"A Popish baptism," said Master Heatherthwayte, "with chrism and
taper and words and gestures to destroy the pure simplicity of the
sacrament."

Controversy here seemed to be setting in, and the infant cause of it
here setting up a cry, Susan escaped under pretext of putting Humfrey
to bed in the next room, and carried off both the little ones. The
conversation then fell upon the voyage, and the captain described the
impregnable aspect of the castle of Dumbarton, which was held for
Queen Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert
Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned
Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith that she had
well-nigh escaped from Lochleven, in the disguise of a lavender or
washerwoman. She was actually in the boat, and about to cross the
lake, when a rude oarsman attempted to pull aside her muffler, and
the whiteness of the hand she raised in self-protection betrayed her,
so that she was carried back. "If she had reached Dumbarton," he
said, "she might have mocked at the Lords of the Congregation. Nay,
she might have been in that very brig, whose wreck I beheld."

"And well would it have been for Scotland and England had it been the
will of Heaven that so it should fall out," observed the Puritan.

"Or it may be," said the merchant, "that the poor lady's escape was
frustrated by Providence, that she might be saved from the rocks of
the Spurn."

"The poor lady, truly! Say rather the murtheress," quoth
Heatherthwayte.