With many deep sighs and portentous shakes of the head, all indicative of what no one could divine, John of the Silvermills had to abandon his smoke-begrimed laboratory near the water of Leith, and accompany the court; carrying his books of Paracelsus, Galen, and Avicenna, and the anatomical works of Hippocrates, Herophilus, and of the great modern, Vesalius (the exposer of the errors of Galen), with all his retorts, crucibles, chafing-dishes, horoscopes, and other scientific rubbish, packed on sumpter-horses, by which much irreparable damage was sustained by certain glass phials and bottles that contained--the Lord alone knew what; but one was said to be the famous powder of _projection_, which when thrown upon heated mercury or lead, turned them into silver or gold, and the loss whereof made the patient John rend his long beard, and passionately bequeath himself to the devil a hundred times. "If Magdalene groweth well here," said the king to the cardinal, as they dismounted at the gate of the monastery, "to your eminence alone will Scotland and I be indebted for her recovery; but if she becometh worse, and our suspicions are confirmed, then woe to the _authors_ of her illness--woe!" CHAPTER XXII. TEN RED GRAINS. "Yes! in an hour like this, 'twere vain to hide The heart so long and so severely tried: Still to thy name that heart hath fondly thrilled, But sterner duties called and were fulfilled." MRS. HEMANS. Prior to his departure for Balmerino, and immediately on his leaving the palace, the learned apothegar visited the king's advocate. The town house of Sir Adam Otterburn, the Redhall Lodging, as it was named and as we have before stated, stood upon the south side of the Canongate, and near to the eastern end thereof. At the present day the south side of this venerable street, the memories of which go back to the days of St. David I., and the glories of Earl Randolph and Ramsay of Dalhousie, is still somewhat straggling, irregular, and open; in 1537 it was much more so. The houses were then detached, surrounded by gardens, and even parks; for there were several barnyards in the Canongate, some of which were destroyed by cannonading during the siege of 1573. The severe plagues of 1514 and 1520, which followed the slaughter of Flodden, swept away many of the citizens, whose houses were demolished to remove all chance of lingering infection; thus the mansion of Redhall was remarkably solitary. A ruined and desolate barn-yard lay to the westward; and a grass park, shaded by many beautiful sycamores, extended on the east nearly to the foot of the alley known as the Horsewynd.