye like
unquestioned in the gloaming." And so saying he went away, leaving me
with his mother, an ancient matron, with something of the remnant of
ladyness about her, yet was she not altogether an entire gentlewoman,
though at the first glimpse she had the look of one of the very highest
degree.

Notwithstanding, however, that apparition of finery which was about her,
she was in truth and in heart a sincere woman, and had, in the better
days of her younger years, been, as she rehearsed to me, gentlewom