The deep sleep into which I had fallen when Sarah Lochrig and my son were admitted to see me, and during the season of which they had sat in silence beside me till revived nature again unsealed my eyes, was so refreshing, that after they were gone away I was enabled to consider my condition with a composed mind, and free from the heats of passion and anxiety wherewith I had previously been so greatly tossed. And calling to mind all that had taken place, and the ruthless revenge with which the cruel prelates were actuated, I saw, as it were written in a book, that for my part and conduct I was doomed to die. I felt not, however, the sense of guilt in my conscience; and I said to myself, that this sore thing ought not to be, and that, as an innocent man and the head of a family, I was obligated by all expedient ways to escape, if it were possible, from the grasps of the tyranny. So from that time, the first night of my imprisonment, I set myself to devise the means of working out my deliverance; and I was not long without an encouraging glimmer of hope. It seemed to me, that in the piety and simplicity of Willie Sutherland, instruments were given by which I might break through the walls of my prison; and accordingly, when he next morning came in to see me, I failed not to try their edge. I entered into discourse with him, and told him of many things which I have recorded in this book, and so won upon his confidence and the singleness of his heart, that he shed tears of grief at the thought of so many blameless men being ordained to an untimely end. "It has pleased God," said he, "to make me as it were a leper and an excommunicant in this world, by the constraints of a low estate, and without any fault of mine. But for this temporal ignominy, He will, in His own good time, bestow an exceeding great reward;--and though I may be called on to fulfil the work of the persecutors, it shall yet be seen of me, that I will abide by the integrity of my faith, and that, poor despised hangman as I am, I have a conscience that will not brook a task of iniquity, whatsoever the laws of man may determine, or the King's judges decree." I was, as it were, rebuked by this proud religious declaration, and I gently inquired how it was that he came to fall into a condition so rejected of the world.