The town was in great distress lest the mouth from which so much sweetness flowed should be closed. [Sidenote: ATTEMPT TO MURDER WISHART.] Nevertheless, at the cardinal’s instigation, says Knox, a priest named Wighton took a sword, and concealing it under his gown mixed with the crowd as if he were a mere hearer, and stood waiting at the foot of the steps by which Wishart must come down. The discourse was finished, the people dispersed. Wishart, whose glance was keen and whose judgment was swift, noticed as he came down the steps a priest who kept his hand under his gown, and as soon as he came near him he said, ‘My friend, what would ye do?’ At the same moment he laid hold of the priest’s hand and snatched the weapon from him. The assassin fell at his feet and confessed his fault. Swiftly ran the report that a priest had attempted to kill the reformer, and the sick who heard it turned back and cried, ‘Deliver the traitor to us, or else we will take him by force.’ And so indeed they rushed on him. But Wishart put his arms round the assassin. ‘Whosoever troubles him,’ said he, ‘shall trouble me, for he has hurt me in nothing.’ His friends however insisted that for the future one of them, in arms, should accompany him whithersoever he went.[333] When the plague had ceased at Dundee, Wishart thought that, as God had put an end to that battle, he called him to another. It was indeed proposed that he should hold a public disputation. He inquired of the bishops where he should be heard. But first he went to Montrose ‘to salute the kirk there,’ and although sometimes preaching the Gospel, he was ‘most part in secret meditation, in the which he was so earnest that night and day he would continue in it.’[334] [Sidenote: HIS NIGHT OF PRAYER.]