The young delinquents speedily became aware of the quality of the man they had insulted, and were of course in great alarm, Fleming in particular being apprehensive of losing his commission. After a month’s imprisonment, they were glad to come and make public profession of penitence on their knees before the Council, in order to obtain their liberty.[373] On a Sunday, early in the same month, four free-living gentlemen, including Lord Blantyre—then a hot youth of two-and-twenty—drove in a hackney-coach to Leith, and sat in the tavern of a Mrs Innes all the time of the afternoon-service. Thereafter they went out to take a ramble on the sands, but by and by returned to drinking at the tavern of a Captain Kendal, where they carried on the debauch till eight o’clock in the evening. Let an Edinburgh correspondent of Mr Wodrow tell the remainder of the story. Being all drunk—‘when they were coming back to Edinburgh, in the very street of Leith, they called furiously to the coachman and post-boy to drive. The fellows, I think, were drunk, too, and ran in on the side of the causey, dung down [knocked over] a woman, and both the fore and hind wheel went over her. The poor woman cried; however, the coach went on; the woman died in half an hour. Word came to the Advocate to-morrow morning, who caused seize the two fellows, and hath been taking a precognition of the witnesses ... it will be a great pity that the gentlemen that were in the coach be not soundly fined for breach of Sabbath. One of them had once too great a profession to [make it proper that he should] be guilty now of such a crime.’[374] The desire to see these scapegraces punished for what was called breach of Sabbath, without any regard to that dangerous rashness of conduct which had led to the loss of an innocent life, is very characteristic of Mr Wodrow’s style of correspondents. [Sidenote: FEB. 19.]