had
been so nearly sacrificed before, and where he was to be entrusted to
the care of a more remorseless jailer.

[Sidenote: He escapes by Night.]

As soon as their superior left them for the night the canons, satisfied
that all hope of preserving the life of their comrade in St Andrews was
at an end, and that if he did not seek safety by instant flight horrible
torments and certain death awaited him, gathered round him and urged him
to escape. On his expressing a wish to consult with other friends before
taking a step so serious, they pressed him only the more urgently to
flee and leave the country at once, as he would certainly be pursued,
and, if overtaken, brought back for condign punishment. The sequel I
give in his own unvarnished statement, which is to me more touching from
its very simplicity than the highly embellished _rechauffees_ of
D'Aubigne: "Etsi maximo dolore afficiebar cum cogitarem mihi e patria,
qua nihil dulcius est bene institutis naturis, discedendum esse, tamen,
et necessitati, et tot bonorum virorum consiliis parendum duxi."[292]
And then follows a parting scene only less affecting than that of St
Paul from the disciples on the seashore at Tyre, and proving that even
yet all good was not extinguished from the hearts of those under the
rule of this vicious prior, and encouraging the hope, which was
afterwards fully realised, that the best of them would ultimately find a
more congenial home in a new and purified church. Only the apostle,
though in a heathen land, could kneel down in open day on the seashore
to pray with his friends, and they without challenge could accompany him
to the ship which waited to receive him; while these men, though living
in a professedly Christian land, had secretly to bring out their friend
from the place of confinement and comfort him, and then send him away
alone into the thick darkness to pursue his weary journey under cover of
night to that broad firth which bounds Fifeshire on the north, if haply
he might find on its shores some boat to ferry him across, or on its
bosom some friendly craft to convey him without loss of time beyond the
reach of his implacable persecutor. "Clam igitur educunt me domo,
instruunt et viatico. Ita cum lachrymantes inter nos vale dixissemus, et
illi suavissima commemoratione illustrium virorum et sanctorum qui
similiter e patria tyrannidi cesserunt, maesticiam meam non nihil
levassent, media jam nocte in densissimis tenebris solus iter