But while they were busily conversing and contriving how best to aid and further that iniquitous aggression of perfidious tyranny, there came in one of the brethren of the monastery, with a frightened look, and cried aloud, that John Knox was come, and had been all night in the town. At the news the spectators, as if moved by one spirit, gave a triumphant shout,--the clergy were thunderstruck,--some started from their seats, unconscious of what they did,--others threw themselves back where they sat,--and all appeared as if a judgment had been pronounced upon them. In the same moment the church began to skail,--the session was adjourned,--and the people ran in all directions. The cry rose everywhere, "John Knox is come!" All the town came rushing into the streets,--the old and the young, the lordly and the lowly, were seen mingling and marvelling together,--all tasks of duty, and servitude, and pleasure, were forsaken,--the sick-beds of the dying were deserted,--the priests abandoned their altars and masses, and stood pale and trembling at the doors of their churches,--mothers set down their infants on the floors, and ran to inquire what had come to pass,--funerals were suspended, and the impious and the guilty stood aghast, as if some dreadful apocalypse had been made;--travellers, with the bridles in their hands, lingering in profane discourse with their hosts, suddenly mounted, and speeded into the country with the tidings. At every cottage door and wayside bield, the inmates stood in clusters, silent and wondering, as horseman came following horseman, crying, "John Knox is come!" Barks that had departed, when they heard the news, bore up to tell others that they saw afar at sea. The shepherds were called in from the hills;--the warders on the castle, when, at the sound of many quickened feet approaching, they challenged the comers, were answered, "John Knox is come!" Studious men were roused from the spells of their books;--nuns, at their windows, looked out fearful and inquiring,--and priests and friars were seen standing by themselves, shunned like lepers. The whole land was stirred as with the inspiration of some new element, and the hearts of the persecutors were withered. "No tongue," often said my grandfather, "could tell the sense of that great event through all the bounds of Scotland, and the papistical dominators shrunk as if they had suffered in their powers and principalities, an awful and irremediable overthrow." CHAPTER XVIII When my grandfather left the Greyfriars, he went to the lodging of the Lord James Stuart, whom he found well instructed of all that had taken place, which he much marvelled at, having scarcely tarried by the way in going thither.