upon a man who was sitting,
as he had so shortly before been himself, sad and solitary, gazing on
the sea. The stranger, on hearing him approach, rose hastily, and was
moving quickly away; but my grandfather called to him to stop and not to
be afraid, for he would harm no one.

"I thought," said the melancholy man, "that all his Grace's retainers
were at the execution of the heretic."

There was something in the way in which he uttered the latter clause of
the sentence that seemed to my grandfather as if he would have made use
of better and fitter words, and therefore, to encourage him into
confidence, he replied,--

"I belong not to his Grace."

"How is it, then, that you wear his livery, and that I saw you, with Sir
David Hamilton, enter the garden of that misguided woman?"

He could proceed no farther, for his heart swelled, and his utterance
was for a while stifled, he being no other than the misfortunate Bailie
of Crail, whose light wife had sunk into the depravity of the
Archbishop's lemane. She had been beguiled away from him and her five
babies, their children, by the temptations of a Dominican, who, by habit
and repute, was pandarus to his Grace, and the poor man had come to try
if it was possible to wile her back.

My grandfather was melted with sorrow to see his great affection for the
unworthy concubine, calling to mind the scene of her harlotry and wanton
glances, and he reasoned with him on the great folly of vexing his
spirit for a woman so far lost to all shame and given over to iniquity.
But still the good man of Crail would not be persuaded, but used many
earnest entreaties that my grandfather would assist him to see his wife,
in order that he might remonstrate with her on the eternal perils in
which she had placed her precious soul.

My grandfather, though much moved by the importunity of that weak,
honest man, nevertheless withstood his entreaties, telling him that he
was minded to depart forthwith from St Andrews, and make the best of his
way back to Edinburgh, and so could embark in no undertaking whatever.

Discoursing on that subject in this manner, they strayed into the
fields, and being wrapt up in their conversation, they heeded not which
way they went, till, turning suddenly round the corner of an orchard,
they saw the castle full before them, about half a mile off, and a dim
white vapour mounting at times from the spot, still surrounded by many
spectators, where the fires of martyrd