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I will go back to Crail my penitence shall be seen in my shame; I will go openly, that all may take warning and before all, in the face of day, will I confess the wrongs I hae done to my gudeman and bairns." She then rose and said to her sister, "Elspa, ye hae heard my vow, and this very hour I will begin my pilgrimage."

The next day, Elspa Ruet, under the escorting of my grandfather, was minded to have gone home to Crail, but the news that John Knox was to preach on the morrow at St Andrews had spread far and wide; no man could tell by what wonderful reverberation the tidings had awakened the whole land.

To this, at first, she made no answer; but leaping out of the cart, and standing still for a moment, she looked wistfully at her sister and daughter, and then began to weep, crying, "Gang ye awa, and no mind me; ye canna thole, and oughtna to share what I maun bear; and I'll never break another vow: so, in the face o' day, and of a' people, I'm constrained to enter Crail first, to confess my guilt at the door of the honest man and his bairns that I hae sae disgraced; and syne to beg my mother to take in the limmer that was scofft frae door to door, till the blessed time when ye were sent to stop me laying desperate hands on mysel'."

Even so accomplished a person as Professor Crail, in his English of Shakespeare, derives head, through the German haupt, from the Latin caput! Mr. I believe that more people could tell why the month of July was so called than could explain the origin of the names for our days of the week, and that it is oftener the Saxon than the French words in Chaucer that puzzle the modern reader.

On escaping the gate they fell in with divers persons going along the road, who, by their discourse, were returning home to Cupar, and they walked leisurely with them till they came to a cross-road, where my grandfather, giving Master Kilspinnie a nodge, turned down the one that went to the left, followed by him, and it happened to be the road to Dysart and Crail.

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.

And afterwards, when they had sat some time, and the crowd which had gathered out of doors in the street was dispersed, my grandfather went to his lodgings; and having paid his lawin, returned to the two sisters and Agnes Kilspinnie, and they all walked to the shore of Leith together, where they found a boat going to Kinghorn, into which they embarked; and having slept there, they hired a cart to take them to Crail next morning, everyone who saw them wondering at the dejected and ruinous appearance of the penitent.

In the winter after the storming of Dumbarton Castle, Widow Ruet, the mother of my grandmother, hearing nothing for a long time of her poor donsie daughter Marion, had, from the hanging of Archbishop Hamilton, the anti-Christian paramour of that misguided creature, fallen into a melancholy state of moaning and inward grief, in so much that Bailie Kilspinnie wrote a letter invoking my grandfather to come with his wife to Crail, that they might join together in comforting the aged woman; which work of duty and of charity they lost no time in undertaking, carrying with them Agnes Kilspinnie to see her kin.

There were strange scenes enacted in the policies. Some say he took his cane to her, and Jessie fell back upon her former weapons stones. It is certain at least that he made a motion to Captain Crail to have the woman trepanned, and that the Captain refused the proposition with uncommon vehemence. And the end of the matter was victory for Jessie. This is to look forward.

In the meantime the poor man of Crail was grinding the teeth of his rage at the sight of the cause of his sorrow, and my grandfather had a sore struggle to keep him down, and prevent him from running wud and furious at the two sacerdotal reprobates, for no lightlier could they be called.