f gentry,
among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood
of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great
volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some
popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid
besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its
way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded
ominous in the background. Among the congregation was a dark, vehement
man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his
side, of whom he had charge--strange tutor! flames of zeal and
earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it
was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long
disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of
youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral,
vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the
superseded faith.

Knox's gifts and qualities were already well known; he had been a
devoted friend and follower of Wishart, the martyr whose memory was
still fresh in the minds of all men; and these public examinations of
the three boys, and the expositions he addressed to them, but which many
of mature age also gathered to hear, had given the many competent judges
then assembled in the beleaguered city a practical knowledge of his
gifts and endowments. And Rough, who filled the post of preacher in St.
Andrews, was not a man of learning, and in consequence would seem to
have been troubled by disputatious members of the priesthood, eager, not
unnaturally, to defend their own tenets, and with all the authorities at
their fingers' ends. In this strait John Knox was entreated to accept
the charge of the congregation, but in vain. Perhaps the memory of
Wishart's charge to him, "Return to your bairns," was still in his ears;
perhaps the reluctance and hesitation of a man who felt himself
incompetent for so great a responsibility--though it is strange to
associate any idea of shrinking from responsibility with such a
dauntless spirit, and he was by this time a man of forty-two, with a
matured mind and some experience of life. At all events he "utterlie
refused": he "would not run where God had not called him." This being
so, there was no alternative but to take him by surprise and force him
into the position which all desired him to assume. And this was the step