here I am."

"Nay, but what seek ye?" cried Muckle John. "The Lord has led ye to our
company by His own good way. What seek ye? I say again, and yea, a
third time."

"I go to finish my colleging," I said.

He laughed a harsh, croaking laugh. "Little ye ken, young man. We
travel to watch the surprising judgment which is about to overtake the
wicked city of Edinburgh. An angel hath revealed it to me in a dream.
Fire and brimstone will descend upon it as on Sodom and Gomorrah, and
it will be consumed and wither away, with its cruel Ahabs and its
painted Jezebels, its subtle Doegs and its lying Balaams, its priests
and its judges, and its proud men of blood, its Bible-idolaters and its
false prophets, its purple and damask, its gold and its fine linen, and
it shall be as Tyre and Sidon, so that none shall know the site
thereof. But we who follow the Lord and have cleansed His word from
human abominations, shall leap as he-goats upon the mountains, and
enter upon the heritage of the righteous from Beth-peor even unto the
crossings of Jordan."

In reply to this rigmarole I asked for food, since my head was
beginning to swim from my long fast. This, to my terror, put him into a
great rage.

"Ye are carnally minded, like the rest of them. Ye will get no fleshly
provender here; but if ye be not besotted in your sins ye shall drink
of the Water of Life that floweth freely and eat of the honey and manna
of forgiveness."