Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/290

 274 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CK. 65. was obliged to be present. The Provost had prayed Lawson to be moderate ; he said he must speak what the Lord put in his mouth, ' and he preached upon the 6th of Zacharie, and opened up upon the Hills of Brass.' The instincts of these men had pierced the secret of the conspiracy, shrouded as it lay in hypocrisy, and the imagery of the Hebrew prophets gave their tongues superhuman eloquence. Durie, ' the little devil ' whom the French cooks at Dalkeith had ' invaded/ addressed the King from the pulpit at Stirling. On the September. . 4th of (September he too was restored in triumph to his congregation at Edinburgh. He landed at Leith. Two thousand people met him at Gallows Green, escorted him back to the city, and replaced him in his church ; the vast throng as they went along chanting the 1 24th Psalm, ' Now may Israel say, if the Lord himself had not been on our side, they had swal- lowed us up quick when they were so wrathfully dis- pleased at us : our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.' ' The Duke/ it was said, ' was more afraid at that sight than at anything that he had ever before seen in Scotland, and rave his beard for anger.' He might curse it as heresy, he might scorn it as fanaticism but there visibly present before him was a power which had baffled his plots, and which neither he nor his Jesuits could exorcise. He stole away out of the town, and never rested till he was among his own people at Dum- barton, with the highway of the sea open before him. ' If these news be true/ wrote the old Randolph when