When my grandfather had returned to the vintner's, he found that Elspa had conferred with Lucky Kilfauns concerning the afflicting end and intent of her journey to St Andrews; and that decent woman sympathising with her sorrow, telling her of many woful things of the same sort she had herself known, and how a cousin of her mother's, by the father's side, had been wiled away from her home by the abbot of Melrose, and never heard tell of for many a day, till she was discovered, in the condition of a disconsolate nun, in a convent, far away in Nithsdale. But the great difficulty was to get access to Marion Ruet's bower, for so, from that day, was Mrs Kilspinnie called again by her sister; and, after no little communing, it was proposed by Lucky Kilfauns, that Elspa should go with her to the house of a certain Widow Dingwall, and there for a time take up her abode, and that my grandfather, after putting on the Prior's livery, should look about him for the gilly, his former guide, and, through him, make a tryst, to meet the dissolute madam at the widow's house. Accordingly the matter was so settled, and while Lucky Kilfauns, in a most motherly and pitiful manner, carried Elspa Ruet to the house of the Widow Dingwall, my grandfather went back to the priory to get the cloak and arms of the Lord James' livery. When he was equipped, he then went fearless all about the town, and met with no molestation; only he saw at times divers of the Archbishop's men, who recollected him, and who, as he passed, stopped and looked after him, and whispered to one another and muttered fierce words. Much he desired to fall in with that humane Samaritan, Leonard Meldrum, the seneschal of the castle, and fain would he have gone thither to inquire for him; but, until he had served the turn of the mournful Elspa Ruet, he would not allow any wish of his own to lead him to aught wherein there was the hazard of any trouble that might balk her pious purpose. After daunering from place to place, and seeing nothing of the stripling, he was obligated to give twalpennies to a stabler's lad to search for him, who soon brought him to the vintner's, where my grandfather, putting on the look of a losel and roister, gave him a groat, and bade him go to the madam's dwelling, and tell her that he would be, from the gloaming, all the night at the Widow Dingwall's, where he would rejoice exceedingly if she could come and spend an hour or two.