A few minutes after they had gone below, the friar reappeared and ascended to the ship's waist, where Sir Hew Borthwick, notwithstanding his knighthood, was comfortably regaling himself with Archy of Anster and Wad the gunner, on salt beef and spiced ale at the capstan-head. Zuill placed a purse in his hands, and said,
"Here are the hundred crowns which Captain Barton promised thee."
"A hundred crowns!" stammered Borthwick; "'tis an enormous sum, good father." (And so it was in the time of James III.)
"But Barton hath a noble heart and a princely fortune," said the chaplain, retiring hurriedly, for he had neither respect nor admiration for an apostate priest like Borthwick.
"Ah me!" muttered the latter; "where shall I conceal this, and what shall I do with it? I never had such a sum before! What a thing it is, for a poor devil, who has not had even a black penny for ten days, to find himself suddenly the king of a hundred crowns! I' faith!" he added, while concealing his prize, "'tis well that fiery birkie Barton knoweth not by whose information the Lord Howard knew that the Scottish ships would pass the English Downs about Saint Swithin's day."
CHAPTER III.
BONNY DUNDEE.
"Yon is the Tay rolled down from Highland hills,
That rests his waves, after so rude a race,
In the fair plains of Gowrie—further westward
Proud Stirling rises—yonder to the east,
Dundee, the gift of God."
MACDUFF'S CROSS.
In that age of cold iron (for indeed we cannot call it a golden age), when the potent and valiant knight, Sir James Scrimegeour, of Dudhope and Glastre, Hereditary Bearer of the Royal Standard, was Constable and Provost of the Scottish Geneva, the unexpected appearance of Sir Andrew Wood's two stately caravels created no small commotion within the burgh. No sooner was notice given from the Castle of Broughty that the Laird of Largo's ships had been seen off the Inchcape, and were now standing up the Tay, than it spread from mouth to mouth, and passed through the town like wildfire.
Though now the shapeless façade of many a huge linen factory, and the tall outline of many a smoky chimney, overshadow the ground that was covered by green fields and waving coppice in the days I write of, "Bonny Dundee" still merits the name given it of old by the northern clansmen—Ail-lec—the pleasant and the beautiful.