On the evening of that eventful day which saw Patrick Hamilton, Abbot of Ferne, the young and learned Scotch proto-martyr to the Protestant faith, bend his head and resign his soul at the burning stake, in the head-quarters of Scottish superstition--St Andrews--a young man was slowly bending his steps from the scene of execution towards his home, a good many miles distant. The effect produced by that day's proceedings was, as is well known, felt throughout all Scotland, where the scene of martyrdom was, as yet, one of these _mira nova_ which startle a country, and extort from the innermost recesses of the heart thoughts and feelings as new as intense. In the case of Hamilton, there were many features calculated, in an eminent degree, to strike deep into the minds of a sympathetic and meditative people; and doubtless, his birth, descended from the royal house of Albany--his learning, derived from the deep wells of Mair's philosophy--and his extreme youth--were not the least impressive; yet there was something in the mere _manner_ of his death--abstracted even from the species of immolation not altogether new to Scotland, cruelly mangled, as he was, by an awkward or cold-blooded executioner--that deepened and riveted the effect produced by the extraordinary scene of his martyrdom. If casual or merely curious spectators might dream of that scene till their dying hour, we may form some estimate of what the friend and college companion of the martyr--for such was the young man whom we have now introduced to the reader--felt and thought, as, with eyes bent on the ground, he prosecuted his journey homewards, after witnessing the execution. Imbued himself with the spirit of the new faith, he had that day seen it proved, in a manner little less than miraculous. One of the softest and gentlest of mankind, who would have shrunk from the sight of pain inflicted on the meanest of God's creatures, had been enabled, by celestial influence, to stand, in the midst of a scorching and destroying fire, undaunted, unmoved, with smiles on his countenance, and words of exhortation on his lips. The feelings of the religionist were roused and sublimed by the contemplation of one of heaven's marvels; but the pity of the man and the friend was not lost in the admiration of the heaven-born fortitude that simulated total relief from bodily agony. Tears filled the eyes of the youth, and were wiped away only to rise again with the recurring thoughts of the various stages of the trial and triumph of his beloved friend. He had already wandered a considerable distance; but the space bore no proportion to the time occupied; for he had sat down often by the roadside, hid his face in his hands, and been lost in a species of charmed contemplation of images at which he shuddered.