It was evening, and the rays of the setting sun were gilding the lofty spires of the ancient city of St. Andrews, causing the windows of the venerable university to glance like diamonds in the golden light; while the huge waves, gradually decreasing as they rolled along, broke with a gentle murmur on the shore, creating a harmony in unison with the pensive beauty of the hour. Apparently enjoying this interval of calm repose, a young man—whose extreme youthfulness of features contrasted strangely with the dejection seated on his brow—might have been observed seated in a musing attitude amongst the rocks on the seashore. The eyes of this solitary being were fixed with a melancholy earnest gaze alternately on the setting sun, which, having completed its appointed journey, descended rapidly into the empurpled west, and on the swiftly gliding vessels as they passed proudly on their way, their white sails flapping in the evening breeze. This dreaming youth—for he numbered only seventeen years of age—was Andrew Ayton, younger of Inchdarnie, then studying at the ancient university of St. Andrews. He was a young man possessed of graceful and winning manners—upright and honourable in his conduct; while his constant attention to his studies, and fervent, unobtrusive piety, endeared him alike to his instructors and to his fellow-students. His thoughts, at the moment of his being introduced to the reader, seemed not of that gentle kind which one might have expected from the soft serenity of the surrounding scene, for alternately his face flushed, and then waxed pale as death, according to the nature of the images presented to his mind. "Oh, my unhappy country!" at length he exclaimed aloud in impassioned anguish, "how long are thy saints called upon to endure the miseries heaped upon them? How long must they continue to fall beneath the oppressor’s rod——?" At this moment a loud derisive burst of laughter grated harshly on his ear, interrupting him in the midst of his reverie. Starting hastily from his seat—his face covered with blushes in being thus detected in his solitary musings—young Ayton turning an inquiring eye in all directions in order to spy out the mocking intruder. For some little time his endeavours proved fruitless, and he was on the point of giving up the search, when a head cautiously protruded from behind a jutting piece of rock disclosed to view the laughing face of his cousin, William Auchmutie, who, perceiving himself detected, came forward and addressed young Ayton thus:—