After lying about the period of an hour in great perturbation, he began
to grow more collected, and the din and resort of strangers in the house
also subsided, by which he was enabled, with help from on high, to
gather his scattered thoughts and to bind them up into the sheaves of
purpose and resolution. Accordingly, when all was still, and several
young men that were sitting by the fire on account of every bed being
occupied, gave note, by their deep breathing, that sleep had descended
upon them, and darkened their senses with her gracious and downy wings,
he rose softly from the side of Winterton, and stepping over him,
slipped to the door, which he unbarred, and the moon shining bright he
went to the stable to take out his horse. It was not his intent to have
done this, but to have gone up into the streets of the city and walked
the walls thereof till he thought his adversary was gone, but seeing the
moon so fair and clear he determined to take his horse and forthwith
proceed on his journey, for the river was low and fordable, and trintled
its waters with a silvery sheen in the stillness of the beautiful light.
Scarcely, however, had he pulled the latch of the stable door--even as
he was just entering in--when he heard Winterton coming from the house
rousing the hostler, whom he profanely rated for allowing him to
oversleep himself. For, wakening just as his bedfellow rose, he thought
the morning was come and that his orders had been neglected.
In this extremity my grandfather saw no chance of evasion. If he went
out into the moonshine he would to a surety be discovered, and in the
stable he would to a certainty be caught. But what could he do and the
danger so pressing? He had hardly a choice; however, he went into the
stable, shut the door, and running up to the horses that were farthest
ben, mounted into the hack, and hid himself among the hay.
In that concealment he was scarcely well down when Winterton, with an
hostler that was half asleep, came with a lantern to the door, banning
the poor knave as if he had been cursing him with bell, book and candle,
the other rubbing his eyes and declaring it was still far from morning,
and saying he was sure the other traveller was not gone. To the which
there was speedy evidence, for on going towards Winterton's horse the
hostler saw my grandfather's in its stall and told him so.
At that moment a glimpse of the lantern fell on the horse's legs, and
its feet being white, "Oho!" cried Winterton, "let us look here--Kenneth
Shelty's Lightfoot--the very beast; and hae I been in the same hole wi'
the tod and no kent it. The deil's black collie worry my soul, but this
is a soople trick. I did nae think the sleekit sinner had art enough to
play't. Nae doubt he's gane to hide himsel in the town till I'm awa, for
he has heard what I said yestreen. But I'll be up sides wi' him. The
de'il a foot will I gang this morning till he comes back for his horse."
And with these words he turned out of the stable with the hostler and
went back to the house.
No sooner were they well gone than my grandfather came from his
hiding-place, and twisting a wisp of straw round his horse's feet, that
they might not dirl or make a din on the stones, he led it cannily out
and down to the river's brink, and, there mounting, took the ford, and
was soon free on the Gorbals side. Riding up the gait at a brisk trot,
he passed on for a short time along the road that he had been told led
to Kilmarnock, but fearing he would be followed, he turned off at the
first wynd he came to on the left, and a blessed thing it was that he
did so, for it led to the Reformation-leavened town of Paisley, where he
arrived an hour before daylight. Winterton, little jealousing what had
happened, went again to bed, as my grandfather afterwards learnt, and
had fallen asleep. In the morning when he awoke and was told that both
man and horse were flown, he flayed the hostler's back and legs in more
than a score of places, believing he had connived at my grandfather's
secret flight.
My grandfather had never before been in the town of Paisley, but he had
often heard from Abercorn's serving-men that were wont to sorn about his
father's smiddy, of a house of jovial entertainment by the water-side,
about a stone-cast from the abbey-yett, the hostess whereof was a
certain canty dame called Maggy Napier, then in great repute with the
shavelings of the abbey. Thither he directed his course, the abbey
towers serving him for her sign, and the moonlight and running river
were guides to her door, at the which he was not blate in chapping. She
was, however, long of giving entrance, for it happened that some nights
before the magistrates of the town had been at a carousal with the abbot
and chapter, the papistical denomination for the seven heads and ten
horns of a monastery, and when they had come away and were going home,
one of them, Bailie Pollock, a gaucy widower, was instigated by the
devil and the wine he had drunk to stravaig towards Maggy Napier's--a
most unseemly thing for a bailie to do--especially a bailie of Paisley,
but it was then the days of popish sinfulness. And when Bailie Pollock
went thither the house was full of riotous swankies, who, being the waur
of drink themselves, had but little reverence for a magistrate in the
same state, so they handled him to such a degree that he was obliged to
keep his bed and put collops to his eyes for three days. The consequence
of which was that the house fell under the displeasure of the Town
Council, and Maggie was admonished to keep it more orderly and
doucely--though the fault came neither from her nor her customers, as
she told my grandfather, for detaining him so long, it being requisite
that she should see he was in a condition of sobriety before letting him
in. But, when admitted, he was in no spirit to enjoy her jocosity
concerning Bailie Pollock's spree, so he told her that he had come far
and had far to go, and that having heard sore tidings of a friend, he
was fain to go to bed and try if he could compose himself with an hour
or two of sleep.
Maggie accordingly refrained from her jocularity, and began to soothe
and comfort him, for she was naturally of a winsome way, and prepared a
bed for him with her best sheets, the which, she said, were gi'en her in
gratus gift frae the Lord Abbot, so that he undressed himself and
enjoyed a pleasant interregnum of anxiety for more than five hours; and
when he awoke and was up, he found a breakfast worthy of the abbot
himself ready, and his hostess was most courtly and kind, praising the
dainties, and pressing him to eat. Nor when he proposed to reckon with
her for the lawin would she touch the money, but made him promise, when
he came back, he would bide another night with her, hoping he would then
be in better spirits, for she was wae to see so braw a gallant sae
casten down, doless and dowie.
When they had settled their contest, and my grandfather had come out to
mount his beast, which a stripling was holding ready for him at a
louping-on-stane near the abbey-yett, as he was going thither, a young
friar, who was taking a morning stroll along the pleasant banks of the
Cart, approached towards him, and, after looking hard at him for some
time, called him by name and took him by both the hands, which he
pressed with a brotherly affection.
This friar was of Lithgow parentage and called Dominick Callender, and
when he and my grandfather were playing-bairns, they had spent many a
merry day of their suspicion-less young years together. As he grew up,
being a lad of shrewd parts, and of a very staid and orderly deportment,
the monks set their snares for him, and before he could well think for
himself he was wiled into their traps, and becoming a novice, in due
season professed himself a monk. But it was some time before my
grandfather knew him again, for the ruddy of youth had fled his cheek,
and he was pale and of a studious countenance; and when the first
sparklings of his pleasure at the sight of his old play-marrow had gone
off, his eyes saddened into thoughtfulness, and he appeared like one
weighed down with care and heavy inward dule.