ingredior."[293] Sadly he plodded on his way through the darkness,
oppressed with forebodings, for he knew of no hospitable retreat in
other lands; he had neither friend nor acquaintance among foreigners; he
could speak no language but his native tongue and Latin; and he had some
reason to fear that he might be classed with those vagabonds who had
been driven out from various Continental states because of their
fanatical opinions, and were justly suspected even by Protestants in
Germany. But in the multitude of distracting thoughts within him he
encouraged himself in the Lord his God and in Christ his Saviour. Ere
morning had well dawned his journey was completed, and he got safely on
shipboard, where, according to his own account, _quidam homo
germanus_[294]--that is, according to some, a certain man a German;
according to others, a certain man a kinsman--received him very
affectionately, and afterwards nursed him with great kindness during the
sea-sickness from which he suffered throughout the stormy voyage.

[Sidenote: His Dundee Friends.]

On the day following his escape, when the vessel which sheltered him had
already sailed, there came horsemen to the shore, sent by the prior from
St Andrews, to make search for the fugitive. When they returned without
success to their master, he is reported to have summoned before him a
certain citizen of Dundee, whom he suspected to have aided in providing
a ship for the canon. This merchant citizen[295] took with him another
true-hearted favourer of the Reformation, James Scrymgeour, provost of
the town; and on the former denying that he had given the assistance
which he was accused of doing to Alesius, and which probably he could
deny with a good conscience, his sons in St Andrews and Dundee having
been too prudent to involve him in their little plot, the provost spoke
out boldly to the haughty prior, and said: Why make a work about this?
I, myself, if I had known that Alexander was preparing to go away, would
with the greatest pleasure have furnished him both with a ship and with
provisions for his voyage, that he might be put in safety beyond the
reach of your cruelty. Assuredly, had he been my brother I would long
ago have rescued him from those perils and miseries in which you have
involved him.

Thus Alexander Alesius was driven from his much-loved native land,
destined never to return to it more, or again to see the friends and
relations to whom he was so warmly attach