The evening wore on like eternity, and I had many a thought in my heart, though but few of them were sad or waesooie, for I was too young. Most of all I prayed that I might bear myself well, and in some shape at least carry the matter through without dishonour. When the Provost and my master had well drunken and eaten yet more, their host stole away from them on a pretext, and came to the chamber where I sat in darkness, planning how to make my way through the garden. He brought me presently the equipment of which I had need, and of his own accord added another pistol of admirable French workmanship. For France is ever the country for good ordnance of all sorts—from the pistolet which Sir Thomas Nisbett gave me to the cannons that dang down the Castle of Saint Andrews about the heads of Normand Leslie and his crew. ’Gin ye live ye kin keep the pistol,’ he said, as one that did me a vast kindness. Then over my steel cap I set the great broad hat of Sir Thomas of Culzean, and did his cloak about me. It was now the time to go, and I tell you true, my heart beat a pretty tune to dance to as I stood at the back of the door—with my host hiding well in the rear, lest they should nick him by firing as the light within showed me plain in the doorway. So I ordered the lamp to be removed and the door to be opened. Then my host bade me adieu in a loud, hearty tone, and said that he would come round and visit me in the morning. It was with a bitter sort of joy, not wholly unpleasant, that I heard the door clash sharply to behind me. I had my sword in my right hand and my pistol ready bent in the other. And I bethought me how many would have risked the same wager of battle. There was a light flickering somewhere in the town—belike a party passing homeward with torches from a merry making, or some of the bonfires lighted for the inbringing of the New Year. I could see my friend of the beckoning hand now standing erect with his plaid about him. He was the same I had seen at the burning of the Bible when I was but a boy in the courtyard of Ardstinchar, and, I doubted not, the Grey Man of our later troubles. I knew that the sharpshooters would be placed in the alleys of the garden. Indeed, I had seen them pass to their situations, and observed that they had their hackbutts carefully pointed at the path along which I must pass. So instead of walking directly down the main road to the gate, I made believe to stumble on the threshold, and to recover myself with an exclamation of pain, in order that I might divert them into waiting till I should come their way. For I must perforce pass by the mouths of their muskets so close that they could not miss.